24th June 2014

Summer Madness, has UK.plc finally lost the plot?

Being born in the ‘50’s has some benefits, the best ones being that my generation, in the most part, had access to decent education, work was an aspiration, common sense forged life skills. Benefits were something that came with a job, bastards were illegitimate children and not a form of abuse hurled at you for doing nothing wrong, the police were actually on the streets, a pension was income in retirement, not a place to stay in France, Ethics was a code of conduct and not a county north of the Thames….. well the list could be sooooo long.

So with summer upon us the start of the so called ‘Silly season” has arrived.

This years front runners in the ‘how much did it cost to find this out’ and ‘how stupid can people be and get paid for it’ will soon be caught up in the race for the bottom over the coming months.

Runners and riders so far: 

• Research shows that children with learning disabilities and special needs may be at increased risk of being bullied.
• I may have been wrong to condemn Christian B&B owners for banning gay couple because those with religious beliefs have rights too', says top judge.
• A Grimsby fisherman and a new set of European rules that stopped him catching a Dover sole for supper.
• Ladies day at Ascot- vomit, tattoos and fascinators.
• Headphones can form 120 'complex knots' in your pocket because loose ends weave through coiled strands. Physicists tumbled a string in a box 3,415 times to investigate tangling.
• A ‘disproportionately high number’ of athletes and sports stars are privately educated amid the dire state of competitive sport in state schools, according to the head of Ofsted.
• Drinking, smoking, obesity and the legacy of holidays in the sun are fuelling a sharp rise in cancers.
• Toddlers who watch lots of TV do worse at school – and even sets left on in the background can be harmful, a leading expert has warned. Lynne Murray, a professor of developmental psychology, said that two large-scale reviews made it ‘absolutely clear’ that watching television has no benefits for under-twos.
• A trader at a £4billion Mayfair wealth management company claims her boss greeted news she was pregnant by saying: ‘I knew something like this was going to happen.’Emilie Gregg told a tribunal she was ‘bullied, harassed, victimised and blatantly discriminated against’ for taking maternity leave from her £150,000-a-year job.
• Should smartphones and laptops be banned from classrooms? Researchers find even the smartest students are distracted by social networks at school.
• England captain Steven Gerrard was at the centre of an escalating row between Nike and Adidas over the leisure kit being worn by the players in Brazil, decking the England squad in their gear with little or no FA branding, in addition to the official supply items for on and off the pitch. Never mind the team performance ‘outcome’, all items of leisure kit are now at knock down prices too.
• A North Tyneside council has issued families with a 13 point code for children on ‘how to play nicely outside’.

In football speak, c’mon UK. Do we really need to pay people to tell us something so very obvious that anyone with an ounce of common sense could see. 

The UK is being taken for a ride by so called experts, politicians, human rights groups, lobbyists, lawyers, regulators etc. ‘Boots’ and ‘raining’ are words that spring to mind.

But top prize for summer madness goes to Deeb Salem, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) trader who said he helped the bank earn more than $7 billion and wants to be paid the almost $5 million difference between his 2010 bonus and what he told his mother to expect. Salem said his bonus was unfairly docked because of a written warning he received about his 2007 self-evaluation. It was rejected by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in New York. 

What is needed is a return to common sense, caveat emptor, removal of no win no fee, morality and in Mr Salem’s case, a little modesty.

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