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Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. £1m made up of £20 notes weighs 25 times as much as the equivalent of £1m in 500 euro notes.

2. Downing Street's famous black front door was once green.

3. And the original door - now in the Churchill Museum - has its own cleaner.

4. Shakespeare's Henry VIII is considered jinxed because during a performance in 1613, the Globe theatre burned down.

5. The prime minister's first task is always to answer the question of whether he would retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.

6. More than half of Spain's cabinet is female.

7. China smokes one third of the world's cigarettes.

8. And there are 4.5 trillion cigarette butts discarded each year.

9. Florence Nightingale used the pseudonym "Miss Smith" to evade the media.

10. Hair is used to clean up oil spills because it is adsorbent (not absorbent).

Seen 10 things? . Thanks to Vic Barton=Walderstadt for this week's picture of 10 spring buds in Hertfordshire.

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Re banning mobiles in meetings, I have had a plumber take calls and get called away by other clients twice and then he had the cheek to charge me travel time for having to come back.
Sally Heming

They say pictures are worth a 1,000 words so I have put together to sum up the entire election in a single simple view. I humbly suggest it can be inserted into the pages of the history books and will save some poor soul from having to cobble together a load of that "the maths did not work any other way and the country needed a strong and stable government" nonsense.
Christian Cook, Epsom, UK
Monitor note: Other images summing up the entire election are no doubt available.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have the new coalition cabinet wear green ties - blue and yellow does make green.
Kit, Devon

Brianofthecam, Cambridge (just down the road - hi there!), Downing Street's windows are most likely bulletproof, just like the windows of the Cabinet room. They cracked in 1991 with the force of the blast.
John Airey, Peterborough, UK

Hey! Where's the low-graphics version of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú news site gone? The high-graphics version is much harder for the visually impaired, takes longer to load for those of us on dial-up, and takes much longer to find individual stories. Bring it back please!
Terry, Christchurch, NZ

Ditto. I now get abused with a slideshow of a grinning David and Nick rather than my nice clear headlines. A turn for the worse.
Tim Granger, Cambridge

Luisa, who is taken with the job title of Chief Whip (Thursday letters), we have better titles here in the Capitol. I imagine the Sergeant-at-Arms at one point actually did have a gun (or probably, even still does), but I can only assume that the Engrossing Secretary maybe is furnished with a plentiful supply of lipstick and the odd flirtatious remark.
Rachel, Minnetonka

So there are people out there who will read and then comment on the redundant word in the headline (Thursday letters).
*shudder*
Kaylie, Runcorn, UK

Si, Hannah (Thursday letters), actually the duplication of parts of an acronym can help clarify meanings, for example SAT test, ISBN number, ATM machine, HIV virus. I don't need to know what they stand for, but I know they are a test, a number, a machine and a virus.
Tom, Maidstone, UK

An ASBO Order has a certain sense to it though - an ASB Order smacks of encouragement.
Rahere, Smithfield

I see Sam Cam has . But in the body of the article we learn she had been working four days a week before stepping down to two during the election campaign. Maybe this definition of full-time is why we miss out on Letters on a regular basis? Does Monitor follow Sam Cam's example?
Margaret, Christchurch, NZ

Lavender-flavoured coffee might make the Monitor twitch (Thursday letters), but there are a couple which I would like to see. I suggest bacon-and-egg flavour for an all-in-one treat, and tea-flavoured coffee for those of us racked by indecision. Cheese and onion tea, vicar ?
Graham, Purmerend

Re Michael of Edinburgh and the missing 54 letters, will the following do:
A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z ß ø
(I particularly like the last two.)
Tom, Croydon

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Winning entries in the Caption Competition.

The competition is now closed.

This week it's Dame Helen Mirren looking on as her husband Taylor Hackford kisses a new wax figure of herself at Madame Tussauds in London.

Thanks to all who entered. The prize of a small amount of kudos to the following:

6. SkarloeyLine
Taylor's dummy.

5. MightyGiddyUpGal
"Too right, it's the Royal We."

4. BeckySnow
"Total waste of Clubcard vouchers this has turned out to be."

3. jtotheglo
Dr Frankenstein had finally cracked it.

2. SimonRooke
That's always the problem with TV these days, too many repeats.

1. simon
If Carlsberg did Saga Holidays...

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

After all the wedding metaphors yesterday to describe the coalition's first press conference, the newspapers were searching for new imagery to report on .

The Guardian had to follow , in which she said the new power-sharing arrangement was like an Ikea flatpack with screws missing and liable to collapse.

Today her colleague Michael White likens the crowded cabinet meeting to the crush on the 24 bus that drives past Downing Street:

Those who had managed to scramble on board all looked cheerful, grateful to be off the street at last, even if they had just been told they were getting 5% clipped off their Oyster cards as part of the economy drive

Studying , Tim Dowling in the same paper points to Andrew Lansley, sat next to Caroline Spelman, and quips:

[This is ] where they started the seating plan, intending to go clockwise, boy-girl-boy-girl, until they realised that wasn't going to work out

The seating plan, according to the Times, suggested that William Hague was deputy leader in all but name, because he was on David Cameron's left-hand side. The official deputy, Nick Clegg, was seated directly opposite.

The Telegraph extends the wedding metaphor to one of honeymoons (a subject ). He thrown by the happy couple.

But after the meeting finished, the scene reminded him of something more nostalgic:

Once the new ministers got out of Cabinet and were walking away down Whitehall, they looked perkier, like children who have been let out of school

Presumably, turning all their mobile phones back on, too...

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Welcome to the Weekly Bonus Question.

Each week the news quiz 7 days 7 questions will offer an answer. You are invited to suggest what the question might have been.

Suggestions should be sent using the COMMENTS BOX IN THIS ENTRY. Any answers submitted using the "Send us a letter" form on the right will be summarily ignored.

And since nobody likes a smart alec, kudos will be deducted for predictability in your suggestions.

This week's answer is "1,752 PAGES".

UPDATE 1519 BST: The correct answer is how long is England's 2018 World Cup bid book. The many people who submitted this below should feel only shame at being so literal. Of the deliberately wrong entries, we liked:

• SkarloeyLine's How many have auditioned for the Led Zeppelin tribute band?
• tony's In Xanadu did Khubla Khan a mighty pleasure dome decree. How long would the planning application be in modern day Britain?
• BeckySnow's How much had I typed before realising I'd got caps lock on and was sounding a bit shouty?
• Kipson's How much of this Jeffrey Archer novel do I have to read before I get to the good bit?
• And LaurenceLane's How long are the full rules to Mornington Crescent?

Thanks to all who entered.

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"I thought 'Oh God, what's he doing now?'" - David Cameron momentarily forgets he is prime minister, while listening to the news

In his first newspaper interview since becoming prime minister, Mr Cameron tells the Sun that he is still getting used to having the top job. As he woke up to the radio news, he thought the newsreader was talking about someone else and then thought: "Oh no, hang on a second - it's me!"

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Will the no-longer dreadlocked lady be contributing to ?
Joseph, London

I love the fact that the is bomb-proof, while the very Georgian-looking glass paned windows either side clearly are not.
Brianofthecam, Cambridge, UK

In , Jenny Mulholland, landlady of the nearby Willow Tree pub, says: "I just happened to look out the window and saw a bus with no roof and thought, 'that's a sight you don't see very often'."
Y'see, it's the very rare occasions when I read something as wonderfully understated and matter-of-fact as this that I feel genuinely proud to be British.
Sue, London

Re ;
*twitch*
Si, Leeds

My pedant alarm went off instantly when I saw that headline. Almost as bad as when I heard a newsreader in Wales refer to "ASBO orders".
Hannah, Oxford

Never mind Morecambe and Wise (Paper Monitor), will Nick and Dave behaviour like Ant and Dec and always stand the same way round so we can tell them apart?
Howard G, Nottingham

Chief Whip? Now that's a great title! Although I was a little disappointed to discover it had nothing to do with ice cream.
Luisa, Frome

In fairness, Ken Clarke also has an eccentric taste in footwear (Wednesday letters). Put him in knee breeches and tights plus brown suedes and you have a story.
Ed, London

Talking of grovelheaps (Wednesday letters), I've always felt that these bumper crops of letters never quite made up for the lack of missed-day letters; so I checked. In the past two years there have been nine "bumper crops" including a total of 126 letters: a healthy average bumper crop of 14. Comparing each to the previous completed letters selection gives an average normal crop of 10 letters. This means each grovelheap makes up only 40% of the missed letters and we are owed 54 letters in the past two years alone.
Michael, Edinburgh, UK

Dear Candace, as an alternative to the Monitor's suggestion in Wednesday letters, why not just eat coffee-flavoured fudge brownies?
Nima_toad, DC, US

Eating a brownie with a coffee isn't the same as fudge brownie-flavoured coffee, due to the calories... Could Monitor be a skinny-minnie bloke?
Carol, Bangalore, India

We have lavender-flavoured coffee. Trying too hard?
Rachel, Minnetonka
Monitor note: *twitch*

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

It's Through the Keyhole, only without the mystery as to whose house it is.

The Guardian runs a picture gallery of Gordon Brown's final hours... with photographer Martin Argles inside Downing Street. Those who love open house weekends and backstage tours will lap this stuff up.

And it's something of an accidental companion piece to the Magazine's article on , in that it swings open that famous front door and heads up to what's called the "war room".

Paper Monitor scrolled through the last night, having stumbled across it while reading about , but the version in today's newspaper makes for a much richer experience.

The photos are about five times the size, for one thing, allowing a detailed view of what, exactly, Mr Brown had on his desk, including:

• contact lens solutions
• first-day-at-school snap of son John, clutching a red book bag
• cut crystal tumbler

• rainbow coalition of six landscape scenes, presumably by the elder of his sons
• framed photos of both boys
• finger-painting taped to the wall, presumably by the younger of his sons

And instead of the online version's bald captions - eg: "Brown takes the phone call from Clegg that seals his resignation" - the newspaper sensibly gets a reporter to interview Argles and craft his impressions into a proper story. (Some of Paper Monitor's best friends are photojournalists. Great at telling stories with pictures. Words... not so much.)

"[T]hey were having quite a good time laughing, which was really just to keep the tension down, I think, while we were waiting for this phone call. Then it came. And there was silence. The whole place fell completely silent. Brown answered the phone, and we could hear him saying: 'Nick, Nick. I can't hold on any longer. Nick. I've got to go to the palace. The country expects me to do that. I have to go. The Queen expects me to go. I can't hold on any longer.' Presumably Clegg was trying to get him to not go to the palace while he extracted some more concessions from Cameron. I assume."

It's obviously something of a coup, because the Daily Mail has bought the lot and .

Elsewhere, the papers wheel out the likenesses to the country's newest double act. The Sun's front page photo montage casts Cameron and Clegg as a skipping Morecambe and Wise with the headline: "Bring us sunshine".

Mail columnist Jan Moir likens them to , "two peas from a very privileged pod".

The Daily Mirror calls them "HISTORY BOYS" (Paper Monitor's italics for the Mirror's blue text).

The Independent, and many of the others, cast it as a civil partnership - garden setting, grooms in near-matching smart suits etc - "... 'til debt us do part."

And the Guardian picks up on the blizzard of tweets comparing the pair to Jeeves and Wooster.

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"I got them trapped in car doors and would trip over them if I bent down" - Paula Jamison, who has cut off her 4ft 9in dreadlocks for charity.

The dreads took 22 years to grow, and were nearly as long as Ms Jamison is tall by the time she cut them off to raise money for cancer charities after a friend died of leukaemia. She now sports a smart bob.

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In , it includes the fact that Theresa May has an exotic taste in shoes. I hope that as the only woman this is entirely coincidental, or alternatively as she is the minister for equality this is intentionally ironic.
Luke, Edinburgh
Monitor note: This article has since been updated.

Re Georgian properties on the Thomas Coram Estate had a covenant that stated front doors had to be black. Ours was a hotel in Hunter St.
EnglishFolkfan

Time for a haircut! ()
nbasty

The tennis.
Joanna Jones

The World Cup squad.
Oliver Jillings

What do the English traditionally talk about? The weather.
Chris Rutt

Our latest coffee flavours this end - Island Coconut and Fudge Brownie.
Candace Sleeman
Monitor note: Why not just *eat* a chocolate brownie with a cup of coffee-flavoured coffee?

I don't really understand how people can NOT be interested in politics.
Luke Charmander

I feel like I've just stepped into a PG Wodehouse inspired alternate reality...
Paul Maplesden, Tunbridge Wells, UK

I suggest a new flexicon entry with the definition "A bumper crop by way of apology" to save Magazine Monitor time in future. How about "grovelheap"?
Joel, Tokyo, Japan

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

A new prime minister, new parties in power, the first coalition government in 70 years... it's a significant day in news, so how do the papers lend sufficient gravitas to the situation?

Set your dust covers to stand-by.

The Express goes for that tried and trusted technique of filling the front page with just a picture and a headline, while the Daily Telegraph plays its headline-in-whopping-point-size tactic, which it deployed with such effect in last year's expenses expose.

Still too subtle? The Sun spells it out by branding today's offering an "historic edition". If, like Paper Monitor, you like to squirrel away editions of newspapers that mark significant events, in the doubtless deluded belief that future generations will be interested - you might be interested to know what the Sun has done that marks it out as THE one to keep from today's crop.

Frankly, it's a bit difficult to see. Inside it republishes (in thumbnail form) its election day front page take on the Obama hope poster - in which David Cameron was substituted for the then-US senator. And there's a "victory" version of the poster as well - but again, it's no bigger than a postage stamp.

There are columns, from David Blunkett, Dr Irwin Steltzer and Lorraine Kelly... but that's hardly souvenir stuff. Maybe, just maybe, they are hiding something in the centre pages - a pull-out-and-keep pic of David and Samantha at the door of No 10. Nope, it's just a gatefold ad for Sky+.

The Independent does the David Cameron life story across three pages, and the Clegg biography across two - both with requisite family snaps of the leaders as children and as fresh-faced students.

In fact, if it's special, souvenir, keep this for the grandkids type stuff that you are after, the Daily Mirror is the only paper to come up trumps - with an eight-page pull-out "tribute" to Gordon Brown.

One dust cover, at least, will not go disappointed.

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"A passer-by said, 'Need some help, brother?' and put a dollar in my hat" - Sir Ian McKellen, mistaken for a homeless man while in his Waiting for Godot tramp costume.

The noted thespian is in Australia rehearsing the Beckett play, and while taking a break a passing stranger slipped him some change. It's now on Sir Ian's dressing room wall as a lucky talisman.

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A bumper crop by way of apology.

I don't want to complicate things, but if we're to have a vote on how we vote, should we have another vote before that in order to vote on the voting system we'll use to vote about the voting system?
Christian Cook, Epsom, UK

Wouldn't it be excellent if all wars were like .
Phil, Guisborough

Re Tuesday's Quote of the Day, who was rated coolest when the votes were counted? We should be told.
Francis, Watford

Just so long as they still have heated back windows for when you push the car.
Iain F MacMillan

What do you call a Lada with a sunroof... a skip.
Debbie Carson-Mills

There is a compilation of traffic cam footage from the Lefortovo Tunnel in Moscow - basically just a series of crashes. Most of the cars are wrecked, but at the end a trusty Lada rolls over, then back onto four wheels. The driver just checked his mirrors and continued as if nothing happened. We could do with solid cars like that.
John Henderson

I had a Lada Riva 1500 estate in the late 1980s. Fuel consumption varied from 30.0mpg to 30.5mpg. I reckoned it was a good example of Soviet standardisation: it was built in the same factory as the MiG-29 fighter, so went like the clappers, but it was built on the same assembly line as the T-72 battle tank, and that's how it drove. I've driven Skodas ever since - now they're good.
Rev Tony Buglass, Mytholmroyd, W Yorks

I never knew Lord Alan Sugar was a . Go figure.
Luisa, Frome

Hung parliament? There could well be a hung Magazine Monitor if we don't get any new letters to entertain us - it's Tuesday lunchtime and we still only have Friday's letters to stimulate our minds.
Graeme, Woking
Monitor note: At ease, dear readers.

Could Paper Monitor's prolonged absence be explained by the theory that he/she/it is at the Palace in discussion with the Queen about forming a government?
PM for PM!
Phil, Oxford

Isn't the Fay Weldon quote from ? I was very interested to read it, having missed it the first time round, but just wondered how it came to be quote of the day in 2010?
Emma, Oxford

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

It's Hung Britain Day Five, and despite all the fears about instability and what "the markets" will do, a few have done well out of the commotion.

Graphic designers, who expected their election branding (noted by Paper Monitor on the first full day of the campaign) to have been consigned to the wastepaper basket are surely allowing themselves a wry smile as they sit back and relish how their creations are still gracing the tops of pages.

The Daily Mail has, however, augmented its "Election 2010" blue, red and yellow circles with a sort of temperature-of-the-masses tag, today reading "A squalid day".

Metaphor manufacturers, were they to exist, would be enduring this hiatus of power... after all time is money.

There's Ann Treneman in the Times talking about

"not so much the hand of history as [a] glove puppet"

While the Daily Telegraph's Andrew Gimson likens Mr Brown to a

"mortally wounded bear emerging from his lair"

The prime minister's resignation has also given the bookies further tenure in the press, as they go from calculating odds on who will win the election to who is favourite to win the Labour leadership contest.

It's David Miliband, by the way, though there's some disagreement on whether he is 4-7 (the Guardian and the Telegraph) or 4-6 (the Sun).

The Independent opts out of all this unseemly wager-staking, offering a star system instead. Both Milibands (David and Ed) get four stars, as does Alan Johnson.

Finally, Paper Monitor was intrigued to note how the Sun and its Scottish twin differ on the question of "Democrazy" in their editorials.

The Sun: "[Gordon Brown] is brazenly selling himself at any price to Nick Clegg's Lib Dems and a ragtag collection of MPs in Scots, Welsh and Ulster seats."

The Scottish Sun: "He is brazenly selling himself at any price to Nick Clegg's Lib Dems and a collection of minority parties."

has more details.

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"From the following list in your opinion who is/was a 'cool' leader - Richard Branson, Gordon Brown, Adolf Hitler..." - Staff survey by West Midlands Ambulance Service

In a research project aimed at promoting "leadership development", staff were asked to rate a list of leaders - including Hitler, Fabio Capello and their own chief executive - from one to five, with one being "not cool" and five being "cool". Some staff contacted their union to complain about the survey.

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Your Letters will return tomorrow. As Harold Macmillan said: "Events dear boy".

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A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.

It's Hung Britain Day Four and while an effective lack of government in the UK has yet to see the world spin off its axis, a few themes are starting to emerge in the newspaper coverage of the story.

1. The Venn diagram of policy differences and similarities. Trialled by the Independent on Saturday the Daily Telegraph clearly liked this graphic so much it decided to replicate it... though it appears to have missed out an attribution.

2. The Markets has become the watch-phrase of the moment.

"The markets won't wait" - Daily Telegraph

"The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have until Wednesday to reach a power-sharing deal, or risk turmoil on the markets" - Metro

"A deadline for coming to a coalition deal last night was missed - opening up the prospect of a massive wobble when the markets open at 7am today" - the Sun

"Rough ride on the markets: Pages 4&5" - Daily Express

"'With the markets being highly nervous and fragile...'" - Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, Daily Mail

3. Chelsea beating Manchester United provides a neat allegory of a blue side winning against a red team, as the Times and Metro unsubtly point out.

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"They were very vulgar, very middle-class with very rich colours and double glazed" - Author Fay Weldon describes the Pearly Gates which she says she saw in a near-death experience

When Fay Weldon's heart stopped last year because of an allergic reaction, she says she then saw the gates of paradise, and a figure like Cerberus (the multi-headed hound that guards the gates of Hell) was trying to drag her to the other side. The former atheist says she is now convinced there is an "over there".

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