15/08/2017 The Papers

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

With me are the author and former Conservative advisor Jo-Anne Nadler,

A warm welcome to both of you. Good to have you with us. Let's bring you

up-to-date on what the front pages are saying so far.

The Express leads with new figures that suggests house prices have

soared by ?10,000 on average since last year's Brexit vote.

The I claims the Government is to announce there is be to no

land border with the Ireland after Britain leaves the EU.

The Guardian say that the plan is already being ridiculed in Brussels.

The FT carries a picture on the Indian Prime Minister

celebrating the 70th anniversary of his country's independence.

The Mirror headlines calls from campaign groups

for the government to freeze rail fares after an increase of 3.6%

The Telegraph claims the number of babies left brain damaged by NHS

blunders has increased by almost a quarter in one year.

The Daily Mail says that they could reconsider the decision to stop Big

Ben for four years, as some did not know that it would be silenced for

that time. After many months of the Government

being somewhat low paid about their intentions for Brexit, we are now

going through a deluge of hopefully clarifying information about what we

may all be dealing with over the next few years. Of course, today, we

have had a lot of discussion about customs unions and tomorrow we will

be hopefully finding out more about how this issue of the border between

northern and southern Ireland will be handled after Brexit. What the I

will be saying is there will be no land border. We have only seen the

front pages and what I found amusing about this front page is that it

says, Brexit blueprints, we beat them so you don't have to.

LAUGHTER -- we read them.

Hopefully we will have more detail and tell people slightly more detail

on this. That is the critical point, it looks as though the proposal will

be no land border as such. This is particularly sensitive for the Irish

Republic because they will continue to have the relationship with the

European Union but have this island in the way! It is important for the

U and the Irish Republic, at a red line as well for the EU, you

suspect. How this... There is a whole and of history now resting on

this, the legacies of John Major and Tony Blair and the Good Friday

Agreement and all of the rest of it. If they had gone down, or were

considering going down the road of a hard border and all the checkpoints

that some of us remember driving through, which were awful, then you

would be quite fearful of the direction of travel. The difficulty

is the and practicality of this was the technology means you could drive

a lorry through and you could sweep it with a radar gun and know what

products were in there and whether ever thing was being properly

declared. But then you have got to answer that with free movements,

which is supposed to end for the UK. There is talk of free movement

within the island of Ireland. I don't agree third any senior

Conservative politicians seriously talk about the possibility of there

having to be a land border. This would appear to confirm that that is

the case. We look forward to the detail of that. What we don't have

is the detail of what happens at the external border. Northern Ireland

voted to stay in, did it not? That was an important vote. These

problems were an inevitable result of the vote. An interesting link

here because she could almost suggest that all of these papers

coming out were an answer to the story about your namesake at the top

of the Times today. My namesake indeed, without the E, indeed. It

doesn't spell it properly! Isn't politics a lovely business? You have

the former chief of staff accusing the Brexit secretary of leering, of

bullying and laziness, on the very day that this morning... I couldn't

turn on a television and listen to radio without him popping up. He

will deal with it. I do know him a little, I suspected of him

reasonably well, and he will be all that in that fairly jolly way,

whatever he thinks privately about what his former chief of staff is

saying. The only thing I would say is I think I'm right in saying he

has not had a holiday, and is not having a holiday in the month of

August. Without any question, whatever you think about the EU and

staying in or coming out or whatever, David Davis has got the

most wretched job in government, trying to satisfy... It is a job he

has wanted for any years was up in many ways, he is supremely qualified

because of his detailed understanding of how boot he was

Europe Minister 1000 years ago, in political terms. If there were any

truth in this that he only works three days a week, it could be that

he knows what he is doing. 26 countries placating the European

Commission, the parliament, that is before you get to the Tory party. He

will need to lie down for the other four days! The Telegraph now. This

is a disturbing one about brain injuries in newly born children. It

is. This is a story that the Telegraph seem to be running

exclusively, and they have looked into a rather alarming increase in

the number of babies being born with brain damage. It has gone up from,

or medical claims for damages have in the last year gone up from

something like 180 up two 230. What is called here

normal birth, or what might have been referred to as natural birth.

That seems to be the suggestion that that is partly behind this obviously

rather disturbing trend. It's a hugely disturbing trend. It is a

horrendous story for those of us who have seen the fantastic pressures on

medical staff, be they doctors or whatever in these units who, in my

case, brought two children and one grandchild into this world, they

owed them everything. I can only imagine what it is like. The skill

and care that they show. It was only last week that the Royal College of

Midwives dropped its campaign for normal births and abandoned the use

of the term. Maybe we are heading in a different direction, and that is a

turning point. A lot of pressures which will come up as part of the

NHS review as well, with the moves towards specialism and fewer but

better sites, as the Government is hoping for. That is a story that

will have disturbed people. This is one that will anger people, which is

the rail fares. An annual treat for journalists. The rail fares, the

expected rise of 3.6% is running across all of the newspapers.

Especially alarming headline in the Telegraph, saying that the soon to

see ?10,000 rail tickets for people on particular routes for the annual

season ticket. Clearly, as you say, this is going to infuriate people

because not only are they paying a great deal more but in many cases,

the service seems to be wholly inadequate. Some of the

modernisation is having to be put back and delayed because it will

cost more money. Am I not right in saying that government... There has

been a Conservative led government since 2010, governments can control

fares. It will be interesting to see in the budget in the autumn whether

anything is done about this. If you can control fuel, presumably you can

control rail fares. There have been increases for seven years. That is

what some of the papers will be alluding to. There will be an

argument about this. The good news is, if you need your ?10,000 to pay

for your rail fare, you might be able to sell your house to pay for

it according to the daily express. That is extrapolating! Indeed. The

express have got a story that seems to fly against some of the other

trends around house prices. The average price of a house has gone up

by ?10,000. I think the interesting thing, reading between the lines is

how they are presenting this as a sign that Britain after the vote to

leave the European Union has got a healthy economy. Some people would

suggest, and I have a lot of sympathy with it, that just stating

the health of the economy on ever rising house prices is not a healthy

way to look at it. In fact, the threat that George Osborne made

about house prices falling, would not necessarily have been a bad

thing. Call me old-fashioned, but are house prices that carry on going

up for ever and a day, is that good? Possibly not for your son's

generation. Or your grandchild's generation. It is unsustainable,

isn't it? This is a story that might have been seen earlier. A lot of the

papers got excited by this story of Millie Forrest, described as a

cloakroom girl turned overnight singing sensation. What a

patronising way of putting it! It is a classic August story, and that

your dream comes true. You start off handing out the cloakroom tickets

and you end up standing in for the top soprano of the night. That

appears to be the story. It is a view weeks old, apparently, as

well(!) She ended up singing Schubert and Vaughan Williams and

Purcell. Let's hope it plays on for her. Any publicist is good

publicity. We will be back in under an hour's time.

Don't forget you can see the front pages of the papers online