The Panel of the Wise charged with making recommendations about the future of public TV has put forward proposals that would enrich the owner of the country’s major left-wing media group. El Mundo has pointed out that this is hardly astonishing as most of the members, appointed by the socialist government, have links to this media group. As it puts it, the surprise would have come if they had recommended anything else.

There’s an article in today’s Telegraph about the tortuous process of getting a family’s passports renewed - to fly from London to Scotland, for God’s sake. It all sounded rather familiar to me. So when the writer asked what on earth it’s going to be like when there are ID cards, I was able to shout “Just the same only a lot worse!”. There’s nothing quite like the combination of an officious bureaucracy and an obsession with identity. You have been warned.

When my colleagues and I were setting up the world’s first DNA testing business in the mid 80s, we used to try to forecast just how Alec Jeffries’ invention would ultimately be used. None of us came up with anything like resolving the dispute between 8 women claiming to be the mother of a baby which survived the tsunami.

I was talking about Spanish “nobility” the other day. The example closest to home is the habit of the staff of my favourite café of giving me a double, even triple, portion of tapas with my glass of wine. This is most welcome but it can be a trifle embarrassing when my plate arrives at the same time as that of the chap next to me.