Papers salute Queen Mother

The Queen Mother's picture beams out from many of the front pages.

"Nothing passes today without carping in some quarter," says The Telegraph, but it feels the affection shown yesterday was genuine and deep.

The Queen Mother is roundly praised for providing a symbol of constancy in a changing world.

For The Express she is Our Royal Rock while for The Mail she is a reminder of the virtues that have "made this nation what it is".

The Mirror exhorts readers not to overlook the monarchy's "vital place" in the fabric of our nation.

The Times takes a longer view of the monarchy's history. What was once a closed shop of power, it says, has reinvented itself as a public spectacle and representative of national unity.

And the paper salutes the Queen Mother, whom it calls "the grand old lady" for keeping the show on the road.

The Guardian expresses relief at the end of the News of the World's campaign to identify paedophiles.

Lynch mobs

Clearly, it says, random vigilante publishing was not the answer.

For The Express, the mob violence outside the home of a suspected paedophile in Portsmouth smacked of the days of the lynch mobs in America's Deep South.

However, the paper says more guarantees are needed that paedophiles are not being left to roam the community at will.

"You've done it" shouts The Mirror's front page, claiming a victory for its readers in the campaign for a public register of convicted paedophiles.

It says police backing for the register means parents everywhere can sleep a little easier.

But The Guardian sounds a note of caution. Information on such a register could well spark just the kind of violence seen in Portsmouth, it warns.

Blairism: Moving target

What is needed now is debate, says the paper, not vigilantism whether in Portsmouth or in the News of the World.

Scholars working on the New Penguin English Dictionary have, according to The Guardian, taken an unprecedented two months to define one word: Blairism.

One of the versions rejected by the dictionary - and quoted in the paper - describes it as "characterised by the absence of a fundamental underlying ideology and close attention to prevailing public opinion".

The paper reports that tempers ran high before a slightly tamer version was agreed.

Ruth Killick from Penguin Press tells the paper the lexicographers were simply doing their best to hit a moving target.