18/03/2018 The Papers

Hello and welcome to our look ahead

to what the papers will be

bringing us tomorrow.

With me are The New Statesman's

special correspondent,

Stephen Bush and Rosamund Urwin,

Financial Services correspondent

at the Sunday Times.

Many of tomorrow's front

pages are already in.

The FT leads with more

on the pressure being placed

on Facebook to explain allegations

that data from millions of its users

helped President Trump

win the US election.

The Guardian also has that story.

It says an investigation has been

launched into possible data breaches

committed by the firm

Cambridge Analytica,

which was used by Donald Trump's

election campaign.

Both Cambridge Analytica

and Facebook deny any wrongdoing.

The Metro has more on the Foreign

Secretary's rejection of claims made

by Russia that the chemical used

to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal

was made in the UK.

The I reports on President Putin's

landslide election win tonight

along with his reaction

to the dispute over the origin

of the nerve agent

used in Salisbury.

The Telegraph has details on plans

by the government to introduce

stricter regulations and taxation

on tech giants operating in Britain.

The Times says the gambling watchdog

is to relax its drastic

recommendation to limit stakes

on fixed-odds betting machines.

The Mirror reports on the arrest

of TV presenter Ant McPartlin

after he was allegedly involved

in a car accident in south-west

London.

And the Sun is leading

on that story too.

It says the star was arrested

on suspicion of drink driving.

So a fair old spread of different

stories on the front pages but, of

course, Russia is never far away and

that is where we will begin with the

times. A landslide victory to put on

thanks to Britain and the suggestion

is that the confrontation with

Britain over various matters has

boosted and bolstered the victory

that Vladimir Putin is enjoying.

That is what people have said, that

some analysis of saying that it

turned out to be a boost.

Ultimately, the main factor in this

election was that Vladimir Putin was

able to choose his opponent, and

effectively was able to run the

rules of the election. His main

opponent was this hard because of a

fraud conviction that he says was

false. I don't really think that

Britain's reaction one way or

another has been that important, not

the least because it had Britain not

reacted at all than he would have

looked even stronger going into the

election. I don't really see what

else we might have done.

The fact

that turnout dropped from 65 to 60%

is being commented upon.

There is a

lovely line in this from a

spokesperson for the campaign. I

would like to thank the UK for

helping with this high turnout which

we ourselves could not have dreamt

of. Of course, that could quite

easily have they meet this happened.

One of the things that they did if

they offered little incentive to

come out and vote. Coffee,

chocolate, whatever. Of course it is

the only way people can oppose

Hooton's re- election, I not voting

at all. That is what you do when you

have no choice on the ballot paper.

If it is down to 60%, I think that

was two hours before polls closed,

so there is a chance the roads, but

if it is that then that is a slight

dent in his otherwise unstoppable

six more years.

Looking at the sun.

Piles of poison. The Foreign

Secretary saying that Russia has

been stockpiling the nerve agent for

quite sometime. I think this was

Boris this morning.

He is saying

exactly that that they are stock

stock boiling -- stockpiling it. The

suggestion was that it might come

from within the UK. But Boris

Johnson says that the trail does

lead inevitably to the Kremlin.

And

the Daily Telegraph goes one further

without saying that Russian

dissident bodies could be exhumed to

test for Novichok. They want to look

for traces of it.

There have been

various people critical of what you

put's regime who have lived here in

the UK and died in mysterious

circumstances. The Telegraph is

suggesting that some of these people

will be dug up and have their bodies

tested for the presence of this

nerve agent. Because it is

undetectable in its preprepared

form. So you have two harmless

agents that are only deadly when

combined, it could be some people

who have been attacked with it and

we have not noticed until now. The

Telegraph suggests that we will dig

it up. If that happens, that puts

the government in a bind because at

the moment they have expelled 23

diplomats and there has been some

tit-for-tat expulsion. At that

point, if things start to escalate

it is not clear what the British

government can do that will not

leave them looking weak and unable

to respond to the Russian

government.

Moving on to look at

Facebook and, more widely technology

firms to dig the Guardian, firstly.

Pressure on Facebook and data firm

over a mass breach of personal data

files. This is that Cambridge

Analytica. And a reporter who has

been looking at them for quite some

time with some deep investigation,

what is the suggestion here?

The

suggestion is that data was

improperly obtained by Cambridge

Analytica under the cover of being

for research purposes. It was

actually used to make advertisers

and influence the American

presidential election. Alexander Nix

testified to the Commons Select

Committee in the past and he is now

being accused of being economical

with the truth. He and Mark

Zuckerberg will be callback to

account for how Facebook keeps

control of the user's data and

prevents it from being used in ways

we may not like.

Both organisations

and Facebook say that we have done

nothing wrong at all. But it is

quite sensitive, the use of people's

data. We are supposed to give our

consent for how it is used.

I always

wonder if this is one of those

things that really splits people.

Some people do seem to be rather

blase about how their data is used,

actually. And then there is another

group of us who really feel that

this is a pressing issue of our time

that needs addressing. I think we

will see a lot more scrutiny of the

tech firms in this regard. And I

think we will, you know, the whole

thing of their original sort of

slightly idealistic fix the world...

This is where it turns. It actually

says OK, we have some real problems

with the way this operates --

companies operate. We have things

like this where it comes out and we

have a light shone on them and they

do not look great.

That leads us

nicely to the Telegraph and the wild

West era of technology firms. A

cabinet minister responsible for

overseeing them says that things

will get more difficult. How?

This

is not just about regulation. It is

also talking about tax cost, of

course, many of these companies not

only have gotten away with a

regulation like existence for a

while, I have also not paid much in

the way of corporation tax. And so

he is talking about looking at the

way they operate, the major

technology firms, and looking at

forcing them to accept increasing

regulation. Some companies are ahead

of us. Germany has strict rules,

rules about finding tech companies

if they do not handle abusive or

hate speech adequately.

I wonder why

we have been behind other countries.

We have been talking about the

problems of lack of regulation and

certainly lack of tax being paid for

years.

It is probably because our

legal structure is permissive. If it

is not strict forbidden you can do.

Or so, for a long time, pervading

ideology of the government party has

been that basically freedom is great

and, yeah, these are just wonderful

entrepreneurs. Thing the tech firms

have been able to do and Matt

Hancock almost says this is become

an entirely new type of company who

does not need to follow any of the

old rules. Are Facebook pretends it

is not a publisher. Actually, as he

says, that era of pretending that

these are not normal companies that

should follow normal rules is, I

think, thankfully, coming to an end.

Yes. They have really -- reached a

certain level of maturity. Looking

at city AM added every -- different

story. Campaigners plead for a tax

break as 18 pubs close every week.

This is a campaign that always

fights for tax breaks at pubs. Here

they say that pubs are being hit by

a triple whammy of high beer duty,

business rates and VAT. This is

where it is squeezing a lot of

businesses, not just pubs. But they

point out that 460 pubs closed in

the second half of 2017. Does

obviously sound like a high number,

that is almost 18 a week. Most are

in London however at the same time,

they have to find ways to operate

and some pubs are frightening in

this environment.

How much of it is

down to our changing habits? People

drinking at home more?

Pubs have a

long standing problem of people

drinking less alcoholic drinks in

general and drinking more of them at

home. However, business rates are a

big looming problem for the high

street and a big looming problem for

the government as well. The effect

of them so far seems to have been

much more severe than many people

expected. ICD my own part of London,

businesses that succeed in terms of

bums on seats but do not succeed in

terms of making enough money because

of the raise in business rate. I

think the lobby group has a point

here and we are in danger of having

an homogenous high-street.

Business

rates disproportionately hit certain

places and London would be one of

them.

That is it for the papers

tonight. You can see all the front

pages of the papers online.

Therefore you seven days a

[email protected], don't fret, if you

miss it you can watch it later on I

play a. Thank you to both of you for

sharing your Sunday night with a.

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