What the papers say

Journalist Keith Baker takes a look at what is making the headlines in Thursday's morning papers.

Not much Christmas cheer in the News Letter this morning with a big front page headline that advises us to "Wake up to rising rates".

The paper says home-owners in Northern Ireland need a rude awakening because any rates concessions that might be in the offing are dependent on the assembly being restored by 26 March.

It reports how Anne Monaghan of the Fair Rates Campaign spoke at the Preparation for Government Committee at Stormont on Wednesday and warned "that thousands of people are sleep-walking into financial misery next year".

The Irish News highlights the problem of homelessness.

It reports that the North Belfast Adolescent Centre, set up four years ago to provide supervised accommodation for homeless teenagers leaving care, has now closed due to a withdrawal of funding.

The paper has a letter from a teenage boy who has been in care since the age of two.

He pleads with the Eastern Health Board to reopen the facility which has been his home for most of the past year.

The centre's manager tells the Irish News "it's devastating to see the project end".

The weather is the big story in the Belfast Telegraph and several of the cross-channel papers.

Travel chaos

The Mail writes of how the great getaway is descending into chaos. It carries the headline: "Who'd travel at Christmas?"

You could always hibernate, of course. In fact several papers have the story of a Japanese hiker who is believed to be the first human being to have done so.

The Guardian reports how he survived for 24 days without food and water after a fall.

Doctors reckon he lost consciousness and that "his body's natural survival instincts kicked in" as the temperature on the mountain dropped as low as -10 degrees centigrade.

There is more in the Dublin papers on the report of the Moriarty Tribunal.

There are increasing signals that underneath it all the economy may be badly out of kilter Irish Independent

The Irish Times focusses on one section which says that "Bertie Ahern and others may have wanted to leave undisturbed the facts behind a large payment made to Fianna Fail on the day of the Republic's 1989 general election".

The paper says this comment has not been reported before. The sum involved amounted to £75,000, but only £25,000 was declared as having been received.

The Times reports how Mr Justice Moriarty describes as "extraordinary" the apparent fact that conversations seven years later, in which Mr Ahern was involved, did not lead to the discrepancy becoming known.

Meanwhile, the Irish Independent reports that the rate of inflation in the Republic is set to rise to 6%.

The paper says "it will be the biggest rise in the cost of living for six years"... and it reckons that despite rapid growth and good times generally "there are increasing signals that underneath it all the economy may be badly out of kilter".

Light fandango

Several papers report on the end of the Whiter Shade of Pale copyright case in which the truth is now "plain to see".

The Times says the organist Matthew Fisher, who has been awarded 40% of the royalties, will be "skipping the light fandango" all the way to the bank.

Finally, the Independent reports on how the Chinese are trying to improve the English translations on the menus in restaurants in preparation for the Beijing Olympics.

Gone, it says, will be such items as complicated cake, pee soup (that's with two Es) and dumpling stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of a crab.

The reporter says he will always recall landing in Yunnan province some years ago to see a sign reading.... "We welcome our foreign fiends".