you studied french and russian at heriot—watt university in edinburgh, and then in yourfinal year youved a scott trust bursary from the guardian to study journalism. and i think you were quite clear at that point that you wanted to be a columnist. why? because i had been very politically involved and my entry into writing was partly because i'd studied languages and studied to be an interpreter and i like to manipulate words, but it was also because i had been very involved politically, almost precociously, and that i thought i had things to say. and what i didn't realise at the time was the degree to which reporting, running out, talking to people, finding out, all of that, is the nuts and bolts of everything, including column writing. so as someone who hadn't done an awful lot ofjournalism and heriot—watt didn't have a student newspaper for the first couple of years i was there, my sense of being a journalist was about writing my thoughts and, of course, because i was 21 or 22 i also assumed that everybody would be interested in my thoughts, which, when i look back at it now is a li

in the 1980's, 3% of high school tbraj watts went to university.number then by the late 1990's grew to 25% and today, according to the latest data, over 51% of high school graduates can go to university. you have to ask yourself, if the enrollments in universities are increasing so rapidly who is teaching these kids? that's a really big question. and the reason why you have this bifurcation is clearly that at the top tier, they're getting not only their own graduates, which is an incestuousness in the system. they tried to break it down but there's not enough places to go. the second source of course is getting people to come back after they've been in the u.s. or europe for a number of years. that's really why the talent programs have been so important for china is to recruit that faculty that are needed to staff these new positions across the entire system. and then also of course to drive the rernlg -- research. so there is a big problem. the faculty -- the best and the brightest still stay in the united states. and if that's the case, then if y

james watt, how is then the visiting professor at london's university london's southbank university andical and jo phillips, the political commentator, keep commentator, both keep me company. the justice company. now the justice secretary, dominic says secretary, dominic raab, says get this, everyone, the prisoners might have to be early because quite frankly, we're running out of room for them already. you might recall a place cells have been authorised , used to be used for prisoners, boats, the jail population apparently grown by 4000 people in the last few , meaning there's in the last few, meaning there's no room , the inn. and i say inn, no room, the inn. and i say inn, by the way, because if you look at these prisons, they are like hotels and holiday camps. if you ask me, as opposed to places of punishment. but anyway, i digress . jeff phillips, what do digress. jeff phillips, what do you make that? i think it's you make of that? i think it's highly that there's highly unlikely that there's going early release, going to be any early release, but you know, again, it but i think yo