Most journalistic accounts of the new forms of electronic money misleadingly spin the story as the emergence of yet another convenience for the technologically pampered.

The urban intelligentsia and professionals have been pampered with material perks and political recognition, while new private entrepreneurs have been allowed to join the Party.

And We sent not unto any township a warner , but its pampered ones declared Lo ! we are disbelievers in that wherewith ye have been sent .

And We sent not unto any township a warner , but its pampered ones declared Lo ! we are disbelievers in that wherewith ye have been sent .

Princess Sahar sent this photo of herself to Channel 4 News. People don't realise how hard our situation is. They still see us as 'pampered' Saudi Princesses.

There, the pampered chimpanzee who, when asked to sort photos of humans and apes, put his own photo among the humans was locked in a cage with other chimps.

The shoe did not hit Saleh but sent home the message that Yemenis are angry he is getting pampered instead of facing justice for his crimes against the Yemeni people.

The 1949 communist takeover in China, the Cold War, America's adoption of Japan as its pampered protégé, and the failure to prosecute Emperor Hirohito for war crimes, allowed Japan to avoid a moral reckoning.

If we were dogs in those faraway lands we would be sitting by the fire now, eating and getting pampered, even being protected. But here, as a human, you wait your turn you either clean their wounds or they clean yours.

Ideally, that head of state would be an elected president, rather than a hereditary monarch. Indeed, anything worthwhile that a monarch can do, an elected non executive president can do better not least because an elected official is much less likely to be undermined by the scandals of pampered offspring or degraded by the inevitable hypocrisy and servility of a royal court.