The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee says children are not George Osborne’s priority. For this captain it is older people first to the lifeboats, women and children last. A smell of decadence and corruption hangs in the air of a society when tomorrow is sacrificed for today, like the Easter Islanders who cut down all their trees and so exterminated themselves.

In The Times Patrick Hosking says trust in pensions requires savers to be quietly confident the rules will be more or less the same in 30 or 40 years’ time. That’s an alien notion for featherbedded ministers riding the five-year electoral cycle.

The Daily Telegraph’s Fraser Nelson thinks that this week, the Chancellor unveiled a Budget that was every bit as radical as he claimed – and for reasons that Westminster has yet fully to comprehend. The pensions revolution he announced effectively signals the end of the social contract that has underpinned the welfare state since its creation.

The Daily Mail’s Tom Utley asks: What is it that John McTernan doesn’t understand about the words ‘their own money’? How can it possibly be preferable to sink his life-savings into some pathetic annuity, to be picked at by the vultures of the insurance industry, when he and his wife can spend the money on what they want — with any left over for her widowhood?

The Independent’s Andreas Whittam Smith thinks that despite the new freedom, it might still be wise to purchase an annuity. For it pays out until you die and thus removes the risk that you live so long that you use up all your savings and end up penniless in your final years. On the other hand, if unfortunately you die shortly after taking out an annuity, the “wasted” capital won’t be returned.

In The Daily Express Chris Roycroft-Davis says that by tearing up the tax rules which shackled pension pots and forced people to buy meagre annuities they didn’t want, the Chancellor did more than offer financial hope to millions. He also struck a mighty blow for the freedom of the individual.

The Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn thinks we should look beyond the usual synthetic Twitter storm and the puerile political point-scoring. Shoot the messenger, by all means. But pay attention to the message. What if, instead of beer and bingo, the advert had read: ‘Cutting income tax and stamp duty to help hard-working people’? Now you’re talking. Letting people keep more of their own money and setting them free to decide what to spend it on is a sure-fire vote winner.

The Daily Telegraph’s Isabel Hardman says the Tories published a stupid campaign “graphic” suggesting, in condescending terms, that they thought all working-class people played bingo while sipping beer. Eric Pickles fell asleep in the House of Commons. These were the two best bits of the Budget this week for the Labour Party, which decided to bow out of debating any of the actual announcements.

The Independent’s Mark Steel is sure he imagined that mobs would greet him saying, “Bless you Mr Shapps, sir, you’re a kindly soul for helping us simple folk with them things we enjoy sir like bingo, sir, even though we don’t understand numbers like you clever folk so we don’t know what a five looks like so no one can ever win but even so it’s all what we enjoy sir, just like you said, that and dog-fighting, sir.”

In The FT Norbert Rottgen, chairman of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, argues that sanctions can only be effective in combination with diplomacy. Their goal is not to punish, the goal is to settle a conflict and to prevent further escalation. The person who is inflicting the most painful sanctions on Russia is Mr Putin himself. He is isolating his country from the international community and he is harming the Russian economy for years to come.

In The Guardian author Agata Pyzik thinks that if we hope for the westernisation of Ukraine, and to wrest it from Putin’s hands, let’s make sure this doesn’t simply mean further exploitation of the country – and the women who live there.

In The International New York Times Roger Cohen argues that the language Putin understands is force and power. His meandering annexation speech made clear that he regards eastern Ukraine as wrongly usurped from Russia. If further Russian designs on Ukraine are to be stopped, President Obama has to respond to the Russian president in the idiom he understands. Providing U.S. Army rations as military support to Kiev amounts to history repeated as farce.

In the Times Ben Macintyre says Putin has no real interest in history but, like his Soviet predecessors, he has an instinctive understanding of how to use it as a weapon.

The Daily Mirror thinks that the speed at which George Osborne’s Budget unravelled sets a new record for Chancellors of the Exchequer. No sooner had he sat down than Tory chairman Grant Shapps was devising his patronising ‘they’ advert about hardworking people, beer and bingo, unintentionally reinforcing how the Conservative leadership peers down its nose at the working people they lord it over.

The Independent thinks that the reason why Washington, London and other states have been so gentle with the Saudis and their allies, responsible though they are for sustaining the jihadi movement, is the kingdom’s financial might, the West’s hunger for arms deals and the lure of consultancy contracts and other personal benefits for powerful individuals. The “war on terror” has failed and failed unnecessarily. Were there to be a repeat of 9/11, then those responsible for that defeat should be held accountable.

The FT thinks that the decision to scrap a rule effectively forcing purchase of annuities at retirement has been rightly hailed as the most substantial reform of the pension system since its introduction nearly a century ago. But while the new world facing British savers looks better than the status quo, the government must stand ready to manage the risks that its revolution entails.

The Daily Telegraph’s John Bingham says that now the honeymoon is long past, Archbishop Justin Welby is preparing for what promises to be a far bigger battle for the soul of the Church both in England and in the wider Anglican Communion over an issue that has plagued it for years: its unresolved position on homosexuality. Even his admirers admit privately that in comparison with the rows over women bishops, the battle over sexuality is like “an elephant compared to the flea”. Many once-vehement opponents of women bishops have recently softened their stance precisely because they are keeping their powder dry for a bigger fight to come.

The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins says tourism may be Britain’s second biggest industry after finance, yet it has no department, no minister, no parliamentary lobby. It enjoys no tax breaks to equate with those available to farming, new building schemes, even film-making. The historic buildings, towns and landscapes of Britain are not Venice. But they are equally vulnerable and irreplaceable – and equally popular. Increasingly they will be key to the profitability of the tourist industry. They have yet to convert that profit into power. British politics still regards beauty as for wimps.

The Daily Mail’s Jan Moir says shrill voices on both sides of the Atlantic have claimed that referring to L’Wren Scott in terms of her relationship with Mick Jagger was both foolish and demeaning. The truth is that if you are a marginally notable personage who spent more than a decade in a relationship with one of the most famous icons of the 20th century, then your obituary and the headlines accompanying it are going to reflect that. Surely the truth is more important than the scalded feelings of a few peeved she-fems who are always desperate to whirl their cudgels at the latest perceived media hurts?

@allisonpearson