Transcripts For BBCNEWS Our World 20161225

As we enter 2017. The events of the last year have changed our world. Popular votes in the United States and United Kingdom have shaken the west. Both have been an angry backlash against decades old policies. The rising tide of antiestablishment feeling is found its voice in social media. As the new means of communicating propelled us into an age where fact no longer matters . Post truth is the word of the year. What does it mean . What is new is the speed at which some of these false and get distributed, and the willingness of people to embrace them. And what does the future look like . Is britains vote to leave the eu the beginning of a wider European Unravelling . In the pale winter dawn of Western Pennsylvania the Deer Hunting Season has begun. Chuck eriksson has been Shooting Deer for a0 years. They start hunting here as early as eight years old. Over the years it has changed. We have gone from being meat seekers to trophy hunters. It was a bad day if we saw 100 deer. Now it is a good day if we see ten. That is a buck. Oh, yeah. Damn they got spooked when they saw us. This is donald Trump Country now. Blue collar, plain speaking, patriotic. It is a world that the other america, prosperous, big city, liberal, scarcely recognise us. How widespread is this . Is everybody in this part of the state involved in deer hunting . 25 30 of the population probably. Chuck used to work in the coal industry. But coal and steel were swept away in the age of globalised trade and open borders. When donald trump promised to bring those industries back chuck started encouraging people to register to vote, knowing they would support the man promising to make America Great again. Our area is really dependent upon the Natural Resources that we are not hard to get out of the ground now, to be able to produce the steel were used to in our area. It has really declined and it is to do a lot with regulations that have been enacted over the last a0 years. How much of a part has competition from overseas plate . As far as the Steel Industry goes . The competition overseas has been tough, but it is not because we cannot do it for the price that they can do over there, we can. It is that we have extra add ons with Employee Cost and so forth, that they do not have, that is the problem for the competition. So do you think donald trump can bring back coal and steel to this part of the state . I sure do. I have a lot of hope for the next four years. Everybody needs to sit back, take a deep breath, give him a chance to make things happen. Why is it that parties of the right, notjust your butt on both why is it that parties of the right, notjust your butt on both sides of the atlantic, have emerged as champions of the Working Class . The rust belt state of pennsylvania, a four hour drive from new york city, has traditionally voted democrat. This year donald trump voiced the pent up feelings from decades of decline, and he won. His promise to reverse this industrial dereliction is a retreat to economic nationalism. It turns the page on a0 years of western orthodoxy. It challenges the decades long consensus established by the us president , ronald reagan, and uk prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. They radically reshaped the economy to embrace free markets, free trade, deregulation, and competition. They radically reshaped the economy to embrace free markets, free trade, deregulation, and competition. The economic revolution that britain and america went through in the 1980s did make both countries richer, in the sense that the overall, aggregate wealth grew. It was not to matter that the wealth is unevenly distributed. Greater wealth at the top trickle down and a rising tide would lift all boats. Well, not all boats were lifted. Places like this in britain and america got left behind and places like this voted for donald trump and voted for brexit. There is an irony. The countries that pursued the privatising, deregulating, Globalisation Agenda most vigorously, and now the countries that have suffered an angry, popular, electoral backlash. What do they think now, those reforms of the 1980s, and pushed with Margaret Thatcher for free markets . Did Trickle Down Economics work . It was really a sort of transatlantic borrowing from ronald reagan. He believed the rising tide would lift all boats. It was overoptimistic. It failed to provide fresh jobs for voters in michigan, west virginia, ohio, just as it has failed to providejobs in ayrshire, and other parts that have suffered from the decline of Heavy Industry. 2016 has thrown the political left in both the us and the uk into crisis. For the us democrats and the Uk Labour Party were once the authentic voices of Working Class aspiration. Once the parties of socialjustice. The Franklin Roosevelt memorial in washington, dc recalls a democratic president who used the power of the state to promote social equality. This was a president who presided over a huge expansion in the power and role of the federal government, of the state, in american society. In social of care, health care provision, job creation, rebuilding americas shattered industry. It was a time when they left in american politics, the democratic party, was absolutely aligned with the interests of Blue Collar America. What happened . How did the party becomes so detached from its Working Class base . Things are going badly for the lower middle class and Working Class in america, there has been a huge migration of wealth to the 1 while everybody else is working two jobs, scrambling, barely getting by. Hillary was seen by many people, including myself, as a member of the new liberal, globalised establishment. I would have preferred her to be president. But there are things about globalisation, being wholly owned by wall street and goldman sachs, that scares me also. Given that reality, it is no surprise in that donald trump was elected. Two america has emerged from the bitter election campaign. Each listen to its own separate sources of news, believing its own separate truths. The American Media landscape is now so fragmented that you can choose your news and never have to expose yourself to the views of people who disagree with you. This is something that appeared frequently on social media. And it is a quote attributed to donald trump, it says, people magazine, 1988, and the quote is, if i was to run i would run as a republican, they are the dumbest people in the country, they will believe anything. It sounds authentic. It sounds like the real donald trump. But he never said it. It is a made up quote. This is a fake news website. The headline, pope francis shocks the world, endorses donald trump for president , releases a statement. That was shared a million times on social media. With a long quote from pope francis. But there was some Fact Checking, some debunking of this. What happened to that . The debunking of the fake piece was shared a 30,000 times. What is the value of Fact Checking now in this new environment in which we are working, is there a new urgency to this . Fact checking is essential to help people discern what is true or not. I Rememberwhenjimmy Carter would give a speech, the tradition was, on the first daily newspaper wrote an article, here is what the president said in his speech. Then the next day, there would be an article, here is the reaction to the president s speech. And in todays media landscape, all those elements, the speech, the reaction, the analysis, it is happening in a tweet, the moment the speech is given. So there is no real time for reflection. Just for reaction. And dismissal. Donald trumps appeal to Blue Collar America finds its british echo here, in the Old Industrial heartlands of england. These communities have been Labour Voting for close to a century. But in june they voted to leave the eu. The right wing ukip believes that it, and not labour, is the authentic voice of Working Class experience. The lack ofjobs, the lack of opportunities for our young ones, it is absolutely horrendous, and with the mass migration and of the labour party, under tony blair in particular, all of this was compressed. It isjust a case that ukip fills in the gap where labour once was. For Working Class. During the brexit a referendum on the official Leave Campaigners said that the uk sent £350 million per week to brussels and it would be better spent on the nhs. They painted it on the side of a campaign bus. Critics said it was a lie. This is what that boss looks like now. New livery, new colours. The pledge to Fund Health Care is gone. Just as it has gone from the national discourse. Is this the uk version of so called post truth politics . We knew exactly who made the claim written on the side of the sparse, they were challenged every day on television, there is still a shared public reality in british politics, a common square where news is generated and consumed. But it has gone in america, and it could go here too. The dangers to democracy are obvious. If you want to have a vision of the future, look to russia, were actually one of these things under Vladimir Putin has been about creating a regime where nobody can really know anything and keeping people in a fog of uncertainty, somebody trying to create an atmosphere in which there are no experts, nobody can know anything, so you better that a strong man take charge and governed. That is not great for democracy. Terrible for democracy and terrible for journalism. The combined victories of brexit and donald trump are felt across europe. The Christmas Markets of prague are a glittering symbol of a remarkable transformation. From decades of dictatorship and stagnation to one of the Fastest Growing economies in europe. The Czech Republics wealth has more than quadrupled in a generation. It is only 27 years since the people who overthrew soviet backed communism in what came to be known as the velvet revolution. Somewhere in this crowd of a00,000 is a much younger than me. Reporting those tumultuous events. As news filtered out of the changes from the Dark Suburban Building where the Central Committee were meeting in crisis, we were with the crowd. There are clearly distinct crowds forming now in the square, one in front of me, chanting slogans that have become familiar over the last week. Flags of the Czech Republic are being raised all round. And the grandeur of the National Museum in front of me, lit up in the night sky. It was a really thrilling thing to stand here beneath that balcony and watch an entire nation rise up to take back control of its own destiny. It was not just about democratic transitions, at the heart of the revolution lay the idea that they were returning the country to work properly belong to, to the heart of europe. Has that pro european sentiment survived the intervening years . Eastern europe has its own rust belt. This Factory Outside Prague once employed 20,000 people. Now it has 300. Scepticism about the European Union is on the rise across the continent. Anti eu parties are emboldened by the brexit victory in the uk. It extends to the very top of the ruling elites here. To speak about independence is a joke. We wanted to be integrated in the eu. But not unified. I think that the role of the National Government is now rather limited, most of the decisions come from brussels, not from prague. So this is not independence. Despite the decline of its Heavy Industry the Czech Republic has one of the lowest Unemployment Rates in europe. Trade with the Single Market has given in the countrys economy far more than it has taken away. Public opinion, for now, seems committed to staying in the eu. This man has worked at this plant since the early 1970s. Do you think people have become disillusioned with the European Union since the very optimistic days of 27 years ago . If there was a referendum now, do you think that czech people would vote to stay in the European Union, or to leave . Half a dozen eu countries have elections scheduled in the coming year. The contest will be dominated by the question of europe, as far right wing Eurosceptic Parties ride the wave of popular discontent. Among them the National Front in france, and the Freedom Party in the netherlands. One by one in 2016, four of the five leaders of the Western World depart the international stage. President obama, Francois Hollande of france, Matthew Renzi of italy, and David Cameron of the uk. Leaving just one standing. For 70 years we thought that the leadership of the Western World was essentially english speaking, rooted as it has been in the transatlantic partnership. That assumption has been challenged for the first time and it leaves leadership of the pre brexit interpretation of what the Democratic West should be to berlin, which is a new challenge and responsibility for germany, how to lead in europe, without appearing to dominate. Because the idea of german domination still brings up too many ghosts, for the germans as much as anywhere else. Germans are incredibly neurotic about world or european leadership. They dont like to think of themselves as having a foreign policy. The idea that germany would somehow lead is a very disturbing for many germans. So i dont think they are prepared for this moment at all, although things in germany are changing, and there is beginning to slowly be a sense that if we dont do it, nobody will. Germany remains in europes economic powerhouse. A Manufacturing Economy and an exporting one. This factory on the german czech border sells pianos around the world, because they are among the best in the world. This is german strength. High tech, high quality, high end products. But germany has drawn its european neighbours around itself, locking its own destiny into theirs. Building the eu has been the german way of separating itself from its own past. It has been germanys Act Of Contrition and redemption. The past, our history, it is something that really makes us ashamed. On the other hand, we have to look forward. Our generation, we are focusing on the pluralism. If you walk the streets of berlin you will listen to many languages. You will see many people. And we all live together, very, you know, in harmony. I feel european. I dont feel like a german. There is so much thatjoins as an brings us together, more than what brings us apart. It seems that germans want their country to be strong and successful. But they dont want their country to be too powerful in europe, too dominant. Is that true . That is at least what we all try. Lets say, what our government tries to be. We all try to be moderate. We try to integrate. If you look at our government, currently, that is what they are going to do. That is what they are doing. Trying to integrate. And we are also try to integrate. Our history reflects on us. In our daily actions. So integration is important for us, european integration, it is a big achievement for us. This has been years since i was a child. But for the First Time Since the Second World War 2017 will see an american president who is actively hostile to the idea of european integration. Hostile to open borders. And at home, Donald Trumps victory has unleashed a huge expectations. You are excited about what you think you can achieve . For the first time in eight years i am very excited. I think we can really see an Industrial Revolution in ourcountry again, and a building revolution, and i dont have to worry about inflation. This is the Re Industrialisation of america, for you . I hope so, yes. 2016 has changed the shape of our world. It has ended decades old assumptions about the values of the liberal Democratic West. We know what we are in transition from, not yet what we are in transition to. Thanks forjoining me. Christmas day was exceptionally mild across the uk. I dont think we beat any records. We are still checking that, but it was close. Temperatures around 100 years ago were 15. 6 degrees, today recorded, in scotland, around 15. 1, there might be one or two other stations that need checking to confirm that that was indeed the highest but here is a selection of some of the temperatures we had today, hereford, 14, temperatures we had today, hereford, 1a, whole, 1a, london, around 13, now, theres A Change Heading Oui 13, now, theres a change heading our way, this line of rain will be crossing some parts of the uk and is actually a cold front, behind it we have some showers, and colder air. Coming in now, a day too light for some of us. But look at that, some wintry showers across parts of scotland, and this is still driven by storm corner, which will be passing way to the north of us, because it is such a large Weather System it is still sending fierce winds into northern part of scotland, and so on boxing day there is an amberwarning scotland, and so on boxing day there is an Amber Warning in force for northern parts of scotland, storm force winds, whereas in the south, com pletely force winds, whereas in the south, completely different story, look at that, lovely boxing day across most of england, and wales as well, lots of england, and wales as well, lots of events taking place, the weather is certainly turning perfect for that, not so bad in northern ireland, a bit breezy, maybe one or but we are also going to get some fault in the coming days and the reason for that is because of rather low pressure, starting to build across the uk, this is tuesday morning, you can see some blue, so there will be A Touch Of Frost around, but a crisp start to the day. In in the north, i think frost free here, but for england and wales, after a foggy start, sunshine, and cooler by day, temperatures around six or 7 degrees, we know this High Pressure is going to stick around for a while, and in the wintertime, when the high sort of locked in, stalls across one part of the continent here, europe, the uk, we tend to get problems with fog, and where the fog lingers through the day, temperatures struggle, heres an example, if boggling as it can be only three degrees during the daytime, so i think if you are travelling between christmas and the new year, just be prepared that it could be tricky, especially in the morning, and some of the country roads, especially across england and wales, so the summary is, in the run up to the new year, North Western parts of the uk are actually more likely to have a breezy weather, some cloud, bits and pieces of rain, that is the far north west, but the bulk of england and wales, certainly southeast, looking quite sunny, with frost and fog in the morning. And as we head towards the new year, theres going towards the new year, theres going to bea towards the new year, theres going to be a bit ofa towards the new year, theres going to be a bit of a battle happening across all part of the world, milder tries to come back in again, cold air tries to tries to come back in again, Cold Airtries to win tries to come back in again, cold air tries to win from the north, which of these is going to the . The thinking is that as we head into 2017 the colder air is going to win, but exactly how cold it is going to get, and weather we get much material weather with this, it is still a little bit uncertain, but the idea is things are going to finally cool off a little bit. This is bbc news. The headlines at ten the queen pays tribute to Unsung Heroes who do small acts of goodness in her christmas message. I often draw strength from meeting ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Volunteers, carers, Community Organisers and good neighbours. But shes forced to miss the Christmas Day Church Service at sandringham because of a heavy cold. 11 bodies have been recovered from the black sea after a Russian Military plane crashes, killing all 92 people on board. Also in the next hour, in his Christmas Day sermon the archbishop of canterbury says the last year has left the world awash with division and fear. Pope francis calls for a new effort for peace between israel and the palestinians, at his Christmas Mass from the vatican