Papers highlight farmers' stories

For the thousands of farmers waiting to learn whether their livelihoods have been destroyed, the only certainty is the total lack of certainty.

One farmer in Devon tells the Daily Mail: "It's like fighting a man in the fog."

To communicate some of the anguish being felt across the country, The Guardian has begun printing a series of daily diaries written by people who work on the land. Today, Sarah Walton - who helps breed and fatten cattle and sheep in Northumberland - describes her plight.

As often, it's the little details which best convey the frightening realities of the present.

"We are desperate, like everyone else in our region, for more disinfectant," she says.

And she tells how her postman has offered to leave her mail with a relative eight miles away - rather than drive up the road to the farm.

In the face of such stark facts, The Times is moved to ask: "What now is the real cost of Britain's food?"

The Daily Express has little doubt that things cannot carry on as they have - saying consumers must realise "that cheap food, mass produced, carries its own too-high cost."

Law and order

The government's 10-year plan for tackling crime has not convinced everyone. Hugo Young of The Guardian believes that "the politics of law and order are entirely about spin. Not just partly. Entirely."

The Financial Times agrees. It sees both Labour and the Tories engaged in an "Arms war" - with politicians more concerned about rhetoric and winning votes than common-sense policies that work.

The Daily Star offers some of those - saying more bobbies on the beat would cut crime at a stroke.

And The Mirror highlights the fears raised by Jack Straw's plan to let juries hear about the criminal records of people in the dock. The paper asks: "Is this the end of a fair trial?"

The Daily Telegraph suspects that the only outcome of Monday's proposals will be a mass of criminal justice legislation in the next parliament - "the one thing the fight against crime does not need."

Brits

It's neither the foot-and-mouth crisis, nor the intractable problems of dishonesty, that have excited many of the papers - it's the annual pop music shindig, the Brit awards. Pictures of glamorous stars in revealing costumes fill page after page.

Almost everyone agrees that the ceremony marked the confirmation of Robbie Williams as this country's top star. The Sun hails him as "King Rob" - "Robbie Rules" says the Express, and the Star calls him "the undisputed king of British music."

But not everyone is celebrating: The Times sneers at what it describes as "predictable and depressing rewards for mediocrity."

Lucca

But for sheer inflammatory rudeness, turn to The Guardian and a report on a row that has set the town of Lucca in Tuscany ablaze with indignation. A local professor has written a guide book to the region - and he saw fit to damn the moral character of the town's residents in no uncertain terms.

"Almost all the sins of man, the darkest vices, money avarice, fraud, lust, gluttony, live in the heart of Lucca's residents," he wrote.

"In Lucca people live in corruption and know it more profoundly than anywhere else in the country."

As the paper needs hardly add, the people of Lucca are not best pleased.