18/01/2016 The Papers

nervous wait after he cited for making contact with opponent's eyes.

-- an opponent. to what the the papers

will be bringing us tomorrow. With me are Deborah Haynes,

who's defence editor with the Times, political editor

for the Daily Record. The Daily Telegraph, get us started

on this, Deborah, Cameron will back the Muslim veil ban, we knew what he

wanted to do about people speaking English, this goes further. The

Telegraph has picked up comments made in an interview by David

Cameron with the Today programme this morning, and it talks about how

the veil could be banned for students at school, institutions

such as courts, people arriving at the border. He is not saying it goes

as far as a French style actual ban, but in certain situations he says

that he could see the sense of, you know, Muslim women not being allowed

to wear the veil, which, you know, the Telegraph goes into depth about

how this will reignite the debate about whether it would be a French

style ban over the veil, and he also, it also goes on to talk about

a range of measures that the Government is preparing, apparently,

to stop British Muslims from being radicalised and travelling to join

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which seems to be the foundation for

it all. Indeed, Torcuil, this is the second leg of it, the idea that

those who do not speak English and be encouraged to do so, even though

the funding for that was cut in recent years. This will be day two

of Cameron's clamp down on Muslims, as you could portray it, because he

managed to conflate and confuse the story on the radio, ?20 million to

fund education for Mars and women coming into Britain who do not speak

English, that is fine. -- for Muslim women. He managed to conflate that

with radicalisation, with the fear that the Government and lots of

people in Britain have about parts of the Muslim community being

radicalised and going to fight for Isis, and this was not clever

politics. The Telegraph have taken the quotes, shaken this about a bit,

and managed to put this into the day two story about the veil, which

opens up... It has been talked about for some time, in France too. For a

lot of people, it will resonate, they may think we should go down the

French road. The French road seems prescriptive to me and other people,

and even Cameron himself says that people are free to wear what they

want within reason, but there will be places, courts, hospitals,

perhaps council buildings... Schools is an interesting one. At the

barrier between the private and public breaks down in these places,

people become part of a bigger society, which is what is behind

this whole thing, about trying to get citizenship and a sense of

Britishness and a sense of belonging, because there is this

uncertainty and fear now about whether we live in one community or

two or five or ten, the sense of community breaking down. Let's move

on, right, Torcuil, the Financial Times, the big story of the day, the

problems with steel, Tata cutting 1000 jobs in Port Talbot, and the

Chinese getting the blame. The Chinese, quite rightly, getting the

blame! There are other factors, it has to be said. You have to blame

the phenomenon of globalisation, really. Basically, the world

produces too much steel, and there is no demand for it. China produces

1.1 billion tonnes of the stuff, and we only need 1.6 billion tonnes per

year. There is no greater symbol of that than the car park at Port

Talbot, where the steel is stacked up in the car park, because they

have got nowhere else to put it and they cannot sell it. The FT has gone

on moving the story forward from the job losses, 750 at Port Talbot, more

in the North of England, they have moved it on to this thing called

market economy status, which is what China wants from the World Trade

Organisation this year, and it looks like the WTO might give them it, a

market where what I am willing to pay for the commodity is what you

will sell it at, and the state does not have any interference in the

market. Of course, China's mass of control of its economy, it is not a

market economy yet, and experts have been warning that granting China

this status would cost Europe, one of the biggest markets, it would

cost it 3.5 million jobs, and something like ?228 billion of lost

orders. All very good and so forth, but, Deborah, the impact on Port

Talbot, we have seen it in other places, Middlesbrough and so on, it

is not just the jobs immediately at risk, other industries and

businesses, little businesses, cafes, bus companies, everybody

suffers accordingly. Absolutely, such a wide reaching issue. There

was like a debate in Parliament today about defence is used, talking

about the nuclear deterrent, and the replacement of the submarines,

asking whether steel for that project will be British or Chinese.

So it touches all walks of life, and this story in the FT is a very clear

about the impact, and it seems like this is going to happen. It is just

a massive correction anyway that, you know, the whole world deals with

producing and purchasing steel. Linked to that, and other FT

front-page story, Deborah, about what is happening in the oil market,

Iran apparently threatening to increase production considerably.

The price is already going down like a stone, surely it can only go down

further. Fascinating story, we have had years and years of diplomacy

ending in this historic moment, the sanctions that were imposed on the

Iranian regime to stop it from developing a nuclear bomb have been

lifted, and immediately it is very orchestrated, isn't it? Clearly a

lot of planning, people knew this was going to happen, and immediately

they have ordered an increase of 500,000 barrels a day in its

production, and apparently Iranian tankers loaded with 50 million

barrels of crude... Half a million. 50 million barrels setting sail

following the lifting of the sanctions. I love these little

details! Very interestingly, the price of oil went down to $28 per

barrel, which is its lowest level since 2003, and you have got major

banks warning last week, or predicting last week, that it is

going to go even further, down to about $10 per barrel. That is a

level we have not seen since the Asian financial crisis. A heck of a

difficult situation for everybody concerned, but the net effect will

be oil going down, which is good in some ways. Cheap petrol. But not

many other places. Good for filling your oil tank for your stove this

winter, or if you are driving onto the fork out of the supermarket

petrol station, paying less than ?1 per litre. Bad news if you work in

the North Sea, bad news if you live in Aberdeenshire or the Northeast,

some of the highest earning postcodes in the UK will be hit by

this, and not a street, Robel Village will be affected by a

downturn in the North Sea. -- not a street, road or village. MI5

declared best LGBT employer, maybe some people will think what that

means? Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, gay would be the short

code we would use. Stonewall has declared that MI5, the Secret

Intelligence Service, is the best employer in diversifying its

workforce, getting different people to work for it. The question is, how

do we know that? Aren't they meant to be secret agents?! And the story

behind that, MI5 is recruiting furiously just now to counter the

terror threat that it meets from Islamic fundamentalism, and the

number of staff they employ maybe far in excess of that. Interesting

how Islamic State have a hardline rule against gay people, checking

them off buildings, a bit of a counter narrative, it shows how

different we are. Certainly a surprise. Deborah, the Sun, crack

shot this, what is this about? This is

part and parcel of a big kind of story, a much larger to do with

after the Iraq invasion, and also the war in Afghanistan, lots and

lots of claims being made about alleged abuse by British forces, and

it has resulted in this huge historic allegations tribunal being

set up by the MOD, independent of the MOD, to look into these

allegations, and there are 1500 allegations that are being looked

at, affecting almost 300 soldiers. There is a sense of outrage on the

part of the military that, you know, it is ambulance chasing lawyers,

that sort of thing. This particular story? This particular story is

talking about how, allegedly, a British sniper is being probed for

killing an Iraqi who was about to throw a grenade because he did not

shout a warning shot. He would have been the first sniper in history to

do that! On the streets of Britain, police have to shout a warning, but

I am not sure that it ever applied to soldiers in any war. Soldiers,

like policemen, have very specific rules of engagement depending on

their theatre of war, where their operations are taking place, but for

a sniper to shout a warning is crazy. It feeds into this whole

story, the background about ambulance chasing lawyers trying to

sue British soldiers a sickly fighting not just to defend the

country but often fighting for their lives. -- basically. We have to

leave it at there, Deborah, Torcuil, thank you very much indeed. We will

be back at 11:34 another look at the stories making the front pages

tomorrow. -- at 11:30 for another look. At 11 o'clock, we will have

more on the steel industry crisis, but coming up next it is time for

Sportsday.