Bailie Norman MacLeod

Paul Nowak, "The national minimum wage is £12.71 an hour" "Nobody on this panel is on £12.71 an hour" "And I think it is right that we are looking to increase people's wages" "Why? When low paid members get a pay rise, what do they do, they go out and spend it in local shops and local restaurants" "They don't squirrel it away in offshore bank accounts" My view: For someone earning the least, a pay rise can mean putting the heating on without worrying, buying fresh food, or getting through the month without borrowing. That matters in its own right. People deserve more than a lifetime of work spent barely scraping by. There is an economic value too. When household budgets have been stretched to breaking point, extra income helps meet needs that have gone unmet. That spending supports other people’s jobs and gives local businesses customers who can afford to walk through the door. We spend so much time asking whether the economy can afford to pay people more. We should also ask what it costs us to keep so many people poor.

Zack Polanski observes that early on the response from the media was positive, but as soon as Greta Thunberg started talking about Palestine, "they either ignore you or are quite vicious" Greta Thunberg, "Yeah. I got into activism because of my basic human values: every human is equal, we should be kind to each other" "Then I grew up and realised that putting those values into practice is seen as radical" "In every children's book, the person who oppresses people is obviously the villain" "How do we grow up up and like, this villain, he has to make compromises - at what age does that happen?" "Whether it's Palestinians being killed or people being killed by carbon emissions, whatever the source of that human suffering, we have to go to the source" "I grew up in a very white privileged background and didn't experience the dehumanisation the Palestinians were experiencing" "It was overnight how the establishment turned against me for saying genocide is bad" "I went from all the big people in power wanting to pose with me for selfies, to, overnight, it was a complete slander campaign because now she's radicalised" "Then I'd be invited to events where they say you can talk about climate but you can't talk about politics" "They would physically remove my keffiyeh (the scarf worn in the middle east and north Africa), or remove my microphone away from me" "It really shows the selective solidarity people have, especially in the west" "When I talk to people in the global south, for them it is so much more clear" "We have reached a point of the dehumanisation of Palestinians, where speaking up for their basic human rights is seen as controversial" My view: Greta Thunberg tells Zack Polanski that the values behind her activism have never changed: every human being is equal, and suffering should be challenged at its source, whether caused by climate change or violence against Palestinians. What changed, she says, was the establishment’s response. Leaders who once queued for selfies turned against her when she spoke about Palestine, portraying her as radicalised for applying the same principles consistently. She describes invitations to discuss climate while being forbidden from discussing politics, alongside attempts to remove her keffiyeh or microphone. For Thunberg, this exposes the selective solidarity of powerful Western institutions: celebrating human rights when convenient, then treating their defence as controversial when Palestinians are involved. Her central question is simple: children recognise oppression as wrong and oppressors as villains. At what age do adults start excusing them as people making necessary compromises, and why does basic humanity suddenly become a radical position?

Alastair Campbell, "I will say to Zia Yusuf and his friend Nigel Farage" "Brexit has taken 6-8% out of economy" "If we had not left, the Chancellor today would have had £90 billion more to spend" "He could have doubled the defence budget" Fiona Bruce, "That is a projection Alastair, no one can be sure about that" Alastair Campbell, "And added 50% to the health budget as well" "The people who gave us Brexit now want to give you another set of false promises" "Do not fall for them because they are a bunch of conmen. They're being found out. And its one reason why Nigel Farage will never be Prime Minister of this country" My view: Fiona Bruce was quick to dismiss Campbell’s figures as “a projection”. But that shouldn’t be a way to shut down the argument. Campbell was making a point about what Brexit has cost the country: on his figures, a 6–8% hit to the economy means around £90 billion less for the Chancellor to spend—enough, he said, to double the defence budget or increase health spending by 50%. And remember what Nigel Farage was saying in 2016: that even without a trade deal, Britain would be better off than it was then. The evidence points the other way. The OBR estimates that Brexit will leave UK productivity around 4% lower than it would have been inside the EU; other studies put the economic hit higher. That means we’re poorer than we would have been had we stayed. So yes, these are estimates—but the claims made by Brexit’s champions were projections too. Bruce’s caveat shouldn’t obscure the central question Campbell raised: how much has Brexit cost us, and what could that money have done for the country?