The price of love: A German man came up with a canny money-saving device recently when he opted to leave his girlfriend in prison rather than pay off her €220 shoplifting fine.

After the woman was jailed, she called her boyfriend and asked him to pay the fine which he refused to do. "People are very worried in the current economic climate and they have to make whatever savings they can," a police spokesman in Wanne-Eickel said. "He saw not paying the fine as a simple saving."