The papers - 27 January, 2011

Keys and phone hacking jostle with each other this morning to gain our attention.

Independent charges in with the hacking story citing the “next turn of the screw”, using pix of 4 key players – Coulson, Edmondson, Murdoch and Brooks - in faded black and white that look like wanted posters. Guardian joins the splash with more details and analysis inside.

Lots of comment about the impact on Murdoch and BSkyB future – will it be ByeSkyB? Had hacking spread to the Sun?

Naaah, Sun splashes with Keys to the Door and seems suddenly obsessed with Cheryl Cole’s back plus a double pager inside on its petition delivered to Downing Street to cut fuel tax. The name is a gift and the Mirror uses “Lost Keys” and inside “Leer we go”.

Telegraph runs pix of rueful Keys, but splashes with a warning from the military (you can imagine the generals harrumphing) that scrapping Nimrod would pose a jolly large risk to our security. Express runs same pix of Keys and inside Keys rant on radio about “dark forces”, but splashes with story about Equitable Life scandal that denies 1m people a large part of their savings.

The Mail is clearly bored with the two main stories and goes on a crusade about speed cameras – apparently half of them are not working - illustrated with a picture of a gorilla walking like a man.

The FT and the Times runs the pix, used by most, of a woman in Egypt b@ll%^ing a riot policeman amidst the reported “growing unrest”. Times deals with the hacking story by informing its readership that the NoTW had handed over new (or was it old) evidence to the police and sacked someone.

The FT’s companies and markets section provides us with the news that Barclays has been fined GBP1.1m mixing up accounts over 8 years. A lot of money to you and me, but small beer to Barclays.

It takes City:am to splash, with a little glee, that the Government will today announce “sweeping reforms” to ETs (that’s Employment Tribunals and not cute little aliens because they no longer exist) – making bosses very happy. The Mail rants on about ET money being multi-million pound gravy trains, as opposed, presumably, to the banking industry.

Finally, the news that we all suspected – rats at No 10. Yesterday the twitterati gleefully grabbed onto this news and spread the word through the cybersphere. We wait for the eviction of said rats.