What a week!

No sooner had one huge news story popped up than along came another. I suppose it's no longer news that the British Government is plunging into a programme of reckless public borrowing to solve a problem created by reckless private borrowing. Nor is there anything really new in sickening violence in Mumbai; we must just hope that governments will not give the terrorists what they want which is more war.

Well, at least the guards have been allowed back into Virunga National Park, though we don't yet know how many gorillas have survived. Charcoal burning is as big a problem as poaching, and with all those refugees desperate for fuel the pressure on the forest will increase.

And Mrs Obama is to have a diamond-encrusted rhodium ring. Why rhodium? Certainly not to give jobs to American workers, as it is being made in Italy. Presumably it is because it is the most expensive silvery metal; platinum would have done as well.

At least there was one unadulterated good news item: Paul McCartney endorsing vegetarianism as a contribution to reducing carbon emissions. The carnivores' spokesmen (all men so far) have leapt into action denying that British cows belch that much methane (it is belches, by the way, not farts); good! So we can forget about destruction of Brazilian rainforest to make room for soya to feed our cattle, and no need to worry about all that grazing land created around the world at the expense of forests!