in the spanish region of catalonia, pro—separatist parties are on course to win a majority in regional elections with nearly all votes counted. the un's general assembly votes in favour of a resolution rejecting the us decision to recognise jerusalem as israel's capital. in the spanish region of catalonia, pro—separatist parties are on course to win a majority in regional elections with nearly all votes counted. the un's general assembly votes in favour of a resolution rejecting the us decision to recognise jerusalem as israel's capital. the retailer, toys r us, avoids collapse in the uk after agreeing to put more money into its pension fund. my my guest is one of the most successful crime writers ever. we will be talking about the book the

seagull. that is on meet the author. hello, and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers will be bringing us tomorrow. with me are lord digbyjones, former trader minister and henry bonsu, broadcaster and campaigner. tomorrow's front pages, starting with this. the metro devotes its entire front page to the engagement photo of prince harry and meghan markel. the paper wishes its readers a merry kissmass. the i claims that the health secretary, jeremy hunt, wants to take over as deputy prime minister following the departure of damien green. the express headlines details of what it's calling a breakthrough on alzheimer's. the financial times shows an image of nikki haley, the us ambassador to the un, who has warned that the us will not forget countries who voted against its decision to recognise jerusalem as israel's capital. the daily mirror leads with a report about an alleged russian spy who visited number 10 as part of a ukrainian delegation. the telegraph features claims

from borisjohnson that damien green was the victim of a vendetta by retired met police officers. the times has a similar story, alongside another picture of the recently engaged royal couple. and the guardian says that tens of thousands of nhs patients will have their surgeries cancelled this winter to help avoid a crisis across the health service. so, let's begin. the telegraph. a green vendetta from the police. yes. boris johnson said the police. yes. boris johnson said the former deputy prime minister suffered a police vendetta. this is building up steam. theresa may echoed these concerns across the

political spectrum. it is putting increasing pressure on cressida dick to make sure things are properly looked at. it does not tell us exactly what laws the police may have broken. it refers vaguely to possible prosecutions and the referral of this case to the information commissioner's office. they are not serving officers, so they have not broken the official secrets act, but there may be fines if they leak personal darter to the data to the public. —— data to the public. there is another aspect to this article after that where it saysin this article after that where it says in other developments, talking about kate, you had a bit of

interview on your headlines, i think there are a few things here where it has not been her finest hour. firstly, she was quoted, the telegraph picked this up, she said she did not want him to resign, she wanted an apology. that is incredibly naive. i think she deserves an apology is that the i am not talking about that. —— i am not. she must have known that seeking one would lead to the other. did she not mean when she first took this complaint to downing street sometime ago she wanted an apology back then? that was my reading of it.|j ago she wanted an apology back then? that was my reading of it. i agree. quite right. the other point, she has quoted here in the telegraph, she said i have been through such a terrible ordeal since reporting allegations that i advise other

women to stay silent. she should not have an ordeal. this society should allow a person, woman or man, to say, look, you did this to me, that is an allegation. it might be proven, it might not. no matter what happens, no woman must have a stay silent. you will not stop this dreadful behaviour by people if you do not let these people make allegations. it can be heard talking about what you can suffer by doing this. if you are in front of this camera, and whatever you say, whatever you do, ijust have to come out with one outspoken peace and be politically incorrect and what people want to do to me is amazing. and i am low in the latter. i am saying to people do not stop coming

out about this. all of these allegations inside politics, they must have good, robust whistleblowing procedures. people will not feel confident to come forward otherwise. the times. it is in the same territory. i worry about this. that was a good summary. it is quite similar. the times has another angle. the police themselves, ken marsh, the chairman of the police federation, he is turning around and seen you should not have done this. the reason he is doing this is, tonight, there are policemen, good and decent coppers, doing a good job oi'i and decent coppers, doing a good job on the streets. a bond of trust between society and the police, they do not carry guns by right like

every policeman does in other countries, they come from society and a police society. and that bond of trust... some people will say are you going to fit me up like green? it creates the impression the police cannot be trusted. the moment you do that it makes the police job more difficult. marsh is saying the abhorrent actions... he is saying you are making myjob hard. abhorrent actions... he is saying you are making my job hard. the police are in a position of power and have access to delicate information they have to keep secret and only use when the law requires them to do so. these two would say they had public interest reasons to do it which will be tested. the i.

jeremy hunt and his political aspirations. he said on your programme he is a health man to his core and passionate about his currentjob core and passionate about his current job and has core and passionate about his currentjob and has been in it for five years. but some of his colleagues believe he is manoeuvring and is touting his name around. he believes he has not reached the senate of his career and is deeply ambitious. he says he has a good chance of greater things. —— zenith of his career. what is the specific job that deputy prime minister is to? —— ministers do? he was a remainer, nota to? —— ministers do? he was a remainer, not a brexiteer. he is active in social media. i remember

from university days many years ago, he is nice. he is a very nice and bland conservative christian chap. is that a compliment? it is. but he is the kind of person that, when david cameron... yes. when asked if he would implement in prison custody budget, he said 20%. --10% he would implement in prison custody budget, he said 20%. -- 1096 budget budget, he said 2096. -- 1096 budget cuts, he said 20%. there is no empty seat at the moment. there is a quote on manoeuvring, putting the word out he wants a job. that is a claim from other colleagues. if you were in the cabinet and wanted a job, get rid of one of the people who wanted it more

than you. so you put the word out he has been making manoeuvres. politics isa dirty has been making manoeuvres. politics is a dirty game. you are seeing more manoeuvres than just one. yes. i would say at the end of the day if i was theresa may i would take some time and watch and wait. i am ending stronger than many people thought i would. i would just keep the powder dry and watch others break cover. if this does not work, they will break cover, and you will see a scrap. the daily mail. borisjohnson's cyber war threat with the kremlin. daily mail. borisjohnson's cyber war threat with the kremlinm daily mail. borisjohnson's cyber war threat with the kremlin. it is a real problem. we are in agreement

about this. what boris johnson real problem. we are in agreement about this. what borisjohnson is talking about is incredibly serious from the business point of view. what i can tell you, one of the greatest threats to business is cyber—attack. not only do they ran some things, if you do not pay, your products will be ruined, but also stealing. —— ransom things. the public sector, you saw the issue with the nhs months ago. interfering with the nhs months ago. interfering with elections as wellthis goes to the core of western democratic values. russian—made not be doing it. we have to be careful. —— russia may not. but someone is doing it. this is it. you said it is a serious

story. it is. it is huge. but is it serious when it comes out of the mouth of boris johnson? serious when it comes out of the mouth of borisjohnson? i serious when it comes out of the mouth of boris johnson? i would suggest not. we cannot taken seriously, notjust because he used to all of this stuff, he is just making silly gaffes and putting lives at risk in iran, libya, all of the things he has said in recent months. he is going up against sergey lavrov, a man who is hugely experienced and close to vladimir putin. will he take borisjohnson seriously when he hears about a threat of cyber war? gchq, we can be serious thing see you, that's a quote. it is easy meat to say they

do not do these things. do you think borisjohnson would say do not do these things. do you think boris johnson would say this to sergey lavrov to his face? not at all. nhs operations axed to avert the winter crisis. the guardian. hospitals setting up makeshift wards. we talk about this in the previous hour with the guardian being more alarmist than others talking about the possibility of hospitals turning areas into temporary wards. this is temporary at the moment. simon stevens, the chief executive of the nhs, has been made personally responsible for winter services. many elderly will have the flu. we will see huge operations, cataract removals, knee operations, cataract removals, knee operations, hip operations. people need these. unless they are

life—threatening, people will have them postponed. from the point of view of the guardian, the anti—government alarmist... yes. alarmist. this is complete alarmist from the guardian and does not become them. what i congratulate the nhs for is what do we always do? we criticise them while they do excellent work. for once, they have said we are going to get ready for this and we are going to plant this. with great respect, important emergency operations, nothing to worry about. those with an active elective surgery requirement, it is not necessary. it is great planning from the nhs. it would be nicejust once or anti—government newspapers

to say something nice. —— for. once or anti—government newspapers to say something nice. -- for. to be fair, the telegraph, you highlighted them, they are not being complimentary. to be fair to them, they said in it that it was actually planned with no flu at the moment. a short agreement is the a0 minutes ago. —— let's go and other note of surefire agreement. i will give you a shorter period this time around, eu plans, take it or leave it, if britain fails to clarify. two things, the ft, which i take every day, iadmire things, the ft, which i take every day, i admire theirjournalism and reporting. i will worry that they

are falling down the chasm of propaganda. they are too pro remains. what i worry is, they quote to eu officials, both saying basically, we are in lala land if we think we are getting anything better than a canada deal. what i say is, in europe is starting its negotiation. they would say this, wouldn't they? it is perfectly reasonable for them to decide who... your favourite newspapers like the telegraph and the mail, they editorialise. the financial times is then your favourite, brexit here. they have an editorial line and that governs who they choose to take what is wrong, that isjournalism. governs who they choose to take what is wrong, that is journalism. the ft's is wrong, that is journalism. the ft‘s history was, it was to be objective on the front page. the point i want to make about the actual trade thing is that this is

the eu starting off by saying where it is a. this was the other way around and this is what david davis said, the eu is in lala land and thinks it can do without britain in trade. guys, we have one minute left. i just want to try and focus on maybe one more. sport, maybe? let's go to the metro. we rather like this photograph. squeezed two in the. there is a most lovely photograph on the metro. it is lovely. these other photographs released by the palace to celebrate the royal engagement. there is a lot of sadness in the world, isn't that great? it is a beautiful picture, they look deeply in love. it doesn't look staged. and on the ft, we have self driving cars being taught in boston, pittsburgh and detroit to recognise a snowflake. the trouble

is, nobody has talked taught about them —— taught them about snow. you andi them —— taught them about snow. you and i agreed that is what technology has got to do. disrupt and leapfrog. very good. on that note of near harmony. thank you very much. and a merry christmas. don't forget you can see the front pages of the papers online, on the bbc news website. seven days a week. if you missed the programme any evening, you have no excuse but you can watch it later on the bbc iplayer. coming up it later on the bbc iplayer. coming up next it is time for meet the author. vera stanhope rides again. the seagull is the eighth book

by ann cleeves featuring her slightly scruffy, determined but very warm detective inspector, who's drawn into a mystery touching rather uncomfortably on the story of her own father and his dodgy friends on tyneside. it's been an immensely successful series from a writer who's been high in the league table of british crime writers for many years. her other detective inspector, jimmy perez, for example, having become a favourite tv cop in shetland. welcome. when you get a character — invent a character — that you really like, like vera stanhope, you like to stick with them, don't you? i do, and i think that's one of the joys of writing crime fiction. there are very few other genres where you can follow a character through a number of books.

there's some literary fiction, but crime, it's expected that we're going to write a series, and it's great to be able to develop a character that grows. that's an interesting phrase — "it's expected". you know that you're writing not for a specific audience, but for a general audience that likes this kind of story. you must feel that you now know them quite well? yes, because i go out and meet them. i love doing library events and book shop events and meeting readers. and i'm a reader, i'm a fan as well. i read crime fiction, so i love that sense of getting to know a character very well, and watching him grow or her grow. i think crime writers as a breed are like that, aren't they? i mean, they all read each other‘s work... yeah. ..even though maybe they don't like to admit it? yeah, i think we're a very jolly bunch. we're so used to people looking down their noses at us, because we're genre fiction, that we come together and we fight back. those days have gone, haven't they?

imean... i think there's still a little bit of that. you think there's a wee bit of snobbishness about? yeah, still a bit of that. but you all enjoy paddling around in gore, and all these dark deeds, and actually you're like sort of, i don't know, anybody who works in a kind of profession or trade, where they're facing death all the time, they're actually quite full of fun and stories. yeah, i think so. i'm not really into the gore. i'm more into using that as a framework to develop characters and to look at the things that really interest me, so... well, we don't want to talk about the plot in great detail, because obviously that would spoil it for people who haven't read the book yet. but we can say that vera stanhope, your detective inspector in this series, the eighth book in the series, is taken, by chance — she doesn't really expect it — into her own past, and this rather dodgy ne'er—do—well father of hers, who had been sort of slightly grand, but then shall we say, fell into bad company? yeah. it's classic fictional material, isn't it? i think it is, and i love that idea

of looking at the relationship between the daughter and the father, and that theme, i think, goes through the book — there are other daughters and other fathers. and she is a character who is, you know, a bit scruffy and very determined and sometimes quite rough with people. but the essential thing, it strikes me about her, is her fundamental warmth. i mean, she's a good person? classic crime, i think. —— oh, she is a good person — in the tradition of classic crime, i think. that the detectives are flawed, they appear brusque, but they are good, because at the end, i think that's why, especially now in times of trouble and uncertainty, people are going back to classic crime, because there is at the end a sense of order restored, of good triumphing — and we need that sense at a time of confusion, that things will be well. well, that's good that you define, or interesting, that

you define classic crime as order being restored. somehow, you know, people may not all be happy, but at least the fundamentals have been revealed to be still there. yeah. so, there's a reassurance involved. i think so, and i think that's why it's so popular at the minute, why the british library crime classics are doing amazingly, the between—the—wars books, that are selling fanta... yes. because people like that sense of, as i say, in a time of confusion, that in the end, justice prevails. and we know where we are. we know where we are, and we know the difference between good and evil, and even if there are ambiguities in all the characters, and confusions, which there have to be, otherwise it's a pretty boring story, we find at the end with a sigh, that it's ok — somebody may have come to a sticky end, a good person may have been brought down, but something remains. yes, and the end of the seagull is quite ambiguous, and you're not quite sure that the killer has been unmasked, but there is that sense ofjustice prevailing, i think. it's quite good, at the same time, isn't it, to have people wondering

about the alternative explanations to an ending — to say, "ok, order has been restored, but i wonder how it happened?" yeah. no, i think that's... because you want the book to live on after the reader's finished it. that's interesting, yes. because everybody sees the book in a different way, that's why book clubs are so interesting, as you know. yes. people have different ideas, they see different pictures in their heads when they read. you have a way of creating an atmosphere, and i'm thinking, for example, of the shetland books, which, of course, made it to the small screen very, very successfully. and what was it about that atmosphere, there, the bleakness and bareness of shetland — which is very beautiful as well — that gave you the spark? i suppose i first went there a0... more than a0 years ago, because i dropped out of university and just by chance i got the job working in the bird observatory in fair isle.

and since then, i've been going back, but i haven't really been there in midwinter. i went in midwinter and there was snow, and it is very bare, because there are no trees, really, in shetland. no trees. and so it's that contrast, i think, between the... you can see for miles, but then the contrast between that and any possible secrets. and the warmth of the domestic scenes within the croft houses, that attracted me first. yes, the fact that even on a bare landscape, all kinds of things can be concealed. yes. you've also got the feeling in shetland of stepping away from the world, haven't you? i'm not saying that pejoratively about what goes on in shetland. but it is distant. it is. it is the edge of our known universe in the uk. it's ia hours by boat from aberdeen, so it's a long way. and it does feel separate, and it feels... and they're very self—reliant, shetlanders, so they do things their own way. do you write, you know, in a continuous stream, really, or are their big gaps? i alternate between...

i wouldn't just want to write vera, because... no. at the end, i've had enough and i want to go off and try something new. you want a break. yes, so i've been alternating with shetland. so, i've just finished the very last shetland book, just now, so... the very last, the end of the series. the end of the series. did you come to the end just because you thought, well, that it, time to close the covers on this, it's done, i am not going to keep it, give it artificial resuscitation? —— that's it. i'd said all that i can about the place, and about the characters that i'd created, i think. yes. and i don't want to be bored by them — and i certainly don't want the readers to be bored by them. so, better end while i'm still enjoying it. do you find writing, which you've been doing for a long time, very successfully, and with great dedication, do you find it a kind of therapy as well? oh, it's an escape, isn't it? we lose ourselves in a different world when we're writing, just as when we're reading. so, certainly it's an escape.

but you need to be there living as well, otherwise you run out of things to write about, so it's a good balance. but when you're in full flow in a story, and it's working, the rest of the world doesn't exist? no, there's nothing like it. it's an amazing feeling. ann cleeves, author of the seagulll, thank you very much. thank you. if you like your weather cloudy and mild, i have a real treat in store for you in this forecast. mild weather is here to stay for the next few days. it didn't really matter today, where you lived whether it was herefordshire, you yorkshire, the skies looked the same. cloudy. we have more for the next few days as well. high pressure to the south of the uk, these weather fronts bringing of cloud at times and in turn that will bring outbreaks of

rain. the wettest weather at the moment is across north—west england where it will stay wet for most of the night. showers affecting south—west england is going to try and move its way to off south—west through the night, introducing that dull and through the night, introducing that dulland damp through the night, introducing that dull and damp weather. for many of us it is a grey start that they speak watch out for fog patches and patchy frost first thing in the morning in scotland, with cloudy weather working over that cold air, temperatures could be slow to rise but otherwise it is a mild kind of day. murky in the west but dry to the afternoon, temperatures eventually around 11 or 12 degrees. mild conditions continue through the night, again that low cloud will continue to lower through friday night, with fog becoming more expensive over the hills and coast we're. these temperatures through the night kind of what we would expect during the day, it would be good for daytime temperatures. this could be pretty mild. onto the weekend, more of the same. more cloud, it will thicken for the

north—west of scotland. here we will see a weather front arrived bringing outbreaks of rain. averages into double figures, a few bright spells to the east but this weather front could cause a few issues for western scotland. is received, christmas day, it will be their bringing persistent rain. a risk of localised flooding from that. that aside, assessees looked like it will be a breezy day. a few breaks through eastern areas that. christmas day, if you want a white christmas you can have one, go to the scottish mountains, walk 500 metres up and you will find a little bit of snow. for the vast majority of us it is a mild one, could be quite windy across areas, the cloud thicken for bits and pieces of rain but the wettest weather is across the north—west of the country and those temperatures, ten, 11 degrees, something like that. if you like a white christmas, it won't be this year. for most of us it will stay

pretty dull, cloudy and mild. this is newsday on the bbc. i am rico hizon in singapore. the top stories. pro—independence parties in the spanish region of catalonia celebrate after claiming victory in regional elections. translation: the cata la n regional elections. translation: the catalan republic has beaten the monarchy of article 155 it. keep that in mind and take note. 128 countries backed a vote in the un. the us warns of consequences. we will remember it when we are called upon to make a contribution to the un. also in