The Irish Times, 19 November 2010
At least the International Monetary men do: today’s Irish Times features a front-page shot of the IMF experts tasked with overseeing the budget austerity plans as they stride over to the Irish Central Bank HQ in Dublin, with a beggar holding out a coffee cup. “IMF/EU staff begin formal talks with Government,” reports the paper adding that the discussions will include “more than 20 officials from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission”. The daily also runs a selection of readers’ reactions to yesterday’s editorial, which asked “whether this is what the men of 1916 died for: a bailout from the German chancellor with a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor on the side.”
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies. 
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either? 
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku.