Gillian Tett looks beyond yesterday's Today item on "jurisdiction shopping" by banks. She warns there is an unintended consequence of the current worldwide desire to bash the bankers. Legislators in key countries are busy unilaterally changing internationally-agreed rules. Unfortunately, Tett says, this makes it more likely that practices illegal in one country but legal in another will be used to cover up looming catastrophes in the capital markets.
Among the reports of Michael Foot's funeral at Golders Green Crematorium yesterday there are many gems that would, I hope, have pleased the grand old man of English socialism. My favourite, retold in this piece by Valentine Low of the Times, concerns the moment when Mr Foot sought to persuade a steward at Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park football ground that a good book is the world's most powerful weapon.

After my comments about the importance of reading widely (and Allan Little's impassioned guidance on the same theme), Alan McGuinness asked me to recommend my favourite novels about journalists and journalism. You know about Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. I also recommend Towards the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn, The Quiet American by Graham Greene and Yellow Dog by Martin Amis. Of course, journalists should not restrict themselves to fiction about journalists.
During his excellent session yesterday, Allan Little told the story of Jessica Lynch, the 19-year-old US Army Ordnance Clerk who was captured by Iraqi soldiers in 2003. Allan described how the truth about Private Lynch was spun into a fictional heroic fantasy by the Pentagon's top rotational surgeons. You can read the full version of Jessica's story
Very pleasing to read, in
Allan Little, the BBC's multiple award winning Special Correspondent, will now make his second visit to the Centre for Journalism on Monday 8 March. Allan will meet and talk to students in an informal newsroom session at 12 noon. He has recently returned from Afghanistan, where he broadcast live reports during a Taliban attack in central Kabul.