The UK sends jets to the Middle East as Israel and Iran exchange air strikes

21:15Well, there's two things. I mean, the broad thing is that businesses and investors have told us for a long time that in this country, they're not quite sure what's going to happen when and if it's going to happen at all. And that means they don't take the risk of investing in their workforce, taking on new apprentices, thinking about training their workforce to do different things. And then you don't have the capacity in order to be able to build all of the infrastructure we want to see across the country. So our 10-year infrastructure strategy backed up by five-year capital budgets, and what will be a kind of online website that shows investors and businesses what's coming down the track, where and when.

21:46Paddy O'Connell:So that could kind of put a postcode in if I'm a business. If we've got a business listening, they put a postcode in, and within a few weeks it could show government pots of money, which might be relevant to that geography? Yeah, you zoom in on a map as opposed to a postcode. But it'll be a website in a couple of weeks that will go live, and you'll be able to see what we're going to buy, when we're going to buy it, where we're going to buy it. And the idea of all of that is it gives those businesses the confidence to say, do you know what, I'm going to hire those staff, I'm going to hire those apprentices in these places because I know I've got the strategy, the money and the commitment to be able to build.

22:16Paddy O'Connell:You've done a big job for us this morning. The listeners love candour. Just in two sentences, this was much harder than you ever thought it was going to be, this governing thing, isn't it? I'm enjoying it very much. It's much better than opposition. Opposition is utterly pointless. Being in government means you can actually, you know, implement your values and run the country and that's a great privilege. And it's great unpredictability. It keeps you busy. Do you speak any languages while you're here, can I ask you? No. No, sorry. That's our next item. Well, I'll leave in that case. The language of finance is a language.

22:49Paddy O'Connell:Oh, well, there you go. I can do fiscal rules. I'm co-presenting with Lisa and Seth. We can't have you as well, but thank you very much. Maybe next time. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. It's just gone 20 past nine. Next, we will rate the new Spanish-speaking skills of the English footballer, Trent Alexander-Arnold, raised in Liverpool, the right back and chess player has just moved from the Reds to Real Madrid, saying he's studied the language of his new home for months. This is the result which greatly impressed the Spanish. Buenas tardes a todos. Ficha por un club como Real Madrid no sucede todos los días.

23:22Paddy O'Connell:Es un sueño hecho realidad. Estoy muy feliz y orgulloso de estar aquí. Tengo muchas ganas de enseñar mi juego a los madridistas. There you go. I'm sure lots of our listeners speak Spanish. But let's see, Richard Simcott, language consultant, head of the International Polyglot Conference. He speaks around 30 languages over 15 fluently. How do you rate that Spanish, Richard? I thought it was pretty good. I mean, he really represented one of my hometowns of Liverpool very, very well. And I think his original Scouse dialect would have helped him with Spanish because he's got the G down there. 30 languages.

24:03Yes. That's just a quick fire tip. I have to say that when I, it seems to me that one of the latest is that you're supposed to imagine every word as a picture, which means a lot of pictures going around your head. What would be your top tip? My top tips, I mean, basically knowing what you want to say, what you want to be able to put across is really important because we can start on this journey of learning languages and just sort of learn random things that make no sense and have no real meaning for us individually. But if we know what we want to say, we're talking about ourselves, talking about things we like, dislike, things that we enjoy eating, things we're allergic to.

24:41These things are really concrete items that we can start to learn and give a structure to our learning. And if we practice them every day, we're going to get there.

24:49Paddy O'Connell:And then you're telling me to follow my passions, really. I mean, it can be quite good to fall in love with someone, can't it? That's another way to learn the language. If you fall in love with someone whose language isn't your own, you might very well find you learn it. Well, here I am married almost 20 years to my Macedonian wife. Are you not going to tell me that you learnt Macedonian? I absolutely did. And that is our home language and we've never spoken English. Just for listeners in Wales who speak Welsh and may think we're talking about the English language, have you tried to crack Welsh and has that helped you with English?

25:25I've tried to crack Welsh and has that helped you with English? I've tried to crack Welsh and has that helped you with English? I've tried to crack Welsh and has that helped you with English? So I come from Wales originally and I speak Welsh OK, I think.

25:37Paddy O'Connell:Well, what did you just say? Just because I don't. That's exactly what I said. I come from Wales originally. I hope you're not playing that trick on me of the road sign that gives the out of office instead of directions. Can you tell me, I've often wondered, because I do have many friends who do speak many languages and I sometimes wonder if their brains are wired differently. Is it a certain kind of skill that you need to acquire so many languages? Because, you know, before this thing, we asked around the BH office, do you speak a language? They said, no, no, I only speak English. And is it not just the passions, but a certain kind of skill?

26:15I think it's a passion, absolutely. I mean, we can talk about skills or talents. And I hear those words all the time when people talk to me or talk about people learning multiple languages. Now, everyone is able to learn language. I mean, the fact that we speak English and most of the English-speaking world tends to be pretty monolingual, but in other countries, multilingualism is the absolute norm. I mean, you go to Luxembourg

26:42Paddy O'Connell:and everyone speaks at least three or four languages. And not to be, you know, deliberately argumentative, but English is a fabulous language, isn't it? It's very flexible. We're not hung up on introducing new words. and you know do you love speaking English do you love our idioms do you love our metaphors what do you love about English oh I absolutely love English I think English is a wonderful language and in fact my English has been enriched by my study of languages so you know French and the German that I've learned particularly you see them we have these words that we've just as you say wholesale adopted into our language like schadenfreude or you know we'll say um you know or you'll say these things that are from a language that's related because of our histories, because of our cultures, and how they've intertwined and intermingled over the centuries.

27:33Paddy O'Connell:Can you give me some idioms from other languages just before we leave you? Because I think that could be quite fun for a Sunday. At least we'll be able to translate them. How about one from Spanish? Because we heard in Spanish how our wonderful footballer was speaking. So in Spanish, they have this lovely thing that they say, which is, más vale una vez rojo que siento amarillo, which means it's better to be red once than yellow a hundred times. And what it means is it's better to make a mistake and just learn from it than to doubt and sort of hang fire and hold back and to never, ever try. I'm just looking at the German literal translation.

28:12Paddy O'Connell:It's, Tomaten auf den Augenhaben. You have tomatoes on your eyes. You're not seeing what everyone else can see. exactly yes there are some beautiful ways to express these things in other languages absolutely and tips for listeners i hear you take forward the passions that's obviously what this is the main story about really when we heard there from trent alexander arnold but what would be a good tip to start it's that it's planning what you're going to do and thinking about what you want to learn and why so if you're going to learn a language because you're going on holiday well there's no point learning things like you know the owl is green it makes no sense it's better to go and think okay well what do i want to eat what's going to be on the menu what kind of things are there how do i say i would like this i would like that how do i ask for the bill how do i start with things that are really practical talking about yourself is something that's very common so you know where are you from uh are you with your family talking about the ages of your children if you're with children.

29:14Things like that, you know, what it's like back home. It rains at home.

29:17Paddy O'Connell:I like it here because it's sunny. You know, these kinds of lovely things. Richard, thank you. And I'm so glad to have got the word polyglot out once in my career. Thank you very much. Please come back. Richard Simcott, polyglot. It's 9.29. It's BBC Radio 4. It's BH with Lise Doucette and Paddy O 'Connell and Tina Ritchie with the news headlines. Tensions have continued to escalate between Israel and Iran as the two sides launched further attacks on each other overnight. Iran fired a wave of missiles at central and northern Israel, killing at least 10 people, including two children. The Israeli military carried out more strikes on Tehran, targeting buildings linked to Iran's nuclear programme.

29:58Sakhir Starmer has called the deployment of more RAF jets to the Middle East contingency support and says his constant message to both sides is to de-escalate. President Trump has warned Iran against attacking the US in any way, shape or form, or it will feel the full might of the American military.

30:17Paddy O'Connell:That statement from the US president came to our attention at around 6am. Foreign ministers and world leaders are speaking at the moment. Lise has a summary for us of some of the main headlines. Lise, what is the world saying? Well, I have to say that our discussion earlier about how this war is intensifying, I'm just looking at some of the updates on that idea that Britain is worried about the war expanding in Israel. They're saying that the oil refinery in Haifa has taken a direct hit. And that means that the damage has been caused to the pipelines and the transfer lines. And the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakshi is saying that Israel has hit energy facilities in the south of Iran, close to the Persian Gulf, and is accusing Israel of trying to drag the region.

31:04And indeed, he accuses of Israel trying to drag the entire world into this conflict.

31:10Paddy O'Connell:He's used an unusual phrase. You've met him, you know him, and you can translate for us when he said that Israel has crossed a red line by bombing these economic sites. What is he trying to signal to the world by saying that? Well, just what we've been discussing today, literally fires are burning. If you go from nuclear sites to military bases, then to energy facilities, you're really going at the arteries of a country, a country's ability to survive. And does that explain why Iran has hit an oil refinery in Israel? Both of them are starting to say that all targets are legitimate now. That's the update at half past nine.

31:51Paddy O'Connell:Lisa's with us all the way till 10. Ben, we'll leave that there for what we've heard since we last tackled this with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. We'll turn to our colleague Ben Chu, who will be rounding up the lunchtime situation for the world this weekend. Ben, welcome back. Hello, Paddy. What have you been working on on this? Well, we're going to be sticking with the Iran-Israel conflict, unsurprisingly, and we'll be talking to Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary, who was the first UK Cabinet Minister to visit Iran since the 1979 revolution. and we'll be asking what he thinks the UK government should be doing.

32:24We're also going to be hearing from Ken Rogoff, who was the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, about what all this means for the global economy. So that's 1pm on The World this weekend.

32:34Paddy O'Connell:Yes, I mean, just in a sentence for the schoolboys and schoolgirls, if the oil price goes up, the UK government spending plans are going to have to be rewritten again. Well, that's one way of looking at it, yes. higher prices means higher borrowing costs for the UK, I think that's fair to say. The higher prices at the pump for all our listeners. We'll be talking about that specifically. Okay, you've got that for one, you'll obviously bring all the situation that we don't know about between now and one, but for now, thank you very much indeed. Back home, the Chancellor's pledged to end the use of migrant hotels, unpopular both with voters and refugee charities.

33:11Paddy O'Connell:Both BH guests and listeners have urged us to give more airtime to this in recent weeks. Here are some figures. 32 ,000 people are currently being housed in so-called heartbreak hotels, costing more than£1 billion a year. The 32 ,000 is down from 56 ,000 two years ago. In 2023, demonstrators in Dover alleged criminals were among those who'd arrived in small boats to be housed in hotels, and that the media, including the BBC, was ignoring the problem. We should not let this happen. What we see is men and children, the women, where are they?

33:50Paddy O'Connell:After the Southport riots in August 2024, other migrant hotels around the UK were attacked. This family escaped the Taliban in Afghanistan and spoke to me in Aldershot, where they were being housed, when confronted by a street mob whipped up by false online rumours. They come like suddenly and they were trying to climb into the hotel. They even break our wall. Our windows were also broken. It was really scary. We just love them. They are so polite, some people, but some people are very aggressive towards us and racist. That feels very bad. This violence overshadows legitimate concerns over safety and community inclusion from sudden migrant arrivals.

34:33Paddy O'Connell:That's what I heard from three parish councillors in one village in Berkshire. They want proper treatment for asylum seekers, but felt ignored when a local hotel became used for migrants. We'll hear from Datchet after a reminder of what the Chancellor has recently said. I can confirm today that led by the work of my right honourable friend, the Home Secretary, we will be ending the costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers in this Parliament. Datchet is minutes by train from Windsor and it's underneath Heathrow Airport and during our interviews you will hear evidence of that this is the Manor Hotel now here's a sign saying weddings brasserie and bar accommodation conferences private functions Sun Terrace but actually it's changed it's been used very differently as I heard from the man who lives opposite it who's on the parish council, Darren Sanders.

35:34Paddy O'Connell:It's always been a hub of the village, so used not just for weddings and parties and other social gatherings, but it was a bistro and a bar. What's happening now? It's empty. Nothing's happening at all. What's happened in the middle between it being a hub and being empty? What happened in the middle? It became used by Home Office to house people and borough to house people. and the challenge really for the community was there's no infrastructure to support them. And what do you think will happen to this place? The same as it has happened. I'd imagine they'll keep taking home office money and borough money to house people that can't be housed elsewhere.

36:13I'm just knocking on there because the owners didn't really want to speak to us

36:17Paddy O'Connell:but there might be someone in. Ooh, there is actually, the doors just seem to have swung open on the Manor Hotel. Hello?

36:30Paddy O'Connell:There was an open door. I did just go in, but a lady who I didn't wish to be recorded told me that the owner's not here. Although we did try and reach him, but there is criticism for the owners. That's why I wanted to try and find him, as I heard from Darren. I'd imagine this is an easy way out for them to make money without having to pay wages and staff the hotel. What would you like to happen? to come back as a hotel, preferably with different owners. Councillor Alison Whelan told me that villagers felt done too and that the policy of housing migrants in hotels appears to be an admission of failure, bad for everybody, including those who are sent there.

37:12I think it really changed the dynamic around. We have a beautiful recreation ground just over at the back there and having groups of men standing around. What they were doing, it's completely, I'm sure, innocent, but it changes the dynamic of a recreation ground where you have young children playing, women working out in their outside gym. It goes from being a very open space to being a much more kind of wary space and that's what happened. We had 85 men, you know, asylum seekers into the hotel in one go. People didn't want to go out at night. They were out on the streets at night. I don't know why.

37:47I thought there would be a curfew but there wasn't. They would stand around on the corners at night.

37:51Paddy O'Connell:And are you sympathetic to their plight? Do you have a sympathy for their problem? I do. But I think it's not about the fact that they are asylum seekers. It's about integration. It's about really thinking about where is best for these people to go to and to put them in the heart of a small parish village without any consideration for what that might look like is, I think, really careless. The chair of the parish council is David Buckley. He said that the way that the main parties have mishandled the whole question of immigration in this country over the last decade has made him switch his politics.

38:27I am representing Reform UK currently. I was elected as an independent, been an independent councillor and independent on the parish council for six years. I've decided to change because my main focus is to give residents their voice

38:41Paddy O'Connell:and put residents first. And do you feel that the other political parties, the main ones, have been slow to understand the concerns? Oh, I think they just don't know how to worry about people anymore. They don't care about people. I think that we need to put residents and people before politics. Now, Alison told me as I left her, could she make one more point after we finished our recording? And it was that there is a great deal of compassion in this community and it's been very upsetting to people like her to be told they must be from the far right if they wish to express concerns about immigration.

39:16I don't want to be seen as a far-right person because I care about my community. It just feels like a real shutdown strategy to take the voice away from people that are naturally concerned about the well-being of their community. It's not OK to silence me in that way. It's not on us to sort of pick up the pieces of consecutive government's mistakes, but we are.

39:38Paddy O'Connell:And it's not for you to be branded as far-right because you want a hotel in your village? Yeah, because I'm anti what the hotel is doing. Alison speaking to me in Datchet. Now, this is a response from us, really, to emails that we get asking for more coverage of this. The far-right thing really annoys listeners. They think it's undefined. And so we know this isn't the last we're going to do on this, but we hope you appreciate what we're trying to do here, which is respond to listeners who pay for the programme. We approached the Manor Hotel for comment, but they declined to speak to us. And, of course, it's important to note that the hotel is one of many across the country that had a contract with the Home Office.

40:15Paddy O'Connell:that contract has now ended. And so has that item for this week. It's 20 to 10. Here with our headliners and lease, and of course his remaining, Dr Alice Bunn is Chief Executive of the Institution for Mechanical Engineers and President of UK Space, the Trade Association of the British Space Industry. Dr Bunn, do we have enough engineers on Radio 4? We certainly do not, but I'm doing my best to fix that. George Parker is FT Political Editor and presenter of the Radio 4 Week in Westminster. Welcome back, George. Thanks, Paddy. And Maria McCurlay, the actor and broadcaster, has a new podcast with Graham Norton.

40:51Well, it's been embargoed. How can you embargo a podcast? But I'm not allowed to talk about it, apparently, until it comes out, which is not long. But there, we've already talked about it, and now I'll get in trouble. What do you think of having Lise Doucette here? I am a massive fan of Lise Doucette, and I want her to be here every week and come home and live with me.

41:09Paddy O'Connell:Let's get underway. We don't want to give too much work to Lise Doucette. Other people have to have it. Sorry, Paddy. The engineer in the room goes first. Don't be ashamed if you're sick of little darlings in the Sunday Times. It's just parental burnout. Absolutely. Well, after all, it's Father's Day, so this article caught my eye. You shouldn't laugh, but some of the lines in here about people watching their kids sleeping so they can feel that love again. Basically, it's a story about our generation of helicopter parenting and the fact that parents are now starting to feel a bit of burnout. And I thought it was appropriate today to let parents off the hook a little bit on Father's Day.

41:49You've got four children, haven't you? I do, I do. Do you know where they are at this moment in time? Certainly not, certainly not my daughter, that's for sure.

41:57Paddy O'Connell:Someone on my social media said that Father's Day is the one we always ignore, George. If it was Mother's Day, we'd all be booking roast dinners in country hotels and dads are sort of given a pair of old socks and told how they don't have a look at an old motorbike. I think it's true. I think people initially were a bit suspicious of this as being an Americanism being imported into the country. My dad used to say, don't worry about this, just sort of fabrication of the card companies to make a bit of money. But I think over time it's become more embedded in national life. So I'm looking forward to my kids buying me a pint down by the river later.

42:28Will you get something? I hope so. They're planning to take me out this evening for dinner, which was really nice. Oh, so you are going to celebrate? Yeah.

42:34Paddy O'Connell:What about this helicopter parenting thing that Alice is pointing to? Have parents changed in your generation? Are parents more involved? Can we make a generalisation? I think so. I think they probably have done. I think people have become more aware of risk as well. I think when we were growing up, I think we were allowed just to, we ran wild for the whole summer. We'd just sit there for hours on end, just out playing games and just walking around. Well, Alice and I were saying, you know, basically when you were young you ate dirt, you got bitten by a dog and you had to sort of stave off the local flasher.

43:06And that was really your education.

43:09Paddy O'Connell:I feel that I'm the one who says this every week, but I've only really got two thoughts. And one of them is that I do want to make the case that it's hard to be a teenager today because of this constant comparison online. I feel that if it's true we had this scampering around, we didn't know that someone else was having a better time or looked better or anything else. Yeah, absolutely. And it's a challenge as well, isn't it? Because parents, we're very concerned that the amount of time that our children spend on screens, so you've got to navigate that one as well. But I do think sometimes we just overthink it.

43:40Do you think if you've still got children living at home over 30, you've done something wrong? What, from your perspective or theirs? Yes, exactly.

43:50Paddy O'Connell:What about over 40? Where's the threshold? George, let's turn to the Mail on Sunday. Starmer scrambles RAF. Netanyahu can smell the air and Tehran reeks of weakness. Well, Israel-Iran conflict is on a number of front pages, including the Sun, the Sunday Times. But I think it's a really interesting piece here in the Mail on Sunday by Mark Ullman from the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford, where he talks a bit about why now the whole idea of that Tehran reeks of weakness, he says. You know, the fact that Israel has defanged, as he puts it, Hezbollah, their proxies in Lebanon. And he thinks that at 86, the supreme leader in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, hasn't many years left.

44:28His response to this attack has been inept and scattergun. But he admits, Mark Ullman, that trying to have a regime change from 50 ,000 feet in the air is going to be really difficult. And Israel should be careful what it wishes for, because the idea of an orderly, swift transition to a new Western friendly regime is going to be extremely hard to execute. What we've learned yet again in this crisis is that Israel is not just in the skies. They have penetrated yet again with Mossad spies inside Iran and were able to carry out drone strikes from inside Iran. And it has done the same when it's assassinated nuclear scientists.

45:07It's done it on the ground. I'm sure we don't know the half of what Israel has in Iran right now. And I think that is what is making Iranians nervous and why this is really already a battle for survival in Iran.

45:20Paddy O'Connell:George, what are you looking for in the UK response? And what about this tightrope I was trying to explore? Lisa and I were trying to explore with the cabinet minister in earlier. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be dominating Keir Starmer's discussions at the G7 in Canada. What's interesting, I think, has been the response saying that we have grave concerns about Iran's nuclear programme. And obviously it's in our interest. We've been trying through diplomatic means to stop the nuclear programme for years and years and years. if it can be stopped by military action, great, up to a point, except for the fact the danger is that it starts a wider regional war, the Americans get sucked in, the UK possibly get sucked in, and of course, economically, the danger of an oil price spike.

46:01Paddy O'Connell:OK, so at least we'll also sum up for us at the end of the programme what news there has been, if there has been, during the hour we've been on air. Now we'll turn away from that subject. We'll go to Maria McCurling, who has a new private podcast that we're not allowed to know about. And you're going to take us to the Sunday Times, page seven. Bone broth, Botox and a caffeine-free shot of bonkers. Yes, exactly. Immortality cult. It's the inaugural meeting of the Superhuman Society, if only I can say it. Are they linked to the Polyglot Society that I had earlier? Oh, I like your term polyglot, yes, using that as many times as possible.

46:39Superhuman Summit in Stockholm. And it's Brian Johnson, who some may have seen, I think he's got a show on Netflix, where he's, we're all trying to do this, defying death, basically. And he has to, there's no meat, no dairy. He gets up at five o 'clock in the morning to meditate. He has his son's blood transfusions. He has a sugar, I'm trying to find out how I can say this. He has a sugar cube sized thing under his, part of his willy to test his morning glory. And he's not allowed to have any stimulants whatsoever. But it's such a joyless life. I could list it forever. But it's one of those things where you think, if you said to somebody, would you like to have deprivation and discipline but live another 20 years?

47:25No guarantees. Or would you like debauchery and excess and live another 10 years? Alice? Oh, definitely the latter. Definitely the latter. Although I'd like to think I'll probably manage to spin some kind of space angle on this. Good. Where are you putting space in? a deep torpor and some interplanetary travel. Can you live longer in space? Well, actually... It aged you. Exactly. If you go, your average astronaut going up to space for six months will come back with basically the immune system of someone about 30 years older than that. So you have to re-jig it afterwards. Well, yeah, so what can you do with that?

48:03Maybe you can learn about the ageing process and then maybe you can do something to reverse the ageing progress. Which doesn't involve any of the things you can do. I want to ask you, as you're the space expert, Alice, why do you think Jeff Bezos didn't get married in space? Because he's planning something in Venice. No, absolutely. I think that was a massive miss, a big fail on his part, and I really think you should have claimed that.

48:23Paddy O'Connell:It's a question the other Sunday shows aren't asked. I have to be honest. So now we turn back to you, Alice, and we're going to go back to The Observer. Rachel Reeves, pressed to invest in people as well as projects and get more bang for her buck, which links to a story in the mail on Sunday. here's how to make sure you can get some of the government's money for your investments. Yeah, well, it does, doesn't it? And I started with the Mail because basically the article in the Mail is what you see. On Sunday. Indeed, is a whole list of areas in which we will be making investments. And I was very interested listening to Darren Jones earlier, finding out a little bit more about those over the next few weeks.

48:59And what you can be mistaken into thinking is this is an announcement about projects, but actually it needs to be an announcement about people. because unless we invest in the people to deliver these projects, we're really going to be letting ourselves down. Now, there has been some good news. Apprenticeships, people talk a lot about apprenticeships. That's seen a boost in the spending review. But we need to make sure that there's targeted properly. You've got organisations like the National Engineering Policy Centre, Engineering UK. We're right behind them too, talking about a national engineering and technology strategy so we get the right people to deliver these big ambitions.

49:37Paddy O'Connell:So there is money, there's not a lot of it, but this links to the Sunday Times, George Parker, praying for something to turn up. What does the paper say? Well, this is all about, really, it's just taking on Alice's point, really, about how Rachel Reeves has got this huge amount of money to dispense in terms of capital projects. But the question is whether it delivers votes for the Labour Party, I suppose, if you're looking at it from the political perspective. Well, to be fair, that's a bit cynical. The question is, they're spending money on the economy, and there may be votes here. Sorry, I'm thinking from a narrow political point of view.

50:06Paddy O'Connell:We live in the bubble. From an economic point of view, I think lots of economists agree that what we do need to do is invest in the long-term growth potential of the country. That means building nuclear power stations, new bridges and roads and all the rest of it. But for Labour MPs looking over their shoulders at the electorate and thinking, am I going to have a job in four years' time, I think we're going to hear a lot more in the next few days about projects which will be deliverable in the short term, fixing potholes or fixing roads or whatever it might be, to show that money is going into people's potholes.

50:33Paddy O'Connell:OK, because the Tories were accused of this with the levelling up thing, weren't they? But there was still some projects that were popular. Figures from the Office for National Statistics published on Thursday revealed that the economy contracted in April by 0.3 % as businesses cut jobs and cancelled investment plans in response to higher taxes. This I'm reading from the paper. What kind of a crunch moment is this, Darren, this Chief Secretary of the Treasury announcement he was talking about earlier? Well, I mean, the Sunday Timers piece is looking ahead to Rachel Reeves' autumn budget, where basically because the economy is not growing as fast as people would like it to, because of the rising cost of debt and because of a number of government U-turns on various policies, a lot of speculation, it will run right through the summer on what taxes are going to have to rise to fill the fiscal gap, basically.

51:18Yeah. And I suppose, you know, it's interesting your point around, you know, jobs and what voters want, because there is a massive skill shortage in engineers. You know, there is a big, big prospect for jobs ahead. But I suppose my point is that the government needs to be in investing in that pipeline to be able to pull through the engineers that we need for all of these, you know, effectively social good projects, be that affordable housing, net zero energy, future transport systems.

51:42Paddy O'Connell:OK, and do you think in the life of this Parliament, Labour will increase income tax, George? I think they'll do everything they possibly can to not do that. Although I should put one caveat. There is a freeze on the thresholds and allowances for income tax which the Tories put in, which I think will be extended until the end of the Parliament, and that will be an effective income tax rise. I just want to say, I think, Darren Jones, if we're talking about vote winners. George has his shorts on this morning and we said to Darren, why haven't you got your shorts on? And he said, because I will be packed.

52:10I said, I think that would be a vote winner and make the Monday front pages. He hasn't got as nice legs as me, that's what it is. Oh, well, that's debatable. We never got to find out. Let the viewers decide.

52:21Paddy O'Connell:Maria, we're going to turn to you now with a Mail on Sunday column from Deborah Ross. Why does this drama have you rooting for the bad guys? It's about the gold TV series. Yes, talking of money as we were, Oh, you see, there is a segue there somewhere. It's a BBC series, and the gold was about the Brinks map robbery in 1983. And 50 % of that money has not been recovered. And so this is a sort of summation of what somebody has decided has happened to that gold. And we root for the bad guy. The BBC and also all of television once had a moral obligation to expose the bad guys and to make them get their comeuppance and their punishment.

53:01but now it seems we're kind of rooting for them. We don't want them to get caught. We don't want them to have to go to prison.

53:08Paddy O'Connell:Maybe this began with Breaking Bad. Maybe it didn't begin there. Yes, the whole drugs thing. The loving of the bad guy, George, in your drama. Do you love the bad guys? I think so. I mean, I think it's been a long history of gangster movies where you end up finding some rooting for the gangster. I know, but that really has been a sea change. Going back to the Italian job. We had to see that the baddies got killed or got their comeuppance. But now we don't want to see that. Now we're kind of, we're rooting for them and we're applauding bad behaviour. Is that a good thing? Are we losing our moral backbone?

53:41Paddy O'Connell:Let's have your guilty pleasures. Lise, what are you watching? What does Lise Dissette watch to calm down from this hour, I would say? What's big on your guilty pleasure list? Do you know, every time I try to look at British serials, to relax. I started watching EastEnders and then I had to stop because Albert Square was more dangerous than all of the places. People were killing each other or threatening to kill each other and it stressed me out so I had to stop. What are you watching? I'm too busy helicopter parenting. I need time to watch. George? I'm watching reruns of Crystal Palace's win in the FA Cup ad nauseum I'm afraid to say.

54:22Any other tip for us Maria? I'm watching the Formula 1 where we have a Brit on pole position today in Giles Russell for Mercedes.

54:30Paddy O'Connell:George Russell, yes, Mercedes. I think you're right. Thank you. I was, yeah. I wasn't expecting that answer. You weren't, and that's why I gave it, Paddy. Do you want to give us any other car models, perhaps? Any other? The cars are available. Who can forget the Hillman Hunter? The Hillman Imp is what I'm driving home in. And, you know, those Morris Oxfords. How lovely. You can't beat them, Paddy, the old ones. MGBGT every time. Ah, you see, I knew you were a sports gal. I was out yesterday. George, we're turning back to you now, which is going to tell me about the Mail on Sunday's coverage of the Blue Peter Garden.

55:02Oh, it's terrible. Look at the state of it. Anger of Blue Peter Garden creator as he returns to find an overgrown mess. And everyone of our generation, my generation anyway, remembers the Blue Peter Garden. It was a sort of integral part of our lives. And I think at the moment when the Blue Peter Garden was vandalised, do you remember that? I do. It was a huge thing. The adult world intruded into our little childhood bubble that some people have done this awful thing to the Blue Peace Garden. Anyway, something equally bad seems to have happened, that the Blue Peace Garden has been neglected and the person who built it, Lee Connolly, says, it's sad to see what it's become.

55:37Look at the state of it. I feel like I need to come back and redo it. And apparently... Nothing's stopping him, is it? There are some plans afoot to reinstate the garden, which is now, by the way, in Salford rather than in White City, where it used to be.

55:49Paddy O'Connell:OK, we have one minute left of our review. We're then going to turn back to Lisa for a summary of what's been happening since we've been on the air. So I wonder if I can ask you a question that many listeners write to us about, which is how do you balance this depressing news cycle with the need to keep life going? What do you do as a scientist, Alice? How do you keep focused without getting overwhelmed? How do you keep focused without getting overwhelmed? You've just got to look for the solutions in things, haven't you? And that's where, as an engineer, we are hardwired to be looking for solutions and finding fixes rather than dwelling on the negative.

56:21Paddy O'Connell:George, does the government agree that it was too pessimistic? I mean, it's a very gloomy narrative. I think, yes, I think that they should have got onto this front foot and started spending some money much earlier on in the Parliament. Maria, how do you keep Bonnie? It's very hard. It's very hard to, you know, be able to see what's going on in the world and also to keep Bonnie. I think comedy is the answer. You might have got that from my contribution this morning. I think always find the joy, always find the funny where you can. I do, and I have to say that in all of the countries I've worked in the world, including in some of the darkest wars, people survive through humour.

56:52Paddy O'Connell:Thank you, Lise. It's nice to hear. It's good to be reinforced by Lise Dissette. Yes, I'm going to have that on my CV now. Well, we will have our thanks to go with it. Maria, thank you for coming. Thank you, Paddy. George has returned. He's the FT political editor. We can hear him on the Radio 4 Week in Westminster. And Alice Bunn, we've not met you before because there are never enough engineers on the radio. So thank you. Absolutely, thank you. So you've done a fabulous job for us today. And as promised to you, this being a threshold news weekend, And we invited Lise to help us all the way through, which she's obviously done.

57:21Paddy O'Connell:So, Lise, can I come back to you? We've asked you, the editorial team has given you new information. Can you tell us how we should update, listeners, since we came on air? I think it just keeps getting worse, Paddy. If you look to what's, let's forget about the bombs and the drones and what's happening to people on the ground. They're counting the dead, trying to find the missing. They're worrying about what is going to come next. And that is in both Israel as well as in Iran. This is turning into the most intense, most sustained attacks between these decades-old enemies. And the most worrying question of all is how far is it going to go and how long is it going to last?

57:57Paddy O'Connell:One piece of news which I'm going to read and one final question. Iran's police spokesman is reported to have said two members of Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, have been arrested in one of the provinces of the country. In the final 30 seconds, Lise, let's go back to Operation Rising Lion. You said to me in the office, we should read a lot more into that than we have been. Well, every time countries choose a name for their military operations, there's usually some symbolism. A line, of course, in Jewish tradition represents strength, nobility, leadership. Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke to Israelis rising up.

58:30But the line is also on the imperial flag, the old imperial flag of the Shah of Iran.

58:35Paddy O'Connell:Meaning that this is a call to the Iranians themselves, Operation Rising Line. As Prime Minister Netanyahu has said. Thank you very much. Thank you, Lise. Thank you to you for listening. Today's producers were Lucy Thomas and Joe Cowell. Studio director was Nicky Brough. The editor was Ayo Adoniji. Thank you very much for listening and goodbye.