Specials

Stand up show recording

Debt Collector

383 billion dollars

Debt comes from foreign loans, war reparations and broken business contracts

Mark took a minibus to the Tower Thistle Hotel with a couple of corporately dressed ladies and offered a free trip to the Dsei exhibition in docklands.

Also gets on the Docklands Light Railway and has a game of "Arms dealer" bingo and raises another £12.60.

After 3 weeks went and collected the bags

Speak with Joseph Stiglitz, Ex Vice-president of the world bank about "Odious debt". Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are trying to get money back from Iraq.

Manage to bump into a debt trader with George, an Iraqi who is chained to Mark

Mark goes to the Iraqi Rafidain Bank in London, Iraq's top bank, closed since 1991 and gives it a bit of a spruce up with flowers and a scrub down.

Bank will get about 0.01 pence in the pound.

Or at least cancel the £100 million owed to his bank.

Mark turns to the companies that will profit from Iraq in the future. The UK's Iraq Industry working groups is meeting at the DTI.

Ali is radio controlled on wheels so Mark could chase the delegates anyway. He collected £2.77

At Olympia there is a secret conference where big businesses are deciding how Iraq will be sliced up.

Meets with one of the senior Americans running the meeting and he chatted for a while.

He says that all ownership has to passed down to the private sector.

If Iraq is to stand any chance the debt should be cancelled.

Justabout productions

After School Arms Club

On Dispatches, Mark shows how a bunch of school students managed to broker thumb cuffs, a sting stick, a shock baton and a lethal weapon.

There are 640 million guns in circulation, 8 million more are added each year.

Even countries with arms embargoes on them attend such as China

Unfortunately this legislation isn't working.

They set up 2 companies, Williams Defence and Seachtar Associates

Step 1 - Network with other brokers

Mick has been in the trade 25 years and says he has moved over 100,000 small arms.

At Williams Defence they phone up and try to buy handcuffs for Egypt and ask if they need a license.

They also found that some EU countries have no brokerage laws so they could even broker small arms.

Item 1 - thumb cuffs moved from Taiwan to the UK

Mark was invited along to a select committee looking at the UK military list that requires export licensing. Whilst there he showed them the thumb cuffs.

Thumb-cuffs are not currently included, neither are wall cuffs or sting sticks.

Williams defence

Williams Defence head to London to meet some MPs.

Roger Berry MP agrees they have found some loopholes and say they will try and get something done.

Ireland does not have arms brokerage laws despite EU requirements

They get brokering which is much freer than in Oxford

They find a stone throwing machine and try and import it for £5,000

A comedian and a Nun may not make the most convincing arms dealers but they gave it a go while the students watch from a remote position.

The stone thrower is loaded with stones and demonstrated.

They say they could be exported as agricultural equipment.

Also try it close up to some targets which it damages quite badly

And Mark owns up as to what they are doing, showing how easily it is to broker arms.

They get angry and leave (obviously not going to get a sale here).

Ellie and Michele from Williams Defence go to Italy where there are no brokerage laws

There are 5 European countries with no brokerage laws; Ireland, Cyprus, Portugal, Greece and Luxembourg. Italy's legal situation is more ambiguous.

They speak to Walter Mapeli a local state prosecutor about a big local arms dealer, Leonard Minnin who was brokering guns to West Africa (Liberia and Sierra Leone) but couldn't be prosecuted.

The boys are in Ireland brokering guns to Angola

Again mailed to Doug Nunn in Albion, California from Korea

Sister Barbara and the girls hold a press conference for the Irish press. The girls present what they have managed to do.

Since the press conference the Irish Government have said they are "...preparing new export control legislation, and we hope to have a Bill published later this year..."

"This will enable Ireland to fulfil it's obligation under the EU Common Position on arms brokering, and will ensure that Ireland is meeting it's EU and national obligations in full...".

1. All European countries need brokerage laws.

3. Needs to be a law to stop British citizens going abroad to do deals they are not able to do here

Credits

The Arms Clubs: THE STUDENTS AND TEACHERS FROM SCOLI CHRIOTS RI PRESENTATION SECONDARY SCHOOL, PORTLAOISE. THE STUDENTS AND TEACHERS FROM LORD WILLIAMS'S SCHOOL OXFORDSHIRE.

With thanks to: BRENDAN FINGLETON, MARY LOU MURRAY

Sound: DAVID FERGUSON, RENATO FERRARI, RICHARD MILLER, PAUL ZANDERS

Dubbing Mixer: BRIAN MOSELEY

Production Manager: KELLY BRETT

Executive Producer: GEOFF ATKINSON

Director: WILL KNOTT

Asylum& Immigration Bill

Tells labour party members in the audience that he's going to try and persuade them to hand over their membership cards and he will cut them up for them.

Force asylum seekers from the housing protection act and force them into poverty

We are a mongrel nation

Ann Clwyd - International Development Committee

She asked the UNCHR reps on the spot

She asked questions and was told it was an administrative error

Detailed what countries wanted which specific type of refugees.

Americans don't want people with HIV or AIDS

Britain will take medical cases but only if they are single

Kosovo

Then revised up to a few thousand

Talk of making refugees sell their assets before they could claim benefits

Diane Abbot asks Mike O'Brien if they are seriously expecting refugees to sell their jewellery before claiming benefit. He replies "that is just what we intend to do".

Next week Mark returned to the committee with Bea Green who escaped from Nazi Germany on the kinder transport

Bea wanted to tell him what it's like to be a refugee

Need to be given dignity, not food coupons

Old law used to be that you had to prove you weren't marrying a British national just for the passport

It'll now be law for a registry office registrar to report any asylum seeker that marries a British national that that registrar deems to show an insufficient love within the relationship

Some of them sent it back!

Nick Palmer wrote back saying that it wasn't a proper survey, had no academic foundation, "it is, in fact, a satire."! D'oh.

Then they are refused luxury items such as yoghurt.

One Kosovan, Ilirjan Memaj came here 2 months before the voucher scheme. Him and his mate live in a hostel sharing their vouchers to economise. When he tried to spend some of his mate's vouchers they called the police.

Police inform social services who kicked him out of the hostel and refused him vouchers.

Daily Mail readers

Diane Abbot says we're doing this to appeal to readers of the Daily Mail, playing to a middle England agenda

Mike O'Brien

Take Kurdish dancers and a Guyanan band.

O'Brien comes out and Mark confronts him and shows him the culture and asks him why they are taking away their jewellery and other issues.

He accuses Asylum aid of lying and says that the asylum seekers that win on appeal are included in the figures.

In an answer in the House of Lords, Lord Williams says "I regret that equivalent information on grants of asylum or exceptional leave following an initial refusal could only be obtained through the examination of individual case files and therefore at disproportionate cost.

Lots of people aren't given leave to appeal since the labour party have come to power for reasons such as:

At an appeal an Algerian was asked "If they really wanted to get you, why did they shoot you in the leg and not the head?"

Mike O'Brien, when shown a picture of a torture victim said "I just see a man who's thin."

Got in touch with aids agencies and the Co-Op bank who are so concerned that they are prepared to work with us to form a credit union which will operate a voucher scheme.

Collected a couple of Labour membership cards at the end

THE MARK THOMAS COMEDY PRODUCT

Associate Producers: JACK CHESHIRE

Producer: GEOFF ATKINSON

© Channel Four Television Corporation MCMXCIX

AWE Burghfield - N51:21:46 W1:08:28

On the map AWE Burgfhield is not marked, where Britain assembles nuclear weapons, except in the 1976 version whenn it was included by mistake.

Dr Chris Perkins, Map Curator, Manchester University says there are 2-3,000 such sites across the country.

M4 Eastbound - N51:27:28 W1:24:43

Lets call it junction 8 1/2

Mark has been lookin at Britain's secrecy and ompiling his own map of Britain.

The Government Telephone Preference Scheme

Designed for nuclear war but has been used since at such disasters as Piper Alpha, Hungerford, Lockerbie, the Brixton riots and Aintree in 1997.

Exchange lines get closed down so this would stop all internet communication as well

Belgravia - N51:29:44 W0:08:54

He has the plans for her house which you can get from Westminster council which include the location of her safe.

Indicators in fields show the location of government oil pipelines that run across the countryside transporting aviation fuel from refineries to military installations.

Mark phones John Vardon, Chief Executive, Oil & Pipelines agency and asks if he can tell him the location of this pipeline.

Corsham - N51:25:50 W2:11:32

Can house 5,000 people in this underground city. There is a bakery and a pub.

The communication system was upgraded in the 1980's.

Mark calls them from his mobile outside the front gates.

Police turn up and tell Mark it doesn't exist.

She says they have underground tunnels but that's all.

Chemical weapons tested on forces here.

Police escort them off the premises.

Central London - N51.31.00 W0.08.24

Greenham Common - N51:22:24 W1:16:18

By taking comparative soil samples from other countries they could work out where their nuclear bases were.

They expect this relates to an incident in 1958 when an American plane suspected to be carrying a nuclear weapon crashed and burned there.

Wokingham Road, Reading - N51:26:21 W0:54:52

The owner has had bone marrow and kidney problems

Bore holes are driven paid by the insurance company.

Recorded some of the highest levels of plutonium and uranium in the country. This can only come from a nuclear reactor.

Where Britain's nuclear deterrent is put onto planes and sent to America where it is transferred to ground transport as it is illegal to fly nuclear material over civilian areas.

State secret no. 627

This phone number puts you through to a recorded message playing all the alarm sounds and their meanings.

If you want the power to intercept peoples emails and internet communications then spend £25 million and build a National Technical Assistance Centre inside MI5's HQ.

MI6 HQ - N51:27:53 W0:06:54

There are tunnels and a 6 acre citadel under Whitehall.

Labour wanted to re-furbish it, MPs asked how much it was going to cost and why. Government wouldn't say as it was a secret.

State secret no 832

If they say "yes" you can set up a security liaison office giving you access to MI6 who will give you their secret confidential report which in turn will give you information on the security and political risks of entering a foreign territory.

The Pentel pen - write your message with it. Take a plains sheet of paper and put it over the message and press down.

Take your secret fluid pen and wash over the plain paper

Cannes, France

MI6 can pay bribes, whereas the foreign office can't

British Airways have a link with MI6, BA staff actively recruited by them

SAS trained in high altitude parachute drops. Would adopt the call sign of a regular BA passenger jet.

Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson

Advises the media on what should and shouldn't be included in the press

Get together twice a year to discuss items of national security.

He can't comment on the OSA but thinks it needs looking at as things have moved on since it was last updated.

FOI act is supposed to help us get information

Baker asked for his MI5 file under the data protection act and he won the case

Norman won his case but hadn't received his file

He asks to make an appointment

Southwark council

Like where hazardous waste and radioactive material is stored in your area, unregistered land, register of interests of councillors.

Some councils are more open than others. Ebbw Vale weren't quite as open as Southwark

One councillor was involved in an election and claimed he was honest. As soon as he was elected he pleaded guilty as charged.

Mark is a Balfour Beatty shareholder

You can find out what directors earn what for doing what

Viscount Weir works up to 50% of his time for £150,000 a year plus expenses

State secret No. 165

70% of Britain is owned by less than 1% of the population.

Between 30-50% of land in England and Wales isn't even registered so write to them and get them to change the rules

State secret No.020

Leave your TV on at all times

State secret No. 459

Duchy of Cornwall

The Holiday Inn! Not a carbuncle, of course

From a memo about flight 103, the Lockerbie flight

It warned of a terrorist attack and specifically mentioned Pan Am as a likely target.

MI5 got involved to try and stop the relatives getting the information they have a legal and moral right to.

Dropped a copy of the note to Jack Straw's office and never got back.

MOD have agreed to put the sites back on the map

Presented by: MARK THOMAS

Research: SALLY FREEMAN

Sound: PAUL SMITH

Videotape Editor: OWEN TYLER

Production Manager: CATHERINE STRAUSS

Directors: STEVE CONNELLY, MICHAEL CUMMING

Made by Vera for Channel Four

Thomas Country

1st March 1998 Countryside alliance had a march in London, 300,000 people

Saying it was a march about the countryside, conservation, rural post offices, etc.

Janet George was the press spokesman for the countryside alliance

She said the strategy was " To wrap up hunting in a wider rural fabric because everyone loves the countryside and hates hunting". Their first priority was to stop the Foster bill

Robin Hanbury Tenison, Co-founder of the countryside alliance said they made no secret of the fact that it was triggered by Michael Foser's bill which was an "anti-hunting, anti-dog-owning bill which was very damaging to the countryside".

Fair enough strategy, better than having Hunstmen walking around saying "we like killing things".

Released a single hoping it would get to number 1 sung by George Bowyer, a real country boy and Lord Denham's son.

The great and the good claim to be guardians of the land, but that's not really true.

They are owned by the Hanbury Tenison family. He claims he has nothing to do with it, it's his brother's estate.

Created a character "Farmer Mark" who used to work in the city, made a lot of money and has now bought a farm.

Staged a debate at the Newbury fair, persuaded George Monbiot to debate with farmer Mark. Mark is playing to a home crowd.

1996 farmers profits rose by 29%, 1995 cereal farmers profits went up by 138%.

Have lost

95% of meadow land

20% of all scheduled ancient monuments

Mark visits the South Downs with Dave Bangs a local wildlife expert who explains that there is none of the wildlife there that there used to be.

The common agricultural policy (CAP) subsidises the big farms.

Ben Gill says that hedgerows are being re-planted. Of course, farmers are subsidised for doing this.

£6.5 billion pounds a year the taxpayer pays to subsidise farming

Bertie Bows of the country landowners association says "We don't want all and sundry roaming across our land, especially not criminals, drug pushers and vandals."

Back at the Newbury debate Farmer Mark suggested centrres of excellence rather than wholesale conservation. But it really kicked off when they got onto fox-hunting.

New Forest council paid £7,800 attending hunts and dealing with queries. The local hunt killed just 7 foxes that year.

Went down there in a Reliant Robin with a fox's head as a professional pest control company and handed out some leaflets saying they could do them for £50 a time.