Stuff his mouth with gold
Those clamouring for the government to stop paying Sir Fred Goodwin his £690,000 p.a. pension and, in the words of John Prescott (himself the beneficiary of a handsome taxpayer-funded pension), “let him sue”, shoud remember Louise Brandeis’s law. Goodwin’s greed may be sickening, his lack of shame unfathomable, his hubris inexplicable, but one thing’s for sure: the rule of law is worth a lot more than whatever he receives. Goodwin’s contract should be honoured. Stuff his mouth with gold.
Res ipsa loquitur
The ex-councillor from Blackburn, now (and for the time being still) Lord Taylor, may not be familiar with the legal concept ‘res ipsa loquitur’, despite all his ermine . It means ‘things speak for themselves’. However much he huffs and puffs about the injustice of the Sunday Times’s allegations, the recordings of his conversation with the newspaper’s reporters make everything quite clear. One hundred thousand pounds is, apparently, cheap at the price for his services. If ever there was a modern example of Thoreau’s Ruling this is it. The ignoble Lord should be stripped of his title and forced to repay his immoral earnings to the taxpayer.
Lessons from the bail-out
Was there ever greater proof than the last fortnight’s events for Kahn’s Law: ‘The rich get rich and the poor get poorer’. The world’s bankers who have brought us to this crisis walk away with millions, while ordinary taxpayers foot the bill. No-one should be surprised. As for saving your own skin, the best advice may be Swanson’s. ‘When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats.’
Palin’s Precepts
What, we wondered, are the Laws that feisty Alaskan senator Sarah Palin subscribes to? Some suggestions below:
First off, she’d undoubtedly agree with Whitton’s Law, and it’s corollary.
Secondly, her reputation for shaking up cosy, corrupt government suggests she’d have some sympathy with Stalin’s adage (in the case of the murderous Soviet regime, the obvious riposte was “but where’s the omelette?”), if not with his methods.
Finally, Palin’s track record as a doer puts in mind Lady Thatcher’s withering assessment of men in politics.
New laws posted today
“When taxi drivers know the name of a FTSE 100 boss, it’s a bad sign”, says Harvard Professor John Quelch in his article ‘How to spot a chief executive who is going off the rails’. Read the 10 signs of trouble here.
Meanwhile, also on the subject of organisational flaws, Rod Liddle points out the discrepancy between the politically correct public stance taken by large organisations like the BBC and the Metropolitan Police on racism, and the exclusively white faces that sit atop them. Read Rod’s law here.
Bill Gates’ advice to school-leavers
As thousands of 18 year olds get ready for their gap year (after a hard summer flitting between villas in Majorca, the Algarve and St Tropez) parents funding the whole shebang could do worse than print off Bill Gates’ advice for their return.
The founder of Microsoft provides a healthy dose of realism to those used only to pre-Crunch largesse. Rule 5 of 11 gives you something of the flavour. ‘Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping — they called it opportunity.’
The Art of Blind Reviewing
News that Robin Goldstein’s fake Italian Restaurant - Osteria L’Intrepido - won an ‘Award of Excellence’ from Wine Spectator magazine, despite being completely imaginary, has put a spring in the step of hoaxers everywhere. The magazine has, with astonishing chutzpah, described the hoax as “an act of malicious duplicity”, overlooking its own duplicity in recommending a restaurant to its readers which it had not properly evaluated. Click here for more on Goldstein’s hoax, and for his book, here.
In The Times, Ben Macintrye draws parallels between the magazine’s restaurant reviewing practices and book reviewing, where it has, apparently, never been seen as a requirement that reviewers actually read the book.
Prescott’s class act
The words ‘Prescott’ and ‘grapples’ conjure up the most unsavoury of images, involving the former deputy PM and his diary secretary Tracey Temple, so it is a relief - almost - to learn that in his new BBC2 programme the only thing he is grappling with is “political apathy, middle-class syntax, snobbery and the wealth gap in modern Britain”. There is, of course, only one thing to be said about class, and Eleanor Roosevelt said it best. Money, on the other hand, is a more complex subject, with many laws.
Go China!
As the Chinese and American basketball teams clashed last night in an epic encounter watched by the presidents of both countries (score: 101:70 to the visiting team), it is doubtful whether Raymond Chandler’s Law comes as much consolation to the host nation. More reflective of their feelings are the words of Vince Lombard : “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing!” or even, to borrow from Mao, “Sport is the continuation of war by other means”. How quaint, and appealing, then to consider Grantland Rice’s old-fashioned views on the manner of sporting competition.
Strategy for Saakashvili
Captain Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, one of the most influential military thinkers of the twentieth century, distilled the essence of strategy and tactics into eight maxims in his classic work Strategy. His ideas strongly influenced German tactics in WW2, Field Marshal Rommel declaring that “The British would have been able to prevent the greatest part of their defeats if they had paid attention to the modern theories expounded by Liddell Hart before the war.”
Beleagured Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili looks like he has already breached the first of the 8 maxims. Survival of the Russian onslaught may now depend more in diplomacy than warfare. With that in mind, he and George Bush could do worse than study Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and, in particular, The Trollope Ploy.
