Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, is apparently receiving a pension of £650,000 per annum at the age of 50. The underlying principle is clearly that pensions should be in inverse proportion to the wealth that the pensioner has generated. As my newsagent pointed out, it is probably a price worth paying to keep such a destroyer of wealth out of the job market.

Sadly, this does not bode well for me as I can’t hope to compete with Sir Fred. While Tiger of the Stripe did not make much money last year, it did not lose billions of pounds, or even hundreds. I am clearly an abject failure in the world of high commerce and will be punished accordingly.

You might think that this would leave our revered Prime Minister Gordon Brown in poll position to receive a bumper pension. His policies, such as the tripartite system of regulation, allowed RBS and others to squander billions of pounds. Unfortunately, the PM blotted his copy-book by saving the world on 10 December 2008 (see here). This must surely more than compensate for wrecking the British economy.