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WTF?
- What have we done? Why did it happen? How do we take back control?
- Narrated by: Robert Peston, Luke Thompson
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
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Summary
There has been a people's revolt against the way the West has been run. Brexit, Trump, the recent British and French elections saw millions of people shouting that they were sick to death of things never getting better. In WTF Robert Peston gives us his highly personal account of what those who have ruled us for years got so badly wrong and what we need to do to mend the terrible fractures in our society.
Peston wrote WTF because the election of Trump, the Corbyn surge and the vote for Brexit all challenged how he thought the world could and should be run. With characteristic passion and clarity, he looks at how and whether it is possible to make a success of leaving the EU, what the lessons should be of the appalling Grenfell Tower tragedy, whether robots can be stopped from taking our work, what can be done to staunch the widening gap between rich and poor, how to raise living standards for all and what must happen to prevent democracy being subverted by technocratic geniuses with the ability to manipulate social media.
These are the challenges of our age, because the combination of economic stagnation and a technological revolution is killing jobs, enriching the few and undermining the institutions we used to trust as the foundations of the state. What and whom can we believe when it is almost impossible to know whether posts on Facebook and Twitter are hard news or the fabrication of a Russian agent?
As in his best sellers, Who Runs Britain? and How Do We Fix This Mess?, Robert Peston draws on his years of experience as a political, economics and business journalist to show us what has gone bad and gives us a manifesto to put at least some of it right. WTF is a trenchant, often entertaining account of the recent past. It is also a call to action, giving hope to all of us who believe that taking back control is not only vital but possible.
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What listeners say about WTF?
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Newty1977
- 07-11-17
Excellent Analysis
A thoroughly good listen from a balanced and well respected journalist who comes at the issues with clarity, broad knowledge, and - even - some interesting suggested solutions. Well worth the listen
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Hoops
- 30-08-19
Excellent political and economic critique.
Robert Peston takes you on a journey through the recent and ongoing drama of Trump's election and the Brexit debacle. I couldn't stop listening. The new insights he has given me leave me even more despairing about our political system and the squalid inadequacies of so many of our politicians and financial system. I was a fan before and now he has risen in my esteem.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- SPRish
- 07-01-18
wonderful rant
great rant. bang up to date for now highly relevant arguments. lots of brexit corbyn may and a dash of trump. first and final chapter read by peston (can't beat the author reading). short and punchy espousal of mainly left of centre thinking. but with plenty of evidence as well as passion. i hope his dad liked it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 28-11-17
Great!
Loved it, but Robert Peston only reads the first and last chapters, so if (like me) you bought the audiobook for his unique command of the English language you may be a little disappointed.
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16 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- MR D ROSCOE
- 12-11-17
A great sandwich
I don’t often write messages about books I have read however I have become fascinated with trying to understand the fabric of our country and this would appear to be the case for Robert Preston.This book set out admirably to sit on the fence and try to find answers but ever they may lie to the suppose it shock that was the Brexit vote. In his first and last chapters the author nails it on the head however the Meandering middle chapters maybe and economists wet dream they had little to the overall narrative that the politicians and the electricity have become dangerously dissociated. That said this is well worth a read for anyone who wants to better understand Brexit and I would signpost anybody to read Yannis varoufakis For a broader contextual understanding of Europe.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Bettym
- 21-07-19
Searing analysis
Robert Peston's analysis holds up after
Nearly 2 years of Brexit madness. Thought provoking, humane and always interesting. Listen and be challenged, it's worth it!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- K. Tobin
- 18-07-18
Balanced view of UK and the world
I listened to this book in two days. A fantastically researched, fair and balanced view of a number of topics, including: what went wrong in the UK and the USA in 2016; Gordon Brown's (lack of) public spending before and after the Blair years; regionalism; living standards; Theresa May's own goals as Prime Minister; Donald Trump; fake news; zero hours; Grenfell; immigration; automation; and some progressive suggestions for a post Brexit UK. Peston perhaps throws in too many statistics at times but some of them are genuinely surprising and contradict popular stereotypes. Whilst a self-confessed 'Metropolitan liberal' he writes very evenly, seeing both sides of the argument and recognising that the metropolitan liberals ignored the anger of those lower down the social scale for years. He rarely resorts to name calling or emotional opinion, using reasoned fact to back up his arguments. If we are ever to move forward as a society we need to stop putting our fingers in our ears to opinions different to our own and try to listen. That this book is selling so well proves that there are a considerable number of people who are attempting to do so. An utterly essential book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Luke M.
- 16-01-19
amazing
a beautiful and succinct review of The Mess. a voice.of reason in an age of stupidity
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- led1980
- 17-02-19
Very interesting opinion of modern politics
If you're interested in modern UK politics you'll enjoy it. Being left leaning will help...
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-05-18
Abdur Raheem
A great attempt to carry out comprehensive and candid diagnostics on UK’s present state of affairs in particular and global affairs in general.
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