In recent days two young women have received an enormous amount of exposure in magazines and newspapers, though for very different reasons and in very diverse sets of circumstances.

Blasphemous friends and thespians

Government is a law unto itself

Eurozone finance ministers paved the way for their first direct bank recapitalisation when they unanimously voted to lend €100bn for Spanish banks.

The IMF in it’s annual analysis of the euro area has given a damning indictment of the current economic situation and the failure of EU leaders and the ECB to deal effectively with it, saying the root causes remain un-addressed.

A person moving from unemployment benefit to a low-paying job loses about 5% of his income, but the OECD and IMF make widely different proposals on how to tackle what they say as a disincentive to work.

The ECB will be happy to swap the €31bn of promissory notes, reducing the debt burden on taxpayers, if the right deal can be made, sources in Frankfurt say.

Mitchell banking on report

Ireland came last in a report on what EU countries are doing to match their fishing fleet to the amount of fish that can be safely taken out of the sea.

Car owners are facing annual NCT or MOT checks on cars over five years old while technical checks for scooters and motorbikes will be introduced for the first time under EU proposals.