11/08/2017 The Papers

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

With me are Katie Martin of the Financial Times

Both of them got the memo about black attire!

Tomorrow's front pages, The Daily Express leads on the war

of words between North Korea and President Donald Trump who says

the US is locked and loaded in readiness for battle.

The Times headlines a change in tack from the Royal College

of Midwives who say they've dropped their decade-long campaign

for normal births after it made women feel like failures.

The Daily Telegraph questions standards at universities after it

emerged some of the nation's most prestigious establishments

are offering students places regardless of their exam grades.

The Daily Mail claims drivers and homeowners

who pay their insurance monthly are being charged hundreds of pounds

The Sun leads with a poll that most British people want to see Prince

William and -- as king and leap frog Prince Charles. The Daily Mirror

says the owner of the car that Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed

in wants to put it on display in a museum. The Guardian headlines the

conviction of 11 people from one family in Lincolnshire who have been

convicted of involvement with a modern day slavery ring. We return

to North Korea with claims that the White House has used a back channel

for talks with Kim Jong-un 's regime.

Locked and loaded is this headline as President Bush says that the --

President Trump says that the US military is ready to take on North

Korea when it comes to it. Brinkmanship it is said to be. North

Korea are said to feel frightened even though they are carrying out

these missile tests. Yes, you can trade barbs about who started it but

it is a bit schoolboyish. What the world really needs now and what

Germany has called for and China has called for is calm. What we have

instead is Donald Trump saying that military options are locked and

loaded and ready to go should North Korea act unwisely, which is a

statement issued in a tweet. This is how modern-day diplomacy works.

There was no obvious sign at the moment that either the Korean side

or Donald Trump is ready to back down. No. You have the regional

neighbours, South Korea and particular and Japan, over which

these missiles would fly, if North Korea were to launch them, you have

got everyone extremely anxious. You have two spare the thoughts for the

Islanders in Guam who have been told to lie flat in the ground and have

been issued leaflets about what to do. There are about 6000 American

troops there and the island is in the middle of nowhere but it has a

defence system ready to shoot down missiles if they are coming in their

way, but you have got to feel for these people who live there. China

is supposed to be the one country who can talk some sense into North

Korea, but even they appear to be waning confidence. The ability of

China to control what North Korea does has been vastly overstated over

the years. It is not like the president can just pick up phone and

make it all stop. It doesn't all work like that. There are signs that

there are diplomatic back channels and there has been some kind of

contact between North Korea and people connected to the White House.

It has been assumed to be contact that is dealing with the hostage

situations in North Korea in terms of US citizens that are held over

there but actually it turns out they have been talking much more broadly

in recent weeks and so maybe that can help to defuse the situation

somewhat but neither side wants to be seen to be backing down. You

wonder what pressure the international community can put on.

In Iran in the end they became a carrot to go with the stick. At the

moment more sanctions for North Korea are negative incentives, if

you like, to get them to stop firing missiles. You wonder if there is any

appetite anywhere for a positive incentive, if it is through

diplomatic channels, as Angela Merkel has been talking about. As

the rhetoric we have been saying, where does it" Mackey says will

regret it and regret it fast and at least him with nowhere to go. We

would all regret it if it was to happen. In the Times the midwives

back down on natural childbirth. Current policy makes women feel like

failures if you have to have a Caesarean -- Caesarean, and of

course a lot of women do, that is a difficult thing. This campaign to

deter us from having interventions has been going on since 2005. It

has, indeed. More than a quarter of women end up having a Caesarean,

whether through choice because they are forced to have one at the last

minute and the last thing women need is to end up feeling this way and

have this pressure put on them at this time particularly. It is a

change of tack here from the Royal College of midwives and I think it

is a welcome one. I think mums to be will welcome this change. Which

reminds me of some of the forceful breast-feeding campaigns that get

mounted now and if you can't breast-feed or you don't want to you

feel like you are a second-rate mum. Yes, I am delighted to see this

story because I think a lot of the instructions that women get about

how to give birth on how to breast-feed and how to bottle feed

on whether to bottle feed, it is all built up into a huge commercial and

public health enterprise that goes into telling mums that they are

doing it wrong, everything they do they are doing it wrong. It would be

nice to be told actually once in awhile that you are doing your best.

If you need an epidural or a Caesarean or you need to use

bottles, you're not a bad person, you will not harm your baby, quite

the opposite. You are doing the best thing for your health and the baby

's health and it is really time for the medical and a lot of other

people to think about the extent to which they are bullying new mothers

at a time when frankly they are not in the mood for fun and games. No,

you are feeling pretty vulnerable, aren't you? I had a fantastic health

visitor who said, do you think you're doing the right thing? And I

said, I think so, and she said, then you are. Carry on! Eminently

sensible and I have always been grateful to her. The Daily

Telegraph. Unconditional offers being an out left and right and

centre. It means you don't have to get particular grades to get a

place. Didn't work like that in my day! Normally. The story is saying

that universe have such pressure to have students on the books that they

dish out a lot more unconditional offers than they once were.

Unconditional offers from Edinburgh have trebled from 2012. You would

feel pretty lucky to get a place at Edinburgh without having to hit

those targets. Exactly! For Birmingham the rate has doubled

apparently and it raises concerns about standards. There have always

been unconditional offers and about to some, if you have particularly

impressed them. And it it's a different system in Scotland because

you are a bit younger and you have another year to do your hires. I

have to say that this is another story about universities that is

negative that we have had over the past few weeks and we have had a lot

of discussion about university pay particularly. You know, students are

now having to pay ?9,000 a year in tuition fees. If you wonder where it

is going, it is going to pay vice chancellors who are earning ?450,000

a year. The Bath University Vice Chancellor, there were some

information that yesterday, some details about pay, where there is

hundreds of university staff earning more than ?200,000 a year and some

are earning over ?800,000 a year and they can be clinicians working in

Oxford but also lecturing so I put that caveat in there but they have

two fail and once you have that money coming in Europe to keep it

coming in and Europe to keep people coming in and so I do not think that

this is the last story we will see of this sort. The sun has an

exclusive shock poll. Most Brits want King William. They want to

leapfrog over Charles. Are you surprised? I will not answer that.

Does it surprise you. Guild we have had a few weeks of extensive

coverage of Princess Diana and her life and controversial programmes on

the television this week and out of 2000 people who were surveyed in

this case quarters said that they had seen the programme and that they

wanted Prince William which is fairly obvious and more than half

backed him as the next king and only one fifth think it should be Prince

Charles. It is not done on opinion polls though, is it? I thought the

whole idea was that it is immutable and you cannot just pick and choose,

so I find this poll quite interesting. Pointless ultimately?

Yes, possibly. Over half of the Brits wanted to be William, fine,

but one statistic that caught my eye is that 11% wanted to be Harry and

14% say no one. Sorry, Harry! That is a bit of a poke in the eye. No

one at all. I don't have that is Jeremy Corbyn! I am not sure if it

will make any difference but it will not be nice breakfast reading for

Prince Charles. He has waited for such a long time! The Times, page

seven. Police resignations double in a four years. Why are so many people

leaving the force? They are fed up and worried about safety and

resources and this is what the story is saying. It is a Freedom of

information request posed by the Times which has Leal -- which has

yielded this information. The number of police officers or police staff

quitting is at a record high and it has doubled since 2011 on what the

story is saying that while certain types of crime on the up police

numbers are at a 30 year low and it is important to note that the number

of resignations that we are seeing is in addition to those retiring.

This is a fair number of people and it does add to this growing chorus

of calls for Amber Rudd the Home Secretary to pump more money into

the police force. If they are overstretched stress levels and

sickness levels rise and there stresses and strains keep growing.

We forget what we are asking police officers to do on a daily basis,

which is put their lives on the line to protect the rest of us and there

is an example here of a gentleman, a university graduate, who joined the

Met at 2009 and was fired up to be a constable and DeWitt and five years

later he has quit because he is beleaguered and demoralised. There

is talk of cuts and obviously Theresa May gave a speech a couple

of years ago which was Home Secretary where she spoke about

reshaping the Police Federation and wanting them to stop moaning but you

have the cuts and the difficulties there, and you have the fact that

when you join you know you have 30 years, and you resign at the end of

it and you have a nice pension but you also have the loss of experience

and knowledge that just vanishes when they leave and that experience

and knowledge is really vital and it really needs to be there to bring up

the younger officers. A lot of those new recruits certainly won't be

staying for 30 years, by the look of things. The FT, tax burden and

landlords turn to Manchester, so if you have a few quid and you want to

buy to let, head north. Actually, cherie Blair, and her son Euan,

quite a few years ago they bought up blocks of flats in Manchester just

to do that. They spotted the hotspot that Manchester clearly years now.

There is the BBC and a lot of other organisations joining and it is

clearly very popular and more affordable. A lot of people now are

not coming to London anymore, graduates coming to London because

rents are pretty unaffordable but actually you can go somewhere like

Manchester where you can enjoy all of the features of a big city,

concerts and culture and everything else, but it is a bit cheaper. A bit

cheaper, but there is the stamp duty cost of putting investors. The

Conservatives have said if they do not disagree about it it will cost

votes. Apparently London has always had roughly three times the number

of buy to let mortgages as other cities like Manchester but actually

the rate of new buy to let mortgages in London as half since 2016 and it

is very much about the new tax that is placed on purchasing new

properties so, yes, there are a lot of people desperately searching

around London for the last cheap property that they can buy and rent

out to some poor and unsuspecting soul. Actually, Lachlan was saying,

may be better off just looking outside London altogether. Whether

this is a good thing for renters in cities outside London is a whole

other question, but nonetheless it is difficult to stop the market

forces once they are in place. People with money to spam will look

for a good place to invest it. Let us look at a back page. Mo Farah 's

last lap. We move onto Guardian. Thank you. He warms up for the final

tilt at track gold. He is running tomorrow night in the 5000 metres

and the crowd will be in fine voice no doubt, to see it. Yes, I am

running five K tomorrow as well but I doubt it will be quite so exciting

and it will be nowhere near as fast. This is a big opportunity for the

nation to bid farewell to Mo Farah. This is his last turn on the track

before he has a more relaxing life running marathons or something. He

won the 10,000 metres a week ago when going for the 5000 metres

tomorrow and it is hugely exciting because he is purely any person who

has won anything for us. There was that. A bit of a dearth of medals.

They were hoping for between six and eight. Not so good. We have been

watching him for about seven years now. This was the third gold that he

took in the 10,000 metres this week, I think. Brendan Foster described

him as a ruthless running machine and Paula Radcliffe said it was one

of the best races he has run and there was a great picture of him

with his cheeky smile so I don't think there will be any booing in

the stadium when he starts the race. That is the problem. When you have

had a fantastic generation of athletes, who we watched in 2012 in

London at the Olympics, and it is great to see them back in London for

this, but you get used to that level of success, don't you? And in Rio as

well. But eventually they have to retiring to have to replace them and

give them time. Yes, teams need time to renew and I was lucky enough to

get the stadium twice this week to see the sport and it was fantastic

and, yes, there are a number of events where the British team came

forth and from where I was sitting there was no lack of support for

these guys earned huge admiration for some seriously plucky efforts.

These were underdogs that way of running their hearts out and I think

the crowd was absolutely with the man they have some faith that they

can come through for us next time. Is it apart from that you are doing

tomorrow? I am obsessed with park runs. They are a bit early for me

after a late Friday night and that is my excuse. No is the only

medallist at these championships. I think we did say that. I did say

that. Thank you, Amanda, she sent me a message to make sure that we know.

There was no escaping here, it is a goldfish bowl! Let us finish with

Page three of the holiday -- Daily Express. It is holiday season. I

hope you're going with someone more cheerful than this if you are going

on holiday. This is a woman on Mumsnet complaining about the extent

of this man's dissatisfaction with being away on holiday. He has not

been told that nobody likes a man on holiday or otherwise. His complaints

were being too hot, the beach being to Sandy, mountain is being too

stony and foreign chocolate being not a patch on British. That is a

reasonable complaint I think. Defends Warriors in Europe. Belgium

maybe not. Switzerland. He would be happy there. I think she should go

on holiday with a friend instead of him. It sounds like he has been

complaining about some pretty interesting stuff and the story says

that what makes it worse is that he chose to resort himself. There was

clearly no pleasing some people. My favourite complaint of his is that

he doesn't like being told things by people, i:e., the tour guide with

expert knowledge. Brilliant. He should be sent on a coach trip. You

can stay at home next year. He should come away with us, we would

have a great time. Don't forget you can see the front

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evening you can watch it Good luck tomorrow morning. Make

sure you do your stretches. The weather is coming up