05/02/2014 The Papers

the games, the Winter Olympics start tomorrow. We will hear from one of

Britain's skiers in Sportsday, head of The Papers.

Hello and welcome to our look ahead to what The Papers will be bringing

you tomorrow with the broadcaster David Davis, and Philippa Kennedy

the ombudsman at the Sun. We will start with a picture of the storms

battering Porthleven in Cornwall. That is dominating the Telegraph's

front page. The main story is a warning that Britain's tax system is

apparently punishing success. The Independent claims the Liberal

Democrats cools Minister, David Laws, once Ofsted to have more

scrutiny of Michael Gove's academy programme. According to the FT,

defence companies are being asked by the MOD to highlight potential job

losses if Scotland breaks away from the United Kingdom. Ahead of the

Winter games in Sochi, the Guardian has an open letter from 200

prominent international authors saying Russia's International Gay

and blasphemy laws threaten freedom. The Daily Mail has a plan about

extracting data from medical records. The daily express claims

eating a yoghurt a day could help prevent diabetes. And the Sun has a

story saying Liz Hurley denied having an affair with Bill Clinton.

The big story of the day and it is on some of the front pages, the

weather. Let's show our viewers some of the front pages detailing that

now. Striking pictures from the returning storms on many of the

front pages. The Telegraph shows waves engulfing the church at

Porthleven in Cornwall. The financial Times features a similar

shot of the lighthouse at New Haven in East Sussex. The Express has

several pages on the storms and shows the railway line at Dawlish in

Devon. Rail bosses say it could take six weeks to fix. The storms are

dominating everything. Fantastic pictures. They are but these people

have been battered and battered. It is all right now because the Prime

Minister is riding to the rescue. I think that is a due -- dubious

political risk. What is he going to do to stop the weather? He is now

taking charge. David Cameron took personal charge of the flooding

crisis yesterday. What they don't seem to have picked up on in the

early editions are that Owen Paterson has gone into hospital, he

has got an eye operation. I do not know how serious that is, a detached

retina? It seems extraordinary timing. We are told he could lose

his eyesight if it is not dealt with. Clearly, he cannot affect the

timing of that. Our political correspondents throughout the

evening say it does feed into the perception. It is a dangerous

business as a politician getting involved with the weather. You,

having been in America for some time, will remember the problems in

New Orleans and George Bush, just before the presidential election

just so long ago we had Obama being seen to take control and Chris

Christie saying the president has done a good job and upsetting or his

Republican mates. That was Superstorm Sandy which it the States

just before the election. It is a day after the Prince of Wales turned

up in Somerset, properly clad with his Wellingtons and country jacket.

It seems too little, too late. It has taken a long time for anybody to

get to grips with this. We have been talking to whether or not the

Environment Agency was right or wrong to say they did not know

whether they should start dredging the weathers. -- dredging the

rivers. I think there is some PR which has gone wrong will stop even

if it does not help the marshes around Somerset, if I was the

Environment Agency I would stick a few dredgers in there to show people

they will do something. David Cameron said they will start doing

that. Are they working together. We have a story that David Cameron is

taking control and being chair of the emergency committee. The

Environment Agency's chairman has been heavily criticised for not

visiting the Somerset Levels, he did not attend that meeting. He may have

been out in the floods but you do wonder. There are no votes in this

for politicians and my own instinct is that governments get the blame

for the weather. It is a risky strategy. The next general election,

he might be slapped away with the tidal waves. You can sit in a lovely

studio like this and there are some amusing elements to it, but most

certainly, not for those who are so intimately involved. I live in

Worcestershire and we have had more than our fair share of floods in the

county in recent times. And then, as a Londoner born and bred, I look at

that railway track along Dawlish. There is a terrific picture in the

Express of that hanging together. Six weeks to fix it. I would be

amazed if it was fixed in six weeks. Six months is more like it. When I

used to go along that role we line with my mum, I used to think it was

the most exciting thing. It is the single link to that part of the

county. Spectacular pictures but not funny for the people involved. There

are human tragedies beneath all those photos, it has to be said.

Let's go on to the Independent, David Laws and goes. It has been a

lively old week for Michael Gove who is fast becoming the most

controversial member of this coalition government. On Sunday, he

got into hot water because he would not renew the contract of Baroness

Morgan, the chair of Ofsted who used to work for Tony Blair. Then he made

a major speech which could be summed up as back to the future on the

education system that he wants to see. Good things, there are some

good things and not so good things, some of us would argue. The basic

point is, here we have David Laws, his number two, who was widely

reported not to be happy with the treatment of Baroness Morgan, saying

he wants all-party select committee is to be given the power to veto

public service appointments, like the chair of Ofsted to prevent

cronyism, and also talking about the way the Conservatives Academy

schools are going to be investigated. We are seeing a move

away between the two coalition playmates, as it were, as we get

closer to the 2015 election, this is just another manifestation of that,

isn't it? Education is absolutely crucial. What do people worry about?

Being able to park their car outside their houses, their children being

able to go safely to school and they worry about safety and security and

policing, all the basics. I think Mr Gove has tapped into a very strong

vein of public concern which has, to a lot of us, it sounds like Tory

policy. I am not trying to praise the Tories in anyway. I think

education is a basic thing. He is the most radical Education Secretary

of modern times. Unions would say he is foolhardy. We will have to move

on. On the front page of the Independent, everything you need to

know about the Winter Olympics. It starts on Friday. Mr Cameron will

not be there. When a country is awarded a major event, as London was

for the Olympics, as South Africa was close to my heart in one sense

all those years ago for the soccer World Cup. The scrutiny that your

country or your city gets from the world is quite extraordinary. You

can argue that the Russians were not, and have not, been ready for

it. The porosity of it, yes, around gay rights in particular. There is a

letter on the front page of the Guardian from 200 writers. It is

very critical of what is going on in Russia. The calls for boycott - a

boycott - which some of us remember in the Moscow Olympics of 1980, they

have been very mooted. Mr Putin is not going to be bothered, is he? I

do not think he will be bothered that Salman Rushdie has signed a

letter. It is all to do with the recent gay propaganda and blasphemy

laws which prohibit, nontraditional sexual relations. That caused a lot

of controversy. Putin will be concerned about the aftermath of

Sochi when he looks ahead to the soccer World Cup four years of the

way. The tax system is punishing success, apparently. They think that

taxing higher earners will make them all flee the country. Is there any

evidence of that? Apart from Richard Branson... There was an interesting

two quotes in this story. Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrats,

saying today that the idea of the top rate of tax being brought down

to 40p will happen over my dead body, on the same day that Boris

Johnson indicated that plans to cut taxes for the richest would appear

in the Tory manifesto, which is being written by his brother. That

is there enough. We will be back in an hour to look at the more of the

stories making the headlines here. Stay with us. Coming up at the top

of the hour we will have much more on all the weather problems that are

causing havoc in the south-west. Stay with us for that. Now it is

time for the sport.