You're listening to Intelligent Squared, this week we're discussing how to fix a country

with James Plunkett.

Here's the host, Kat Hanna, with more.

Today, we're speaking to James Plunkett, a man thinking about how our society's work

and how we can fix a few things in them.

His new book, End of State, Nine Waves in which society is broken, is more upbeat than

that slightly doom-laden title suggests.

Asking questions such as, is it time to get rid of Mondays in the working week?

Can populism be combated by giving young people an actual say in their futures?

Could some sectors of society be less poor if we'd maybe just gave them a bit more money?

James is well positioned to answer some of these questions.

He's Director of Policy and Advocacy for Citizens Advice in the UK.

He was also at one time an advisor in Downing Street to the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Welcome to Intelligent Squared, James.

Good afternoon.

I wanted to begin really by getting a bit of a sense of where the idea of this book originally came from.

Yeah, sure.

I actually started when I was in number 10, so this was way back in 2008.

And in the opening months of the financial crisis was when I was working there.

And it came about from a meeting, I guess, with Gordon Brown and Tim Berners-Lee,

was where the idea first popped into my head.

And it was less about the substance of the meeting itself and more this vibe I got

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