27/10/2017 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the the papers will be

bringing us tomorrow.

With me are Susie Boniface,

columnist at the Daily Mirror

and Public Affairs

Consultant Alex Deane.

Good evening.

Tomorrow's front pages.

The Financial Times has more

on Spain's move to sack Catalonia's

regional government as the fallout

over independence deepens.

The i is leading

with the same story.

It says the police are ready

to intervene following Catalonia's

declaration of independence.

The Telegraph reports on warnings

from the European Commission

president, who says the EU

doesn't need more cracks

following Catalonia's

declaration of independence.

The Daily Mail reports nine British

servicemen have been taken off

a nuclear submarine amid sex

and drug allegations.

The top story in the Daily Mirror

is the release of newly-declassified

files related to the

assassination of JFK.

Many of us have been looking through

them, trying to find something. And

some people have, you have?

I have

found stuff that wasn't in it.

Very

interesting. We will get to JK

shortly, everyone is talking about

it again. But we will start with the

big story of the day -- JFK shortly.

The crisis in Spain, it escalates,

that is the pretty blonde headline,

it has been escalating for days, in

all fairness -- pretty blunt.

This

is the latest drawn-out stage of the

catastrophe, chaos, goodness knows

what is going to happen next, and

every day there seems to be a new

disastrous thing that someone has

decided to do that will move things

further towards some sort of reward

them. -- some sort of horrible

event. The Catalan leader was

challenged in a way to declare

independence after the referendum,

he said we will not declare

independence, we want talks with

Spain, which were refused, and then

he batted it over to the Catalonian

Parliament, and said you can decide.

If he had decided it would have been

the chopping block for him, but he

shouted over to the Parliament of

Catalonia and they said they would

have independence, and the Madrid

Madrid -- government has said, no,

you are going to have direct rule,

and what is going to happen next?

Are we going to have a free and fair

election in which everyone in

Catalonia votes for independence and

everyone accept the result? Do we

have the kind of election which the

Catalonian independence movement is

not going to approve of?

52-48 is a

decisive margin, anyway... I derive

my view from the way people have

behaved, and the Madrid government

could hardly have played this worse,

they sent people with riot shields

and batons and beat grandmothers

away from polling booths, legal

polling booths or not, they seized

ballot boxes.

The scenes in early

October.

Exactly.

The Spanish police

are moving in and there is concern

expressed about what you are talking

about.

How could you not fear that

what happened when they conducted

the referendum in Catalonia, which

no doubt would have passed off

peacefully if Madrid had not

intervened, will be repeated, and

everyone remembers that Lincoln

suspended habeas corpus in the

American Civil War.

Yeah, I remember

that LAUGHTER

If you have studied American

history, you will remember that. My

point is, that is what is happening

here, the Catalonian Parliament

wants to secede from Spain and the

government of Spain is sending in

the militia to stop them from being

able to do so and imposing direct

rule, the stakes are that high.

Is

it not the case of another part of

the world that is becoming

antiestablishment and anti-austerity

and would like its own sake?

Nationalism is on the rise? -- phone

said. It is the world order of today

-- its own say.

The stakes are high,

because it is determining whether a

country stays together or parts

ways, Lincoln won the fight and is

regarded as a hero, but the criteria

for deciding whether a country is a

country is very obvious, you have

defined borders, Catalonia has

those, you have a defined population

and you are able in to enter into

discussions with other states, and

clearly there is enough of a GDP

here, this is the richest part of

Spain and there is enough activity

that it could be a state, bigger

than some European states, so what

is to stop them?

Let's move on to

The Daily Telegraph,. As with all of

these claims of independence or a

change of world order, it affects

everybody.

Yes, we live in a global

world.

The Telegraph are focusing on

the potential ramifications for the

EU.

Much of the thrust for

independence is based upon the fact

Catalonia feels they are in a strong

position, not just supporting the

population, but they have a fit of

the Spanish population and an awful

lot of their GDP and they feel they

would be strong on their own. Across

the EU, every nation has a

separatist breakaway movement

somewhere. Cornwall, Wales,

Scotland, parts of Belgium and

France, Corsica and Venice. If that

was to repeat across the EU, you

would have to have I suppose those

states that wanted to have some kind

of independence, they would have to

feel they also likely to wealth and

success on their own. Many of them

will feel that is not the case, so

you won't have all of the EU

splintering apart in the same way

and I doubt that other nations after

watching Spain will have it in the

same way.

I put this to both of you,

although I want to move on to other

stories. The Prime Minister of Spain

has put this to a vote, whether this

can be trusted or not, remains to be

seen, but he has put this to a vote

to the people of Catalonia.

It is

hard to imagine the people who voted

for independence last time in the

face of riot police won't do so

again, and the relatives and friends

of theirs won't follow their

example. Madrid has made a real mess

of this. If it was just an advisory

referendum they should have ignored

it.

If you are going to have a

referendum that is this important,

if you're going to call a vote, it

should be a proper referendum, not a

revote in Parliament, it should be a

proper referendum with a binding

turnout, you have got to have this

many people that will agree with you

before you can achieve it.

Dialogue,

as well, which didn't happen. Now to

another story on the front page of

The Daily Telegraph. This is in

relation to a report in The Sun

newspaper about allegations of

sexual harassment in Westminster by

researchers and other staff of the

I

suppose this is relating to the

Harvey Weinstein scandal, moving

into other areas of life and the

situation in Parliament, if you are

an MP and you have an office with

staff, they are your employees and

they are not Parliament's employees.

Parliament has its own employees,

and what this story is about,

Parliament's standards boss, the

Parliamentary authorities, asked

that the same rights should be given

to all the people who work in the

Houses of Parliament, so MPs

personal office staff have the same

implement rights as everyone else in

the Houses of Parliament, and uses

MPs pushed back against that and

they refused. -- and it says. That

is not what any of us would expect

in a place where we work, and it

means that if you have a problem

with your boss come there are only

three or four people in your boss

and the boss has done it's you, --

and the boss has done it to you,

then it is hard to know who to go

to, and that is the problem.

There

is a help line.

Number ten has said

the right things, but it is

impossible to imagine

parliamentarians could resist the

pressure to have this properly

investigated and revealed if there

are things to reveal, I think the

current climate will have the truth

come out and those who say it

shouldn't our daft. -- are.

The

truth came out about Donald Trump,

he admitted it, and he is still the

leader of the free world.

Now to the

Financial Times. Maybe a story that

makes the world look a bit better.

This is something we were warned

about after Brexit, Humvees were

going to flee the country. --

companies.

We were told everything,

and as they say, we haven't left

yet, but as someone who is a

Brexiteer and who thinks that our

future will be bright, I must be as

sceptical about stories like this as

I should be about stories when it

says such and such a company is

going to leave, and the fact is, all

these company 's posturing to seek

the maximum advantage for their

company, so if someone moves in

their direction, they say,

fantastic, more likely, but if they

don't get the noises they want, they

say, I had a nice trip to Frankfurt

and the weather was lovely. We have

got to be sceptical on those kind of

announcements, and the same way we

have got to be sceptical about the

press conferences we see happening

after the negotiations because we

might think we have lived with

Brexit for ever but we are still in

the Eddie stages. -- early.

Exactly,

we have got to be sceptical about

everything we heard about Brexit,

because there wasn't that much that

was clear about what Brexit

involved.

I don't believe that.

If

it was clear, the negotiation would

be over?

What was clear was the

decision, we would be able to govern

ourselves, and negotiate with others

on our own esteem and control our

own borders, and elation ship with

other countries is complex, but the

way we weather turning the won --

and the relationship with other

countries is complex, but the way we

were determining our own future,

that was clear.

And now we have got

a highly critical report which is

the NHS was hit by the Wannacry

attack, because of cyber security

failings. It goes into more detail?

It says the same thing.

It does a

bit. The National Audit Office says

one in three NHS trusts were hit by

the cyber attack, because they

updated things less than most. With

attacks like this it is seeking the

weakest victim, like the burglar who

goes along the street, the dummy

camera over your house might not

protect you from a determined

burglar but they might move onto the

next house. The point is not that

the NHS security systems were bad,

the point is that they were amongst

the worst and that is why the NHS

suffered so badly.

I'm determined

Susie can talk about the next story.

These are allegations regarding nine

sailors. What do you know from the

front page question not they will be

court-martialed, probably, standard

operating procedure that if someone

is accused of something, they are

removed from their operating vessel.

They might not all go to court

martial, but the allegations are

that nine sub Mariner 's were found

to have tested positive for cocaine,

some or all of them while on duty,

and one man is said to have sex with

a prostitute in a swimming pool.

What a difficult place to have sex

with anybody, really. The

interesting thing is that not that

this happened with the military,

because there are thousands of

people in the military, but the fact

you had nine from one vessel, one

vote. -- one vote.

Allegedly.

It was

carrying the nuclear deterrent, and

they are also sub Mariner 's, they

are the most highly trained and most

carefully selected people within the

senior service and that is because

they have to be able to be the kind

of people who can operate under

water for six months at a time

without soap and deodorant or raises

and an extremely high pressure

situations, part of their training

is you have two escape from an

underwater submersion situation, but

you can't do that if you are someone

who panics and if you go on shore

and takes a load of class a drugs.

There may be more to it?

Yes. But

whoever was in charge of the

submarine training school, they

might have a quick look at how on

earth these people, if they are

found guilty, got through the

training process.

We have had a

statement from the Ministry of

Defence which confirms nine British

servicemen have been dismissed from

duty from HMS vigilant which carries

the Trident deterrent. The tests

moved positive. The Royal Navy says

they don't tolerate drug misuse by

service personnel and those found to

have fallen short of their high

standards face being discharged from

service.

Drug testing is fairly

regular in the service, as well, so

you have got to be pretty dumb to do

that.

Most people pass these things

with flying colours, so this is an

outlier, if true.

The big talking

point, even if there is nothing that

much new, the JFK files, and many

papers have gone pretty big on this,

look at The Daily Mirror. The front

page. You have been looking through

this, is there anything we are

learning which is new?

This is the

most fascinating and gripping

mystery that has been for most of my

lifetime, and people will always

talk about this, which is why the

tabloids will be doing it, but

business solution or answer to the

conspiracy theories. This is a

re-stoke in and putting the fire

underneath everything to keep people

asking questions.

It shows a few

things, like most people who look at

the evidence, it is difficult to

believe one shooter conducted the

assassination of JFK. Weird things

happen, the magic bullet theory

might be true, that is what the

bullet did in the path of all that

damage to the president, but the

papers reveal that the FBI revealed

at the time -- that the FBI at the

time did not think that Lee Harvey

's bald acted alone. -- Lee Harvey

Oswald. The point is, pretty

understandably and predictably, at

the time the FBI had people who are

questioning what was determined to

be the ultimate truth, and also they

reveal that J Edgar Hoover came down

very heavy and very early in his

decision to say, we just need to say

that the Harvey Oswald was the

killer and was the only shooter, and

that might have been true in the

end, but it was like one of those

uneasy things, you have no right to

know that at the time.

What you did

have the time, total panic. Complete

panic within the FBI and CIA,

everyone else around the no one

knowing what happened, and what you

won't have in these files, any kind

of memo that says, there seems to be

some kind of wing nut responsible

for this, who we noticed six months

ago and we should have collared him

and he has gone and done some

stupid. We can think of terrorism

incidents in the last 12 months ago

where police have known about

someone but he has got lucky and

done something anyway, it is that

scenario. That doesn't suit the

conspiracy theorists.

That is right.

The one thing I thought, many of the

files mentioned the conspiracy

theories, as well, as lines of

investigation.

Yes, it started very

early.

The dead express now. British

newspaper got tipped off before the

Kennedy assassination Ash the Daily

Express. Someone got in touch with a

Cambridge newspaper reporter.

25

minutes before the shooting, a

senior reporter at the Cambridge

news got a phone call saying there

was going to be big news from the US

embassy. And then it happened. I

think the person at the CIA who was

doing the whole conspiracy dialled

the wrong number.

It depends on the

person reporting, these things very

quickly cement into truth, they fit

a conspiracy theory and are

constantly challenged if they don't,

and it is just as likely that

someone got the time wrong.

Alex and

Suzy, thanks for joining us.

That's it for The Papers tonight.

Don't forget you can see the front

pages of the papers online

on the BBC News website.

It's all there for you -

seven days a week at

bbc.co.uk/papers - and if you miss

the programme any

evening you can watch it

later on BBC iPlayer.

Thank you Susie and Alex.

Goodbye.