Probity is Britain’s new watchword. After filleting the bankers over their salaries and bonuses and excoriating MPs for fiddling their expenses we’ve now turned our attention to the antics of journalists.

The News of the World (NOTW) has frequently embarrassed politicians, vicars, footballers and celebrities, but the Sunday red-top is currently itself the target of an expose by a broadsheet.

According to a report in The Guardian, reporters at the “News of the Screws” worked with private investigators to access “two or three thousand” private mobile phones belonging to celebrities, MPs and public figures.

Those private investigators apparently intercepted voicemail messages and gained access to personal data such as itemised phone bills and bank statements.

But  police have said they have no plans to reopen a 2005 investigation that led to the jailing of two men, News of the World reporter Clive Goodman and a private investigator, for hacking into the phones of staff working for the royal family.

That raises the question as to whether that decision should be taken by an independent body rather than a policeman choosing not to rake over the coals of a fellow copper’s report.

While the police ponder, the Press Complaints Commission has once again proved to a be a less than an effective regulator.

Rupert Murdoch has ”nothing to say at all” on the story, while former NOTW editor Andy Coulson, who is now the Conservative Party communications chief apparently knew nothing. Funny how journalists and ex-journalists get all tongue-tied when they are being asked to give answers rather than the other way round.

The Daily Telegraph has been criticised for paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for buying information that allowed it to gain access to MPs’ expenses claims, but at least the right-wing broadsheet could claim a public interest defence.

Not so the alleged NOTW fishing operation of celebrity tittle-tattle, which tells us much about the agenda of many of our national newspapers.

A committee of MPs is due to re-examine the phone-hacking scandal, but maybe Britain’s newspaper reading public could take the matter into their own hands. On Merseyside, 20 years after the Hillsborough stadium disaster, nobody buys the Sun newspaper over the way the tabloid covered the death of 96 football fans.

That’s probably an idiot’s utopian idea, so in the meantime how should Britain regulate its press? And under what circumstances is electronic surveillance permissable?

The online release of MPs’ expense claims has only served to further dent their already battered reputation.

Forty-two days after the Daily Telegraph began to investigate MPs’ expenses the Houses of Parliament finally got round to publishing official details of them. Or rather it didn’t, as lots of key information was blacked out.

Britain’s newspapers spelt out their condemnation - in black and white - of this supposed exercise in freedom of information.

The Sun labelled MPs “Blankers”, the Daily Mirror led with the headline: “Blackwash”, while the Daily Mail posed the question: “Just how stupid do they think we are?”

Commons officials insisted that the information that had been blacked out was done to protect MPs’ security, but the consensus of Britain’s media was that the political classes had shot themselves in the foot.

“Yesterday’s exercise in obfuscation suggested the House of Commons has learnt nothing,” opined the Daily Telegraph’s editorial, with the paper promising to publish an uncensored version of every MP’s expense claim on Saturday.

“The Portcullis House edition of the dossier does not so much slam the door behind a bolted stallion as painstakingly construct a new stable in order to house a dead nag,” wrote the Guardian.

The farce was meat and drink to cartoonists. The Guardian’s Steve Bell captioned his cartoon with the statement: “Justice must not only not be done, it must not be seen to not be done.”

Even advertisers got in on the fun with a Volkswagen advert having most of its words crossed out.

Lest your mood has been overly blackened, remember that at least we have learnt a new word from this very British political scandal. Hands up who knew what the word “redacted” - to make ready for publication; edit or revise - meant 42 days ago?

The question is now how are MPs going to redact their reputations?

“Brave” was how most of the British press responded to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech to both houses of Congress in Washington.

Brown was the first European leader to be invited to Washington by the new U.S. administration and was only the fifth British prime minister to speak to a joint session of Congress.

The front pages of the broadsheets were dominated with the speech and leader writers agonised on whether the so-called special relationship between the two countries is still intact.

With an eye on the upcoming G20 meeting of leading nations in London on April 2, Brown called for the U.S. and their European allies to work together through the global economic crisis.

He was praised for his warning against protectionism and his “passionate” plea on tackling poverty in Africa.

It was a speech where Brown “rose to the occasion”, Peter Hyman, former speechwriter to ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrote in the The Guardian.

“Yesterday, Brown didn’t just give us substance but a little style too.”

It had “passion”, Kafka and even a reference to a Puritan founder of New England, the paper said.

“The speech was delivered with passion and was full of good lines; even a bit of poetry,” Hyman added.

“To this audience, religious rhetoric, like manna from heaven, is scooped up with open arms. And Brown didn’t hold back, Biblical soundbites flowed.”

The broadsheet Daily Telegraph said: “Gordon Brown … found eloquent and moving words to describe this country’s unique relationship with the United States and capture the common purpose of the wars we have fought together.

“More important, he found brave words when he tackled head-on the protectionist instincts that are so powerful in the United States and which could hamper the world’s economic recovery.”

The Daily Mail’s leader described it as a “serious and sombre speech for serious and sombre times”.

“Mr Brown merits praise for refusing to pull his punches (unlike his predecessor, whose idea of the special relationship was to fawn on American presidents).

“…If the special relationship is to mean anything, it must be based on honesty and not platitudes.”

But The Guardian leader was critical, saying the speech was limited and full of flattery.

“A brave speechmaker challenges his audience and a cautious one flatters them. Gordon Brown spoke to Congress yesterday with all the daring of a lover clutching a bunch of slightly wilted flowers.

“He said very little that was new, and nothing that was shocking.

“…Perhaps respect encouraged him to be too cautious, when a more critical friend would have been blunter.

“He passage on protectionism pulled its punches. He did not blame America for the crash, as he so often does at home.”

The tabloid Sun newspaper questioned the extent of the special relationship, pointing out that while Brown received 19 standing ovations, Congress was depleted.

“While Congress was packed, it was not with politicians,” the paper’s political editor George Pascoe-Watson wrote in an opinion piece.

“There were many ’staffers’ and interns taking up seats. Gone are the days when a British PM was such a star draw that Tony Blair was cheered as he walked through US hotel lobbies.

“Mr Brown left America last night with a vastly different Special Relationship.

“A new President has taken over - and it is hard to claim he and the PM have an obvious chemistry.

“President Obama paid lip service to the bonds between America and Britain. Things are definitely not what they used to be.”

But the International Herald Tribune said the chamber “was nearly full”, adding the interns “who are sometimes summoned to fill empty seats on such occasions were relatively few in number”.

While the visit dominated the British press, papers in the U.S. were less obsessed. They did look at the special relationship, suggesting it had cooled.

“The address came a day after President Obama assured Mr. Brown that the “special relationship” between the countries was as strong as ever, despite what some people have described as coolness in the handling of the prime minister’s visit,” the New York Times wrote.

The Internatational Herald Tribune referred to the same coolness, harking back to the close bond between former leaders George W. Bush and Blair.

“Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic have catalogued a number of signs that the reception accorded to Brown in Washington was not quite as warm as the ones British prime ministers enjoyed during the Bush years: No invitation to Camp David, no full-scale news conference, no state dinner - and while there was a meeting between the men’s wives, none was held between the two couples.”

But as the Daily Mail pointed out, Brown was still pleased to have beaten French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Barack Obama’s door.

Brown could not hide “his satisfaction” at becoming the first European leader invited by Barack Obama, it reported the French financial daily La Tribune as quoting a Washington source as saying.

The British press, like their American cousins, doesn’t seem to able to get enough of Sarah Palin.

The self-described hunting, shooting and hockey “mom” is the “biggest hot-button political story in the English-speaking world”, says Martin Kettle in The Guardian on Friday.

Newspapers have devoted pages to the previously little-known governor of Alaska and  now Republican vice-presidential candidate.

But while she was described as the next Margaret Thatcher by the American media in the Daily Telegraph, the British media have concentrated on drawing parallels with psychiatrist Dr Melfi from “The Sopranos” TV show or the late Princess Diana.

“She joins those women, such as Diana, Princess of Wales and Carla Bruni, who were picked to fill a gap at the side of a prominent man and promptly upstaged him,” writes Bronwen Maddox in The Times.

Her colleague Andrew Billen draws on Palin’s joke for inspiration: what is the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull — lipstick.

“It has been applied liberally to Mrs Palin’s pleasing face, less hockey mom than Dr Melfi from The Sopranos or the Specsavers model, a sexy lady who knows it but won’t show it. Her hair was down but her neckline was up.”

But all the papers agree she was a superstar. Suzanne Goldenberg in The Guardian writes that Palin had “provided excitement and glamour to a campaign that formerly had trouble electrifying the Republican base”.

She can connect with people in white working-class small towns and conservative areas, as well as younger voters and working mothers, Goldenberg adds.

“Hers was the sort of speech that George Bush, at his best, could do with great effect,” Kettle says.

Peter McKay in the Daily Mail goes one further and says she shouldn’t just set her cap at becoming vice-president.

“The story now isn’t about Sarah Palin’s suitability as vice-president. It’s the certainty that, if McCain, 72, wins, he’ll serve only one term. And his party will be grooming her as America’s first woman President.”

And all that despite her grating voice. “You could kill a bear at 200 yards with Sarah Palin’s voice,” Maddox cruelly says in The Times.

“I heard it first on the radio and winced; an octave higher than Hillary Clinton’s. It made a screech out of ‘I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country’.”

Palin as President would be bad news for The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Clover though. He writes in his Earthlog that she “could yet be a disaster for international relations” and that “environmentalists detest her”, quoting her pro-drillers stance and hunting habit.

She is not popular with Philip Stephens in the Financial Times either. Her speech was “not as good as the gush suggested”, he writes.

British newspapers were not fooled either by the “potent mixture of the homely and the daring”.

“Her teeth had not only been whitened, but sharpened, the better to sink into Barack Obama,” Billen in the Times writes.

Maddox describes Palin’s overall effect as “bullying”.

“You would not want to be on the Parent Teacher Association with her,” she observes.

“Her sarcasm was plain nasty. Mrs Palin portrays herself as the innocent outsider but she is a very worldly queen of her domain.”

The Guardian’s Kettle writes: “Palin can certainly attack. But will either male or female voters want a long-term relationship with a political dominatrix from the Arctic?”

Kettle warns against pumping up Palin’s profile too much.

He says the media had initially underestimated her, but the danger after her barnstorming speech on Wednesday is that it will now overestimate her.

“This isn’t a movie. This isn’t Geena Davis in Commander in Chief. It isn’t Jane Horrocks in The Amazing Mrs Pritchard.”

“Palin is one important factor among several in this election, and the real challenge, especially here in the eye of the storm, is get her into some perspective.”

For full coverage of the U.S. election click here

 THE GUARDIAN: Recession alert as Brown fights back

Gordon Brown’s drive to recapture the political agenda with a programme of new laws to create “an opportunity-rich Britain” was badly shaken yesterday by King’s warning.

“The nice decade is behind us,” Mervyn King declared in funereal tones, warning that the economy was “travelling along a bumpy road” as he predicted rising prices would put a squeeze on take-home pay for millions of workers.

Full story here

FINANCIAL TIMES: No rate cuts before 2010

Britons should not expect another cut in interest rates for at least two years, the Bank of England indicated yesterday as it warned that inflation would rise far above its previous forecasts and persist at levels well above the government’s target until early 2010.

Story here

DAILY TELEGRAPH: Recession danger is real, says Bank governor

The British economy faces the real risk of falling into recession, the Governor of the Bank of England has admitted.

Mervyn King warned families to brace themselves for a further “squeeze” on household finances as energy bills and food prices continue to rise.

Story here

THE TIMES: The “nice decade” is over, says Bank chief

Britain faces two years of economic pain and could sink into recession, the Governor of the Bank of England has said in a stark warning to the nation.

Story here

THE INDEPENDENT: Meningitis: Defeated at last?

The annual scourge of deaths and severe illness caused by meningitis could be consigned to the history books after scientists announced startling results from trials of a potential vaccine.

Story here

DAILY MAIL: Death of the ‘nice’ decade

The good times are gone and there is now a real risk of recession, the Bank of England warned yesterday.

Families face a five-pronged assault on their finances, the BoE’s Mervyn King said in his bleakest assessment yet of the state of the country.

Story here

DAILY EXPRESS: New bin tax bombshell

Ministers are pushing ahead with plans for pay-as-you-throw bin taxes – just days after Gordon Brown signalled they would be axed.

Five pilot schemes are being rolled out across the country which could slap up to £1,000 a year on every family that fails to recycle enough.

Story here

THE SUN: Crackers
Amy Winehouse will not be prosecuted for smoking crack.

Story here

DAILY MIRROR: Help him

He’s just two days out of rehab - but as troubled Paul Gascoigne staggers along a road at 8am yesterday, it’s clear he is still urgently in need of help.

The ex-England star, 40, looked dazed as he tottered along in Gateshead with a towel flung over one shoulder.

Story here

DAILY STAR: Cellar boy: My Story

Cellar monster Josef Fritzl’s freed dungeon kids have spelled out their simple dreams for a happy life.

Felix, 6, says all he really wants is a ride in a car - and to run across a meadow playing with other normal kids.

Story here

The papers are nearly all agreed that Chancellor Alistair Darling’s 2.7 billion pound fix for the 10p tax row is the day’s main story.

“Darling seeks end to 10p tax backlash” reports the Financial Times, noting that the move will still leave 1.1 million poorer households worse off following the abolition of the lowest tax band in last year’s budget.

For the Daily Mail the tax giveaway is a “2.7 billion pound gamble” to appease fury on the Labour backbenches over the scrapping of the 10p starting rate.

But the papers also find room for other stories: Drivers face a 185 pound tax to park at work, says the Daily Telegraph of a government push to cut traffic congestion. The paper reports that Nottingham city council will be the first to introduce the “workplace parking levy as an alternative to road pricing.

The Sun reports that Yorkshire ripper Peter Sutcliffe is making a legal bid for freedom from the secure Broadmoor hospital, claiming his human rights have been breached. It says Sutcliffe, jailed in 1981 for killing 13 women, wants to be declared sane and given a release date.

The Independent opts for an analytic lead, suggesting that “Britain could once again be haunted by the spectre of stagflation“. It says a combination of stagnant output and high inflation not seen for decades will dog policymakers for months if not years to come.

By contrast the Daily Express says there is “Now a race to cut prices“, reporting that supermarkets Asda and Tesco and mortgage lender Nationwide have all unveiled plans for a host of cost-cutting deals to help “Britain’s hard-pressed families.”

The Times publishes a revealing photo of Housing Minster Caroline Flint — exposing her briefing notes on the state of the housing market as she walked to a cabinet meeting. “Safe as houses? Not this minister’s private papers” runs the headline over the picture. You can see a magnified image of the notes themselves on the front of the Telegraph.

The Guardian reports that Spain is being forced to ship drinking water to Barcelona to cope with the effects of the worst drought in the country since records began 60 years ago.

The Daily Mirror leads with the arrest of a 19-year-old man over the weekend murder of 16-year-old Jimmy Mizen in a southeast London bakers, while the Daily Star says police are following a reported sighting of missing Madeleine McCann on a flight to Sao Paulo in Brazil.