El Pais managed to reduce its papal coverage to only 9 pages yesterday. Not bad for a left-wing newspaper. El Mundo’s was as low as a mere 7 pages but then they have the satisfaction of knowing that the Opus Dei candidate was elected and so don’t need either to crow or to moan.

As a Rover 45 owner, I was rather distressed to read yesterday that the Administrators of this bankrupt company had walked away from the 3-year-warranty obligations. Or at least the first two years. Theoretically, the third year is the responsibility of the local dealer but I can’t help wondering whether mine will see things this way, as he stares into the abyss.

Parliament has now finalised the points-based driving licence system that’s aimed at reducing Spain’s high road mortality rate. The number of offences has been reduced from 45 to 31 and a table of penalties established. My first impression is that you’d need an IQ of at least 150 to get your head around this but the one thing that does seem clear is that it will remain impossible to lose your licence unless you are caught at least twice on the same day driving at 180kph with a bottle of Rioja in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. As expected, the law enshrines the principle that you need to be doing 150kph on an autopista before you risk losing even a quarter of the points you started with. I guess if you then drive off at 150 you might just lose a few more. But you need to be doing 180kph [113mph] to lose half your points. The most worrying comment I’ve read was that the highest penalties are reserved for “kamikaze” drivers. I don’t know what the definition is but, if you’re planning to drive on Spanish roads, you’ve been warned.

Someone arrived at my blog today having put ‘yobs with potatoes’ in their search engine. The latter asked whether they hadn’t meant ‘jobs with potatoes’. Of course.