An outbreak of common sense reports the paper
Judges have finally taken a stand over the compensation culture, warning that it threatens to destroy the British way of life.
The Court of Appeal dismissed a £150,000 damages claim against the Royal British Legion from a woman who broke her leg after falling into a hole left when a maypole was removed from a village green.
The hole had become exposed after being filled in two years earlier.
The Mirror leads with
WAGE RAGE
STORM AT 'SLAP-IN-THE-FACE' 1.9% PAY RISE FOR NURSES
As the public sector pay settlements were announced yesterday the paper reports that
THOUSANDS of nurses and other public sector workers were furious last night after being given a pitiful 1.9 per cent pay rise.
Nurses described the below inflation increase as a "slap in the face". Unions warned of industrial action and predicted key NHS workers could quit in disgust.
Amicus said: "The mood of our members may lead to an industrial action ballot." Despite inflation running at a true figure of 4.2 per cent the pay increase is the lowest for 10 years.
Many were outraged that a nurse earning an average of £24,000 a year will get just £6 more a week while the NHS is recruiting executives and administrators on salaries of up to £200,000.Louise Foley, 27, a paediatric nurse at The Children’s Hospital for Wales, Cardiff, said: “We don’t feel appreciated. It’s just going to contribute to the huge numbers of nurses who leave the profession every year.“We feel undervalued, underpaid and over worked
The Sun on the same topic announces
Troops scoop loads of loot
LOW-paid troops have emerged the winners in a tough round of public sector pay rises — after a campaign by The Sun.
The 13,000 soldiers at the bottom of the wage scale will get an inflation-busting 9.2 per cent increase of £100 a month.
Defence Staff head Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said: “It recognises the contribution our people make.”
A further 6,000 Forces personnel on the next-lowest pay rung will get 6.2 per cent.
But as the paper continues
Gordon Brown risked strike action by upsetting many public sector workers with the harshest Whitehall pay settlement since 1993.
The Guardian leads with
Strikes threat after Brown's pay squeeze
Gordon Brown yesterday risked a political backlash from Britain's nurses ahead of a possible Labour leadership battle later this year when he pegged pay increases for more than one million public sector workers to below 2% this year.
Prompting threats of industrial action from health sector unions, the chancellor insisted that the state of the public finances and the need to keep inflation under control meant the government pay bill could increase by only 1.9% - well below any of the official measures used to calculate the cost of living.
Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, fought hard to secure a better deal for nurses and believed she had done enough to delay the settlement pending further political argument. A health department source said she was surprised when Mr Brown told the cabinet yesterday that he would press on regardless.
According to the lead in the Telegraph
Doctors' training system 'a shambles'
Thousands of young doctors have been left without jobs because a new NHS training system has gone "disastrously wrong", it was disclosed yesterday.
As much as £2 billion has been spent on the training of up to 8,000 doctors who find themselves without a new job under a Government initiative.
Such is the fury at the scheme, called Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), that doctors have renamed it "Massive Medical Cull".
It costs £250,000 to train a doctor and the "shambles" is said to be blighting the careers of dedicated young men and women who may now leave the NHS. Many are also saddled with debts of more than £40,000 after funding their training
The Independent looks at the turmoil in the financial markets on its front page asking
Fears of recession spark further turmoil in markets
Fresh anxiety erupted about the health of the world's major economies yesterday after investors in stock markets across Asia, Europe and the United States once again staged significant retreats two days after Tuesday's unexpected global equity sell-off.
In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 200 points in the first minutes of trading, seeding fears of a repeat of Tuesday's massacre that saw a 416-point collapse on the index.
With slowdowns emerging, notably in the housing market and car manufacturing in the United States, signs are building that it economy may be at a pivot point, with some observers worrying about decelerating expansion and possibly a recession looming.
The Times leads with an exclusive
Road pricing: the plan
Exclusive: Britain is to be split into pay-as-you-drive zones, the Roads Minister tells The Times
Britain will be divided into a patchwork of road-pricing zones where drivers will be charged varying rates, under a government plan to make them pay by the mile without tracking them on every road.
Ministers believe that a zonal system would protect drivers’ privacy and deter them from rat-running in residential areas to avoid high charges on main roads. All roads in each zone would be charged at the same rate, regardless of how congested they were.
A driver using empty side streets to visit a shop or take a child to school would pay the same price per mile as those queueing on the high street. Stephen Ladyman, the Roads Minister, gave details of how the system would work in an attempt to address concerns raised by the 1.8 million drivers who signed a petition against road pricing.
Meanwhile yesterday's main story continues to run
Petrol stations could be sued over tainted fuel says the Indy
Filling stations throughout the south of England face legal action from motorists suffering from "kangaroo petrol syndrome", which may have been caused by silicon contamination.
Drivers who found that their cars were "hiccuping, juddering and misfiring" are being advised to take a "class action" against those who supplied them with the petrol. The number of people asking for advice from the AA more than doubled at times yesterday and the BBC received more than 4,000 emails and texts from drivers reporting problems with their cars.
Rogue petrol could put 400,000 off the road says the Mail
The contaminated petrol crisis deepened yesterday as millions of drivers were urged to replace the fuel in their tanks over fears they could suffer catastrophic breakdowns.
Thousands of cars have already spluttered to a halt over the past fortnight after being filled with the 95 octane unleaded supermarket petrol but there are fears the figure could rise to 400,000.
Fouled fuel: tests reveal rogue ingredient reports the Guardian
Tests of the rogue petrol which has caused thousands of cars to break down have discovered traces of silicone which could have caused the contamination.
Thousands of motorists in the UK have apparently been caught up in an unprecedented scare about the supply of contaminated fuel, as investigations by trading standards officers tried to establish why vehicles which had been filled with fuel from forecourts at Tesco and Morrisons supermarkets were losing power and coming to a standstill.
As proceeding's begin in the biggest divorce in the country the Mirror reports
SIR Paul McCartney and estranged wife Heather Mills both left court smiling yesterday after meeting to talk about money.
The couple appeared together so lawyers could "seriously" begin to thrash out an agreement for the sake of daughter Beatrice, three.
Heather, 39, is understood to be desperate for cash for her and the child and wants Macca, 64, to provide full-time minders.
McCartney skips out of divorce court says the Times
Sir Paul McCartney left a private divorce hearing at the High Court in high spirits yesterday, smiling and whistling and giving his usual two-fingered victory salute.
By contrast, his estranged wife, Heather Mills, made a low-key exit. Reports suggest that Mr Justice Bennett has thrown out some of the claims made by Ms Mills in her claim for her share of Sir Paul’s estimated £825 million fortune.
The couple’s lawyers issued a joint statement urging against misreporting of the case. “The parties both ask the media to respect their privacy and the confidentiality of the proceedings, as they work to settle the outstanding issues between them in their divorce,” it added.
The Telegraph reports
Blame TV for moral decline, says Synod
Popular television shows ranging from Celebrity Big Brother to Little Britain were blamed by members of the Church of England's General Synod yesterday for eroding moral standards.
Even Celebrity Come Dancing was criticised for focusing unduly on the elimination of participants rather than on their talents during a wide-ranging debate on the impact of the media on society.
Pornographic films, violent computer games and sexually explicit men's magazines were also attacked.
One speaker even claimed that news programmes which referred to Tony Blair using just his surname undermined respect for political leaders. After a two-hour discussion, the Synod praised many aspects of the media while denouncing trends in broadcasting that "exploit the humiliation of human beings for public entertainment".
Staying on a religous theme,the Times reports from Rome where
Pope is warned of a green Antichrist
An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by the Pope to deliver this year’s Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by giving warning of an Antichrist who is “a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist”.
Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, 78, who retired as Archbishop of Bologna three years ago, quoted Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), the Russian philosopher and mystic, as predicting that the Antichrist “will convoke an ecumenical council and seek the consensus of all the Christian confessions”.
The “masses” would follow the Antichrist, “with the exception of small groups of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants” who would fight to prevent the watering down and ultimate destruction of the faith, he said.
The Guardian reports from Spain where
Release of Eta hunger striker sparks protests
An emaciated De Juana, who was responsible for 25 killings in the 1980s, was sent back to his native Basque country after serving less than half of a three-year sentence for terrorist threats. He had been on hunger strike for 114 days and, reduced to a skeletal wreck, was being force-fed by doctors after being strapped to a hospital bed in Madrid.
Charlotte: I'm up the daff says the Sun celebrating the announcement
PATRIOTIC Welsh star CHARLOTTE CHURCH chose St David’s Day to announce that she is to have a baby.
Charlotte confirmed she is expecting her own little angel — only a week after The Sun reported baby rumours when she snubbed booze at her own 21st birthday party.
The singer-turned-TV host and rugby star boyfriend GAVIN HENSON, 25, announced the pregnancy on her website yesterday — as the Welsh proudly wore daffodils to celebrate their national saint.
A statement said: “For reasons of privacy, Charlotte has chosen not to comment on this matter, other than to confirm that she and Gavin are delighted.”
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