The Panama Papers

I'm just back from my annual pilgrimage to Norfolk.  Living in our stunningly beautiful yet land-locked county, I get the urge to every so often go and see the sea.  I feel it rebalances me, or something. 

I find watching the waves mildly hypnotic, and enjoy a stomp along the beach finding pretty stones, and then also the not-so-pretty items like crab's legs and fish heads, hopefully just jettisoned by a passing gull rather than the remnants of some seaside sacrifice.  There also sadly lurks the inevitable plastic detritus which is the scourge of our modern age.

Where we stay has no mobile signal so it gives me a chance to completely digitally detox too, so I had no idea what was going on with social media and barely watched any television.

Therefore The Panama Papers - which sounds to me like a book Graham Greene should have written - almost completely, gloriously, passed me by.

But for the fact that I visited a nearby hostelry and was enjoying a small alcoholic beverage, I might not have known about the latest political shenanigans until I returned home.

BBC News was on in the background with sound muted but complete with subtitles, so my attention turned as it so often does when there's a TV on - it's almost instinctual now isn't it?  Where there's a screen there's a human gaze, fixed, staring at its contents.

I discovered the Prime Minister of Iceland had resigned, except now they're saying that he hasn't actually resigned, merely stepped aside - what is this, a bizarre political country dance?

And there was David Cameron, looking earnest, saying something about he didn't have shares, then he did have shares, but then he sold the shares.  In truth it was as hard to keep up with the subtitles as it was with the speed with which his story kept changing.

As pointed out by some it's all a bit reminiscent of Father Ted and 'the money was just resting in my account'.  Except this isn't a comedy, this is all too real.