14/01/2018 The Papers

Hello.

This is BBC News.

We'll be taking a look at tomorrow

morning's papers in a moment.

First, the headlines.

The Government considers a judicial

review into the decision to release

serial sex attacker John Worboys.

Every victim out there,

every friend and family of victims,

and everybody who has read

about this case will

want to know that we are doing

everything we can to make sure that

the victims are properly protected.

Police searching for a man

in connection with a suspected

crossbow attack, which left one man

dead and a pregnant woman injured,

discover a body in a vehicle.

The future of the engineering giant

Carillion remains in doubt.

Ministers are due to resume

crisis talks tomorrow

to save it from collapse.

The leading fashion photographer

Mario Testino has been suspended

from working for Vogue,

following allegations

of sexual harassment.

Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the the papers will be

bringing us tomorrow.

With me are Martin Bentham,

home affairs editor

at the London Evening Standard,

and Owen Bennett, deputy political

editor at HuffPost UK.

Welcome to you both. And this, all

being well technologically, is the

last time the papers will look like

this. It's all going to be different

tomorrow, fingers crossed. The front

pages for tonight.

The Metro leads on the future

of Ukip's leader, Henry Bolton,

after his girlfriend was suspended

from the party for sending

apparently racist text

messages about Meghan Markle

The FT reports on the trouble-hit

contractor Carillion.

It asks why it was awarded

£2 billion in government

contracts, despite issuing

a profits warning last year.

The Times also has that story. It

also pictures a claim which skidded

off a runway in Turkey.

The Express has research claiming

that adding more fibre to your diet

can help fight rheumatoid arthritis.

The I has a special report

about arms deals to countries

such as Saudi Arabia

following the Brexit vote.

The Sun reports on the marriage

difficulties of TV star

Anthony McPartlin.

The Mirror also leads on that story.

He is to divorce his wife of 11

years.

The Telegraph claims medical records

of British cancer victims have been

passed to a US firm working

for one of the world's

biggest tobacco companies.

Let's start with the Ukip story,

it's on the front of the Metro. Your

racist lover or your job. A warning

to the Ukip leader, Henry Bolton.

Remind us of the story.

Many people

might have forgotten, and you might

understand why, but Henry Bolton was

elected Ukip leader last autumn, and

since then it's emerged he's left

his wife for a younger party

activist. Some text messages have

emerged, in which she made some

racist and disparaging comments

about Meghan Markle. Ukip know how

to turn these things into even more

of a drama than a crisis, and now

they say he has to choose between

his girlfriend of his job, the

comments of the party chairman

today. We understand other papers

are printing other messages,

referring to other things equally

despicable, to be honest. Ukip, they

are a party without a purpose, and

seemingly a party without a leader

again, it seems.

They seem to have

trouble getting the right leader in

post for any length of time.

I

suppose, when he was elected, he

might have seemed a decent choice,

an ex-army person and so on, and he

might have seemed a safe pair of

hands at that time, and it's all

gone horribly wrong with his romance

and now these revelations about

these rather distasteful comments

that his new girlfriend has been

making. Although clearly one person

should not necessarily be liable for

the actions of their partner and so

on, on the other hand, I think in

this case, it's a bit too close to

home, isn't it? He becomes

identified with it himself, and I

don't think he can be identified

with the sort of things she is

saying. The headline here, your

racist lover or your job, is

probably an accurate summation.

It's

the association, isn't it? You

mentioned the purpose of Ukip, with

Nigel Farage suggesting there might

need to be a second referendum just

to make sure we leave the EU, once

we know a deal, that purpose, isn't

it?

Whenever Farage made that claim,

Ukip distanced themselves from it.

Of course, Farage is still the face

of the party. I don't think there is

going to be a second referendum and

I don't think was going to call it

would the Tories Labour wouldn't

call it.

And Farage then distanced

himself from it.

He is very good at

getting himself off the front page.

This just shows really, and I'm

surprised it's even on the front

page now, toonie owes to Henry

Bolton is really? -- who knows who

the real is.

Financial Times and

Times covering the story about

Carillion, the engineering giant

with £900 million worth of debt from

various banks. They were in trouble

and issued a profits warning last

year, but still awarded this

government contract.

The issue here

is it's a massive company that,

until recently, most people had

never heard of, they are running all

sorts of public sector maintenance

and construction contracts across a

huge range of areas, and they have a

massive debt pile. The question in

today's story in the FT and the

Times is the allegation that the

government awarded them, they had

issued profit warnings last year and

the government kept awarding them

contracts, and the criticism is that

they shouldn't have been doing so,

and there are rules that suggest

they shouldn't have done it, and

that therefore they were throwing

taxpayers money, and money after

bad. On the other hand, there was a

line in the FT from somebody from

the government, suggesting that the

problem would have been, if they

haven't put that money in at the

time, the company would have to the

wall immediately. It still

potentially will go to the wall, but

it's lived longer and there might be

of risking it.

So many

subcontractors to the companies,

which do the look of the HotBot

Carillion, will be watching closely

to see if they have a future. --

which do the work of Carillion.

It

could be that other companies come

in and cherry pick and it's all

divvied up by administration.

Lord

Adonis was criticising the decision

to offer hand-outs to those running

the East Coast Main Line, and

saying, if this is privatisation,

they have to stand fall on their

merits. The government, a

Conservative government

particularly, if it believes in the

free market, it shouldn't be handing

out taxpayers money to prop them up.

I agree with Lord Adonis about east

coast, that was a disgrace, but in

this case I think the problem is,

and he might be right on this one as

well, but the only trouble is it's

like the banks, too big to fail. As

you said, they are running all of

these contracts that maintain

prisons, the NHS, hospitals, quite a

view of those, and that work has to

be done, so the question ultimately

will be, the company, the work, a

lot of it, will continue, so it's a

question of whether losses will

come. The company will probably be

restructured and formulated in

underway and somebody will have to

take a hit. And one is the investors

in the company at the moment taking

a loss, or the other one is that the

government has to step in and do it

on their behalf. Obviously, the

right course is probably for the

individual investors to take that

hit, as private investors, and

that's probably what should happen.

Whether that does happen or not is

the big political question of the

coming weeks.

Let's look at the

second story on the Times.

Households face big fines in

fly-tipping crackdown food how do

you trace it back to a particular

house?

These things make headlines

and it looks good, households will

be fined £400 for paying in an man

in a van or taking were rubbish. We

know that local government has been

decimated by austerity, so how are

they going to have time to police

this and bring prosecutions? It's a

lengthy process already declined to

prosecute people for fly-tipping. --

to try and prosecute. It's come from

death row -- Defra, and the

Conservatives seem to be using this

as a battering ram to get into the

public good books. A lot of the

reason why people are fly-tipping is

that bin collections have been cut

by cuts to local government.

And

also recycling centres and household

waste disposal centres, which seem

to be open less and less and it's

harder and harder to get them to

dispose of your stuff. They have

always been people who fight it

though.

That's no excuse. It is

possible to take things to be

recycling centre or the local tip or

stick it in your bins at not at the

end of the road. If that does

happen. I think the activity is

reprehensible and I'd be entirely in

favour of hitting those people hard.

If they can back it up.

But it's one

thing having an aspiration and

another actually doing and achieving

it. But the principle has to be

right, because what happens is

people through their old sofa down a

lay-by somewhere or whatever and

then somebody else, the taxpayer

ultimately ends up having to pay for

it, and it creates a hell of a mess

and costs somebody off the money.

And move on to the I. UK's Brexit

arms deals exclusive, exports to the

world's most repressive regimes rise

by nearly a third. The year after

the vote to leave the EU is the

connection they are making.

Personally, I think that's a bit

spurious. Of course, we've always

wanted, and the Independent and the

I will not like this, and I think

their position was always to be

critical of that type of trade, and

that's a legitimate position. If you

believe we have arms industry and

want to support that, of course we

are going to try and sell the arms.

There is a question about who we

sell them and some of the people

listed here, Equatorial Guinea, with

a terrible record of human rights

abuses, so you wonder what we are

selling to them. Uzbekistan, not the

greatest country for human rights.

The country they list is responsible

for the largest chunk of this

increased is oh man, and they talk

about it as an authoritarian regime,

and it's not a democracy in the pure

sense or whatever, but I don't think

it's high up on the worst in the

world. I don't think it's to do with

Brexit, probably just the timing of

a good deal with Oman skewing the

figures.

The article argues that, if

you look at the freedom index, it's

those countries you mention that

these deals are being struck with.

They are trying to develop a post

Brexit industrial strategy to plug

any gap over trade with the rest of

the EU.

They quote a speech Michael

Fallon made when he was Defence

Secretary about that thing, wanted

to spread our arms across the world,

if you'll pardon the expression. I

agree that linking it to Brexit, it

doesn't need that in there. You can

be annoyed that we are selling

weapons to those regimes, if you

like. I don't see why the Brexit

angle is in there.

We've been doing

it for a long time, whether we

should be or not.

They quote

Thailand is being a military

dictatorship, but would you put that

in the same category as Saudi

Arabia? Tying it to Brexit, I just

think it confuses it a bit too much.

Guardian, students drafted in to

plug NHS gap. While these students?

This is now a tabloid!

Yes, a new

shape.

All those who have worked for

tabloids can now be sniffy about the

Guardian. But it was a good format

before and it will no doubt do very

well, and it is possible to produce

a good, quality paper in tabloid

format.

Says a man from the

Standard!

The Times with tabloid and

produces a good newspaper was

is

easier to cope with on the train.

It

is. It is driven by cost cutting,

that's the long and short.

So the

students, who are they?

Fourth and

fifth year medical students who are

being asked to help on wards,

according to the letter that the

Guardian has got hold of saying it

shouldn't be beyond their

competence, and the BMA is quoted

saying that it is indicative of the

terrible situation the NHS is in.

That's probably true that isn't a

desirable situation but, on the

other hand, perhaps we shouldn't

panic entirely, and these people are

quite close to becoming completely

trained doctors.

I'd rather have a

completely trained doctor though.

It

was always August you should avoid

being in hospital, because that's

when the medical graduates were let

loose on the ward.

These are

undergraduates, and this is a

terrible situation to put them in

full we spoke to people working in

A&E departments and the stress they

are under, not just putting

undergraduates into this situation

to carry out minor medical

procedures, they will be stressful

environment and I am worried they

will not have the capacity to deal

with it they haven't finished their

training.

The Daily Express. A fibre

diet can help fight arthritis and

how much have you got to eat and

what?

A bowl of muesli per day.

That's what it is for the how many

bacon sandwiches? It doesn't say.

Do

we know what science is involved?

Is

there any?

Something about fatty

acids. Who knew that eating fried

was good for you.

It's about beating

information.

Is it? That's good. --

beating inflammation.

Let's finish

with the FT. Lloyds brings thrill

seekers back to Earth.

This is the

Lloyd's building which has all of

its interior workings, he lifts and

all that, outside.

Like the Pompidou

centre in Paris.

Yes, and disastrous

for maintenance. An award-winning

building, grade one listed, but

apparently also easy to climb, so

they are trying to stop thrill

seekers who are all climbing up into

the top, taking selfies and creating

a risk to themselves, and probably

to people walking below.

It must be

an expensive operation.

They have

spent £80,000 on enhanced security,

including patrols and cameras to

detect climbing. Personally, I think

if these idiots want to do it, but I

suppose it's not fair on the table

below. If you witnessed something

terrible.

I've got a head for

heights, but even that would put me

off.

I will not be one of those

thrill seekers!

That's it for The Papers this hour.

Thank you, Martin Bentham

and Owen Bennett.

You'll both be back at 11:30pm

for another look at the stories

making the news tomorrow.

Coming up next, it's

Meet The Author.