But for the wall-to-wall coverage of the BBC's crisis, the latest graphs of doom on public finance from the Social Market Foundation (SMF) and Royal Society of Arts (RSA), may have got as much front-page treatment as the last graphs of doom from the Local Government Association back in June.

The SMF/RSA version this week, with its guaranteed spine-chiller title Fiscal fallout cranks up the figures another few notches. This time, the cuts or tax rises needed to meet the Government's deficit-reduction targets by 2017 are an extra £48bn on top of the current Spending Review's – increasingly missed – targets.