Papers predict huge bank bonuses

Several newspapers report UK banks will pay will pay over £4bn in bonuses this year despite the financial slump.

Barclays and HSBC will demonstrate that it is "business as usual" by reporting large revenues, the Guardian says.

The Daily Mail believes the revelation will "enrage millions of credit-starved businesses and families" who were left with the £37bn bail-out bill.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable tells the Daily Express that the situation is "appalling" .

Under fire

The Sun reveals that the families of UK soldiers in Afghanistan are begging for charity food parcels due to poor wages.

It says it is shameful that men risking life and limb have to wonder whether their families are being fed properly.

An aide to the defence secretary has said attempts to claw back compensation from wounded soldiers are "profoundly wrong", the Daily Telegraph reports.

Eric Joyce tells the paper that a victory for the government would be a victory of "bureaucracy over bravery" .

Woman's ways

Remarks by Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman that the party should always have a female leader or deputy leader attract comment in most papers.

Edwina Currie in the Times says Ms Harman is "mad", "on a different planet" and spouting "rabid nonsense".

In the Guardian, Yvonne Roberts of the Young Foundation says Ms Harman's comments hide a "core of common sense" .

But she does say that that if Ms Harman wants to "join the boys' game, she has to learn to play it better".

Offal news

Both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail carry a story that is unlikely to go down well in Scotland.

The papers report claims that, far from being a Scottish invention, haggis is in fact an English dish.

A food historian has found haggis mentioned in an English cookbook from 1615, over 170 years before Robert Burns penned his address to the haggis.

But James Macsween, a director of an award-winning haggis company, tells the Mail it will remain a Scottish icon.

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