Press Preview: Friday’s papers

Press Preview: Friday’s papers

But it is of course time now for the Press preview our first look at the front pages as they arrive time to see what’s making the headlines uh with our guests this evening the political journalist and broadcaster Theo usherwood and the journalist and author Rachel shaby we’ll be with them in just

A second but let’s uh run you through the front pages that we have beginning with the miror Twister Terror their top story uh which speaks to victims of the tornado that hit greater Manchester uh same story for the Daily Express with a quote from a family affected by the tornado who say they

Were lucky to be alive the overstretched state of the NHS is prompted two-thirds of doctors surveyed to feel moral distress uh that’s leading the guardian what the I uh well it’s reporting that former prime minister Boris Johnson has urged his successor Rishi sunak to get on with it when it

Comes to accelerating the UK’s Reliance on nuclear power the Ft hears that the US government has imposed sanctions on Turkish and yemeni groups with alleged ties to Iranian back houthi Rebels an exclusive at leading the male home office figures suggesting that the police give up on four crimes a

Minute similar story in the telegraph which reports that more than half of UK police forces are failing to properly investigate crime the front of the times uh it’s reporting uh a warning from a think tank which says underqualified civil servants are overpaid at the cost of more senior

Staff and the star tells us that nearly 3ars of dogs will need to go on a diet after Christmas well done star uh just a reminder that by scanning the QR code you will be seeing on screen during the program you can have a look at those

Front pages of the papers in more depth whilst watching us uh and as mentioned we are joined tonight by Theo usherwood and Rachel shabby good to see you guys and a very Merry Christmas um but I suppose not a particularly Merry Christmas for those in stbridge this

This localized tornado I mean talk about a way to wake up I mean an absolute Horror Story and and thankfully at least you know not more was not more was lost as a result of this Gareth and uh lindsy Moody’s Christmas and their their children’s Christmas has been completely

Ruined by uh storm Garrett uh there’s a photograph of them on the front of the Daily Mirror outside their home and then an accompanying picture of the the roof ripped off their house by this uh tornado speeds wind speeds of up to 80 M an hour leaving 1500 homes without power

I mean it’s these are scenes not usually well we don’t witness these in in the UK they’re perhaps more familiar with with with tornadoes in America but um they’ve had a lucky Escape by by all accounts and uh they’ve obviously got severe damage to their home but but they’re

Alive they’re well and um it’s a yeah it’s a terrible story I mean 80 mph winds I mean obviously the localized the localized chaos in in Staley Bridge one thing Rachel but just look I mean I was talking to you guys in the break about making my journey back from uh from

Scotland from seeing my seeing my family and you know you had the A9 Road from path upwards that was completely blocked we had significant flooding on the East Coast blocking the train lines I mean it’s been an absolute horror of a year when it comes to weather events like

This yeah abs absolutely and we know that uh the climate emergency and Global heating is making uh extreme weather events like this both more frequent and more intense and um as Theo says we’re starting to see these events happen more and more in the UK the scale of the

Damage of this is horrifying not just um in Greater Manchester but also you know up and down the country with these floods uh with travel chaos with power shortages um and look set to continue for a few more days but you know this is really a wakeup call and it is

Devastating to think of all these families that have been so horribly affected uh by this this storm over the last few days um so take take us to to the front of the daily meal because this is an interesting one because I think we I think we mentioned we we think we see

It elsewhere in the telegraph is this perhaps a Freedom of Information story yeah police give up on on on four crimes a minute what’s this it’s a it’s a good story uh by by the mail well it it won’t be particularly particularly great reading for number 10 and I’ll trying to

Elaborate on that in a minute but they they’ve got some they’ve uncovered some figures which have shown that uh the number of uh inquiries closed by officers without identifying a suspect has gone up 250,000 year on year forces gave up on investigations into two more than 2.3

Million crimes in the year uh to June and these include the mail is reporting hundreds of thousands of violent offenses and burglaries and I just take you back to well the 2017 election where did uh Theresa May really get punished when it came to austerity it was on the

Issue of cutting police officers Boris Johnson in 2019 came in with three promises to get brexit done uh build 40 new hospitals and then concentrating on crime by promising uh to to reintroduce those 20,000 new police officers and here is a report card saying on the

Front page of one of the most supporting conservative supporting newspapers saying well actually when it comes down to the raw numbers the Tory government the police under the government is not doing particularly well it’s having to focus on the most serious crimes and just giving up on crimes that really

Matters to people if you get your home broken into it matters to you you want the culprits to be caught you want it properly investigated but according to this the police are just giving up I suppose the the idea of of Zero Tolerance on crimes is is one for the

Birds I I wonder if so too the idea that the conservatives are the party of Law and Order yeah well I mean they seem to have lost a lot of their you know self-proclaimed titles like the party of business the party of strong economy and

Lo and behold the party of low Law and Order is another one of them and it is it is I think all just down to austerity cards and people feeling the pinch in all kinds of ways uh not just decimated public services and the cost of living

But also things like this when it comes to um just your regular local police force being out and about and visible in the streets which is a big part of um crime preven from anything else it’s just not happening in the way that it used to and

That is a result cuts um let’s let’s talk politics there actually quite a few political stories around in the papers and we’ll begin with with the whoever wants to take this one away can Boris Johnson want this Boris Johnson once again put his size 10 in it uh and and

Providing I I’m sure some some really you know well well-meaning advice ta driving yeah exactly exactly and but this on this particular occasion over nuclear power just to to take you back to uh the war in Ukraine obviously there was a heavy Reliance uh we still rely

Very heavily on uh gas from abroad the real pressure was on well why are Energy prices surging because of what’s Happening W with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that’s because we don’t have we’re not self-sufficient and so the attention turns to how can we make ourselves more self-sufficient when it

Comes to having our own independent energy Supply and that is to build more nuclear now the I have done I think it’s it’s a good story this because they what they’ve managed get hold of is they managed to get a hold of these leaked papers which show that the prime

Minister or the government rather has has missed deadline after deadline after deadline when it comes to building those power stations they’re always going to be opposed by local communities it’s difficult to do but Rishi sunak isn’t doing it and now then they’ve gone and obviously rung up Boris Johnson and said

What do you make of your successes uh what he’s managed to do or not managed to do and Boris Johnson has has gone for him but but I suppose I suppose if if we’re going to be charitable about this I mean isn’t isn’t the the greater failure that you know know Fukushima

Chernobyl live long in the memory of course they do but actually in general terms you know nuclear energy is one of the safest one of the cleanest and and the case has not been made by political leaders I would suggest of of all political Persuasions that that nuclear

Can be can be a significant part not necessarily the totality of it but a significant part of our energy security I would question that I mean nuclear is old um it is dirty it takes a long time to come online that is and it’s very very expensive when you compare that to

Renewables there’s just no contest Renewables have come online in such a quick and increasingly cost-effective way it’s just a no-brainer and so for me I think the real question isn’t what are you are you not doing with nuclear cuz that’s like that’s a dead story it’s why

Have you not invested in Renewables at the rate needed to meet your own n on onshore onshore and offshore they W but the Tes won’t do onshore wind farms yeah they’ll only do offshore wind farms and of course there’s been a huge amount of pressure um about that the leading time

Is the big issue you remember the Nick C when of course he was deput prime minister of the Coalition turned around and said well actually I’m not going it takes 10 years to build a nuclear power station would it’s something that I’m not going to cant and of course we then

Hit the war in Ukraine Energy prices G and questions are being asked about why we’re not uh in energy independent from from Europe and of course these decisions have to be made and Boris Johnson is saying hurry up to Ry suat but in reality if he was going to build

Those new nuclear power stations we’re not looking until 2030 2035 for them to actually come online I mean compare and contrast my drive to to the airport today takes me right through the you know one of the one of the biggest uh onshore wind farms in Scotland and you

Know providing a significant amount of of electricity I want to kind of group together the next two stories though both in the front of the of the telegraph at the first of those that inheritance tax might be scrapped alog together but on top of that that the

Early general election is the worst kept secret in in Westminster I mean I I maybe I’m wrong but I am suggest I’m going to gently suggest that the two might well be linked the inheritance tax one is is all about playing to the base because when you actually look at the numbers this

Year it’s forecast to raise 7 billion pounds m in in revenue for the treasury and I just looked it up you fewer than 4% of the States pay inheritance tax so it’s only the it’s the wealthiest that are paying inheritance tax and it doesn’t affect the vast majority of people so the

Tories are coming with a policy that is going directly to their base to shore up their support a tax cut for the 1% yeah well it may not be the 1% theow the top the top top 4% and it’s and it’s it’s not a policy that actually goes beyond

Traditional conservative voters it might be popular and of course there has been talk about cutting the headline rate from 40p to 20p but actually many conservative MPS particularly those on the right according to the telegraph in Duncan Smith David Jones Jacob Reese MOG all pressing the Prime Minister now to

Go much further and scrap it all uh scrap it completely but Rachel Emily thornby of course um uh the shadow attorney general is she stirring the pot perhaps when she’s suggesting that an early general election is the worst kept secret I mean do you do you want to see

When are you Brenda from Bristol oh not another one I mean I don’t think it’s going to happen to be honest because if you’re the Tories and you’re looking at the polls and they’re they’re awful you’re not going to say bring it on but I also don’t quite agree that the

Inheritance tax thing is playing to the base because as you just said look the vast majority of people in this country are never going to earn enough or own enough to ever pay inheritance tax it doesn’t matter but what does matter is this Narrative of aspiration of oh why

Are you taking away people’s well-earned hard-earned income it’s the aspirational aspect and I think for the Tories this is what they’re trying to do they’re trying to get labor on ground that it’s ly lied about it won’t actually come out and say we need to tax unearned income

We need to bring it in line with taxing income that’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got in this country they won’t say that they want that fight with the with labor not to shore up their own support but to depress labors welcome back to the Press preview uh both you

Guys Theo and Rachel still here with their selections from the papers and and Rachel take us away on this one on the front of the Ft I I think a significant story because of the way in which the tan back the as the as the headline said have been operating and and the

Significant effect that they are already having with their actions tell us more so the houthis um they’ve launched a series of attacks against commercial vessels uh in the Red Sea um and it is significant it’s it affects quite a lot of the international trade that goes

Through uh that Red Sea um and they have said that they will carry on with these attacks as long as Israel’s war on Gaza um continues now the US is trying to shore up support for a task force to deal with this it’s not having much luck

It’s trying to slap sanctions on groups that are um it suspects of financing um the houthi such as uh groups in turkey and Yemen that it makes allegations against and of course Iran it wants to Correll an international task force but it can’t get one and the reason it can’t

Get one is because most of those countries do not agree with the US policy on Gaza and also they know that their own populations countries like Italy countries like Spain they their populations are vastly opposed to uh Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and are calling for a ceasefire and I think

There is a wider context here which is the US trying to Corral support for something for which there is no support internationally globally people are absolutely horrified by what is going on in Gaza and it’s not just the brutal civilian deaths but it’s what Israel is

Now saying it wants to happen which is ethnic cleansing it’s talking about we had the Israeli foreign minister just the other day on Israeli TV asking countries to take gazans to take them out of Gaza it is openly talking about transfer it’s The Logical conclusion to

Israel of what it’s done in Gaza which has made it uninhabitable you’ve seen that Sky’s own coverage has seen that and now we’re talking about forced transfer so the fact that Biden is responding to that scale of danger for Palestinians in Gaza in this way is so out of step with

How most people are feeling indeed but I I do wonder whether we might see opinion change if the Red Sea attacks are stepped up and we see significant cost Rises on the goods that are flowing through those particular channels we’ve not got much time though the I want to

Move us on to to another remarkable story and this is all from from from well explain it for us but it’s abandoned Blair government ideas and and again on the front page of the Ft we have uh the story that he wanted a deal to share the pathal marbles and it gets

Better so there are three stories that come out of uh State release papers which go back to uh the Blair years the first is that uh Blair wanted to or his advisers wanted to come up with an idea or a sharing agreement when it comes to the pathon marbles with Greece back in

2003 accusing the British Museum of being blinkered in transigent trans over the contested uh Treasures now of course this is a topic that’s been relative come up recently because of course the Greek Prime Minister visited this country and was accused by Rishi sunak of grandstanding because he wanted to

Talk about the marbles in particular and Rishi soon had canceled a meeting with the Greek PM now of course Tony Blair obviously was being a bit more open-minded and was looking to put pressure on the British museum to find some sort of loan agreement the other

Story that’s come out of these papers is that he looked at uh front of the Guardian front of the Guardian yes um looked at plans to Offshore Asylum applications uh to the Scottish Island uh the island of mul home of the popular kids show balamore yeah and then

Removing uh those Asylum applications to safe havens in third countries such as turkey South Africa and Kenya now it should be said that the Tory Deputy chairman if I’ve got this right Lee Anderson came up with a very similar idea recently that they should be uh their applications Asylum

Applications should be processed in in Arney Lee Anderson of course represents the city the constituency of Ashfield in that sort of Heartland nor red wall seat was that supposed to try and deter people I mean orne is lovely frankly sorry I’m going to stick up for the

Arcadians I mean richel you what are you you thinking we’ve only got a minute left so I just want to bring you in on this any I bet you’re not surprised by that at all no not remotely because Tony Blair squandered an opportunity to actually push back on these false

Narratives that immigration is in any way a problem the the only the only people for whom Asylum Seekers is a problem is the Asylum Seekers themselves who fleeing persecution and War um it doesn’t surprise me that Tony Blair had this as a nuclear option because he was

One of the worst Prime Ministers honest Asylum some of the most Draconian measures against Asylum Seekers were introduced under Tony Blair so no big surprises there yeah and and a reminder because we’ve often said on this program when I’ve been presenting that the right had not made that economic case for

Migration the same could also be said uh be said of Labor um look thank you for your selections

We take a look inside Friday’s papers.

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