16/12/2013 The Papers

the Ashes as Australia prepare to chase the five wickets they need to

reclaim the urn for England. That's in 15 minutes.

Hello and welcome to our look ahead at what the papers will be bringing

us tomorrow. With me tonight are the broadcaster David Davies and the

freelance journalist Samira Shackle. Tomorrow's front pages: The

Telegraph says that Britons born in the 1950s and 1960s will be the

first generation be poorer than their parents. It's picture is of

the Prime Minister in Afghanistan. The Independent leads on the UN's

appeal for Syria. The express says Britain will be hit

by powerful storms over Christmas. The Guardian leads on the court

judgement in America which ruled the mass collection of phone records by

federal authorities is likely to be unconstitutional. Their front page

shows Barack Obama with his family at an event in Washington.

The male leads on the prediction that those entering middle age will

struggle to match the wealth of their parents.

The Mirror claims a member of the House of Lords is claiming hundreds

of pounds for just a few minutes is' work. The Times says that

vitamin pills are useless. The FT talks about plans for London airport

expansion. Let's talk about the front page of

the Telegraph. First of all, the photograph, which is of David

Cameron with the troops, declaring it is mission accomplished in

Afghanistan. Samira Shackle, what do you make of that particular comment?

It strikes me as slightly bonkers to use that phrasing, given that that

is almost the exact wording that George Bush used notoriously in Iraq

after about a month and a half, and then couldn't really back down from

its June the ensuing bloodshed over several years. I feel like Cameron

is handing his opponents a gift for them to use from now on one of

anything happens. The question was posed - is it mission accomplished,

Prime Minister? He said yes, in a manner of speaking. He said it will

be accomplished. I don't know if they've got some crystal balls in

Number ten these days but you do wonder. It is a bit of a hostage to

fortune because there is another 12 months or so to go and as history

tells us, you only have to have a rudimentary knowledge of Afghanistan

- and you'll have a great knowledge - and it seems to me that you really

are a hostage to fortune because anything can happen. I thought it

was interesting that Cameron was trying to cover himself for that,

referencing the long troubled history and saying they weren't

leaving a perfect democracy. I think that is a wild understatement, to

say it's not going to be perfect. They've already got the threat of

insurgency threatening the elections in April and I think, also, perhaps

he didn't use the mission accomplished phrase himself at the

messages that we've done what we went there to do. It begs the

question of what the aim was because there are many different names that

have mutated over time and I'm not sure any of them have really been

achieved. That's another point - the idea of what the mission was. It

started out as one thing but may have varied over the period. I was

thinking that, seeing Michael Owen therewith David Cameron today. But

all as a power for good and giving some pleasure. -- football as a

power good. I had the privilege of going to Afghanistan eight week is

after the Taliban were thrown out, again to reclaim the Olympic Stadium

in Kabul for sport after the Taliban committed some horrendous atrocities

which was still very visible, in particular the dressing rooms of

that stadium. I do think here that you just hope that the wider aims -

for example, to fight all the battles around opium... And I was

hearing on your own report here on the BBC News Channel that this opium

harvest this year is as good and as extensive as it's been four years.

Let's move on to the other story on the Telegraph, which is Boris's

vision of an island airport being sunk. This is a reference to what

Boris Johnson would like to see happen with regards to airport

expansion in the south-east of England but the suggestion is that

it's not going to happen. Yes, that's what it seems. I think it's

quite funny how every thing Boris does has the word Boris in front of

it - Boris Island. What's next? Boris pavements? We've got

politicians across the board changing their tune on this. A third

runway at Heathrow. There was a report due tomorrow that the story

focuses on, that sort of seems to be the leaders of all the main parties

moving towards saying that actually maybe a third runway would be fine

after all. It crosses my mind that somebody is going to have to make a

decision about this. Someone as eminent as Sir Howard Davies - he

will recommend something and, knowing him a little bit, he will

have covered off most angles, which hasn't always been true in a number

of reports in recent times, one might say. Here we've got something

where it is a real dilemma for the Conservative Party particularly,

with constituencies around, marginal constituencies, around Heathrow. You

talk about Boris - I think his luck is running out a bit and I think the

Tory party is facing up to... David Cameron appears to me to be at last

prepared to stand up to Boris and, indeed, his popularity. We'll see.

An interesting observation before we move on. Let's take another front

page. This is the Independent. David, the biggest emergency in the

UN's history. This is a reference to the story we've been featuring

heavily today about the United Nations appeal for Syria and quite a

heart-rending photograph. The horrendous reality of Syria today,

in this season of goodwill, is being widely reported - as it has been by

you today, as it is by a number of the papers tomorrow. It interesting

that he is David Miliband, a former Foreign Secretary, saying that this

is the biggest humanitarian test of the century, a test of the

international community which it is failing. I was surprised to see all

that snow around refugee camps and I've seen particularly what is going

on in Jordan. You have a country like Jordan, which has... People say

we have a reputation for taking refugees. Jordan, in the Middle

East, has an even bigger reputation for taking refugees and they are

being engulfed by this problem. They are, apparently, very unclear how to

deal with it. Some of the figures are shocking. Three quarters of

Syria's population of 22 million will need aid to survive next year.

It's really quite astonishing, the figures involved. Something like a

10th of the population has fled already and half the population is

homeless or displaced in some way. I think it's good that this kind of

appeal is getting wide coverage and you can only hope these sort of

targets will be met. I think also, though, that it's quite important to

remember it's not just about the money being raised. It's also a

question of access. I've spoken to people working for numerous aid

agencies in Syria and there's a huge frustration that they might be just

half an hour away from a besieged area where people are starving and

having to subsist on grass, and they've got food supplies and just

can't get through because it's too dangerous and they're not being

granted access by the government or rebels holding the area. Can you

believe, on top of everything else, they have a polio epidemic as well?

The weather particularly bad, far worse than normal. The Daily Mail.

Poorer than your parents, dwindling property prices, if you work born in

the 1960s or 70s, you will retire poorer than your parents. We have

heard increasing hints of this. The idea that one generation will always

be better off than the next, that has come to an end. It is quite

interesting. The mention of inheritance is interesting in the

report. The disclaimer that you might be better off than the last

generation if you have been left a big inheritance, which is kind of

saying that inequality is getting more entrenched. If you do not have

money left to you, then you will be worse off. I wonder what it means

for my generation, the one below that. It does not bode well. Another

of those stories guaranteed to wind up the generation of my children,

while making us people, as older people, guilty. A very good front

page lead. Yes, we are guilty. Right? I have a guilty conscience

about having enjoyed a life, perhaps. That is what I think when I

read this stuff. Then your generation, with meagre savings,

your only hope of a comfortable retirement is a large inheritance.

From? I thought. This is the situation that we are in. -- from us

a lot. There are areas of our public life when our system has failed us.

Successive governments have failed and this is where we end up. The

Guardian front page. Judge condones NSA for data wall. -- condemns NSA

for data haul. The idea that what the NSA have done is

unconstitutional. That is strong language. Arbitrary, Orwellian. It

is increasingly hard to justify the NSA programme, I think. What jumped

out for me, the judge said there is not one example of this actually

helping to stop an imminent terrorist attack. That hit where it

hurts. It is not taking the civilian liberties argument. It is saying

that it does not even work, putting that to one side. Where is Mr

Snowdon? Hiding. You wonder how long he will go on hiding. He is chasing

a summer Bin Laden for the length of time he has been holed up and you

start to wonder. -- Osama Bin Laden. Not a good day to justify the mass

collection of individual phone records. Let's finish with the

Guardian because of the attractive photograph on the front. The first

family joins the fun with a National Health Service. We thought it was

something to do with Obama's Christmas card. But they are at the

children's national medical centre in Washington. It looks as though

the good news for President Obama is that Michelle has finally forgiven

him for the selfie in Johannesburg last week because she looks rather

pleased with him and he looks very jolly. It is a terrific family

picture. I love the antics of the children in the front. The one on

the left is looking in the wrong direction and the one on the right

is pulling a face. Good job. Thank you both very much indeed. You will

both be back at 11:30pm for another look at the stories making the news

tomorrow. Stay with us because at 11 o'clock, David Cameron says the

troops can come home next year knowing their mission has been

accomplished. Coming up next, time for Sportsday.

Hello and welcome to Sportsday. I'm Katie Gornall. Coming up: A 5-0

defeat signals the end for Andre Villas-Boas as Tottenham sack their