Simon Jenkins of The Guardian is unimpressed with the indignados-like demonstrations on the streets of New York, seeing them as merely ornamental. "The iron law of insurrection", he avers "holds that it must grow in menace or lose momentum. Once it subsides into encampment, it becomes mere scenery." Which must surely be true.

What can be said of the EU crisis this Friday evening? Only that the weekend summit surely won't bring any advances, as these have now been promised for the following Wednesday. So Saturday and Sunday will merely be talk. And argument. Mrs Sarkozy may have laboured to bring forth a daughter but her husband and Frau Merkel look like struggling to produce as much as a mouse. As someone has written about Britain's currency experience in the 90's, if you get into bed with the Germans, you play by German rules. Which M. Sarkozy is now re-discovering, I guess.

We know the banks are in trouble and Lloyds Bank perhaps more than most. But hard evidence for this comes in the form of a letter imploring me to take out one of their credit cards - two years after they told me not to seek renewal of either my MasterCard or my VisaCard, as they weren't prepared to give me this. Presumably because I never ran up any interest charges. Mind you, the credit limit is a derisory 250 quid so they're not exactly pushing the boat out.

Finally . . . It has to be said that, in the pulchritude stakes, Leeds doesn't hold a candle to Pontevedra. And this would be true even if the young women of Leeds didn't favour an approach to make-up which makes them look like extras in a horror movie. There's simply no competition.