According to the Telegraph,the Tories plan to clip the BBC'S wings.
Conservative policymakers have devised a plan to give back to viewers half of the £800 million raised through licence fee increases to cover the switch to digital television. The move would reduce the licence fee by £6 a year for every viewer.
A senior party source said the Tories planned to "rein in the overweening ambitions of the BBC" which, in spending huge sums on star presenters, had been "acting as if it were Manchester United buying Ronaldo
The Times says that
THE BBC has been urged by ministers to end the culture of “fat cat” pay for top presenters or risk cuts to its £3.4 billion a year of public funding.
Andy Burnham, the culture secretary, has issued a warning that the seven-figure contracts given to stars such as Jonathan Ross are undermining licence fee payers’ confidence in the broadcaster.
Burnham is understood to have told Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, that the corporation needed to show “sensitivity and an awareness of where the public are”. Ministers believe the recession has fuelled hostility to the elite presenters who are insulated from the economic downturn.
The Observer reports that
Media regulator Ofcom warned BBC bosses about lax editorial procedures on Russell Brand's BBC 6 Music show over a year ago, it emerged last night. In a ruling published 15 months ago, it criticised the corporation for failing to follow its own editorial procedures and allowing Brand to broadcast a quiz won by a member of his production team posing as a listener to the digital radio station
The Express reports that
JOHN Prescott has raked in £40,000 from the BBC – thanks to his obsession with class envy.
The former Deputy Prime Minister was paid the astonishing sum for fronting a television series in which he suggested Tony Blair’s wife Cherie was a snob.
The payment takes Mr Prescott’s earnings in the past year to £360,000 – 12 times the average household income of about £30,000.
The News of the World reports that
THE BBC was last night engulfed in a new scandal— over a staggering £14.3 MILLION paid in salaries to management fatcats.
In the wake of the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross storm the News of the World uncovered secret figures revealing 50 Beeb executives earn MORE than the Prime Minister’s £189,994.
We forced the unwilling BBC to reveal details under the Freedom of Information Act. They show beleagured Director General Mark Thompson, right, on a whopping £816,000.
The Mail reports that
The BBC faces unprecedented pressure to have its licence fee cut following the obscene calls furore after an opinion poll found that three-quarters of people now oppose the charge.
The first survey since the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross storm broke has found that support for the £139.50-a-year levy is lowest among the ‘youth’ target audience for the entertainers’ ‘prank’ Radio 2 calls to 78-year-old actor Andrew Sachs.
The US elections are the lead story in both the Observer and the Independent.The latter headlines Obama's Green revolution
Barack Obama is promising a $150bn "Apollo project" to bring jobs and energy security to the US through a new alternative energy economy, if his final push for votes brings victory in the presidential election on Tuesday.
"That's going to be my number one priority when I get into office," Mr Obama has said of his "green recovery" plans. Making his arguments in a radio address yesterday, the Democratic favourite promised: "If you give me your vote on Tuesday, we won't just win this election. Together, we will change this country and change the world."
Meanwhile the Observer leads with
Barack Obama's campaign to become the first black American President was rocked yesterday, only 72 hours before election day, by the revelation that his aunt is an illegal immigrant in the US.
News about Obama's relative is a chance for the McCain campaign to generate some last-minute negative headlines about Obama. Four years ago Zeituni Onyango, 56, who is mentioned in Obama's personal memoir, was instructed by a court to leave the country after being denied political asylum. However, she now lives in local authority housing in Boston.
Obama confident says the Telegraph
Barack Obama has launched his final pitch for power this weekend, with polls suggesting he is on course to make history as America's first black president after Tuesday's election.But his Republican rival John McCain remained bullish about his prospects as he appeared to gain ground
The other big story of the weekend is the Congo
A humanitarian disaster was predicted by aid officials in Congo last night if a fragile ceasefire ordered by commanders of a rebel army fails to hold.says the Times
Hundreds of thousands fled Goma, the regional capital, and the surrounding countryside in a mass exodus last week when Congolese Tutsi rebel forces commanded by the renegade general Laurent Nkunda captured several key towns and threatened to attack the strategic eastern city
The Independent reports
The humanitarian catastrophe now engulfing North Kivu, and propelling the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and his French colleague, Bernard Kouchner, to the region, has been a slow-burner. An estimated one million people, out of a population of six million, are now thought to be displaced in North Kivu. Many, like Marceline, have fled more than once. Alice Gilbert, of the British health agency Merlin, warned that tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of people could be without food, water and health care. "This is the worst I've seen in the 18 months I've been here," she said. "We never imagined it could get this bad."
According to the Times
Labour claims to narrow the class divide - at last
Ministers will claim tomorrow that social mobility - people’s ability to move up the income scale and into different jobs from those of their parents - is finally improving.
Downing Street will publish research that shows social mobility has been on the up since 2000, and that young people’s chances in life are no longer as closely linked to the income of parents as they were.
The government will seize on the study, by academics at the London School of Economics and Bristol University, to counter opposition claims that Labour has presided over an entrenching of the class divide and growing income inequality, and that this is one of its biggest policy failures.
The Observer reports that
The government's own advisers warn that its radical welfare reform plans for parents of under-12s will harm family life and cause poverty and adds that
Gordon Brown is facing a chorus of demands to scrap key parts of his flagship welfare reforms after his own advisers said they risked landing single parents in 'in-work' poverty and could seriously harm children's upbringing.
A report by the Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC), which is appointed by ministers, suggests the plans to force lone parents with children as young as seven to seek work or suffer benefit cuts of up to 40 per cent could increase hardship and be detrimental to family life
The Mail leads with another data controversy,the paper reports that
Ministers have been forced to order an emergency shutdown of a key Government computer system to protect millions of people's private details.
The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park containing confidential passcodes to the online Government Gateway system, which covers everything from tax returns to parking tickets.
An urgent investigation is now under way into how the stick, belonging to the company which runs the flagship system, came to be lost
The economic crisis has taken a back foot this weekend but the Independent reports that
Families living in London and the South-east have pulled in their belts a notch, shopping less at Waitrose and more at Lidl. But in Sunderland and the North-east, there is real suffering
The Telegraph says
Gordon Brown yesterday urged the leaders of wealthy Gulf states to use their oil industry billions to prop up the struggling global economy.As he flew to Saudi Arabia at the start of a four-day visit in the region, the Prime Minister told journalists that oil-rich economies had a responsibility to support the rest of the world by contributing "hundreds of billions" more to the International Monetary Fund's emergency bail-out package.
The Mail reports that
David Blunkett is poised for an accelerated return to Government after holding talks with Gordon Brown about taking on a role as party troubleshooter.
Following discussions at Downing Street, the former Home Secretary told friends he was expecting ‘the call’ from the Prime Minister last Tuesday.
However, negotiations are believed to have stalled at the last minute because Mr Blunkett is holding out for a full Cabinet position.
According to the Observer,Terrorists try to infiltrate UK's top labs
Dozens of suspected terrorists have attempted to infiltrate Britain's top laboratories in order to develop weapons of mass destruction, such as biological and nuclear devices, during the past year.
The security services, MI5 and MI6, have intercepted up to 100 potential terrorists posing as postgraduate students who they believe tried accessing laboratories to gain the materials and expertise needed to create chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, the government has confirmed
NHS lifts ban on ‘top-up’ medicine reports the Times
National Health Service patients are to be allowed to pay privately for life-prolonging cancer drugs that the state does not supply.
Alan Johnson, the health secretary, will end the practice of with drawing care from patients who pay privately for better medicines in an announcement expected to be made to parliament this week.
The U-turn, confirmed by Whitehall sources, follows a year-long campaign by The Sunday Times
More medical matters in the Observer which reports that
A test to predict when a woman will go through the menopause has been developed by scientists who believe it will provide a 'road map' of fertility for older would-be mothers.
The breakthrough will also help women prepare mentally for losing their fertility and allow those in their late 30s and 40s who are considering trying for a baby pinpoint just how long they have left to conceive.
And potential medical matters in the Indy
The cold snap this week heralds the return of months of bitter cold and darkness, but at least ice skaters can take heart from record numbers of temporary ice rinks springing up across the country.
A turn around the ice among 40ft Christmas trees and flaming torches in opulent settings such as Somerset House is fast becoming a modern festive tradition in almost every major town. Thursday sees the opening of the first rink of this year, at London's Natural History Museum.
The Mail reports that
Three people died yesterday when their helicopter crashed into a field and burst into flames.
The aircraft was flying over a farm in the Cotswolds when it came down on a hillside in wet and cloudy weather conditions.
Unconfirmed reports suggested that it exploded when it hit the ground, killing two men and a woman on board. They were all believed to be from the Midlands.
England drop the ball says the Telegraph
England lost the most lucrative cricket match ever played - the Twenty20 for $20m - to a Stanford Superstars team that played with some of the panache and passion of the great West Indians of old, to mass enthusiasm.
The England cricketers played as if infected by the official diffidence during the week. Should England be here, and is it vulgar to play solely for money? England batted with less than total commitment and were dismissed for only 99 with one ball of their 20 overs left unused, whereupon their bowling was soundly trashed.
Finally back to the top story and the News of the World reports that
A BLONDE who had a threesome with Russell Brand has told how she saw him flip and turn nasty the moment he learned he was in trouble over the Sachs saga.
Speaking exclusively to the News of the World, Francesca Amber Sawyer recalled: “He’d been sweet and charming.
“But as soon as he got off the phone he was like a different man. He immediately wanted me to have a another threesome with a girl he had lined up.
No comments:
Post a Comment