03/04/2016 The Papers

That is all the sport for now, and now on BBC News, here is Govan with

the Papers. -- Gavin. Hello and welcome to our Sunday

morning edition of the Papers. former editor of the

Independent on Sunday, and Ian Birrell, associate editor

of the Mail on Sunday. The Observer's main story is a poll

it carried out on the EU referendum, which suggests

the Out camp is leading. The Sunday Express claims police

have been given six more months to find out what happened

to Madeleine McCann, who went missing from a holiday

apartment in Portugal The Mail on Sunday alleges

the Government overspent its foreign aid budget

by some ?200 million last year. The Sunday Times

carries an investigation and claims one doctor

has prescribed banned performance enhancing drugs to 150

well-known sporting figures. British aid to Tanzania is the

headline on the Sunday Telegraph, which suggests the Foreign

Office should suspend aid to the country, following

disputed elections in Zanzibar. And the Simpsons characters

Smithers and Mr Burns are pictured on the front page

of the Independent. Smithers is due to declare his love

for his boss, Mr Burns, Let's begin with what we have been

leading on, picking up from the Sunday I'm story, British doctor

claiming he doped sports stars, are you so prized by this? I am not

surprised by it. This particular doctor, it is quite interesting,

because the UK Anti-Doping agency had identified him a couple of years

ago, I think, but any investigation was quickly dismissed, and the

Sunday Times team have gone back to him. He has named names, and they

are not giving those names here, unsurprisingly, he has given 150

high end the sports stars. One wonders if a little bit of that,

because it was all undercover filming, was some that the sales

pitch for someone trying to attract new clients, I don't know. But given

that we have already heard about athletics, cycling, tennis quite

recently, there was a BBC investigation with Buzzfeed into

that, so it is not surprising that it was all focused on this one

doctor. I would like to see now a deeper and wider investigation. As

an editor, if you have got the names and know the names of these people,

which have not been published in the paper, and I noticed on Twitter some

people are saying, typical mainstream media, what do you have

to think about before you publish these names of presumably very

famous people? First of all, you have to think about what the lawyers

are going to say! They would say, do not publish those names, because

this is one person's word. It could be a complete fabrication, so first

of all you would go to each and every one of those stars before you

named them. They do seem to have gone to some of them. You say, this

is the allegation, what do you have to say? I don't suppose any of them

would be likely to say, well, yes, caught bang to rights. There is an

ethical issue, this is just one person's word, and these careers

could be ruined, the public would think they were true, so you have to

think through that as well. I am just surprised it has taken force

along for people to suggest that some people in the Premier League

are involved, because given the rewards, particularly in football in

this country, perhaps it is up rising it has taken so long. It is

not at all surprised in, but it is a great story, credit to the Sunday

Times for getting it, because I think the real scandal is that we

are seeing sport at the sport at the sport whereby the authorities who

are meant to be in charge of anti-doping, meant to be in charge

of regulating the game, have been basically allowing shady practices

to be going on, presumably because of the tide of money, but we have

seen it in athletics, cycling, tennis, football allegedly. I think

the authorities have behaved atrociously, because I assume of the

sums of money involved. And apart from the fans, if you were an honest

sports or woman,... That is the argument, and the UK anti-doping

authority, they are the people who have been called to look into the

big Russian scandal of doping, and so, if they were given information

about this doctor and did nothing about it, there are already calls

for the person who runs UK Anti-Doping to stand down or for

there to be an investigation, because it is not surprising, but it

needs to be rooted out, because there are honest sportsmen and women

who need this to be dealt with. If they knew about it for two years,

they should all be cleared out, none of them should be allowed to carry

on. Let's move on to the Mail on Sunday, a lot on foreign aid, quite

an extraordinary story, I will read a front page. ?172 million is what

we overspend on foreign aid last year by mistake as sneaked out by

the Government on Friday, another to keep Port Talbot plant alive for six

months. There are pages and pages of very detailed investigation into

foreign aid, a good story on page seven, despair for steelworkers, so

why are we giving ?9 million to Nigeria to help its leather tanning

industry? That is the context, hard times at home, giving money abroad.

Tel us why the paper has devoted so much space to this. What is

interesting is that the paper is focusing on the idea not just that

aid is a flawed concept, which is my personal view, but the fixed target

is a nonsense. This beset by Professor Angus Deighton, a Nobel

Prize winning economist, the man who devised the metrics for measuring

global poverty, pointing out the stupidity of having a fixed target,

how it is about us, not them, about making politicians here look good,

but not about helping. Otherwise, why would you have a figure that

goes up and down depending on British growth. The paper has tapped

into something with readers who saw the speed at which they signed this

e-petition that the paper has launched, to get a debate in

Parliament on this. There is clearly very strong public anger, and it is

right, I think, when you see things going on. You picked out the leather

industry, but if you read the detail, you have someone working on

a scheme that had ?91 million across various industries to boost

industries in Nigeria, and one person is quoted saying that Chi

went in, and the only Nigerians were the drivers and the people making

copy, and it was full of white Europeans who had flown in at great

expense to give workshops. -- making coffee. That is the sort of thing

that gets people annoyed, money going to the Palestinian Authority,

who is then funding prisoners who are convicted of terrorism. There is

an interview with a British woman who was appallingly attacked and

stabbed, I think it was 13 times, she had to play dead while they

tried to stab her through the heart. She is not surprisingly furious that

her own country is funding the authorities which are giving these

people who did this to her, these terrorists, ?9,000 a year. This will

strike a chord with a lot of people. It does, and all of the examples

that Ian has given, they are heart-rending, they do inside anger,

because they sound completely unjustifiable. But I would say, I am

not a complete scorched earth on foreign aid, and for instance in

Pakistan, if the money is being used corruptly, that is a bad thing and

needs to be investigated. But that money is earmarked for schools in

Pakistan, which particularly for girls is an important issue. The

foreign aid we do give it something like 0.08% of our gross national

income, so even though the numbers are huge, proportionately it is not

the most enormous thing that we do. To be fair, it is 0.7, ?16 billion

by the end of the parliament. I am seeing damage being done in the

world of disability, because the Government was cutting disability

benefits, saving ?12 billion. Yet we are giving away ?16 billion abroad.

People say it is a small sum, but it is not a small sum of other people's

money. Let's look at Pakistan, that shows the whole problem, which is

you pour money into a place which is badly run, when no-one in Parliament

is even paying taxes, and you give them free money of the scale that

Britain and America is giving to Pakistan, and it takes away the

incentive for them to actually set up a proper taxation system and

deliver decent public services themselves. That is the whole

problem, it gets to the core of it, you can look at a nice school funded

by British aid and say it is wonderful, but you are undermining

the democratic development and fuelling the very corruption which

creates the state. The counterargument to that, it is not,

let's be nice to people, it is sometimes that this is hard

politics, this is about buying influence in places like Pakistan,

Nigeria and elsewhere, and that may be unpalatable, because people think

they are doing good, but the idea is very realpolitik. And Justine

Greening, the minister responsible, her defence is, and I think you made

some good points which I agree with, but Justine Greening says, and this

is a real hard politics thing, a real project pier type thing, we are

trying to deal with problems where they exist, rather than waiting for

problems to come to us, which is a very veiled message. I wonder what

she has in mind as I cause a macro frankly, it is not helpful, they

should look at these examples and deal with them. -- I wonder what she

has in mind(!) The final word on this. They have got this fixed

target to throw money at the door, they have to find ways to spend the

money, and all they are doing is exacerbating the problems they seek

to... I have seen this all over the world, in Africa, Asia, the

Caribbean. The problems we are feeling and contributing to, rather

than solving. It is interesting, and my piece, I have done a comment

piece in here, and I understand that George Osborne was asked at a

private dinner, why are you doing this, and he said, simply, to keep

the charities off our backs. That is a pretty pointless exercise. The

headline says it is the fear of Bob Geldof, that is one of the things in

the Mail. Page one of the Telegraph has the other big story, by British

to save our steel, ministers tell local authorities. This is very odd,

because is our industrial policy for a major strategic industry to tell

local councils they have to spend more money on steel than they

otherwise would do? They already have a strategy for doing that,

councils and the NHS. Councils and the NHS are two of the most cash

strapped, needy areas in our society, so it is completely

outrageous for the Government to say to them, can you sort out this

rather embarrassing perception problem we have at the moment? ?300

billion worth of infrastructure projects which will take place in

Britain over the next five years, and that sounds like a big amount of

money, that sounds like enough to keep Port Talbot going, all the

steel to build new classrooms and operating theatres and everything

else. Well, if the steel that is coming from China is a tiny fraction

of the price, it would be very difficult for a local authority to

spend the money on British steel and then go into the red, not be able to

complete. And close the library! Or cut back on services for local

disabled people. To save the British steel industry? It is completely

wrong-headed. Is this a bit of thrashing around? It is difficult

for any government to sort out. It is a difficult situation where they

are struggling to control the agenda. They have looked a bit off

the pace on this issue, and it is the last refuge of the scoundrel,

almost, to say, by British, please, please! People should buy the best

steel available at the best price, and the guv Mata should be more

honest and point out that the fact that British steel is not

competitive. -- the Government. They should help the steelworkers, but

there is a perception problem, Sajid Javid was not around, they did not

have any meetings with Tata Steel, and they want to get a headline out

of it, they want to deal with it. Young whole Ski-Doo Brexit, usual

health warnings here! -- hold key to Brexit. I am sceptical about the

polls, because the most detailed shows that happen next remain is

probably ahead. The interesting thing they packed the Leave picked

up on is the difference between young and old. -- shows that Remain

is probably ahead. They know the generation coming through is

comfortable with the European ideal, comfortable with travelling to

Europe, and despite the obvious problems of Europe, whether

financial or the immigration issue, you have this generational change,

and it is like the last gasp... Where it is now or never. If they do

not get it now, it is less likely, and the other dynamic is that old

people are more likely to vote, and this is a problem. And as we know

from polls in other countries, referenda in other countries, people

are more conservative if they are undecided, stick with what they

know. David Cameron gave an interview to the Independent on

Sunday pointing out that voter apathy will be the biggest problem

for the Remain campaign, because if people do not vote, as we saw with

the Scottish referendum, it was very close because of voter apathy,

because people thought, we are all right as we are, I don't need to do

anything about it. This is a super generalisation, but young people are

less likely to go out and vote, so even though it is a last hurrah for

the Leave campaign, they do need to engage the young people who perhaps

are aware of this but do not feel that their voice needs to be heard.

I wonder if people who are Remain voters will stay at home because

they are more relaxed about it. That is a problem. The other interesting

thing in this story is the stuff about Jeremy Corbyn, where it shows

that the public do not know where he stands on it, which is pretty

amazing for the leader of the main opposition party in a referendum on

such a big subject for the country. The public do not know where he

stands, and that is very telling, an indictment of his stewardship. Do

they know that Alan Johnson is the main voice for Labour? Is very

popular within the party. Is the greatest leader they never had. The

strife in Labour has taken a back-seat with all the other news

going on at the moment, but there is still a problem that Jeremy Corbyn

is not comfortable with this, no-one knows where he stands, so he has

got... We have got a minute and a half left for the Sunday Times, they

welled in saying the rise of women drive is meant to change sex. She is

a great star of things, is she having a laugh? This comes after the

Ian McEwan story, and we are seeing elderly authors having problems with

the emerging world of identity politics and social politics,

struggling to understand what is happening. But equally, it is

obviously a silly thing she said, the headline about men changing sex

because women have won the Battle of the sexes. Underneath it, she is

saying some quite interesting things about why we need role models

anyway. It is not entirely frivolous, although she has got the

headline she wanted by saying something silly. Also, we do see a

lot of elderly authors struggling with issues coming through now.

Transgender politics is a huge subject, on EastEnders, we have at

Caitlyn Jenner, it has informed the debate about sexual politics. This

lack of understanding leads to this sort of headline, with, the greatest

respect for Fay Weldon as an author, but as a commentator and sexual

politics, she should be quiet. On that note, thank you! We will take a

look at tomorrow's front pages every evening at 10:30 and right here on

BBC News.