Moving On

Tweet

Fifteen years is a long time. In life, in a marriage, and in a job.

This week, I had the opportunity to attend the farewell do for a colleague who shall remain unnamed. After fifteen years with the company, he has decided to move on. And I think he has done the right thing.

Somebody else who will soon be moving on, even if after only eight years in the job and not of his own accord, is POTUS. In a refreshingly candid interview, Barack Obama recently admitted what he would miss most was Air Force One. Can’t blame him.

And after only three years with Bayern Munich, megastar football coach Pep Guardiola is moving on in summer to “seek a new challenge” with Manchester City. Interestingly, between now and then he may still be playing with his current club against his new team in the final of the European Champions’ League. I guess that’s what you call a conflict of interest, although I’m sure he is professional enough to be focused only on winning that one game – if only to cement his legacy with his current employer, the crown of European club football having eluded him in the first two years of his three-year tenure there. Not good for his ego.

Don’t you love it when semi-literate football professionals (and I do not include Mr Guardiola in this category, far from it) claim the only reason they move on to a new club abroad for at least twice the outrageous money they are already paid is to learn a new language, sample a new cuisine, and get to know a new culture. 

I remember Lothar Matthäus who, when quizzed about his next club, famously said: “Madrid or Milan. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s Italy.” He eventually joined Inter Milan in 1988 and captained Germany to victory in the 1990 FIFA World Cup played in – Italy. Home ground advantage no doubt since he already knew the language, the cuisine, and the culture.

But show the man some respect: He is the all-time record German international with 150 appearances (and 23 goals) for his country spanning twenty years. 

At age 55 now, he has also been married five times (with four children) to women of five different nationalities. Who needs geography for moving on?

Coming back to us mere mortals, what is it that makes moving on after a while in the same situation a positive, a plus, and a portal to bigger and better things?

Well, there’s the obvious advantage of getting the chance to do something different, learn something you didn’t know yet, and make new friends (and enemies).

Then, there’s the golden opportunity to leave people behind, no longer be reminded of disappointments, and stop ruing mistakes.

Finally, if you played your cards right, you can hope to have built a legacy, left large footsteps to be filled by whoever follows, and be remembered fondly. Don’t bet on it though – most, if not all of our contributions tend to be ephemeral in nature, temporary in impact, and as a consequence quickly forgotten. 

Ironically, we tend to be remembered as often as not for our blunders rather than what we may consider our successes. Sour grapes is what I say!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

I think we can safely take the wisdom of this bona fide certified genius at face value. Do you know how he explained his General Theory of Relativity that changed the world in laymen’s terms? “If you’re in the presence of a beautiful girl, ten minutes will pass relatively quickly. If you spend them sitting on a hot stove, they will pass relatively slowly.” I told you, a genius. 

Synthesise, synthesise, synthesise.

If you want to get to know another side of him, read Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children (2002), a small sampling of the amusing, touching, and sometimes precocious letters sent to him by children from around the world whose exasperated teachers, unable to answer their questions, told them to “ask Dr Einstein”, and his often witty and very considerate responses. It also has wonderful photos of him from various stages in his life.

The question raises itself when is a good time to move on – always provided we can determine the moment ourselves of course. In a nutshell, I would suggest do it while you’re ahead.

Which brings me neatly to the story of one David Cameron, Member of Parliament for Witney in Oxfordshire, Leader of the British Conservative Party, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2010. 

Much to his own and the pollsters’ surprise, Dave as his friends call him won the general election last September quite comfortably, with a resulting Conservative parliamentary majority in the House of Commons for the first time since 1992. For the statistics wonks among you, Cameron is also the first Prime Minister to be re-elected immediately after serving a full term with an increased popular vote share since Lord Salisbury in 1900, and the only Prime Minister other than Margaret Thatcher to be re-elected immediately after a full term with a greater share of the seats.


But in 2013, stuck in an awkward coalition government with the notoriously pro-European Liberal Democrats, when things were not looking all that rosy and in order to secure the ongoing support of his own less-than “Brussels”-friendly backbenchers, Cameron promised an “In / Out” referendum on the UK's membership in the European Union before the end of 2017, after a period of renegotiation of its terms of staying in, if the Conservatives were to gain a majority in the 2015 general election. They did, the referendum was legislated following their victory, and it is to take place coming 23 June. And Cameron has been to the other 27 Member States and back on his renegotiation mission, bringing home mostly minor meaningless concessions that self-imploded in the perception of pundits, politicians, and the public within 48 hours of their pompous publication.

And this tactical move made at a time of perceived weakness (I don’t believe for a moment the above-mentioned backbenchers would have risked a coup against their leader and thereby endangered in an early election their own return to Westminster and the perks enjoyed by MPs when the opposition Labour Party was viewed to be “neck and neck” with them in the electorate’s favour) is now coming back to bite him BIG TIME. In addition, it didn’t help when he volunteered last year – was it a slip-up or was it the only truthful sentence uttered in the course of the election campaign? – that he would not be seeking a third term if returned to power.

Dave, one of the Golden Rules when dealing with the media: Never lie, but don’t always say everything you know.

The net result now is a bloody fratricide not just within his party, but among his Cabinet members over the question of “Remain” or “Leave” that makes for great TV and newspaper headlines, presided over as it is by a Prime Minister who one way or another has reduced himself to that most pitiful of governing political animals, a Lame Duck. 

If the referendum results in the UK’s unceremonious departure from the EU, generally labelled “Brexit” – remember the much-discussed original version of not so long ago, “Grexit” that has been overtaken and relegated to the backseat of public, political, and media attention by the dramatic events of the more recent past? – Dave’s days (or just hours) in the Prime Minister’s residence at Ten Downing Street are numbered anyway. And if he limps over the finish line having secured his nation’s continued membership in the community of 28 European countries, people will quickly turn to the excitement of the struggle for succession, political patricide in terms of the Ancients’ legends. 

Either way, Boris Johnson (and I think I will write more about him another time; for now, let’s just describe him as the current mayor of London, notoriously in need of a haircut, and an opportunist extraordinaire) is ante portas, as he himself, permanently prone to public pronouncements in ancient Greek or Latin, just because he can, would put it.

Of course, one should not underestimate Dave’s ability to survive, a must-have instinct in a successful politician, and his unfailing luck that has never let him down yet. But many observers who know much more than I do say this is the first time in his career he is not going to be lucky. And most of his dilemma is of his own making, remarkable for one so shrewd.

I mean, Dave, why not sit things out without making any silly commitments and then move on when in the driver seat.

In tennis, it’s what you call an unforced error.

Speaking of luck, this is maybe the most important and least recognised prerequisite of a leader – political, military, or indeed as coach of a football team. I guess it also applies to CEOs, but I will spare you the analogies, if any, to the contemporary corporate world, referring you to the libraries of business books written on what it takes to be A Great Industry Leader. All the while await the advent of The Great American Novel with much more ardour.

Instead, just a couple of stories from history to illustrate my point. 

In Ancient Rome, to indulge Boris Johnson some more, home to all sorts of superstitions as it was – in fact, one could claim the Romans invented and institutionalised this fatalistic take on Life, leaving it as their signature legacy along with their language; codified law; underfloor heating and aqueducts; and military strategy together with the roads for the armies to march on – Luck was emblematic of successful public personalities. Sulla, the Civil War general and politician of the first century BC, went by Sulla Felix.

Of Julius Caesar, the following tale was told and oft-repeated: On his way back to Rome from an Eastern province, he was carried across the Adriatic Sea in a small fishing boat. A huge storm gathered, and everybody on board was convinced they would not survive. Caesar – quietly reclining, as noble Romans would, against the mast – called the captain over and said the following timeless words: “Fear not, for you carry Caesar and his luck.” Needless to say, the storm died down and everybody lived to see another day. Caesar’s proverbial luck eventually did run out on the Ides of March 44 BC – maybe by then he had simply pushed it once too often.

One more anecdote from more recent times. Napoleon Bonaparte was once being told about a French general who had excelled in everything he had done during his military career to date and urged to give him an important command. Napoleon listened patiently as the man’s virtues and successes were extolled, until he interrupted and quietly asked: “Yes, but is he lucky?” A classic.

So, knowing when to move on is key to preserving your luck. The Ancient Greeks had a word for “the right moment” – kairos. To recognise it and act accordingly indeed makes all the difference in life. Seize the day! Opportunity knocks but once – or does it?

But then, there are those who just happen to be in the right place at the right time, with no need even to see and let alone seize the day. To quote Rod Stewart, “Some Guys Have All the Luck” indeed. Lady Luck, oft-serenated, is a capricious mistress. 

Having mentioned the relatively (what would Dr Einstein say about it I wonder) humble abode of the UK Prime Minister, the famous property at Number Ten Downing Street, coming into office or leaving it, in addition to moving on, requires first moving in and then moving out again. That’s three moves all tied in with each other, and I know from my own experience that a lot can go wrong in the process. But while you can insure your household goods against damage for the physical moves, and of course realistically never have their true value replaced if they do come to harm, you can’t insure your life for moving on, or not, at the opportune and propitious time.


“Living above the shop”, as the saying goes, the same removals related to assuming office and then leaving it again that British heads of government go through also apply for American Presidents – first they take residence in the White House and then have to vacate it again after four or eight years, depending on their popularity at the end of the first term and subsequent re-election. Or is it rather their luck?

With every new arrival, a lot has always been made about what type of tenants POTUS and FLOTUS would be and eventually turned out to be. The Americans speak of a Presidency, the administration, and the First Couple’s immediate entourage as the “So-and-so White House”, consciously amalgamating the policies and politics with the social and private goings-on in the building. Just watch TV series like West Wing and House of Cards, and you will know what I mean.

In history, some of these have been more interesting, entertaining, and endearing than others, a reflection of the personalities, but given the average age of a newly sworn-in President, small children have generally been the exception – hence, for example, all the hype about John F. and Jackie Kennedy and the reincarnation of the mythical court of “Camelot” in and around the Oval Office. It turns out this was nothing but a clever PR stunt on the part of the coolly manipulative First Lady after her husband’s tragic assassination on 22 November 1963.

By the way, on Friday 20 January 2017, Inauguration Day for the next President, current forerunners Trump (born 14 June 1946) and Clinton (born 26 October 1947) will be 70 and 69 respectively. Grandchildren to the fore, and in this contest, Trump with eight clearly trumps Clinton with currently just one and another on the way! 


In addition to children, a pet in the White House is always a nice touch. The most famous FDOTUS? Scottish Terrier Fala (7 April 1940 – 5 April 1952), the dog of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 – 1945), who captured the attention of people in the United States like no other before or since and followed the President everywhere, becoming part of his public image. Fala survived Roosevelt by seven years and was buried beside him at Springwood, the Roosevelt family home in Hyde Park, New York overlooking the Hudson River valley. If you ever want to see a magical place of history, go visit what is now The FDR National Historic Site. Just take the commuter train from Grand Central Station in Manhattan to Poughkeepsie, NY and shuttle buses pick you up. And as for Fala, he is prominently featured beside Roosevelt in Washington, DC's Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the only presidential pet so honoured.

While we are still in the state of New York, the primaries there earlier this week do seem to make the duel for the Presidency between Donald “The Donald” Trump and Hillary “It’s my turn” Clinton ever more likely. If she moves back into the White House, accompanied by ex-POTUS Bill as First Husband of the United States (FHOTUS), it will be like coming home, the ultimate fulfilment of her sense of entitlement. If Trump, however, wins the election, it will be the first time in history that a billionaire moves into a public housing vacated by a black family. Savour the thought.

Coming back to JFK, I am currently watching the Fox TV mini-series 11/22/63 based on the brilliant – I’m sorry, but there is no other adjective to describe it, although I do declare my interest as the author’s biggest fan this side of the Atlantic – novel by Stephen King, published in 2011 that imagines a protagonist from our present visiting the early Sixties with the express mission of preventing the Dallas murder of JFK. Incredibly thoroughly researched, impressively intelligently structured, and grippingly well written, this book is one of King’s very best, and the TV adaptation does it justice. Please check it out.

As you know, I don’t do spoilers, but I can’t help quoting the following warning to all time travellers: “If you fuck with the Past, the Past will fuck with you.” Let me tell you, it’s not a smooth ride for our hero Jake Epping, played in the film by James Franco.

This is not the first time a novel by Stephen King has been turned to a TV series. Two other good ones are The Stand (1994) and Under the Dome, launched in 2013 and currently in its third season.

And then, of course, there are the adaptations to the Big Screen, too many really to go into here. I will, however, volunteer my Top Three, strictly in chronological order – and they are all film classics and among the best “book movies" ever.

Carrie, the story of a teenager with telekinetic powers and a repressive, religiously obsessed single Mom. The book was published in 1974, and the movie came out in 1976. Directed by none less than Brian de Palma, it stars Sissy Spacek in the title role as Carrie White and Piper Laurie as her mother, Margaret White. Both were nominated for Oscars, in the category Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (which doesn’t happen too often), but incomprehensively to me, neither won. – Look out for a very young John Travolta in a minor role.

The Shining, set in an isolated hotel in the Rocky Mountains closed for the winter and inhabited by the seasonal caretaker Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and their psychic son Danny. The book of 1977 is a pretty frightening read already as we witness Dad’s mental unravelling, but it’s the brilliant acting of Jack Nicholson in the movie (1980) that imprints images on the viewer’s memory that will never leave you again. Normally, I find, it’s more the other way around as we all create our own pictures in our minds as readers. Anyhow, this is one of the outstanding works by director giant Stanley Kubrick and co-stars Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd. – Stephen King revisits Danny Torrance many years later as a seriously traumatised adult in his novel Doctor Sleep (2013), but there is no film adaptation to date.


Misery, a novel published in 1987, is almost a two-person piece, and conjures up horror without any supernatural elements involved. Author Paul Sheldon has a car accident and ends up, seriously injured, in the home of former nurse Anne Wilkes, his “number one fan”, who insists on caring for him in her remote house in the mountains of Colorado without telling anyone in the outside world. Little does he know of her issues, but temporarily helpless as he is, soon will he find out. The film was released in 1990, directed by Rob Reiner, and starred James Caan and Kathy Bates. And she did win the Oscar as Best Actress in a Leading Role for her truly memorable performance.

So, 11/22/63 is a must-see, for the fascinating premise, the well-crafted plot, and the authentic re-enactment of the times – the cars, the fashion, and the language. Maybe it’s because I’m an historian, but I always find stories of time travel into the past more appealing than those into the future. What fascinates me is the “What if?” question. What if Kennedy’s assassination had been prevented? Read the novel, watch the film.

There’s a very interesting book of that title that explores alternative scenarios – “counterfactuals” to the initiated – linked to a different outcome of major battles in History: Robert Cowley, ed., What If? Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (2001). As the editor writes, “milliseconds can influence centuries” and “the difference can be as slight as the path of a bullet”.

For example, what would have happened if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? Would there have been a British Empire? Would English still be the lingua franca of our time? Probably not.

And to finish fittingly with a military variation on our theme of moving on, here is how the American Civil War Union general and later U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant (1822 – 1885) summarised his take on strategy: “Find out where your enemy is, get him as soon as you can and strike him as hard as you can and keep moving on.”


In more contemporary and peaceful terms, and à propos of nothing, brewing giant AB InBev, a former employer of mine, has agreed this week to sell European lager brands Peroni and Grolsch to Japan's Asahi brewing group to allay competition concerns as part of its takeover of SABMiller. These brands are moving on, and while not partial to them, so will I now to find myself a well-deserved English craft beer. Writing blogs is a thirsty business, let me tell you.

Who Would Have Thought

Tweet

This has been a week of revelations, of scandals broken, and of illusions shattered.

Has it though? Or are we just collectively guilty of looking the other way, not wanting to know, and wilfully ignoring the realities of life and human nature? And then being sanctimonious when reminded of them?

Inconveniently, as usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Let’s start with that obscure UK gynaecologist (!), Dr Mark Bonar who in a masterful spoof of The Sunday Times has been found liberally to be prescribing all sorts of pharmaceuticals to whoever bothers to come to his practice, regardless of gender by the way – the problem being, of course, that these “patients” of his under scrutiny now were not just ordinary folks like you and me who can administer to ourselves just about anything we want (and it does help if it’s a legal substance, as I hasten to add in the interest of Political Correctness), but rather members of a select, minute, but ridiculously revered and richly rewarded tribe of contemporaries who are expected to play by certain special rules as they go about making a living.

You see, “doping” is so not permitted under sport’s global Code of Conduct.

The cynic in me is tempted to say it’s hardly a surprise that highly paid professional athletes who can ply their lucrative trade only for a finite, in fact rather short period of time, will yield to the temptation of seeking performance-enhancing drugs in order to be able, literally, to go the extra mile – and do it faster than their competitors.

And should we not ask ourselves whether we, the sensation-seeking public, are not complicit in wanting ever-more excitement, ever-more entertainment, and ever-more super-human performances and records? The revered Olympic ideals of “Citius, altius, fortius” gone out of control?

Here is what I mean.

Without being an expert in the discipline of cycling, just to choose one endurance sport, it does seem quite clear to me that, no matter how talented your body, how capable your brain of pushing yourself beyond limits where most others would just stop, and how hard you train, from an early age on, it is impossible to cross the Alps and the Pyrenees on a (racing) bike in the heat of summer for four weeks on end within the daily time limits for the individual stages imposed by the management of the Tour de France on a mere diet of spaghetti (lots) and vitamin supplements (manifold) consumed in the evening. Oh, and let’s not forget the proverbial glass of red wine to make you sleep better.

So, what’s an ambitious professional cyclist going to do?

Leaving aside the fact that as long as the rules and regulations of his sport forbid “doping” and he is therefore cheating, knowingly and along with many of his competitors probably, thereby creating a totally new kind of “level playing field”, the real issue I have with this scenario is that young, up-and-coming athletes will be “introduced” to the practice while still underage: “Look, kid, you can go a long way. But if you want to be serious about your sport, you will have to start taking these.”

And driven by the natural ambition of wanting to do as well as possible, often combined with a sense of obligation to parents and obedience to coaches, they will find it even harder to say no. A truly depressing thought.

But then, there is now that other, much grander case of unappetising, unwelcome, and hence best quietly ignored facts rising to the surface of our collective attention, like it or not – the infamous “Panama Papers”.

While Julian Assange is still holed up in the UK Embassy of Ecuador and Edward Snowden continues enjoying the hospitality of Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the competition (although I doubt they view themselves that way) has struck gold and landed a major coup, maybe the biggest ever.

A group of serious investigative journalists centred around the German (who would have thought indeed), Munich-based daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) have now published first details from a total of 11.5 million leaked documents, equal to 2.6 terabytes to those, unlike me, who don’t think in terms of words or pages anymore. – In case you wondered, the old-school journalist’s rule of thumb is ten words to a line, 30 lines to a page, and therefore 300 words per page. Those were the days.

This mountain of documents was so much to review, digest, and make any sense of that it is not surprising the guys at SZ decided to parcel it out among the jaw-dropping total of some 400 journalists at 100 media outlets in 80 countries. Amazingly, they also claim not to have paid a penny for such a bonanza as they were obviously dealing with one seriously angry whistle blower whose identity of course, following the rules of the game and at least for now, remains undisclosed.

Remember “Deep Throat”? If not, check out the 1976 film, All the President’s Men (Director Alan J. Pakula) which tells the story of how The Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that eventually led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974 (the only American President ever to have ended in this ignominious way). It remains the Gold Standard of investigative reporting to this day. And viewed from the other side, a timeless case study of how not to manage a crisis.

While many, many movies have been made about journalists, there is a sub-genre dealing specifically with investigative reporting, in the tradition of All the President’s Men. The latest is of course Spotlight, directed by Joe McCarthy and starring Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, and Michael Keaton. It tells the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Church to its core. And it just won the 2016 Academy Award for Best Motion Picture of the Year. – Following The Rule of Three, which other one do you remember?

The secret of the identity of “Deep Throat”, by the way, was lifted only much later. In 2005, 31 years after Nixon's departure from office and eleven years after his death, a family attorney stated it was former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Associate Director Mark Felt who by then was battling dementia and had denied any links previously. It seems he hated the Nixon administration and wanted to protect the integrity of his own outfit.

I’m always ambiguous about the motivation and character of such anonymous informants. On the one hand, wrongdoing should of course be exposed, especially if it is endemic and institutionalised within an organisation. Declaration of interest: I have just taken and passed with flying colours one of our Company’s online Code of Conduct courses on the issue – and immediately printed out the diploma to add to my already proud collection of such achievements. I’m as good and faithful and compliant a corporate citizen as the next guy.

On the other hand, to gain access to this type and mass of information the whistle blower must also have been involved or at least “in the know” for a while – so at what point, and why, did they suddenly develop a sense of uneasiness and discover their conscience? And before taking their grievance to the media, did they ever try to talk to anyone inside their organisation about it?

Plus, aren’t they betraying their loyalty, not just to their employer, but more importantly, to their colleagues who may well be unaware of anything untoward going on? Wouldn’t it be more respectable just to quit?

Not an easy one, I find. You tell me.

Anyhow, this new trove of information, published with the precision of a military operation across time zones on Sunday, is about the astonishing number of 214,000 “shell companies” founded on behalf of their clients by Mossack Fonseca, a hitherto obscure Panamanian (yes, that’s the Central American country with the isthmus and the Canal; more on this later) law firm called after its founders / owners Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca. Little known, which is how they like it best no doubt, but with a network of more than 40 offices worldwide you will be impressed to learn.

Speaking of Snowden, he did not fail to send out a tweet immediately, more than anything probably just to remind the world he was still around: “Biggest leak in the history of data journalism just went live, and it's about corruption. http://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/ en/ 18:48 - 3 Apr 2016”

Thanks for the heads-up, Ed. But you may have been a little premature, or should have been slightly more circumspect, in your public statement of outrage as, according to early disclosures, your gracious host and his immediate entourage are among those implicated. But then, so is David Cameron’s late father, Ian Cameron, and the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson.

Who would have thought.

Siggy, as impeccable sources close to the government in Reykjavik tell me his friends call him, made a right mess of things when he walked out of a TV interview with the Swedish public broadcaster, SVT as the two journalists started quizzing him about his Panamanian connection – no doubt, this had not been agreed beforehand, so he never saw it coming and had some cause for feeling ambushed – but he didn’t help himself by staying on in the room, standing up and justifying himself clumsily on-camera. Two absolute no-no’s, and I wonder if anyone ever media-trained him. Bottom line, the audience’s takeaway must surely have been, “guilty as charged”, and then some.

He has since been forced to resign, while not found guilty of being involved in anything illegal. Quite a price to pay for a politician who, after all, by definition wants only one thing – to stay in office. Well, and in his and some others’ cases, maybe to get rich at the same time. I hope it was worth it financially, Siggy.

So what exactly are these people who have now been “named and shamed” – and there will be many more to come for sure – implicated in, we ask ourselves.

Let me state clearly at the outset that the presumption of innocence must prevail in all these 214,000 cases. And that it’s early days.

In a nutshell, the name of the game is seeking to pay as little taxes as possible, if any – legally (which we all do) or otherwise (which we shouldn’t). Not a lawyer, I assume this is the difference between “tax avoidance” and “tax evasion”.

For forty years, it now transpires, Mossack Fonseca have set up local legal entities for their clients, and they claim there was nothing questionable about what they did. After all, if you wanted to start a company in Panama, what could possibly be wrong with that? Once the business was incorporated, they say, it was not for them to monitor what people used it for. In fact, Mossack Fonseca are quite upset about the fact their computer systems have obviously been hacked – which in most countries, including Panama, is indeed an illegal act.

Remember the grief the FBI had with Apple in the United States when they merely asked to be given access to the iPhone account of the dead jihadist killer couple in California?

The location at the centre of the unfolding sensation is, of course, no coincidence as it is one of those low-tax countries, aka “tax havens” that make a considerable amount of their GDP by attracting capital, honestly earned or ill-gotten (in which case we might even be talking money laundering), no questions asked, to protect it from the respective national equivalent of the U.S. Inland Revenue Service (IRS), the unofficial world champion of tax collection, in its country of origin.

It has to be said, these oases are getting fewer and fewer year-by-year, and most of the surviving ones are nowadays indeed located in the Caribbean (the British Virgin Islands are a particular hot spot, pun fully intended) and Central America.

“Sunny places for shady characters”, as someone once admirably put it.

Of course, “Panama” has certain connotations about it that make it sexier than, say, Liechtenstein (who got their act together years ago I believe). For one, the climate is so much warmer, the vegetation so much lusher, and the resulting ambience so much more exotic. Then, the Canal dissecting it to enable ships to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean without having to go to the trouble and expense involved in rounding Cape Hoorn gives it an irresistible aura of adventure.

Fun facts: It takes ships a mere six to eight hours to pass through the 77 kilometres or 48 miles of the Panama Canal. And in 1994, the renowned American Society of Civil Engineers named it one of “The Seven Wonders of the Modern World” when paying tribute to the "greatest civil engineering achievements of the 20th century".

The other six, since I know you will ask yourself, are, in alphabetical order: the Channel Tunnel linking Great Britain and France (as in, the Continent of Europe); the CN Tower in Toronto; the Empire State Building in New York City; the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco; the Itaipu Dam on the Paraná River between Brazil and Paraguay; and the Zuiderzee Works in The Netherlands.

Of which, to me, the first is the most significant by far as it has turned invalid a geographical and geopolitical constant of European history across the millennia – Great Britain being an island nation last invaded in 1066. And yes, I do know there are enough explosives buried in the Tunnel construction to blow it up if the national security of my chosen host country was ever threatened, which I have to point out is more than just unlikely as one of the lasting achievements of the process since 1945 towards today’s European Union that we so easily criticise, ridicule, and maybe even reject, has been the end to intra-European warfare.

For every generation since earliest days of recorded history, continental Europeans would proceed to bash one another’s heads in, and the British would sooner or later somehow be drawn into that mess. As were the Americans twice in one generation last century, which is why they were the most eager and serious guarantors of the post-WW2 order – The New Old World, as one knowledgeable historian has aptly called it.

No more. France and Germany killing each other is a ridiculous thought nowadays, and “Europe” has a lot to be thanked for.

Then, in addition, there’s this theory that I think holds, according to which democracies don’t wage war on each other. A blissful double whammy for the Old World. Now The New Old World.

This is one of the things the supporters of Brexit don’t get – the sentimental attachment continental Europeans have to the European Union, a sense of gratitude and affection almost, no matter how critical they may otherwise rightfully be of the expensive, vacuous, and often simply quite useless bureaucratic monster it has become. It’s like putting up with the foibles of an at times annoying member of the family because everybody knows it’s him or her who is holding it all together.

Coming back to “The Seven Wonders of the Modern World”, our own Clifton Suspension Bridge is out of scope as famously completed in 1864 – otherwise, its inclusion in any such list would be a no-brainer of course.

By way of a reminder, and just to rub it in:

The Golden Gate Bridge was opened in 1937. Really? Is that all you’ve got? Case closed.

Meanwhile, back in Central America, finally, as a crossroads of the globalised world, Panama City, where half of the country’s population of 3.4 million live, has been the scene for a number of works of fiction about, let’s call them, “facilitators” like our very busy lawyers at Mossack Fonseca.

I mean, just do the math: 214,000 incorporations in 40 years. That’s 5,350 a year, 15 a day, or two per hour. Without closing down for holidays ever.

So many tax evaders (or avoiders?), so little time!

A very good read is John le Carré’s novel, The Tailor of Panama (1996) which was turned into an entertaining film in 2001, directed by John Boorman and starring Pierce Brosnan as Andy Osnard, a disgraced spy, and Geoffrey Rush as emigré English tailor Harry Pendel.

I do have a weak spot for John le Carré, born in 1931 as David John Moore Cornwell, and his mastery of the English language. During the 1950s and the 1960s, he worked for the UK Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, and began writing novels under a pen name. His third book, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) became an international best-seller and remains one of his most famous works. Following its success, he left MI6 to become a full-time author, establishing himself as a leading writer of espionage fiction.

My second-favourite “classic” in his oeuvre is probably Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974). The film of the same title was released in 2011, directed by Tomas Alfredson and starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley, le Carré’s signature character.

Having successfully made the thematic transition from the “good old days” of the Cold War to the more complex conflicts of the contemporary world (alliteration, anyone?), among his more recent books, the following are well worth reading (and they also have been adapted into movies):

The Constant Gardener (2001). The film of 2005 was directed by Fernando Meirelles, with Ralph Fiennes as widower Justin Quayle who is determined to get to the bottom of a potentially explosive secret involving his wife Tessa’s (Rachel Weisz) murder, big business, and corporate corruption. Set in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, the poverty there so affected the film crew that they established the Constant Gardener Trust to provide basic education to those areas (John le Carré is a patron of the charity).

A Most Wanted Man (2008). This novel, set in Hamburg where the author was once a British agent and consul, is based on the contemporary issues of the international war on terror, money laundering (theme!), and the conflicting interests of different officers and agents and amateurs who are involved and impacted, each with their own vested interests, and therefore not necessarily collaborating. Let’s not forget by way of a backdrop that the core of the 9/11 terrorists had been holed up in Hamburg for a while before their attack on the U.S. – The movie adaptation of 2014 was directed by Anton Corbijn and starred the great Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967 – 2014) in one of his very last performances. That in itself makes it a must-see.

Finally, Our Kind of Traitor (2010). This one is about a Russian money launderer (theme!) seeking to defect to the UK after a close friend of his has been killed by the new leadership of his own criminal brotherhood. The English couple who befriend him during a holiday in Antigua are soon caught between the Russian Mafia and the British Secret Service, the proverbial “rock and a hard place”, neither of whom they can trust. Antigua? Right: another “sunny place for shady characters”. – The upcoming 2016 film of the same title as the novel, to be released in the UK on 13 May, is directed by Susanna White and stars Ewan Mc Gregor. Hold the date. The book is a cracker.

Returning to “Canal City”, the home of that now world-famous law firm, finally, of course, there’s the Panama hat.

I wonder if our new acquaintances, Messrs Mossack and Fonseca, to us now just Jürgen and Ramón, wear one on their way to and from work every day. Busy as they are setting up shell firms, I’m sure they don’t have time to go out for lunch.

So, finally coming back to the question at the beginning of these musings – apart from the sheer dimensions of the “Panamanian Connection” and short of whatever disclosures may still spring from it, is this all something to be so surprised about? Russian oligarchs, FIFA officials, and the regime in North Korea are corrupt? Really? Who would have thought. Duh.

Leaving legality, morality, and ethics aside for a moment, and maybe we can’t, why would human beings – athletes as much as billionaires – not yield to temptation, especially since, like any petty shoplifter, they will always assume to be the one that will not get caught?

Harking back all the way to the Old Testament and the Garden of Eden, Humanity has, if anything, been unfailingly reliable in its unreliability, constant in its fickleness, and strong in its weakness:

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Genesis 3:6. (The Holy Bible, New International Version)

In the words of much more recent members of our race, and not the most stupid or least eloquent ones either:

“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” Mark Twain, American author (1835 – 1910)

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet (1854 – 1900)

“I generally avoid temptation until I can’t resist it.” Mae West, American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, and “sex symbol” (1893 – 1980)

Ms West is one of my all-time favourites, not just as a Queen of the Silver Screen, but as the author of many very witty quips, aphorisms, and double-entendres.

Here’s my top three (but as with Yogi Berra, it’s a very hard choice to make, so please indulge me as I go for four):

“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”

“Young men don’t know what they are doing, but they do it all night long.”

“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”

The best ever: “I have to get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini.”

One of the more controversial movie stars of her day, Ms West encountered many problems. Asked about the various efforts to impede her success, she replied: "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it."

Hollywood doesn’t make them like Mae West anymore. And the world is a poorer place for it.

Like many others who were misunderstood, criticised, or even persecuted in their day, she found refuge in Humour – which, the older I get, the more I find conquers all.

And yes, still a romantic at heart, I would concede so does Love, occasionally, if you get lucky. For it first to strike and then to survive, however, in my experience, a compatible sense of humour is a must-have.

So maybe this is how we should address the revelations, disclosures, and scandals of these past few days – by not taking them nor ourselves too seriously. Probably it’s the only way to navigate the currents of life anyway. After all: “When humour goes, there goes civilization.” Erma Bombeck, American author and humourist (1927 – 1996)

“If I had no sense of humour, I would long ago have committed suicide.” Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948)

“Humour is mankind's greatest blessing.” Mark Twain (1835 – 1910; again – and not by coincidence)

In German, we have a saying: “Humour is when you laugh regardless.”

So, where does all this leave us?

Definitely undecided I guess. We don’t like cheats, but we do understand from our own personal lives the concept of temptation and are familiar with the experience of yielding to it.

But hopefully also with the confidence of knowing that whatever this wondrous existence, this crazy world, and its strange inhabitants may throw at us, we will do better than just muddling through – we will actually find our way.

Never forget the wisdom of Yogi Berra: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

And to leave the last word to the late great Mae West:

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”