We're broke, and it's getting worse. Alistair Darling will see to that. Seasoned readers may recall a previous dark time, when a Labour Chancellor had his back to the wall and started lashing out at taxpayers. That was Denis Healey, who faced with chaotic Government finances promised to "squeeze the rich until the pips squeak". The ensuing tax carnage notably failed to make any impact on public finances. People simply walked – the great brain drain of the 1970s. Are we seeing something similar now?

Their backdrop showed a man relaxing in his bath, about to be rudely awakened by a plugged-in toaster falling from above. If only Fall Out Boy could have shown such spark.

From a lecture by the governor of the Central Bank of Turkey, delivered at the London School of Economics

The Kyoto deal has been hailed as proof that the world's nations can co-operate to confront climate change. It has also been derided as an empty exercise in political posturing. The truth is that it is both

Environmentalists hailed Russia as the world's ecological saviour yesterday after the Russian parliament made good on President Vladimir Putin's promise to endorse the Kyoto climate change pact. Yesterday's vote will see the UN treaty take effect early next year.

Gleneagles, the five-star hotel in Scotland famed for its world-class golf courses, is to host the next G8 conference.

FINALLY, THE British government has put its money where its mouth is. For years British chancellors - from Nigel Lawson and John Major to Kenneth Clarke and then Gordon Brown - have exhorted the international community to do something about the burden of Third World debt. For years poor nations and British aid agencies have told those same chancellors that exhortation was not enough; action was needed. And for years, on the advice of Treasury officials, politicians have adopted a stance of "if everyone won't do it, we can't do it alone".

From a speech by the President of Germany before the Global Development Network, meeting in Bonn

Sir: The "prosperous southern communities of Esher and Wokingham" should not be led astray by the Bristol University Townsend Centre report that they have better health and greater life expectation than poorer parts of the UK community ("Preventable deaths rise as health gap widens", 2 December).

Sir: For the last 200 years, wealth creation in the industrialised countries has been running up an environmental debt on the global account (" `Too late to stop global warming' ", 16 September). The scale of this debt dwarfs the financial debt owed by developing countries to their polluting creditors. Because of this, such "external" debts should be cancelled forthwith.

The idea of free trade is under attack as never before in the post-war era