01/01/2018 The Papers

And coming up, James Naughtie meets

the crime writer Peter James to talk

about his latest novel.

That's in 15 minutes on this

week's Meet The Author.

Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the papers will be

bringing us tomorrow.

With me is the nroadcaster

and campaigner, David Akinsanya,

and the comment and features editor

at City AM, Rachel Cunliffe.

Tomorrow's front pages first

then, starting with...

The front page story in the Times,

which says time-wasting patients

are costing the NHS

£1 billion a year.

The Guardian says several

stabbings on New Year's Eve

brought the number of fatal

stabbings in London to 80 for 2017.

The Daily Mail says firemen

with only a few days

of first aid training are being sent

to medical emergencies,

due to pressure on the NHS.

The i reports that millions

of commuters will be waking

up to the steepest hike in rail

fares for five years -

it calls the increase

"the great train robbery".

The Metro leads with

the Sydney seaplane crash

which killed British chief executive

Richard Cousins and his fiancee -

saying he found love again

after losing his wife to cancer just

three years earlier.

And the Express warns

that an Atlantic storm

could bring 80 mile an hour winds,

torrential rain and flooding

to Britain tomorrow.

To the P. Let's start with the front

page of The i might, shall we? It

has that perennial Newsday story, a

good headline. Great Train Robbery.

Absolutely, great headline. The sad

story, though, especially for

commuters all over the country. Rail

fares are going up by as much as

3.4%, just the news that he wanted

to start the New Year and I think

there is really some anger growing

behind us. Obviously, rail service

is one of the things that we as

Brits like to complain about, it is

not something we are particularly

good at as a country. The owners of

the railways are still earning pay

packets, I think, totalling £4.5

million. There is a feeling that

service and pay is really not linked

and it is kind of this cocktail of

issues which is causing a lot of

trouble and has caused the

Conservatives -- would cause the

Conservatives a lot of trouble over

the next two years because a lot of

these commuters are in Tory seats

and are starting to look at Jeremy

Corbyn, who has promised

renationalisation of the railways

and that is starting to look more

appealing now.

And it is 25 years,

is the 25th anniversary now of when

it railways were privatised. The

fragmentation of the railway system

makes it very difficult for people

to plan, to put a case forward,

because you are dealing with all of

these different, separate

organisations. I was just working

out, the hometown where I grew up,

Basildon, it costs about £4000 a

year for your annual journey into

work. I know most of my friends earn

between £30,000 and £70,000, most of

them get that as part of their

package because there is no way they

could pay out a lump packaged like

that just to London every day.

The

companies pay for it...

Yeah, a lot

of companies fork out for it because

you get the cheaper ticket if you

fork out for the annual ticket. I

think it is a real shame, we have

more strikes coming out. I could not

work out from the newspaper today

but it is saying there are processed

at stations. I would quite like to

know because I would quite like to

go to the protest. It was not one of

ours, no.

And I make the point that

as ticket prices rise, wages are

stagnating.

I think this is a

political problem, is a market

problem as well. It is very

fragmented, there is no

accountability and it is not clear

how you link service to compensation

when it comes to people who are

running this. This goes hand-in-hand

with things like the housing crisis,

you have more and more young people,

under the age of 40, who are

struggling with housing costs and

commuting costs. These are exactly

the sort of voters that I think the

Conservatives are trying to win over

and I think there is an election in

the next couple of years, they are

really going to get punished at the

ballot box port, if they don't...

And certainly, Basildon is a

marginal seat, it could be an issue.

I think that a lot of people who use

the railways, me personally, think

that Jeremy Corbyn's idea of

renationalising the railways might

be an idea.

It is sort of like the

current system is not working so if

you break the current system, maybe

we'll get something better, maybe we

won't. Probably we won't.

This is a

debate that will be continued for

sure. Let's move to the front page

of the Guardian, which has this very

grim story about four stabbings in

London over the New Year period.

Funnily enough, actually, I was in a

park yesterday where one of their

helicopters landed to take one of

these guys that was stabbed

hospital. It is a big issue in

London. Some of the figures, I think

AT last you serious stabbings in

London, and what I was interested in

this was Alice and Copeland's son

was actually stabbed to death, what

she was saying is that there is a

lot of lip service paid to this and

that none of the things being put

forward actually going to change the

situation. So having a billboard

saying I must not carry a knife is

not going to stop young people

carrying a knife, and what she says,

and I agree, is quite powerful, is

that people who have been involved

in these incidents should come into

schools to talk to schoolchildren, a

mother to talk to school kids about

what it is like as a mother to lose

your child to knife crime. I think

that is incredibly powerful and I

think the government should be

investing in that sort of thing, as

well as services, that people have

been talking about for a long time.

There are no youth services any

more. Educating them out of school

hours, they just don't exist any

more. I would support her getting

people into schools to talk to kids

about it.

I agree. Obviously this is

a law and order problem but it is

also a social problem, and it is a

problem with communities that feel

distant or ignored.

Scared.

And

scared.

Yeah, I think that is why a

lot of knife carrying goes on.

Scared into carrying a knife, it is

psychical.

I think that is so sad,

there is a part of me that wants to

go back to the school days when we

just had a punch-up and that was it.

These days, if your honour is

questioned, people turn to this too

quickly and it is a real shame and I

really feel for young people who are

living in fear, especially in city

areas.

Let's go to the front page of

the Metro, another sad story. Devil

tragedy of air crash Brits. This is

a story we have been running very

prominently today. -- double

tragedy. This is Richard Cousins, he

lost his fiancee, her daughter, two

sums, the Daily Telegraph has the

same story actually on its front

page, saying another UK family died

in the same type of accident.

This

is sad, the detail in the Daily

Telegraph is so shocking. I don't

know anything about seaplanes, I

don't know if you do. This

particular type of plane is known as

applying NT, and they are kind of

known for having issues. It says

here that there had been 31 deaths

in nine separate incident with this

type of plan, and I obviously do not

want to detract from this tragedy on

the front page of The Daily Mirror,

but it does seem that there is an

issue with this model and that

almost makes the whole thing worse

because this could have been

preventable.

Yeah, I mean they have

been known to stall and this is like

one of those flights we go to look

at the coastline and stuff like

that. So, the plan is moving about a

bit and it looks to be that that is

a problem that has come up, and that

they do have to have more vigorous

safety checks because of this

problem. But it is just the sort of,

I mean it is not the sort of thing

you want to you on New Year's Day.

It is an awful story about a whole

family being wiped out and when you

read about this guy and his wife's

fight with cancer and wanting to

have another partner, it is just...

Yes, the reason he was engaged is

that his first wife wanted him to

find someone else.

Is very tragic,

an 11-year-old girl is well.

I know.

Lets move on to the front page of

the Times, which has a different

story as its front page story. Time

wasting patients are costing the NHS

£1 billion a year.

Yes, this is an

issue that I don't think we'll

surprise to many people who miss

appointments, it is costs the NHS a

lot of money. How much money? 1

million cataract operations or

200,000 hip replacements, just on

the money that is being spent on

these missed appointments. There

were 7.9 million appointments missed

in 2017, that seems extraordinary to

me.

One in 15.

A lot of people feel

that they are too busy with work or

that their surgeries are too full

and they cannot get an appointment

at the right time, so put off going

to have an appointment that they

really need because they feel like

they do not have the time to do

that. So you have these twin

problems people booking them and

missing them, and blocking them to

people who really need them.

And

apparently, they cost £120 slot. I

did not know that, but every

appointment cost £120 to the NHS. I

am very lucky because I was one of

these guys who did not go to a

doctor for 20 years. There are a lot

of men like me, and I started to

go... And the reason I did not go to

the doctors is because the one

thing, I found receptionist to be

really rude and I do not like that

to justify myself to them stop loop

you can do it online now. That is

what I am saying, the practice I am

now are brilliant.

-- you can do it

online now.

There is really no

excuse for missing an hour. The same

thing with mental health services, I

know they are really good at making

sure they keep in touch with their

patient. There is no reason. It is

the cost, that is the problem. It

seems that everything now has a cost

without rhythms and all this sort of

thing, everything has been worked

out. And when you see these figures,

you have to say to yourself that it

is wasting a lot of money and we

have to take responsibility for its.

The 70th anniversary of the NHS,

they want people to rethink how they

use it and there is an argument that

this, obviously it is a problem of

individuals but it is also a system

problem, and that there are ways

which are already coming into

fruition, giving people in --

appointments in person. There are

lots of ways that we can use

technology and the existing

infrastructure to take the pressure

off services. Obviously, that in no

way excuses not turning up for an

appointment, but there are lots of

ways with online appointments and

text messages, that we can use

technology to help solve this

problem.

Let's take a look at the

other story on the front page of the

Times. Retired peers awarded a meal

ticket for life, what is that?

That

is no surprise, is it? Come on.

Does

that mean you worked up about it?

It

does mean that I worked up about it.

It is a bit like public school, old

university, old, elitist... That is

how it feels to me. I just think

that most of these retired peers are

rich anyway, aren't they? The one

they talk about the most common Lord

Ashcroft, he has got more money than

anyone, hasn't he?

What is

outrageous, is that meals are

subsidised.

That is a good headline.

The thing that bothers me when you

look at other areas of government

spending is that it gives them an

opportunity to influence policies

and the continued interactive

current members of the house appears

in the House of Commons in this very

protected, privilege space, and that

is something that we should be

interested in for issues of

accountability. Why are they getting

this privilege space? And that is

far more important than the money.

OK. Let's move on to the front page

of the Financial Times, which has

predictions for the economy that

growth will slow to 1.5% this year.

It is just what you want to stop

2018.

Well, we are full of good

news, aren't we? This January?

Low

growth, which we heard from Phillip

Hammond, in the budget having to

revise a lot of these figures

looking at Roath. Business

investment is on hold, which is

obviously a huge issue for

productivity. Productivity continues

to be low, they are predicting that

inflation will recede, which

depending on which part of the

economy you are in, is good or not

so much. Consumer spending will

cease, which again is good in terms

of consumer debt, which is a real

problem but it is not so good in

terms of the retail sector.

Inflation will increase. It does

have buried in the third column,

something that I think is worth

mentioning which is that on a more

positive note, they predicted that

exports would rise this year as

British companies benefit from

global acceleration and of course,

the drop in sterling and Brexit. I

think that is something to be very

positive about it basically, the

point of this story is that if we

don't get to grips with the

productivity or if measuring

productivity in a way that enables

us to make growth predictions, then

we are in trouble.

Wright, David?

Everything she said. The thing is,

my worry is obviously Brexit and how

things are going to be in the future

and the long-term.

I know that cars are assembled

I know that cars are assembled here

I know that cars are

in

I know that cars are assembled here

in bits and pieces are done but I am

worried about what we will be giving

to the world afterwards.

Financial

services are the main one and that

is something that my paper in

particular is set on protecting.

Financial services are what messed

us are.

We could be debating this

for a long time. One final story,

the front page of the Sun. Mars bars

did it apparently they are out

because they have over 200 calories.

We are now been told by government

is that we should not be giving

children any more than 200 calories

of treats in a day. These poor

children will have to eat rice

cakes.

Is the headline overwritten?

Banned from eating?

They can do

whatever they want to do. There is a

great traffic here on page five that

shows the exact amount of chocolate

you can give a child. This much for

eight weeks, less for dairy milk,

even less for a bounty. I must say,

the amount of chocolate I consumed

as a child... I turned out all

right.

What I liked at the end was

the last line that said you need to

get kids moving as well.

right. A

simple lesson, really. Thank you

both did it back