Newspaper review: Strong views on RBS ousting
The ousting of Stephen Hester from the Royal Bank of Scotland has provoked some forthright comment.
Bankers who complain of politicians meddling in their affairs are told, by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, to "shut up".
"Remember who started this," he says, pointing out it was the banks that were guilty of reckless lending, until the bubble burst and the same banks then begged for a state bailout.
The Financial Times says the myth that the government could deal with the banks at arm's length has been shattered.
But the Daily Mail declares that "meddling politicians and incompetent civil servants should have as little as possible to do with running huge commercial enterprises".
The Mail goes on to say that "the only task that matters to the taxpayer" is "getting our money back".
About that too, opinions differ. The Daily Mirror fears the chancellor is planning "a Tory election fire sale" - and it tells Mr Osborne that his duty is to sell the state's shares in RBS only "when it profits taxpayers".
The Daily Express says Mr Osborne may be "tempted by the idea of a privatisation" before the next election - but it warns that the low share price of banks makes a tight timetable "unwise".
Life and crimes
Several papers devote pages to the life and brutal crimes of Dale Cregan. To the Sun he is a "swaggering psychopath", a "ticking timebomb".
The Daily Mirror tells how he made the couple he was holding hostage trim his beard and hair - then dressed in his new designer clothes - before murdering two policewomen.
He was "self obsessed," says the Mirror, "mainly concerned about making sure he looked his best."
With a false eye made of black onyx, says the Independent, he had a "fearsome appearance".
The Times calls Cregan a drug dealer who "thrived on a diet of steroids, cocaine and violence".
The Daily Telegraph says the killings for which he has been jailed for the rest of his life were the final act in a decade-long feud between two gangland families in Manchester.
According to the Guardian, news that Rupert Murdoch and his third wife, Wendi Deng, are to divorce took the media by surprise.
The Daily Mail, and other papers, remember when at a Commons hearing on the phone-hacking scandal she leapt from her seat and slapped a protester who had thrown a shaving-foam pie at her husband.
Now, says the Independent, the couple appear to be "hacked off - with each other".
The Times wonders why car design still seems to be done by men, for men.
It reports that a plea from Andy Palmer of Nissan for car makers to do far more to accommodate the wishes of women.
He says more than half of all women are unhappy with their cars - from the seats to the sales patter - and suggests that one remedy might be for far more women to be trained as engineers rather than, say, hairdressers.