Martina helps out for free at the local labour exchange to keep herself sane.

ECONOMIST: Our former Frankfurt correspondent looks back

"Never, ever wrap your hand for any reason in the line, " Burkholder said to the volunteers who were eager to do the menial labour of science in exchange for getting a closer look at the creatures they were hoping to save.

BBC: Protecting sharks off Florida��s eastern coast

This comes after numerous complaints that some agencies and businesses have been offering low grade apprenticeships that only last for a few weeks or even months, in exchange for cheap labour and government funding.

BBC: Apprenticeships 'should last a year', report says

Those at the bottom make a short-term exchange of cash for labour.

ECONOMIST: Classification

Botswana also boasts lower corporate taxes, an absence of exchange controls, simpler labour laws and little of the violent crime that prompts South Africans to fit their cars with alarms, satellite tracking devices and even flame-throwers.

ECONOMIST: The desert booms

Whether accused of doling out seats in the House of Lords in exchange for donations to the Labour Party, or taking the country to war based on questionable intelligence, Blair emerged unscathed--with not a single electoral defeat to his name.

FORBES: Tony Blair Boards With Random House

Yet free prices, free exchange rates, free trade, free labour markets and privatisation have proved a colossal success.

ECONOMIST: The world after 1989

Supporters of the new government also say that it will try to make economic reform more palatable to Congress: whereas Mr Mahuad proposed the new exchange-rate regime as part of a package including telecoms and energy privatisation and changes in the labour laws, the new team may try to do things in stages.

ECONOMIST: Ecuador��s post-coup reckoning