THE recent cold weather features in nearly all this week's local and provincial papers. There is a focus on those who allegedly made the situation worse.

The Westmeath Independent has comments from angry councillors who say the grilling of roads in certain areas was not done and many people were cut off. Local authority officials are recorded as saying, in mitigation, that weather forecasting is an inexact science.

In the Wexford Echo, one official says: "We cannot grit every road in the county". The situation around Wexford got very desperate, the paper reports, after the county's stock of rock salt - 200 tonnes - was used up in three days. The salt was mixed with fine grit to improve road surfaces.

Former Minister Michael Lowry, we read in the Guardian of Nenagh, had a vital constituency meeting cancelled because of the weather. Meanwhile, the Kilkenny People had a report about a local dog named Frosty, which acquired its name after being found abandoned in a bin during a previous cold spell. A man discovered him shivering under some rubbish in advanced hypothermia, but now the dog is fine and an owner is required.

The Tuam Herald reports the weather brought tragedy to the Galway region after the death of four people in accidents. The case of the young man who died in Lough Cutra trying to save his dog is particularly grim.

The Kildare Nationalist tries to get readers to be more understanding of politicians. An emphatic editorial says too much time is spent by the public blaming them for "the country's ills". The writer says that with economic indicators so positive, politicians and civil servants should be congratulated, but its second editorial asks what the use the improved economic position is when "society suffers terminal disintegration" from poverty.

According to the Liffey Champion there is concern among Leixlip Town Commissioners about the use of the town's mechanical street sweeper. The commissioners are "sick and tired" of trying to find out how often the sweeper is used. One councillor says: "We seem unable to find out how often the machine was here and what it did".

Another councillor says Athy is getting better use of the machine, which he clams gets three times the rate of visits given to Leixlip. Another councillor says if the street sweeper had been in Leixlip he would have seen it.

The Kilkenny People carries a story concerning an impending wedding where the "best man" is a woman.

A local theatre director and comedy organiser is marrying the actress Pauline McLynn, and has asked a female friend to be his best man. When the actress, who plays Mrs Doyle in Father Ted, was proposed to, she is reported by the paper to have said: "I will, I will, I will".

The Midland Tribune dedicates its weekly comment piece to the recent Mountjoy siege, telling readers that prisoners do "not lead a life of luxury". It says the prison is extremely dilapidated and prisoners there deserve to "live in decent and humane conditions".

The Kildare Nationalist also devotes space, on its front page, to the same story. It reports that one of the prison officers held was from Monasterevin and was "severely traumatised" by the experience. It says he worked in the prison for less than one year.

Egypt's prohibition on live Irish beef exports is featured in most of the papers. The Northern Standard gives front page space to local TD, Mr Seymour Crawford, who is quoted as saying Ireland's "cordial relations" with Egypt may be of use in talks between the two countries.

An editorial suggests the whole matter has been caused by Government "marketing incompetence".

The writer says the Government should have made the Egyptians aware that young beef cattle exported to them cannot have BSE.

The President, Mrs Robinson, receives some harsh advice in the Wexford Echo from a columnist known only as "Ellen", who says the President's new year resolution should be to "resolve that annoying habit of continually shaking her head like one of those nodding dogs people used to have in the rear window of their cars". The advice to farmers is even harsher: "Stop whinging or at least cut it down to a dull whine".

The central theme running through the various reviews of the year is that the economy is doing well. But the Tullamore Tribune does not join in the good cheer and on its back page claims recent figures from the Central Statistics Office show the midlands as poorer than the west.

The report says that tile midlands is "actually getting poorer" and a local councillor says the region "wants a bigger slice of the cake".