Tuesday's papers

The big news this morning is the Tories plan to raise the retirement age to help cut the budget deficit.

The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, will announce that he will raise the state pension age 10 years earlier than the government planned. The Tories claim the move would slice an estimated £13bn a year off government spending, making a sizeable inroad into a deficit that is due to reach £175bn next year. says the Guardian

The Mail adds that

A Tory government would also hold a review of the retirement age that could speed up further rises - potentially ushering in a state pension age for both men and women of 68 as early as 2020.
Labour's profligacy will take the blame for forcing people to work longer. Half a million men now aged 58, who had expected to retire when they reach 65, will now have to go on for an extra year.

In an announcement apparently timed to coincide with Mr Osborne’s speech, the Chancellor Alistair Darling will today propose pay freezes in the coming year for 40,000 GPs, senior NHS managers, judges and top civil servants, with minimal rises for more than 700,000 other public sector workers, including hospital doctors and dentists

says the Times

The move says the Telegraph

is certain to spark a political row, with the Conservatives likely to accuse ministers of trying to pre-empt or overshadow George Osborne’s speech on Tuesday. Mr Osborne will set out plans to reduce the deficit.

The Independent says that the Tory party conference is being haunted by the ghost of Tony Blair.According to its political correspondent Andrew Grice

Behind the party's debate on Europe lies the spectre of their former nemesis becoming the EU's first president.

Meanwhile the Times carries a populus poll which suggests

A big majority of voters do not believe that the Conservative Party has really changed under David Cameron’s leadership but think that it is doing well mainly because of Labour’s unpopularity,

The president of the Prison Governors' Association will warn that

The prison population is now so large that there is the potential for a "catastrophe of widespread disorder" by inmates as jails struggle to make savings demanded by ministers,reports the Guardian

Meanwhile the Express leads with a variant on that story saying that

JAIL terms of less than a year should be abolished in favour of softer community sentences,

The Sun reports that Sir Richard Dannatt sensationally confirmed yesterday that

GORDON Brown refused a major troop reinforcement in Afghanistan this year - AGAINST military chiefs' advice,

adding that

the outburst will be an intense embarrassment for Prime Minister Gordon Brown who has previously promised Our Boys "whatever they want".

According to the Telegraph Barack Obama has refused to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington this week in a move to curry favour with the Chinese.

The Buddhist monk arrived in Washington on Monday for a week of meetings with Congressional leaders, celebrity supporters and interest groups, but the president will not see him until after he has made his first visit to China next month.

An exclusive on the front of the Indy which claims that

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Two teenage girls leapt hand-in-hand from a bridge to their deaths after one left a 'suicide' message on a social networking site.
The friends, aged 14 and 15, jumped more than 100ft from a notorious suicide spot and plunged into a river. reports the Mail

The Times reports that a network of citizen crimewatchers will be given the chance of winning up to £1,000 by monitoring CCTV security cameras over the internet.

The cameras’ owners will pay a fee to have users watch the footage. The scheme, Internet Eyes, is being promoted as a game and is expected to go “live” next month with a test run in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Finally the Telegraph reports that Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft has said that its reputation has never recovered from the launch of Vista

The company's reputation took a beating after the release of Vista, which caused machines to stall indefinitely while deleting, copying and moving files, among many other issues.