02/03/2014 The Papers

preparations get underway for tonight's Oscars ceremony, with

space thriller Gravity expected to scoop multiple awards at this

evening's ceremony. Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the papers will be bringing us tomorrow. With me are financial

consultant Ros Altmann and Mihir Bose from the London Evening

Standard. This evening we are going to start with the Express, which

says the poor state of British pensions means millions of Britons

will have to work until they drop. While the Mirror leads off with the

crisis in Ukraine and claims it could lead to the price of gas

rocketing. The Telegraph also plumps for Ukraine, nosing off on the

warning from NATO that Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula

"threatens peace and security in Europe". While the Independent has a

dispatch from Kim Sengupta in the Crimea focussing on the defiance of

ordinary Ukrainian people standing up to the Russian troops. Joyous

Manchester City fans are on the front of the Guardian, which also

carries a report about Labour's proposals for substantial changes to

the oversight of the British intelligence agencies. While the

Mail front page claims an NHS whistle`blower has been threatened

with the sack after going public with concerns that a Wolverhampton

hospital was fiddling its death rates. The Times also goes on

Ukraine and the squeeze on army bases. Ukraine dominating many of

the front pages, but we are going to start with the daily Mirror and the

headline, new Cold War. I think they are saying we may get very cold over

here if the troubles in Crimea end up cutting off gas supplies because

this is quite a critical region, geopolitically. And of course gas

prices in this country are already very high. Yes, you would expect the

Mirror to go into that but the idea that we might have a Cold War

reviving, certainly America versus Russia again, part two if you like,

it is quite a serious proposition. While I was at Sochi a couple of

weeks ago, listening to the Russian media, the parts I could

understand, it was interesting to note how anti`American the line

was, this feeling that America is our enemy and so on.

Post`communism, you don't expect that and it was very evident. At

that stage the president of the Ukraine have not been deposed so I

suppose the rhetoric is increasing even more. Earlier and analyst was

speculating there could be more of this to come. It does look like

there could be a lot of instability over there. The nations want more

autonomy, they want to be closer to the EU, and Russia perhaps feels

that is a threat. I think the Russians see them as their family,

their patch if you like. They haven't given up. The Soviet Union

may be history but this is still part of mother Russia, that is what

it amounts to. The Crimea was always part of Russia. This is a

particularly difficult situation. And the vast amount of troops that

have been officially announced, but more are thought to come in. British

officials are now thought not to go to the Paralympics, and the Earl of

Wessex has said he has cancelled a planned trip to the Paralympic

Games. It does seem they might be pretty absent in terms of those

representing. And given Vladimir Putin has spent $50 billion to

create two separate villages. Onto the Express, and a subject near your

hard because you are quoted, the Daily Express with the headline,

pensions blow for millions, and the subheading 66% of people will be

forced work longer. This is the result of a survey that has been

done, showing that since 2012 the number of people planning to work

past pension age has doubled. It is true that many people are happy to

work longer but that is not the case for everyone and a big part of the

issue is that people's pensions have not worked out in the way they would

have hoped. Even those who have saved have not got enough pension

and a lot of people have not got a pension at all so there is a real

issue here and it is inevitable people will have to working longer.

Last week we had the annuities news, and certainly pensions are headline

grabbing thing. I think we should congratulate Ros for arranging this

story! People were told if you invest X, you will get Y, and also I

think people are living longer but most people are realising that when

they invested money, they expected a pot of money and they could go off

wherever they wanted to go and it is just not there. The industry should

be called to task about the way they sold pensions. It was sold as this

is what you will get, instead of this is what we estimate you will

get. Quantitative easing has also driven down annuity rates which

means you get much less pension so there has been a lot of bad news for

pensions and I hope things will improve but I don't think this will

be the last negative headline we will see. Do you think we will

continue to see the pension age is rising? It is inevitable. It is not

wholly bad news, if we are living longer either we have got to save

more or keep working so that we keep earning, but you do need to be

healthy enough to keep working and not everybody is so we need a proper

national debate on how we can manage the ageing population. We don't have

time for that right now! Onto the Telegraph, and an interesting story

with the headline saying, Boris ` Islamists' children should be taken

into care. He is saying these children are educated by their

parents in such a way that they are likely to become terrorists all

fundamentalist and in a way he is raising a question about how these

children are educated or shaped at home and sometimes it is interesting

to meet people who are very devout Muslims and talk to them about 911.

I spoke to a sportsman recently and I was shocked to hear that he didn't

believe it was the result of muslin and takes and the conversation

became bizarre because you expect to say to somebody, obviously it was

fanatics and expect them to condemn it, and he said, how do you know it

was fanatics? He is saying that Muslim children who are radicalised

by parents should be considered abused. If children are

systematically exposed to pornography, they can be taken into

care. If they are systematically exposed to other socially acceptable

influences, they can be taken into care. It is very difficult, there is

no easy answer. Social services are constantly having to draw the line.

He is suggesting that there are situations where children are

clearly being radicalised and nothing is being done about it. Onto

the Independent, looking back at Ukraine, but its second story on the

page is about target punters, not prostitutes, say MPs. As I

understood the law, it was not prostitution that was illegal, it

was living off immoral earnings. This is suggesting there are laws

criminalising women and I don't quite know if the laws exist at the

moment that if you live off immoral earnings that is illegal so I don't

now how the sharpening of the law would take place. It to suggesting

we should aim the full force of the law against punters. A strange word

to use! It says that should be the aim. I think certainly targeting

pimps makes sense, if you like those who are trafficking and

prostitution. We should clamp down on them. As for targeting people who

visit prostitutes, I'm not sure I really want to comment on that one.

We will shuffle along to the Guardian in that case. Edward

Snowdon again, Labour plans to overhaul controls over spy agencies.

This is a very good story for this paper. It is an important story.

What is being said here is that in the online age when it is so easy

technologically to have all kinds of different forms of surveillance that

in the past would have been much more difficult to organise, we do

need to have some kind of boundaries, or to understand what

the boundaries might be for what is allowed by the security services and

what isn't. What Snowdon suggested is that there has been a freefall

and there are no controls over what can be done. Labour are saying they

want some kind of Parliamentary scrutiny or a committee of oversight

that would enable us to know that we are not being targeted just at

random. I think the problem is there is a committee at the moment but it

is not open, and we have moved forward. There was a time when the

man who headed MI5 was not known. Winston Churchill said democracy has

to be protected by a bodyguard of lies. Where do you draw the balance

between trying to protect the democratic way of life and being

transparent about everything that is done to protect it? Thank you, both.

We will have a look at the Oscars later. That's it for the papers this

hour, so thank you to my guests. They will be back at 11:30pm for

another look at what is making the newspapers tomorrow. Stay with us,

the latest from Ukraine as criticism mounts against Russia, common at

first `` coming up first, it is Click.

Cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, Manchego!