05/03/2017 The Papers

well, 12 to 14 for Cardiff and London.

We'll be taking a look at tomorrow morning's papers in a moment -

The Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, has dismissed as "reckless" calls

for him to increase spending in his first Budget on Wednesday.

We are spending over ?50 billion a year on just paying

the interest on our debt, more than we spend on defence

The White House demands that Congress investigates

whether Barack Obama ordered wire-taps on President Trump before

A former director of National Intelligence denies the claims.

There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the

president-elect at the time, as a candidate or against his campaign.

The French centre-right presidential candidate Francois Fillon says

he won't withdraw his candidacy - but he admitted to

misjudgements in dealing with allegations of corruption.

The Iraqi army says it's close to recapturing the main government

building in western Mosul from the so-called Islamic State.

This week how would Jacobson, master of the art of serious but hilarious

writing -- Howard. On his latest collection of newspaper writings and

a fairy tale inspired by Donald Trump.

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

With me are the Mirror columnist Susie Boniface,

and the Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley.

The FT, which says the Chancellor's due to unveil tax rises

in Wednesday's Budget, as he looks to protect

the country from "unexpected challenges" from Brexit.

The Times also looks at the budget - and it pictures French presidential

candidate Francois Fillon and his wife at a rally in Paris,

amid calls for him to quit the race after fraud claims.

The I also looks at the Budget - it says Philip Hammond has been told

by doctors that the NHS needs billions of extra pounds.

The NHS also makes The Telegraph - which claims more than 600 bosses

are earning six-figure salaries, as the health service

The Metro has a warning about the mental health

of university students, reporting that suicide numbers

The Express reports research claiming a Mediterranean diet

of fruit, vegetables and oily fish could slash the risk

The Mail has an investigation into abortions, claiming some

doctors have signed them off for women they've never met.

The Guardian investigates sexual harrassment and misconduct

claims in universities, saying cases are at

Who would like to start? We will start with the Financial Times. We

are looking at the business of tax increases, something that most

people, this has escaped their attention. It is a bit of a

surprise. Philip Hammond's first proper budget and it is a Brexit

budget. He faced a choice, he could have decided to spend and invest in

infrastructure and he could have decided to cut spending and cut

taxes to turbo-charge the economy, or he could do what he is doing,

essentially create a nest egg to get the country through Brexit if the

fiscal situation is difficult so it is more about saving money with a

bit of spending on technology and science. What this means is an

actual tax rise, the Treasury has declined to comment, but one option

according to the Financial Times is raising the national insurance class

paid by the self employed by 3p in the pound. If you bear in mind last

year was a record year for start ups and many of those are self employed

people, that is what has got us through the recession, people

working for themselves. To punish those people with a tax rise, that

seems extraordinary. Very bad judgment. Putting off entrepreneurs.

Yes, but enough self employed journalists, as well. LAUGHTER

We know about how it works, but most people know they have to do a harder

job than we do. There are no the 5 million people in the UK who are

self-employed. -- there are nearly. These are people who are plumbers

and electricians, builders, many other people. To raise their

national insurance rate by a certain amount, it pays into this idea that

if you are paying the self-employed rate of tax you are paying less tax

than someone who is PAYE. We are looking for fairness. It doesn't

take into account the fact that you don't have holiday paid for and you

don't have any kind of medical benefits paid for when you are

self-employed and most people don't have pensions and you don't take

time off or have sick pay. I have a child Bhajji and I was back at work

week later. -- I had a child last year. The Chancellor feels he needs

to get money from somewhere. He has to pay for a couple of things and

the reason he will be spending is because of political embarrassment.

He has to pay to alleviate some of the problems with small businesses

who will have bubbles with the business rate hikes, most of who are

conservative voters -- who will have problems. And he needs to do with

the social care crisis and that has got to come from somewhere. He has

got to do something, then. But to take money from people who are

self-employed, to make up for those who are running small shops in

central London, that is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is not

encouraging investors and drivers. It is not the right approach when

you are trying to tackle Brexit, to raise taxes for those who are paying

such an important role in the economy. I think that is a mistake.

And now to the Daily Telegraph FrontPage. Mobile World -- mobile

web revolution. This has been money which has been announced before in

some instances, ?1 billion investment into Brexit proved

Britain, one of the things they will try to roll out is super fast 5G. I

live in a rural area and I haven't even got 3G. This is the

self-employed having another problem. Exactly! If you live out of

London, you need to get 3G or 4G working first. The people who would

provide 5G, they are not very keen on this kind of idea. It is a

difficult business. It is all very well to say roll it out. Very

expensive. I don't know how you go before you hit hate, it is beyond my

understanding with it comes to the internet. -- H. He's putting a lot

of money into research and development in universities which

ties in the announcement from yesterday, creating tea levels which

are the technological and vocational version of A-levels, so clearly they

are putting emphasis on vocational training and research and

development. The government has also committed itself to dominating 10%

of the global space market by 2030 and they are opening a new space

research centre. This is very bright and bold. They will be spending ?500

million on helping universities to create robots who will be deep space

mining. We went been putting man interviewed others, we are going to

be sending robots. -- man into the universe. We are leaving the EU and

going up into space. Maybe there is a bigger market than the EU out

there. People might wonder about the viability of leaving Earth what is

going on. Now Donald Trump, sighing Barack Obama ordered his phone to be

tapped -- saying. It is not clear what the accuser is actually talking

about, the first scandal in history. Remarkable, just a couple of days,

635 Saturday morning, the president said on Twitter that Obama had put a

wiretap on Trump Tower. Sean Spicer said they demand that Congress

investigates this accusation that his boss has made. But they won't

comment on that until Congress has, which is a way of trying to wrap the

thing up in one go. Donald Trump, they are being investigated for

supposed contacts with Russia, and he is serious about that in he feels

his agenda of fielding a wall and protecting jobs should be dominating

-- building. He is trying to turn the story into a story of the

establishment trying to deny him the election by wiretapping and

besmirching his election. Despite the fact he won. Yes, he is fighting

the election that he won. Donald Trump says many things in these

comments on Twitter. When he is on the toilet, first thing. Let's not

worry about the circumstances! But in this case it is probable that a

committee will probably say there is no evidence, but he is counting on

events having rushed past. And people having forgotten about it. He

has been called the deflector in chief. By some of his opponents.

Yes, and Obama does not have the power to order a wiretap on any of

his citizens. They would need to be a paper trail, disable is going on.

This seems to be how Donald Trump is governing, to say something mad and

then to go onto the next thing. -- to show what is going on. What he

says changes every day, and although we pay interest to it, and it is

fascinating in its data, it doesn't help anybody cover and analyse what

his presidency is doing. But it appeals to his supporters and they

love it. He is speaking their language. That is important. This is

a theme in conservatism that has been going on now eight years, the

press, Democrats and federal agencies have colluded in a grand

conspiracy to stop the advance of Conservative ideas and this is a

similar accusation to the suggestion that the federal tax department

targeted conservative groups under Obama, the idea that the whole

constitution has been perverted and undermined by liberals. It is

possible there is some truth in it, Marco Rubio said the president maybe

knows things that we don't know. He's the Republican governor from

Florida. But it is governing by creating a persecution complex will

and eventually this will be manifest in something else. They will turn

against somebody. And out of France. The front page of the Financial

Times. -- now to France. Francois Fillon at a big rally in Paris. It

was important that a lot of people attended and they did. What is going

on? It is complex for new readers. The French political system, it has

a series of run-offs, everyone comes forward and says they would like to

be president, they vote and it is the last two who go into the final.

At this stage Francois Fillon is the principal conservative contender but

it turns out he has been paying his wife and two children, ranging for

them to be paid for jobs they might not have done, via the taxpayer.

That has caused a scandal forced he doesn't deny that it. -- he doesn't

deny that bit. He says there is a political assassination against him,

as opposed to something which any modern political debate would focus

on because your wife and children have been paid for work they have

not done by the taxpayer. They need a standard bearer in French politics

because they have Marine Le Pen coming up on the bike hand side and

Michelle Wie one on the left. -- right hand side and then we have

Macron on the left-hand side. It is likely that Marine Le Pen will get

to the final round, and so it is important that the right candidate

makes it to the final round, as well, the one who can beat her.

Francois Fillon was regarded as the candidate but now he is tainted. So

who is going to run against Marine Le Pen? It could be someone like

Macron, who is regarded as a Blairite, many socialists don't like

him. They need a candidate who is right wing, and who can take her

voters and defeat the Front National. Francois Fillon has lost a

lot of support and he's quite painfully fairly unelectable, you

would imagine, but if Marine Le Pen is the one who gets into the final

run-off and is against Emmanuel Macron, it is likely that even

conservative voters would vote with the Blairite in order to vote

against her. You vote against the person you don't want to get the

job, fundamentally, in France, so the Conservatives are pushing

Francois Fillon to go through because they don't want Macron to go

through. It is a long game of chess. Our politics is a bit mild, I

suppose, but the Daily Telegraph has a story about Jeremy Corbyn, under

attack from his own side, but this is about his tax returns. Reportedly

he released his tax returns to put pressure on the government when it

comes to the issue of tax, but it is suggested not all of his income has

been declared on his tax returns. It looks as though his income as an MP

has been and his pensions and everything else but not his income

as leader of the Labour Party which is entitled to. This is probably a

clerical error. How much does he get? ?40,000, and that should be

declared. No one is suggesting he is dodging anything, but this is a

political case of shooting yourself in the foot. It was a stunt too

embarrassed the government but instead it has embarrassed him.

People say Jeremy Corbyn is always attacked by the media, and maybe

they have a good point, but when they said that he has not declared

his own income properly in this tax return, that is outrageous. It is

not just a piece of paper where he has missed something off, this is

his actual tax return. Oh right, we get into trouble if we do that.

Exactly. He has been taxed at source for that money and he did take it,

but he did not put that on his declaration. That is an oversight,

but someone should have checked his tax return before it went out. There

has been incompetence, but aside from all that, his income includes

?77,000 basic MP salary and also ?36,000 in pensions income. He is

entitled because he is over 65 to draw a pension for that job, but as

Leader of the Opposition and someone who is talking about wealthy members

of society who should be maybe not take the benefits they are entitled

to, like free TV licences, winter fuel payments, why is he taking the

?36,000 pension? It is not like he is a poor man, he already has

?118,000 income without it. Is that not enough for him? What is he

spending his money on? Drink? We will leave it there. Thanks for now.

You will both be back for another look at the front pages at 1130.

Coming up next it's time for Meet the Author.

Howard Jacobson is a master of the art of serious fiction