05/01/2014 The Papers

His press conference was just a few minutes ago. We are not proud of our

performance. It is a bitter pill to swallow but that is it. And coming

up, the Film Review. Time for a look at the front pages.

Thank you for joining us. Good evening.

Let's have a look at some of them now. The Independent has a

photograph of Eusebio, who has died. It also has a report on the standard

of care in the NHS. The Financial Times says that years of economic

uncertainty lie ahead despite the recent recovery. The Express's

headline is that tough new rules will be put in place to stop

migrants claiming money for family not living in the UK. The Daily Mail

says Downing Street is in turmoil over pensions. And hardfought

territory in southern Afghanistan will fall back into Taliban hands

when British troops withdraw this year. The Mirror says Doreen

Lawrence is furious following the removal of the detective leading the

investigation into her son's death. Let's start with the Daily Mail.

They have done some journalism of their own following David Cameron's

appearance on the Andrew Marr Show today. The result is that there is

turmoil over the old age pension benefits. Yes. I'm not trying to

belittle pensioners and benefits and essential things like winter fuel

allowance, free bus passes and television licences for people of

pension age, but it does seem to be the wrong focus. If the government

is looking at sweeteners to give the public in order to win votes in the

forthcoming general election, this is the right thing to do, but when

we look at the stories in recent weeks about one in ten young people

in the UK feeling suicidal, that is the population that we have utterly

failed, young people, and I find this focus on pensioners just a

little bit distracting and essentially a vote please. People

have been quick to point out that it degrades vote and its pensioners who

come out and vote. -- it is the elderly vote. That is why Labour and

the Liberal Democrats support similar pledges. But David Cameron

refused to be drawn on whether the Conservatives would cut back on

pension benefits like winter fuel allowance, bus passes and the

television licence. The Daily Mail says there is some confusion over

that. Downing Street says it is David Cameron's personal position on

that to safeguard it. That has always been the case. He has backed

these universal benefits and has refused to touch them for political

reasons. These universal benefits actually only cost about ?3 billion

maximum. They are not expensive. But it is madness that someone with an

income over ?100,000 per year should get a winter fuel allowance, free

television licence and a free bus pass. On a moral and ethical level,

it should be means tested. Even if you reform those things, you still

have so much to cover. Welfare spending is 25% of what the

government spends and half of that is pensions. In other words, you had

to look not just at these universal benefits but the mounting pensions

Bill. We have to get more people getting private insurance rather

than relying totally on the state. Later, we will be hearing from

George Osborne. According to the Daily Telegraph, he is preparing the

country for more cuts ahead and austerity measures even though we

are bouncing back, slightly, it seems. Osborne's blueprint for tax

cuts. The Chancellor is promising a permanently smaller state but it

says that the austerity programme must continue. We are bouncing back

because of austerity. No, we are not. It is the property boom. And

this is not how you get a nation back on its feet. Of course it is.

We are leading in car production. Manufacturing is up. In 15 years,

Britain will be the second largest Western economy aside from America.

We are coming back. It's not just housing. It's because we have got

our finances in order. We are already the second largest economy

but we have the most wealth inequality. Nobody is feeling the

benefits of any effect of the supposed economic recovery

statistics. George Osborne, not content with driving people into

poverty with low wages... He is convinced that things are getting

better. He wants to compound this even further by dismantling the

state. It's completely avoidable. These are ideological cuts. There is

no need for them. Not necessarily. Labour would have done exactly the

same. Just slower. That just means Labour is as spineless as the

coalition. George Osborne says that things are getting better. However,

the Financial Times says it is years of cuts that lie ahead. How much

more are people supposed to take. This is unsustainable. Just get the

government back to the size it was before Labour went on its spending

splurge. The government's target is ideological. It is to cut the

welfare state and that is ideological driven and unnecessary

stop it can be philosophical but it can also be necessary. We cannot

afford it! We have ?1.2 trillion... Rachel, isn't it a case that... Why

not chase tax evaders? We can do that as well. We have to have

austerity. We don't have to have austerity. This is not a fringe

view. Leading economists, leading businessmen. There are other ways

out of a financial crisis. This austerity is pure ideology. I'm very

happy as a Catholic to hear you say that the Pope is right on some. This

is a purely ideological view and you are presenting it as the law. Let's

agree to disagree on that one. The Times has a story that we mentioned

earlier, which is quite unique, compared to other papers. The

Taliban is poised to regain Helmand province after the UK exit. This is

regarding Afghanistan. 447 UK soldiers lost their lives in this

part of Afghanistan and many commanders say this is how to lose a

war as a good example. In which case, why did we go in the first

place? That is what the public is going to be asking. Not

unreasonably. Firemen very reasonably. Another indication of

how poorly it has gone is that drug production is up again. Under the

Taliban, one good thing that they did is eradicate the opium trade.

That is now back. One irony is that the wars on terror in Afghanistan

and Iraq is that they have had the opposite effect. They have actually

increased militants. There was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq before 2003, now

they have just taken over Fallujah. So these wars have not only failed,

they have had the opposite effect of what they set out to achieve. Do you

think that has effect did not just the British reaction but the

international reaction to Syria? -- affected. Of course it has. It is

not a position of impotence or being too frightened. It's a case of not

doing something because you have learned a lesson. But Syria is

different to Iraq and Afghanistan. The definition of insanity is to go

on repeating an action that hurts you. If we went on after Afghanistan

and Iraq, that would not be courage, that would be madness. Some patients

could be denied treatment because of overspending on NHS budgets. Doctors

have been forced to cancel a ?15 million fund to fast track the use

of new therapies because the NHS in England has spent too much of its

?12 billion budget for complex care. Recently, the head of the BMA said

that if the NHS was the country, it would not have a credit rating

because it is so poorly managed. This is a good example. You have got

to reform the system wholesale otherwise things like this will keep

on happening. This is a really hard story, isn't it? Cancer care, the

idea that people are not getting the best care that they could have and

that there is better care available overseas... There was something

recently about pancreatic cancer getting better treatment in

Germany. It's just horrifying. People should be allowed to shop

around. If you have the money, you should be able to go there and buy

those drugs. And yet on the front page of the Independent, the

headline is that NHS care is outstanding, according to serve

Michael Richards, whose job is to review every single NHS Trust in

England, and he says that he has come across fantastic care that he

feels deserves to be highlighted as well. Good. He has come across some

fantastic care. And it's almost certainly the majority of

hospitals. But recent reports into GPs found that one third of

surgeries were not up to scratch. Mid-Staffordshire Hospital. People

died. The point of the NHS is that you might get it right in the

majority of cases but when you get it wrong, because it's a health

service, people die. It's not good enough. But if you keep bashing the

NHS, people will be driven to cutting it into parts and selling it

off, which is what the government is trying to do. I'm fascinating about

why you think it's necessary to talk up the NHS. Negative headlines make

good news. But the curious thing about this headline is that it is

positive. You have to remember that this is a vocational job. They are

not doing it for the money. This is the Daily Mail. A story you are very

keen to do. Yes. Baldric goes to war against Michael Gove. This is coming

off the back of Michael Gove in the same newspaper attacking the way

that World War I is being taught in schools. He would prefer it to be

taught in a much more jingoistic term. Neocolonial, nationalists.

Yeah, yeah will stop upbeat. Then act this is embarrassing. We have so

many resources, historians, teachers, capable of providing a

really well rounded view of World War I, the arguments, the opinions,

the different takes, and instead we have Michael Gove promoting this

horrible, nationalistic war happy... It's like history for

insecure idiots. I admire him as an education Secretary and he has done

a lot of great things but this frightens me as an historian. I

don't care about his opinion as to World War I but the idea of an

education secretary saying that it's too left-wing and to promote an

alternative right wing take on that and that the state should impose

that on children and academics, that is actually frightening. That is

very frightening. I actually agree with you for a change. Thank you. We

will have more on the storms sweeping in from the Atlantic.

Almost 100 warnings in place. Coming up next - the film review.

Hello and welcome to the Film Review on BBC News. To take us through this

week's cinema releases is Jason Solomons. Jason, amazingly good

films out at the moment. Yes, and awards season