Money can’t buy you love
8:45am Wednesday 19th March 2008
It's been a good week for bargains so far.
An American bank has snapped up one of its rivals for a hundredth of what it was worth only seven days ago, and got a billion-dollar building as part of a very impressive deal.
Then there's Heather Mills McCartney, who has come out of the divorce courts with £24.3 million of Sir Paul McCartney's £400 to £800 million fortune.
Admittedly, it's not a massive proportion of her ex-husband's wealth, but it's a handsome enough lottery win, for example. And at least one of the papers has worked out that it comes to about £700 an hour of Heather's time in the brief period of her former marriage.
Sir Paul's formidable lawyer Fiona Shackleton somehow managed to get what Heather described as "a baptism" in court.
But she will surely have taken home a big enough wage slip to sort out cut-and-blow-dries for the rest of her natural life.
And yet, despite the fact that he's been doing most of the forking out, I can't help thinking that the person who's struck the bargain of the week is none other than Sir Paul himself.
Even if you confine yourself to contemplating the display Heather mounted on the steps of the High Court on Monday, you'd be hard put to conclude that he won't consider £24.3 million a reasonable deal for a future of relative peace and quiet.
Silence is golden, as the Tremeloes used to sing. I can't seem to find out who wrote that, but if it wasn't Sir Paul, I bet he wishes it was.
Another home relishing a bit of respite must be a certain Devonshire mansion where thousands of gatecrashers turned up for an 18th birthday party.
Pictures of the resulting mayhem have been posted on the internet, and it's easy to see how Rebecca Brooks, the owner of the manor house involved, could be looking at a repairs bill running into tens of thousands of pounds.
Not such a good week, then for her, and she has condemned BBC Radio One for flagging up the party on air.
I've no doubt national publicity didn't help, but putting an "all-welcome" notice on your sixth-form college notice-board, as Rebecca's daughter did, must surely count as asking for trouble.
Having once been a teenager, I shudder at the very idea of such a notice. I'm sure Rebecca could handle her own daughter, but hundreds of strangers who don't give a damn about the new carpet is an altogether more chilling prospect.
And speaking of feral youth, yet another new scheme has been hatched this week to tackle the problem.
This time the idea is to root out bad behaviour before it can escalate into an ASBO.
A thousand of the children "most at risk" of getting into trouble with the law (the nation's leading junior yobs, to you and me) will be tackled by a crack team of "assertive and persistent key workers" who will force them, basically, to behave. They will make them agree to go to school and steer them away from misusing drink and drugs.
Local authorities will bid for £13 million to run 20 of these Intensive Youth Support Projects.
Silly me, I thought we already had "assertive and persistent key workers" in place to deal with naughty kids. Parents, I thought they were called.