Onlookers have delighted, as onlookers do, in the spectacle of the get-rich-quick merchants getting nothing but their just deserts.

ECONOMIST: All that glisters . . .

If someone has already received more than his or her just financial deserts for what they do in life, the knighthood might then look like an institutionalised form of having your cake and eating it: lovely for the recipient, but perhaps of limited social utility.

BBC: Do business leaders deserve their gongs?

Unless something is done to reverse the decline in Europe's fish stock, the oceans here will be as devoid of life as deserts are in just four decades from now, President Grimsson said.

BBC: Davos 2013: Iceland slams Europe over fishing policy