28/12/2015 The Papers

81-year-old woman has been shot dead at a care home in Essex and a

relative, also a resident, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Welcome to our look ahead at what the papers will bring us tomorrow.

With me Martin Bentham, home affairs editor for the London Evening

Standard, and the broadcaster Petrie Hoskin. We are going to start with

the flooding in northern England which features on a number of

tomorrow's front pages, with the Guardian saying the cost of the

floods could top ?5 billion. The Telegraph is eight photograph of an

RAF Chinook flying past York Minster as it helps with the efforts to

repair the flood defences. The main stories about a planned change to

stamp duty on second homes which critics have dubbed a tax on

marriage. The Financial Times reports that 10,000 homes are built

on flood plains every year and says David Cameron is coming under fire

with accusations of a north-south divide and flood prevention. The

Daily Mail has an image of a woman cleaning the window in a wine bar in

York, as floodwaters washed against the side. The main story is about

the fatal shooting of an elderly woman in a care home. That story is

also on the front of the Sun. The Daily Express also chooses to lead

with the shooting in Essex. The Independent focuses on politics,

saying Jeremy Corbyn has challenged David Cameron to take part in an

annual TV debate. The Times returns to the flooding, reporting that

uninsured victims face a ?1 billion bill. The flooding is the place to

start. Let's start with the Guardian, flood victims face ruin as

the bill reaches 5 billion. Presumably these people for some

reason don't have insurance. Insurance policies, a lot of people

are finding in their insurance policies that in the small print,

and they would argue it is therefore they didn't read it, but it will say

something like, if you are so many feet or yards or half a mile away

from a river or a lake, you are not insured. I was thinking, I'm not far

from the Thames and I haven't checked to see if there is something

in my policy. I think we all need to look at our policies and make sure

we are covered. The companies will say, I'm sorry, you are not covered.

Should the government paid the bill if the homeowner didn't check their

policy? That will be the next question. I've got the Regents canal

at the back of my garden. Check your policy. It might well be there. I

will. ?5 billion is a lot. I think it will be higher. The government

probably would feel it should step in, wouldn't it? That is the overall

damage, some of which is insured, and ?1 billion is supposed to be

not. The basic point is that it is an enormous amount of economic

damage that has been caused, and personal misery, but also from an

economic point of view the argue about how much to spend on flood

defences, it obviously expects -- suggests that the events show that

defences are inaccurate and if there are any arguments about this then it

should be value for money to do this. If the government ends up

picking up a lot of the bill... We are talking now about the immediate

damage. There are businesses that will never be running again, people

whose livelihoods will not be the same. It will take at least a year

for people to get their homes and businesses back into any sort of

semblance of Liverpool or workable condition. It is a huge cost. --

Liverpool. We have seen with York, for example, some of the

Communications in York city centre have broken down and people haven't

been able to use cash machines, which seems a shambles to be frank.

We need again, when we are looking at how to protect against these

events in future, which it appears there is likely to be more, things

have to be resilient. We can't have flood defences which don't work when

floods happen, and you can't have electronics and communications which

break down... The whole of civil society disappearing because of

flooding. That increases the damage. If you can maintain your businesses

and keep trading... But if you are knocked out because of something

foreseeable to an extent... The Environment Agency is saying that

flood defences need a complete rethink. If we go to the front of

the Financial Times, figures show that 10,000 homes are built on flood

plains every year, so the latest figures on these, 2013-14, 10,000

homes were built on flood plains. Despite the fact that we know that

more extreme weather events are going to become the norm. One of

your report earlier and was showing that in 2007 there were floods, a

great debate about that, and there have been subsequent ones. 2011,

2012... You hear these debates every time. With places like York, it is a

historic city and those houses will always be in a perilous situation.

But building and putting your new properties in the line of fire, so

to speak, seems to be an obscenity, but it keeps happening. This is not

a new revelation, that there is a risk with flood plains. It has been

talked about for at least a decade, more than that, that it is a problem

to do that. Why is this continuing? Is it one in 14 homes? It seems to

be insanity that planning permission is given, and it is probably if it

is out of town and it will be bigger states presumably built on flood

plains, not just one or two. There may be pressure on housing but there

has to be a more intelligent way of doing this. How can they build a

property on a flood plain, which is there so that water runs off? That

is what it is therefore. It's supposed to take it and you are

building houses! It would be good to look at the regulations and whether

local authorities are able to resist the power of the developers to force

it through. It could be that they are not. They have to make it

illegal. It has to be like the green belt, where you can't build. There

is no excuse. There is no point building houses on a flood plain and

then paying millions of pounds for defences to defend homes you

shouldn't have built there. It doesn't make sense. One would assume

that insurance premiums are much higher if you are on a flood plain

anyway. If you know you are. Building in extra cost for the

people buying them in the first place, it seems bizarre. The Daily

Telegraph, the Scottish edition, Scotland warned over severe weather.

The suggestion is that it could well... I mean, the southern bit of

Scotland, across the border, just across, has been badly hit over the

past few days, but there is a suggestion it isn't quite as bad as

it has been over the border. I was talking on my radio show over the

weekend and there were calls from the border saying, look, it is bad

but we don't feel anywhere near the pain being felt further south from

where they were. There have to be warnings, and at least there are

warnings, and at least their sandbags and preparation being made.

Hopefully, there will be less of a surprise factor with Scotland, if it

does get that bad. The bigger concern is that, of course, this is

a Scottish edition so they are talking to their readers, but the

bigger concern is the existing places that have been hit that have

saturated ground. They are the ones who will be most in the firing line

when bad weather hits in the next couple of days. Some bloke called

Frank will be wondering over. Astonishing photo, with that chin.

It says it all. We are going to go to the Independent, an interesting

story. Corbyn challenges Cameron Stewart annual TV debate. The Labour

leader once a state of the nation debate, taking its cue from a recent

election. It would be well worth seeing. People would like it. We

would all like to see it. I am not sure Mr Cameron would like it. That

is the drawback. Nothing to win from that. David Cameron and his team

didn't want a debate before the last election, let alone every single

year. He has so much to lose. There is no point. The question would also

be, in theory, he might not mind a one-to-one, the problem with the

televised debates in the election was exactly who was going to

participate, so you probably wouldn't be able to have a

one-to-one debate, well maybe, but that would be a drawback, and he

would probably repeat himself. It would be another string of people, a

massive row of people. One-to-one, he has more to lose than to gain. I

wonder if Jeremy Corbyn is going to e-mail questions to get people to

write his speeches for him. Questions for the debate. If it

happens, it would be good, because these things are good to engage the

public. People can watch it and make up their own minds. They complain

about how we present things to them, so people can see directly out their

politicians... I don't think they believe what they say anyway. There

is that problem of credibility. I think it would be boring, but there

you go. If you are doing it every year, what are they trying to

achieve? Please, concentrate on politics and being politicians and

doing the job that we pay you to do, to get on with the job of either

fighting the power that is being the power that is and getting things

like, I don't know, flood defences, let's sort out actual work was then

-- rather than worrying about public appearances. I'm bored of it. Let's

go back to the Guardian. Martin, Japan issued an apology over sex

slaves to Korea. One of those nasty, horrible episodes left over from the

Second World War. 200,000 women it is estimated, Korean women, were

basically made to work as sex slaves in brothels for the Japanese army. A

horrible thing that happened in the war and some victims are still

alive, as some of your reports were showing. The Japanese have made this

donation as a gesture, an initial gesture. They were asked to do it by

this year, they got in there just in time. The Japanese have been pretty

poor at apologising for various things they did during the war. I

suppose we should give them credit for making a step in the right

direction on this. Yeah. You can't row back from what happened. These

women are 80 or 90 and the Japanese are going to give some money that

will compensate hopefully in some way for the psychological torture

and horror, but for me this reminds me that women are still used today

as sex slaves and victims of rape in war. I spent time in Bosnia and

there were rape camps there. This is a reminder, still, of the plight

that women face, today, in this world as the victims of war. They

face this kind of brutality now. This is a good reminder to all of

us, actually, that women are suffering all around the world.

Sexual violence is a weapon of war. Always has been and I'm afraid it

always will be. It is taking place in many parts of the world in

complex. The Daily Telegraph, stamp duty change is being seen by some as

a tax on marriage. Explain this. This is very iniquitous. It is

saying that the new levy on having a second home, the new stamp duty, is,

if you are an unmarried couple, you can each buy a home before you have

to pay and, if one of few buys a second home in your name, you would

have to pay it, but the two of you can each own one whereas, if you

marry, a man who has a house already, a woman marries him who

hasn't got a house, she then can't buy another property without having

to pay this extra stamp duty. She is then treated as, in effect, in tax

purposes, his chattel, or whatever. It works the other way round, but it

is the principle of independent taxation, which is what women

particularly fought for is one of the fundamental changes in sex

equality, is being undermined by this. It is relating to marriage in

this case because it is saying, if you are married, you are counted as

two people, and it does seem to be wrong that you are discriminated

against in the tax system. It is a real Telegraph story, because I am

wondering how many couples struggle with who is going to buy their

second property. I don't know how many people that will affect. It is

also if you are buying a property for your child foster don't look at

me, Simon, it's not happening! You would have the same thing. Stamp

duty change, a tax on marriage. It should be on some marriage, a tiny

proportion of marriages. A tiny proportion of Telegraph readers'

marriages. We will end it there. You will be back in about an hour, I

hope, looking at some more of the stories behind the headlines. Stay

with us on BBC news. Much more coming up but now it is Sportsday.

United draw a blank against Chelsea as it finshed goalless