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Wednesday, 1 April, 2009

Sarah McDermott | 17:25 UK time, Wednesday, 1 April 2009

The whole of tonight's programme is devoted to the G20 in London, where we saw Barack Obama and Gordon Brown appearing at a joint press conference to say one thing, while the French and German heads of state held their own conference to say quite another. The row is between the countries who are prioritising global fiscal stimulus (us, the Americans and the Japanese), and the ones who first want root and branch reform of the 'Anglo-saxon' model of capitalism that they say caused the mess in the first place.

Meanwhile, as the leaders of the West fail to agree the fundamentals, outside the conference centre the angry mob circles.

Check out today's Twitter updates from our reporters inside and outside the G20.

Jeremy will be joined by our Economics Editor Paul Mason, our Political Editor Michael Crick, and our Diplomatic Editor Mark Urban for full spectrum analysis of the day, while Newsnight's Ethical Man Justin Rowlatt has been following the protestors in London.

Do join us at 10:30pm on 91Èȱ¬2.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    I reckon there is enough twittering on TV already without signing in to a special site to get a lot more of it. Still - a person shouldn't condemn in ignorance, so I had a look, and my worst fears were confirmed. I take a crumb of comfort in the thought that Jeremy might say something trenchant about it tonight.

  • Comment number 2.

    NOT GOING THERE (#1)

    Thanks RL - my instincts kept me away. All part of Edgy 91Èȱ¬-nouveau, like backing interviewees up against a plain wall, as if about to be shot. (There's a message there . . .)

  • Comment number 3.

    "....the ones who first want root and branch reform of the 'Anglo-saxon' model of capitalism that they say caused the mess in the first place."

    This is more than annoying as the major investment banks, which were at the centre of the 'firewall-erosion' e.g. and Brothers are not 'Anglo-Saxon'.

    Everyone should look a little more closely at the NYC demographics (#5) and let the data drive classification, not political correctness. Look into who the big property magnates and retailers are in the UK too. Who looked like they would do well out of PPP/PFI? Were these not the banks' major clients and is this not why New Labour was so keen to bail out the banks? How else would they pay for their Public Service programs if not by rekindling the very thing which brought about this mess and which their backers were to do so well out of?

  • Comment number 4.

    But is Britain really 'prioritising fiscal stimulus'? Doesn't look that way at
    all from the perspective of the UK's
    devolved administrations who will
    be facing cuts in the growth of their budgets in 2010? £500 million cut in
    Scotland's case - according to this:



    The truth is that there have been VAT
    cuts in 2008/9 but not much for 2010
    aside from blank cheques for bankers.

  • Comment number 5.

    The helicopter crash in the North Sea off NE Scotland this afternoon is also a reminder
    of who really generates "Britain's" wealth
    and at what cost ........

  • Comment number 6.

    Why, oh why are you, and the rest of the media looking for disaster; and in the process trying to create one?

    Of course there are differences of emphasis, the leaders come from different nations with different needs. But they are all almost unanimously agreed on the principles involved. Even the much hyped Franco-German opposition is about insisting on application of the principles; and as such is positive.

    We, the 2,000 members of the Foresight Network spread across the globe, put together our own hopes; which were formally included in the UN's submission.

    Our 'demands' would probably have been seen as utterly ludicrous if we had submitted them just a few months ago - before Bush Jr left office. Now it looks like the G20 will face up to almost all of them, and put forward plans for most of them to be met.

    To give just one example we had not predicted, the restart of the SALT talks - as a side issue - would have been major (good) news by itself. Now it is just one part of the benefits.

    Please wise up and recognise that optimism may not provide good headlines, but it will make for a much better world!

  • Comment number 7.

    DENIAL?

    barrie - a . At least over in the USA this and 'the lobby' is all discussed openly. Here, any suggestion of a vested interested at work is complained about in some blogs and often censored. No doubt crooked bankers and ministers are 'offended' when their behaviouir is made transparent. Who complains and is 'offended' when reading blogs, and why?

    Some people wonder why opaque, 'bad', things happen, and ask why more isn't done about it!

    This is at least one explanation.

  • Comment number 8.

    Nice to see all the Josh's and Emily's have a jolly day out in the City but aren't they worried it all looks terribly middle class and..well, white. You could have caused a real riot there by throwing a box-set of The Wire into the crowd. But it makes the Last Night of the Proms look like the Notting Hill Carnival.

  • Comment number 9.

    Quite a lot of these 'tax havens' are British
    - including Jersey from which Wee Dougie's
    sister Wendy took campaign contributions?
    Believe reform when you see it, folks .........



  • Comment number 10.

    GLOBAL AND LOCO

    What a mind-boggling mish-mash of small-mindedness predominates in this imaginary global civilisation. We humans, a cosmically brief aberration on an infinitesimal speck of the Universal-whole, run the gamut of group-belief in an ineffable god who donates land and approves slaughter; to individuals (politicians) with self-belief that is beyond measure.

    In our simplicity, even without a religious belief, we regard 'life' as existing 'in its own right', rather than as a function, and put human life into a class of its own, confounding our ability to cope with the ramifications of that error.

    Thank (imaginary) god, that our aberrations can have no measurable effect on the Cosmos; that our presence, in cosmic time, will be brief and, being such stuff as dreams are made of, our little 'life' will be rounded with the sleep of eternity.

    How that god would sigh with relief at our extinction! Meanwhile the slaughter, and other stupidity endures, and the scholarly, god-wise, Rowan Williams pronounces it all down to free will. Well - he got that bit right! But the Amalekites are going to need something more smite-proof than tin hats.

  • Comment number 11.

    Most memorable line of the night - "He's a smoothy chops, isn't he, Obama" - Jeremy, who else ;O)

  • Comment number 12.

    Poor old banks. They're taking all the flak for the crooks who defrauded them.

  • Comment number 13.

    There will no doubt be a lot of talk about the extra resources planned for the IMF - but it would also be nice to see reference
    in the final communiqué to the statement
    issued as recently as March 23 by the IMF
    Managing Director (the socialist Dominique
    Strauss-Kahn) - jointly with ILO in Geneva
    - on the need for an urgent 'Global Jobs Pact' to get us through this recession. I
    think that would help earth this London
    G20 meeting in the kind of language that Obama used to win over public opinion in
    America even if it is a bit "Old Labour" for
    the likes of Gordon 'fiscal stimulus' Brown,.

    Jobs are the bottom line in any recovery
    and social solidarity should be written in.
    As DSK says 'the current financial crisis must not become a wasteland of unemployment'.



  • Comment number 14.

    So while G20 meets in London, other Labour ministers continue to fight for
    the rights of capitalists to exploit the
    workforce?

  • Comment number 15.

    Grateful to Brown?

    if a hyped up driver who is part of a car crash doesn't decide to reverse over the injured to finish the job then one could be grateful?

    this so called 'anglo saxon' economics came out of the chicago school and look at who makes up that mindset? many are not anglo saxon are they?

    so its just name calling and even worse misname calling in a blame game mindset.

    it can be no coincidence that the usa/uk and the rest of the world economic divergence matches the foreign policy divergence?

    smashing windows looks just like emotionalism by those in love with violence?

    charity workers don't seem to get the uk is bankrupt with massive debt with more to come for years. why do people think the uk is a rich country?

    tax havens? there is no risk the money goes elsewhere. the risk is having no rules pirate bases launching destabilising bets with unsecured loans against the uk that can destroy uk factories and industry as surely as if they had dropped bombs on them. What about financial terrorism?

    obama reminds of the serious bald eagle from The Muppets.

  • Comment number 16.

    I've just seen the piece where Mark Thomas
    accuses Douglas Alexander's Government of
    'paying rent to tax dodgers'! Brilliant ...........

    NB Wee Dougie's sister Wendy, of course,
    ended up having to resign as the Labour
    leader in Scotland after writing the thank
    you note for campaign contributions from
    a property developer also based offshore
    in a UK tax-haven: Jersey! (Comment #9)

    The council housing "stock transfer" plan she and New Labour pushed through in
    Glasgow when Wendy was the Minister
    is also very close to collapse in Scotland:





  • Comment number 17.

    You might also suggest that Paul Mason or Mark Thomas keep an eye on this one from
    Douglas Alexander's own Paisley backyard
    where it seems a bank that pulled the plug
    on the developer of Phoenix Park Linwood
    now hopes to recover 90% of its exposure
    under the Government's asset protection scheme and is reported here as being one
    of the parties talking to the administrators
    about buying back the site from them for a
    knockdown price, using taxpayer's money?




  • Comment number 18.

    nortongriffiths (#12) Poor old banks. They're taking all the flak for the crooks who defrauded them".

    Yes. Given the extent to which New Labour has run with PP/PFI, and the extent to which the big borrowers were likely to have been a) the well known Investment Banks and b) 'property developers' (cf. Building Schools for the Future project etc) i.e those who planned to make a killing long term on mortgaging these (often inner city prime land) assets to the Public Sector (hence all the low-skilled immigration to put dysgenic bums in classrooms?), I suggest a very close and crtical look needs to be taken at how much in bed Ministers have been with the banks' clients when assessing who has been helping out (and feecing) who!

    bookhimdano (#15) "this so called 'anglo saxon' economics came out of the chicago school and look at who makes up that mindset? many are not anglo saxon are they?

    so its just name calling and even worse misname calling in a blame game mindset."


    Exactly. The evidence to justify that assertion is there if one looks, but the story is now being spun to blame others. We see a few, highly salient, well remunerated, 'Anglo-Saxon' patsies being paid off and used to mislead whilst the real culprits continue to get bailed out, have their pensions paid, and PFI projects funded at the expense of the taxpayer of the future.

    One just has to ask where this all begain (NYC) and where UK banks bought their toxic assets from which took them down. Also, the millions of sub-primers, their child like IQs which made it like selling orange lollies to babies whilst preaching equality and 'caveat emptor'

    People haven't woken up to the half of of this yet I suggest. Instead, they think they are offended at it being pointed out! :-(

  • Comment number 19.

    Its good to see that not only do the far right not cause a ripple in mainstream politics but when the alternative face of the political process is shown they aren't significant there either.

    So we have the usual suspects with their thinly veiled race hate messages posting again today and they will remain objectionable, futile, irrelevant and flawed tomorrow.

    To quote one its a "mind-boggling mish-mash of small-mindedness" that " predominates in this imaginary " world of the far right.

    Their beef with Jews is Stalin expelled some anarchists and Trotskyites in the 1930's, that included Jews, as he was not shooting that day.

    Their beef with black people does not even have an "intellectual" basis as they rely on a flawed analysis of public statistics that is not shared by the scientific establishment. The statistics are public and therefore they must be right ..... and the mainstream scientists are "all Jews" anyway.

    Genetic variation is greater within a race than between races and therefore there can be no basis for race "realism".

    The BNP have a nice bouncy castle in their field in Derbyshire and I am sure if the "intellectuals" think about it they would be far happier there.

    Email your MP and suggest making Holocaust Denial an offence and I think people should start to think about also following Germany's lead on banning groups that teach children race hatred.

  • Comment number 20.

    There may be good news today economically in the "blip" in house price falls.

    But Brown still seems like a man who has leaped from a building as a self imposed act of faith and is now falling smiling to the ground saying "so far so good...".

    Detached from reality, what is his mindset about where he and Labour will be in five years?

    I just cannot see how history will write up Brown as the Iron Chancellor that saved the world. An unprecedented global phenomenon is how they described the Wall St Crash seventy years ago wasn't it? So the G20 cannot protect us from such a phenomenon?

    As an instance of the knock on effects of Labour policy how about education? PFI academies and a reliance on foreign students that may not appear in higher education. Student loans are going to be a millstone that many will not forget at the next election.

    Anyway I must pop off and "paint Hitler as darkly as possible" as it will annoy the vile adherents to that cult of evil.

  • Comment number 21.

    bookhimdano #15) "tax havens? there is no risk the money goes elsewhere. the risk is having no rules pirate bases launching destabilising bets with unsecured loans against the uk that can destroy uk factories and industry as surely as if they had dropped bombs on them. What about financial terrorism?"

    Excellently put.

    But who are the true terrorists? Who is responsible for financial anarchism, the hedge-fund managers or those who released them, and to what end did they deregulate? Were these not the very people who asserted that mass immigration, and education, education, education (aka dumb-down, dumb-down, dumb-down and trash qualifications) was good for the economy when in fact it was just going to de-skill us in the long run by lowering the birth rate whilst skewing it dysgenically? Still, more income from value-ranges and consumer debt via cash-back etc for Tesco, ASDA etc as they move into loan-sharking on the sly?

    Newsnight - follow the money for PPP/PFI - it's time to get those CGI folk working on a string of economy specials!

  • Comment number 22.

    #18 jaded_jean

    "Also, the millions of sub-primers, their child like IQs which made it like selling orange lollies to babies whilst preaching equality"

    People with IQ's throughout the range reject your race "realist" ideas and they don't see planned economies Hitler style as a solution. They also like equality and democracy.

    The puppet show above does not disguise the fact that you people, who are neither Nazis or the BNP, are trying to promote failed, evil and outdated ideas.

    Its not even as though you don't know that the readers are on to you.

    Whatever you do you will be opposed every step of the way.

  • Comment number 23.

    thegangofone (#19) "Their beef with black people does not even have an "intellectual" basis as they rely on a flawed analysis of public statistics that is not shared by the scientific establishment. The statistics are public and therefore they must be right"

    Nobody here has 'a beef with black people'. Please provide references which show everyone reading this blog that what's been published by Rushton and Jensen, and Murray ad many others, including the ETS in the USA, the DfES here, and the OECD, are not shared by the scientific community. You are wrong.

    You need to be tod that you are presently posting untruhs, and doing so should, I suggest, be in breach of 91Èȱ¬ blog House Rules if it can be shown tht you are wittingly doing so.

    Here below is one example of the evidence which highlights your untruths. Other links to the ETS and our DfES (as it was when the Standards Site an Key Stage report on ethnic minorities was published) have been posted many times before.

    So, why do you keep posting statements which clearlry are not true?

    . James Watson’s most inconvenient truth: Race realism and the moralistic fallacy. Medical Hypotheses, 71, 629-640.

  • Comment number 24.

    thegangofone (#20) "Email your MP and suggest making Holocaust Denial an offence and I think people should start to think about also following Germany's lead on banning groups that teach children race hatred."

    1) Please provide a clear, truth-functional, definition of 'the Holocaust' which can be used in order to fairly assess when somebody is or is not denying it. At present, as no such agreed criteria exist it is impossible to deny or affirm. It is, in fact, meaningless political metaphysics deployed to confuse people and make them feel guilty to the advantage of its propagators. This is precisely how it was used by allied Psychological Warfare in the after WWII in order to Liberal-Democratize and demoralize Germany as a collective punishment.

    2) Please tell us explicitly who the groups are which are teaching children race hatred and where they do this. You appear to be confusing the teaching of facts with teaching hatred.

  • Comment number 25.

    Go1

    Question. Do you think the NHS is a worthy/good idea?

  • Comment number 26.

    thegangofone (#22) "People with IQ's throughout the range reject your race "realist" ideas and they don't see planned economies Hitler style as a solution. They also like equality and democracy."

    Except for those in the People's Republic of China which has a higher mean IQ than White Europeans.

    Try to grasp that by definition, people with Learning Difficulties (Statemented SEN) have lower IQs than average and by those standards, the average Sub-Saharan African has a Learning Difficulty.

    They may reject all sorts of things, but Zimbabwe and other African countries are more than happy to take a helping hand from the PRC. You should ask yourself why that is, and why they despise imperialism/colonialism and Western Liberal-Democratic interference which makes out that the only reason they are undeveloped is because they're derprived of democracy and the liberating effect of the free-maket.

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