Brickbats and bouquets for Blair

"This is no time to wobble," the Guardian advises ministers, as Tony Blair approaches a landmark on Saturday, when he will overtake Clement Atlee as the leader of the longest continuous Labour government.

The paper praises the government's achievements and appears impressed by Mr Blair's performance at one of his regular news conferences on Wednesday.

"He swept aside his troubles," the Guardian says, "and emerged from the session, as he always does, on top of his game."

The Daily Mail was less impressed.

Questions

It says the event was ruthlessly managed and fixed, with the prime minister allowing questions only from journalists friendly to New Labour.

It then names some of them awarding them "Toady" ratings.

The Mail prints a list of questions it believes the prime minister should have been asked, including whether or not he will resign if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq.

The new head of the civil rights group, Liberty, has told the Daily Telegraph that she wants to find allies beyond the organisation's traditional left-wing support base.

Shami Chakrabarti says the group will resist the government's plans to introduce compulsory identity cards, and will work to reverse what she sees as the government's increasingly authoritarian approach to social issues.

Ms Chakrabarti, who is 34, tells the paper she wants to restore the great British liberal consensus which existed when she was growing up, but which has been undermined over the past 10 years.

'Deeply flawed'

The Sun is all in favour of ID cards, calling them "an ID whose time has come".

There is much comment about the government's announcement of thousands of new homes for key workers to be built in south east England.

The Daily Mirror concedes that the homes are needed, but says they will increase already intolerable burdens on roads, public transport and other services.

"What is needed," says the Mirror, "is not just homes in the south-east, but jobs in the Midlands and the North."

The Daily Express agrees, and says John Prescott has come up with a deeply flawed plan, which will turn the south-east into one vast urban sprawl.

It suggests the government should lead by example, by moving some government departments to the north, where homes lie empty.

"This grandiose enterprise has warning signals all over it," says the Mail, which fears a deepening of the north-south divide.

The Telegraph takes the housing issue along with a huge expansion in the public sector workforce under Labour and sees political method in economic madness.

"Half a million new bureaucrats will form part of the payroll vote," says the Telegraph.

Greek 'farce'

"They owe their jobs to New Labour".

The paper notes that much of the new housing planned by Mr Prescott will be reserved for public servants.

"Over time, this colonisation will cost the Tories seats. This is gerrymandering on a national scale," claims the paper.

The Telegraph leads with a report on the British mother and her two sons given jail sentences less than four days after being arrested for allegedly attacking an Athens kebab shop owner.

The paper calls the case a Greek farce. The brothers, Frederick and Christian Johnson, show the paper's photographer the bruises and weals on their backs and a black eye they say they received at the hands of Greek police.

Beetle jump

They tell the paper that within 15 minutes of their arrest, they were being punched, kneed and whipped in a police station.

The family, who live in Greece, say their Greek friends have stood by them and did not believe the allegations aganist them for one moment.

Finally, the Independent is among papers to report a new world record.

Until now, it had been thought that the flea was the greatest jumper.

But a scientist in Cambridge has found that a beetle which spends most of its life in cuckoo spit has taken the title and can leap to heights of 70cm - the equivalent of a human leaping over a sky-scraper.