25/01/2014 The Papers

Opposition Leader in Ukraine has turned down the post of PM. It was

offered to him by the President after months of street protests.

Hello, and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be bringing

us tomorrow. With me are broadcaster Bonnie Greer and Nigel Nelson, who's

Political Editor of The Sunday People. Let's have a quick look at

some of the front pages. The Independent on Sunday looks at

rising energy costs and explores the possibility of communities

generating their own electricity with the help of government funding.

The Sunday Express reports on comments allegedly made by Princess

Michael of Kent in which she describes senior members of the

royal family as boring. The front page of the Observer reports on

comments made by former PM Tony Blair in which he argues that

religious extremism has become the biggest source of conflict around

the world. The paper also reports on President Hollande's private life

after the French leader announced his split from long-term partner

Valerie Trierweiler. The Mail on Sunday's front page concerns the

conservative MP Aidan Burley and allegations about his behaviour at a

Nazi-themed stag party at a French ski resort. The Sunday Times also

reports President Hollande's split from his long-term partner. And the

paper points to criticism within the Labour Party at a promise by the

Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls to re-introduce the 50p top rate of

tax. The Sunday Telegraph takes up the same theme and says that

Labour's former City Minister Lord Myners is also against the move,

which he says takes the party back to Old Labour.

Let's have a look at those stories in a bit more detail. Let's start

with the Sunday Times. Everybody picking up on Ed Miliband's

announcement, and Ed Balls sloop was an announcement of a higher tax for

earners over ?150. It is people who donate money to Labour who are upset

about this. There will be a row about this, because there is a shift

in the party, and it is going a bit left. Some of the old socialist

ideals are coming back. No longer is socialist a dirty word in the Labour

party, as it was under Tony Blair. There is a bit of social engineering

here, but the one point eight both Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are being

consistent on is that there is going to be a recovery, the people who

should benefit should be the whole country and not just those people at

the top. They have been consistent about this, and I think that is what

is throwing the Conservative Party off. This whole cost of living

crisis, the Labour Party has been able to make this a real doorstop

issue. This is something people can talk about, and also the 50p tax is

something people can talk about. We don't feel this, even if it is

happening, the recovery, we don't feel it. And people don't feel it,

so it is a very clever move on the part of the Chancellor, who has been

slammed for the past few weeks, because he hasn't been saying

anything. He has been sitting there silent, and suddenly he drops this

bombshell in a very assured way, and has now scattered forces. The

Conservative Party is not going to look good defending this, and

anybody who is a Conservative Party strategist knows they are not going

to look good. You not by that this. People wanting to come to London,

the Hyannis that we need, it will put them off coming? That idea is

old-fashioned. You see things on Twitter, talking about it not

driving people away when Margaret Thatcher did this. People are

different now, they use a term called rent seekers. They are people

who want to live in their assets. This is a very stable country,

compare to the countries many of these people are coming from. We

don't know how much wealth these people are adding to the country. It

won't put them. They won't be happy about it, but they won't be put off.

The idea is that it could disrupt the recovery, which seems to be the

line coming both from the Lib Dems and from the Tories. It is nonsense,

you are talking about 1% of the working population, who earn more

than ?150,000. The other question is, they are quibbling over figures.

The government is saying it only raises about 100 million. Ed Balls

said in his speech today that in the three years he was in place and the

Labour, in the early days of the coalition, it raised ten billion.

This could be a ?15 billion tax raiser. It is significant money.

Let's move on to the next story. Would you pay ?100,000 to go into ?

-- to go into space? Apparently, Richard Branson is collating $80

million, on ticket money for this space tourist thing that has been

going since 2007. They called it something like a high altitude

bungee jump. You go into outer space, just, you are weightless... A

lot of people have paid their deposits, and it was meant to have

taken off in 2007, and it still hasn't. The latest estimate is

Richard Branson saying it could go in autumn this year. The point is

made that the only thing he has done so far is send a rocket into the

atmosphere for 20 seconds. He has competition as well. Would you do

it, Nigel? If I had ?100,000 I would do it. No way. You guys would go?

You can leave me behind. That move on to the Observer. Extremist

religion at root of 20th-century wars can according to the former PM.

He is saying this again very publicly. The point is that Tony

Blair spent most of his time with his Faith foundation. The idea is to

find ways of bringing peace in areas of conflict where religion plays a

part in the conflict. We are seeing it happening in Egypt, in Syria, at

the moment. Not so long ago, it happened here in Northern Ireland.

Tony Blair's argument is there is no point in going out there and try to

find political solutions solely for these conflicts, we have two sold

the religious differences as well. This is from a man who made Iraq a

moral issue. Suddenly, instead of going to do whatever they thought

they needed to do, this becomes a battle between and evil. Suddenly,

Tony Blair set up a foundation that wants to talk about religion. This

actually doesn't give you any solutions. He brings up a very old

problem, but as far as I'm concerned he helped to create. We will be

reading the conclusions of the report into that this summer.

Exactly. We hope. There is a picture that of President Francois

Hollande. What you make of this? Damaged politician? This is very

difficult. My husband and I have a home in France, and it is very

difficult to explain to people outside of France that the French,

three things. Private life of a public politician is something they

don't discuss, they really don't. So, it is possible for the President

to issue a statement as a private person. The second thing is that

there is no first Lady of France. This is something that has come into

the public consciousness. There is no legal status at all, so she is

his girlfriend, and she is out of the palace. And there is another

thing, which celebrity culture. The French super invasion of privacy. --

sue for. There is a big cultural shakeup in France. I find this

privacy idea bizarre. I don't think many politicians would survive this

year, would they? No, not in America either. It must be an issue of the

character of their president, and what that is. In which case, how

would he behave as a character? I would have thought his treatment of

women must be an important part of that. Can we move on? We could have

a whole debate on this, as much of the world is. Just back to British

politics on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph. We are back to the

50p tax rate. They have quoted the former Minister extensively. That is

significant because he was a Labour minister under Gordon Brown. It is

the first sign of the battle that will go on within the party about

this. He is talking about it going back to old labour. He was very

insulting to Ed Balls, where he turns around and says this economist

would not pass a GCSE. He really doesn't like Ed Balls at all. He was

part of the government that first introduced it. Doesn't it go back to

what you said in the beginning? How much it Alistair Darling collect

when he brought this in? There seems to be a dispute about that. Is it

billions or millions? This is the question. Ed Balls is quoting

figures that he says he has got from revenue and Customs, which are the

latest figures, and he has come up with this figure of 10 billion. It

is an awful lot of money, and even the groups who don't like to say

that this 1% of earners over 150,000 actually pay a third of all the tax.

So, the figure is a possibility. Over the next few days, you will

have a load of figures being thrown around as they argue over them.

Let's move on to the Independent. The headline is about the big six

energy companies. This is an exclusive, but from what we can

gather it involves government funding, -- government funding

communities to create their own energy. I think it is a great idea.

Some people can get money from electricity companies, by selling

back to the grid. You can do it with wind turbines, solar panels... Some

of the things that have happened before have been with wind turbines.

At a village in Gloucestershire, the people they are getting ?300 off

their electricity bills, and they are doing it by ?250 off the bill,

and ?50 when they sell the extra electricity they produce back to the

grid. But it is one group. They don't want a whole village full of

them, just one is enough. I would have thought these would be awfully

popular. I don't know if I would want wind turbines in my road. The

Sunday Express, according to a royal, they are boring. This is

Princess Michael of Kent. She called, she has described a divorcee

from Bohemia. She has talked about how the older royals are boring, the

new generation is lovely, Princess Diana was it, and basically just

pushing her book -- thick. Thank you for bringing us through

the papers. Coming up next, the film review.