12/02/2014 The Papers

also bring you the details of England's cricket edition as they

seek to rebuild after their Ashes humiliation. That is after the

papers. Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the the papers will be bringing us tomorrow. With me are

the journalist and blogger Susie Boniface, aka the Fleet Street Fox,

and political correspondent at the Financial Times, Kiran Stacey. The

Financial Times leads with the Bank of England's forecast of interest

rates, which are not expected to rise before the election. The Metro

calls today's storm "The Big One" and warns there is more bad weather

to come. The Telegraph has a picture of a woman who it says was blown off

her feet by the wind in Manchester. The Independent says the African

elephant could be extinct within a decade because of poaching. The

Express predicts "mortgage joy for millions" because of the prospect of

low interest rates. That's the Guardian's main story too,

underneath a satellite image of the storms engulfing the UK. And guess

what, that is what we are starting with, the storms. Susie, the metro

is talking about the big one, 100 mile an hour storms battering

Britain. We don't have hurricanes here, apparently, we can only have

storms. Those pictures are reminiscent of one that was released

a couple of years ago when we had a very big snow . We have a similar

picture than about how much of Britain was affected. This is not

just affecting people in Windsor or Datchet or Somerset, it is

everybody. This has been going on since the end of November, since the

St Jude's storm. Everywhere was flooded then and people died in that

terrible storm, and it is affecting everybody so badly now.

Unfortunately, where the coalition have in handling it is that all the

ministers have gone down their one-way after another, each of them

have found a way to screw it up. Owen Paterson did not even get his

feet wet. David Cameron visited only after Prince Charles. Philip Hammond

was wandering around Wraysbury in Berkshire this week in his Hunter

wellies and a long scarf and Barbour coat, looking like a squire going to

look at the peasants. They are not handling it well. I know they can't

influence how much rain is falling, but there was high spending on flood

defences after 2007, when more houses were affected. David Cameron,

in PMQs today, praised the Labour government for increasing spending

after that and saving more thousands of houses this time round. But it

has all been cut since 2010. Of course, the coalition says it has

spent as much as the last Labour government did. They say they have

spent more. They did take into account inflation. -- they did not

take into account inflation. So it is a cut in real terms. They are

some clever accounting tricks. It has only gone up in the last couple

of weeks, since they have announced more cash. But is spending more

money on flood defences the answer? These storms are going to happen

with increasing frequency, we are told. That is probably because of

climate change. 90% of scientists would say that. If this stuff is

going to happen, the Somerset Levels are a flood plain and they are going

to get flooded more often. We are also likely to see it in the

south-east and Norfolk. Building sea walls are bit higher will not really

tackle the problems we are likely to see if it happens year after year.

It works in the Netherlands, and they are below sea level. But that

would take a huge decision. The Netherlands has a tiny coastline

compared to the UK, and it is a relatively small country, and it

spends double what we do on flood defences. To get to that kind of

protection, we would be looking at 20, 50 times what we spend at the

moment. But money is no object! It was a strange day today, because we

were told yesterday that money was no object by David Cameron, and then

this morning other ministers were saying, we are not writing a blank

cheque. So money is no object, as long as people are bailing water out

of their houses. But preparing for the next one? The front page of the

Daily Telegraph says it is an unparalleled natural crisis. This is

the age Chief of defence staff, who is helping coordinates the military

involvement in this. Is that true? No, it is not true. I assume he

means in Britain, firstly. But even if we take it in that context, there

are at the moment 5800 homes flooded. In 2007, it was extra

thousand. This is not unparalleled. We have had floods before and they

have been worse. What is bad tonight is the winds. We are starting to see

power lines go down, train services affected. But even if they damage

buildings and power lines and, it is nothing compared to the flood damage

that creates absolute havoc. Not only does it bring the water in, it

destroys fields and homes. If we were looking at 60,000 people

underwater, that would be almost unparalleled. But at the moment,

there is a huge amount of water. We have seen pictures of the Somerset

Levels, where water has reached the roof. There used to be a road, and

it looks like an ocean. But it has not affected the same numbers of

April as a few years ago. But this is forecast to go on until the end

of March. For as long as the jet stream wants it to go on. But in

1947, when there were floods, 200 thousand people -- 2000 people died.

This is nothing on that scale. It is not an unparalleled natural crisis.

I like the forecasters telling us that the storms are remaining for

the foreseeable future. They just mean for a few weeks! Hopefully!

Staying with the Daily Telegraph, the three main parties unite to deny

a separate Scotland the pound. The Liberal Democrats, Labour and the

Conservatives are as one on this. And every time they have been as one

previously, it has gone wrong. They were as one on the European exchange

rate mechanism, which went wrong. They were as one on the Iraq war and

on intervention in Libya. They were not as one on the Iraq war. But the

vote was pretty much unanimous. They were as one on intervention in

Libya, which has now turned into one of the major terror training centres

on earth. They were as one on the Leveson report. But what about the

pound? Let's stick with that. They clearly do not think Scotland will

work if it has the pound, or they don't feel the relationship they

will have with an independent Scotland is what they would want. If

they deny Scotland the right to have the pound, they are pretty much

saying they all want Scotland to stay within the union. That is the

one thing which might make people vote to stay in if you were

otherwise wavering. If you don't have control of your own currency or

have some impact upon a currency like the euro, it is like being in a

car where someone else is controlling the brake and

accelerator. It is aft. You want to have some impact upon your own

currency. You can't have your cake and eat it. They want the pound, but

they don't want the national debt. It is all up in the air. Is this

lack male? That is what the SNP will say -- this is lack male. They have

said this is bullying by Westminster. Somebody else and they

are being bullied into accepting more independence. It is a step that

none of the parties have taken so far, for a good reason, which is

that they don't want to look like it is the powerful Westminster

government telling the Scots they can't run themselves. I wonder if,

in the last few weeks, the polls have started to close. There is more

worried in Westminster that actually, the Scots might vote to go

independent in September. Maybe they have thought, we have to press the

big red button and warned them that they can still have something they

can call the pound, but they can't share a currency and they can't make

interest rate decisions. They would not have the same fiscal constraints

they would have if they shared the pound and have a seat on the

monetary policy committee at the Bank of England. It is a massive

issue for Scots. They now have to say, what do we do? Create our own

currency? Or do we join the Euro? Which used to be the SNP policy.

They could return to bartering. Actually, there is a good case for

them to have their own currency. If they are supposed to be an

independent country, why not have their own central bank? If the SNP

had any guts, I would say they would say, that is fine. Full independence

means an independent currency. The Hubble is, they know that that

worries people and their entire policy since they announced the

referendum has been not to worry people. Onto the Financial Times.

Rate rise unlikely before election, according to the Governor of the

Bank of England. Forecast boosts Osborne's claims on the economy.

This is because they Governor of the bank of England, Mark Carney, came

across from Canada and said he would link fitting to a 7% rate of

unemployment. When we hit at level, good times are here again and

interest rate will go up and stop he has now said the opposite. I think

this is because... He made his first announcement after one week in the

job. While he has been here, he has realised the way we can unemployment

in this country. Our figures include people in part-time work and people

on zero hours contracts who are not necessarily earning. It includes

people who have been sanctioned from their job-seeker's allowance at

other benefits, who are not necessarily working. So he came over

here from Canada, thinking, they are going to count the unemployment

figures in a certain way, and I am going to base my entire policy on

the way that is counted. But in fact, they did a switch and started

counting unemployment differently. He has realised our unemployment

figures are bogus. Easy! Is that fair? Not entirely! The policy was

probably fairly nuts in the first place. Chris Charles, our economics

editor, has said right from the beginning that this means nothing.

We will get to 7% unemployment and then the Government will take a look

at the economy and say, if everything else is in the right

place, if people are getting wage increases, people are in full-time

employment, then there will be a rates rise. Why did he say it? He

wanted to give banks more certainty in the long run. He wanted to say,

don't worry, it will be a long time before we raise rates again. But now

we are wondering if they will move the goalposts again when some

indicator does not fit the methods that he had. He is being a good

banker, being cautious. It may be that unemployment would hit a

certain level and then it would be OK, but having got here it is not a

cave. The boom is not sustainable and could be temporary and we have

to be cautious. -- having got here it is not OK. He is being a cautious

man. The trouble is the Bank of England are talking about

underemployment, the number of people in part-time work wanting to

be working full-time. It is larger than they expected and it is not

changing. Over the last few months, unemployment rates have gone down

about underemployment rates are stable. People are going into work

but only getting part-time jobs. Lots of people want to do more work

but the work is not out there, which is the big worry. If businesses do

not feel confident enough to employ people on a full-time basis, are

they going to be strong enough to keep the recovery going next year?

All right. You will be back to look at more stories on half an hour. At

11 o'clock we will have much more on the ongoing problems with all the

storms and bad weather today. But now an BBC News, time the Sportsday.