Eamonn Butler

So those sorts of reforms are just doing things that everybody knows needs to be done, but there's so many vested interests you have to cut through.

These street lamps here, they're still gas, and they're the oldest street lamps in the world.

Really?

Because what is now the home office used to be the gas works.

Does that make sense that there's still gas?

No, it makes absolutely no sense at all.

But it's, you know, a nice tradition.

And, you know, we do a lot of that silly stuff in Britain.

Good morning.

My friends are doing a radio show and we wanted to have a chat with you.

I'm not doing anything on the radio.

well the last time when there was real unrest was the so-called winter of discontent which was the winter before mrs thatcher was elected and i think it's that kind of sentiment out there today that they're fed up with politicians you know that's why his conservative party elected liz trust because she's not a routine politician and it's why people voted for brexit because they were fed up with the european way of the bureaucratic way of doing things and i suppose it's why people in america voted for trump and why people in

Other European countries are voting for far-right candidates.

It's not that they particularly want far-right candidates.

They just don't want the centralist, bureaucratic, management-minded politicians.

I was once at a reception in Downing Street and they were serving wine and canapés and some poor chap, his canapé had a sort of blob of cream or some sort of sauce on it and he dropped it and it splotched onto the carpet.

The Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, came up, took a cloth out of her handbag and started wiping it up and the staff said, oh, it's all right, Prime Minister, you don't need to do that.

Oh, no, it's fine, I've got it now.

So that was what she was like.

She was very hands-on.