Papers reflect on allowances row

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The Guardian describes Gordon Brown's call to scrap MPs' second home allowances as a decisive move to defuse the row over MPs' expenses.

It says his call for a "simpler" system of parliamentary benefits was an unexpected intervention.

It followed the embarrassing revelation that the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, had claimed public money for her husband to watch pornographic films.

Elsewhere all the evidence is that the controversy has some way to run.

Urgent overhaul

In the Daily Telegraph, the disclosure MPs claimed average allowances of almost £145,000 last year has increased the pressure for an urgent overhaul.

Under a headline: "They Are All At It", the Daily Mirror calls the current arrangements a "gravy train" for "greedy MPs".

It says the current system is costing taxpayers £93m a year.

Noting that "ordinary Britons" are "battling recession," the Daily Mail asks: "What planet are they on?"

Intense pressure

The Financial Times reports on the government's £1.6bn bail-out of the stricken Dunfermline Building Society.

It says it has left the financial watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, under intense pressure.

It says it needs to explain how it monitored the build-up of hundreds of millions of pounds of toxic loans.

The Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, is quoted in the paper as calling the affair a "gross failure of regulation".

Golfing great

The Times carries an interview with the golfing great, Seve Ballersteros.

He has undergone four emergency operations since he had a malignant brain tumour diagnosed in October.

Ballesteros - sometimes reduced to tears during the interview at his home in northern Spain - describes his fight for life as his biggest battle ever.

He tells the paper the public response to his illness has touched him deeply; he said he had no idea quite how popular he was.