14/03/2016 The Papers

Benitez got on in his first match in charge of Newcastle United, or did

Leicester managed to extend their lead at the table?

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers

With me are the broadcaster and columnist, Julia Hartley-Brewer,

and the political commentator, Lance Price.

The Guardian looks at how young families are struggling

to afford rent and contrasts their plight with the property

The Telegraph claims supporters of Britain leaving the EU

are more likely to vote in the forthcoming referendum.

The Mirror reports on the teenager accused of deliberately

running over and killing a police officer on Merseyside last year.

The Metro focuses on President Putin's decision to begin the

The Mail says big firms are slashing overtime,

cutting recruitment and axing staff perks to pay

The Times says George Osborne is to accelerate the spending

of billions of pounds on new roads, railways and housing in an effort to

The Sun leads on the controversy surrounding Top Gear.

And the Express warns us not to complain that we're old

I'm clearly losing it. Nothing to do with the typo, it's all my fault.

It's been a win-win for Mr Putin, he went in in September, pulling out

six months later, Assad is still on the table has been the leader as far

as peace talks are concerned. He's done it Chris Lynn yellow it's been

very controversial from start to finish. What does he mean by this?

That he's pulling them out? Fee is using his diplomatic skill as well

as military might. -- he is. Less than a year ago he was a pariah on

the international stage. Everybody feels they need to involve him, he

has a key role in the peace talks in Syria and he's propped up his mate,

President Assad, much to the fury of not only the Syrian opposition but

also many in the West. They're clearly looking after Russian

interests, he needs the military base on the net, he needs the Syrian

ally, he was never going to let Assad fall, no question. My big

worry is when the Western forces don't act and we are too scared to

take risks ourselves after Iraq and Afghanistan. If we don't get

involved then someone else will, it's Russia, and the people of

Syria, they would have been better off with us. We had David Cameron

decide he was going to go to Parliament, he had to go to

Parliament, to get authorisation. It's a ridiculous thing to insist

that is something decided by the backbench. Convention has now

changed, it's become established that Parliament has to be

consulted. Consulted but they shouldn't have final say. Barack

Obama also felt he had to go to Congress in order to get

authorisation to start launching attacks more this if Risley as far

as chemical weapons potentially being used by Assad. Both those

leaders decided to go to their parliaments essentially to consult

their people on this, President Putin didn't have to do this, he

didn't have that problem, it's easier for him. It is. Obama drew a

red line and said chemical weapons are used, that's the red line,

chemical weapons were used, no one doubts that, but he didn't do

anything. That's because of what happened in the British Parliament.

If you seriously think that America can't attack without Britain that's

absurd, 75% of the military might of Nato is American, there should have

been a clear message and there wasn't. Are you saying the lessons

of Iraq should have been completely ignored? The lessons of Iraq were

for Iraq, they went wrong but that doesn't mean you then say you don't

get involved at all. A mob of innocent lives were lost in a rock,

not necessarily in the war but in the many years since the insurgency

-- a lot of innocent lives were lost in Iraq. But we will see more

devastation in Syria now because we haven't got involved, a different

lesson has been learned from Syria. We can't apply lessons from one

country to another. Isn't that what happened with Libya, which is a

conflict that happened in 2011 just before this. Russia, the United

States, European allies got involved there, and it's a complete mess. But

there was a consensus at the time supported by public opinion that it

was the right thing to do. Supported by public opinion, isn't that the

key thing here? That's not the best guide as to whether military action

should have been taken. There were massive protests about the Iraq

war, but there was a vote in parliament in favour of the Iraq

war. And the British public. And the opinion polls suggested a majority

was in favour. The idea that this public have a clamour to be

consulted before military action is ever taken is a mistake. Putin is

usually popular in his own country. Why did Cameron and Obama do that?

Why didn't they just said we're going to go after this guy. Because

they didn't want to get involved. There in mind the military power

Assad had was different to what they are dealing with in other

countries. It was quite clear that Obama didn't want to get involved.

It would have been a risk. The Americans have no interest in Europe

or the Middle East at all, they're turning their attention to the

Pacific, they've got other things on their mind. They got involved in

Libya, it strikes me that Syria is a particular... Remember Benghazi

after a public statement from Gaddafi that he was going to

massacre them. I'm an is involved, the Saudis are involved, Russian

Mike is involved -- I'm an. Didn't that make them want to get involved

-- Russian might. There are massive costs for in action. In the course

of history we don't learn those lessons. We saw it in Rwanda and

osmium, never again will we allow people to be massacred by their

people -- Bosnia. We have sat by and watched an evil dictator massacre

his people and we've done nothing. This trend of Western leaders using

public opinion as an excuse for inaction. They say they can't do it

because the public don't want it, but they themselves are shying away

from taking the hard decisions. Exactly, it's taking the hard

decision on a hard topic. Libby was an easy topic and Syria was more

difficult. Politicians like low-risk decisions where they will be praise

for whatever they do -- Libya. Brexit campaign has the edge? This

is analysis of polling, this isn't Brexit is going to win, fingers

crossed for me. This is really interesting. Who is likely to vote

and how passionate do people feel about things? They are saying the

people who are pro- Brexit are more passionate and more likely to vote

than people who are in favour of remaining. Part of that is there

more likely to be older and older people are more likely to vote by a

massive factor, as we saw at the election. But it's quite difficult,

I want to leave the EU, have done for some time, and I feel passionate

about it, but it's difficult for the remainder camp, who are sceptical

about the EU, but on balance they want to stay in -- remain. But

they're not passionate. It's a shrug vote. I want some passion passion. I

disagree with what Julia is saying. The people that the -- for all its

faults, people recognise the function of the EU. People can

easily point at the things the EU has got wrong. How long have we

got? It's easy for people to pick holes in the European project,

that's the easiest thing in the world, but for those that still

believe fundamentally and passionately that Britain's

membership of the EU has been in our interests hold that view as strongly

as the Brexit people. I think the polling would show not the majority

do. Not those of us on either side of the argument who have strongly

held views and will argue until the cows come home, it's the voters at

home who don't think about the EU and these issues every day of the

week. Normal people. Sensible people. Whether or not they are

going to be as easily persuaded. The real problem for the remain

campaign, that I support, those wanting to stay in, is a degree of

complacency. Do we look at the chaos on the Brexit side, all squabbling

between themselves, we think we have the big guns on our site. If you go

into a campaign with that level of complacency, that is more of a risk

to the membership of the EU than the spurious idea that Brexit people are

more passionate in their beliefs than we are. We will see. We will

see indeed. We've got a long way to go. And I'm knackered already. I

think you speak on the of the whole British people. On behalf of the

whole world. Onto the Times, Mr Osborne, eight pretty big speech on

Wednesday. -- a pretty big speech. I find budget stories frustrating to

say the least because most of them are being briefed for a purpose, to

raise expectations or low expectations. Not that you ever did

that? When I went to the government we wouldn't have ever dreamt of

doing that. Absolutely not. As a political editor I would never do

those phone calls. No, it would be wrong. This one suggests investment

in infrastructure could be a good thing. One of the dividing lines

with the Labour Party has been that Mr Osborne wants to pay down the

debt, although he isn't doing a very good job of that, he wants to cut

public spending but he's missed his targets on that as well. Labour and

John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor was saying on the weekend

in a speech, that spending on investment, borrowing from

investment is a good thing and Mr Osborne is saying more or less the

same thing. We have a clear divide between left and right in politics

here. Doesn't that make sense? If you're going to miss your deficit

reduction target you might as well miss it because you got a load of

cash in to build a school? Yes, it's all very well. It depends what you

spend it on. A lot of people have a question leaving outside London

spending millions on Crossrail. I live in London, it's very helpful to

have a new railway line going from north to south London, but for the

vast majority of people that don't live in London there is a lot of

resentment for things like this. Trans-Pennine... The longest tunnel

in Europe is also a problem, longest road tunnel in Europe. There's a lot

more need for transport links in the northern powerhouse cities. From the

east to west up north on the links are dreadful. Trains are a

nightmare. The fundamental thing is housebuilding. We have millions more

people but we haven't built houses. The pledges from all three parties

at the general election didn't touch the size of the need we have four

more houses, one of the biggest problems we face is people have

massively high housing costs and we could deal with that overnight if we

build houses, and it creates jobs. You make it sound so easy. It is.

For the last 50 years we haven't managed to do it. We did it in the

post-war years. Where there's a will there's a way. There were holes in

parts of our streets after the war, they have to do something with

them. There's a lot more space in this country. We have been yakking

for so long. What shall we do? I think we should do Chris Evans. Why

am I laughing at this one? You wonder whether the new Top Dear team

are at home thinking this is a terrible story, isn't this awful? Or

they are thinking we are on the front of the papers. Macro what you

are too cynical. If you do a stunt at the Cenotaph on

Sunday... This is a ridiculous fuss, Sunday... This is a ridiculous fuss,

I can only assume it is a PR job. No one is saying we will have any issue

with this whatsoever. Driving a Morris mini passed the Cenotaph is

fine, driving minis and doing really is? The BBC is saying don't worry,

this footage won't be shown anyway. Is not going to be shown... What a

waste of our money, show it -- it's not going to be. You wrote a book on

spin, you know it when you see it. Those wheels were spinning, no

question about it. How long have we got, what's going on? Where are we?

We've got two minutes left. I like coffee cups. Coffee cups, yeah.

Julia, coffee cups? When we go and buy our coffee for ?2 50. ?2 50,

you'll be lucky. Apparently all these big companies, Costa and

Cathay Nero and Pret, they say they recycle their cups, if you're that

obsessed with recycling you're probably not buying a takeaway

cardboard cup. You buy a normal cup and reuse that. The recycling claims

from a lot of places are all a bit frothy anyway. You wonder how much

actually gets recycled. cardboard that has gone into making

the cuts has been recycled. This is true. Rather than a promise it's

going to be recycled afterwards. It is covered in this waxy stuff. I'm

not sure many people going out and buying a coffee really care. These

are the people that just throw their cup on the floor anyway, they don't

give a monkeys about recycling, I'm speaking from personal experience. I

can't let it go. It's very annoying. Little bits of crinkly

cardboard that stop your fingers getting burned, that gets recycled.

And I still don't care. Julia doesn't give a monkeys, folks.

Things on the floor, I don't Oar do care about that. You wouldn't

litter, that's very important. Will we get to the wonky dog? May be next

on. Now it's time for Sportsday. Hello and welcome to Sportsday,

I'm Katherine Downes.