Now you are just Fred.

Not Right Said Fred, but plain Fred.

The Forfeiture Committee did for you.

No one had heard of it before,

But Dave said it had to act, and it did.

Trouble is that no one knows what to think.

Is it ‘Alas, poor Fred‘,

Or ‘Hurray! Sir Fred is dead!’?

We don’t know.

Do you?

By A. Mob, aged 1,378 and a half.

Fed up with being stuck on the Thames in south-east England, London yesterday decided to move. In a dramatic gesture which augurs ill for the Olympics, the city upped sticks and relocated to East Anglia.

Lawyers were not consulted about the move, and the city’s precise motivation remains unclear. However, financiers fear that London’s decision is a sign that it wishes to downsize. Moreover, a source from London said: “We no longer want to be Britain’s seat of power. If the Scots can deregulate, why can’t we? East Anglia is a nice place where nothing happens. It’s time for a quiet life. Please respect our right to privacy.”

Elsewhere, Birmingham did not do anything, but Manchester was seen to be packing its bags. “There’s an opportunity for us,” said Manchester. “We can become London.”

East Anglia said: “We don’t mind. It’ll be refreshing to be associated with something other than fens and flatness.”

A cartologist at CNN, which broke the extraordinary news, was later fired.

The first, which went live at 08.40am, was headlined ‘US journalists on the rich list‘. This referred to a New York Times graphic which put 7,282 journalists among the 1% of the ‘very rich’ in American society. Sadly, none were named.

The second piece, posted at 12.11, was about Trinity Mirror CEO Sly Bailey’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. This piece was headlined ‘Sly Bailey tells it like it is – recruitment ad take falls from £150m to £20m‘. Greenslade praised Bailey for telling the truth about the ever-contracting newspaper industry, citing an especially memorable quote about the effect of the global economic downturn: “It’s almost like a falling knife that’s been getting sharper on the way down.”

Intriguingly, this piece, also on The Guardian’s website, reveals that in 2010 the estimable Bailey received a bonus of £660,000 after Trinty Mirror tripled its profits from £42m to £123m, thus taking her earnings that year to £1.66m.

Is it us, or is there a conundrum – nay, perhaps even a paradox – in all this? Could it be that the media industry’s woes are not solely the fault of that dastardly force for evil, The Internet, allied with a pesky recession, but that they’re also generated by inflated salaries going into the pockets of those at the top?

No, surely not. There is no money in journalism. The online law editor’s job for one the nationals was recently advertised – £25,000, in central London. On the regionals junior journos are on £10,000-£15,000. Soon they’ll have to pay to work. And then, imagine the shareholder profits!

Pictured: some bridal shoes, of Paradoxical relevance.

We ask: do libraries now charge to lend books?

(We suspect, but cannot say for sure, that the Vatican Library, as captured by Flickr user Lawrence OP, may levy a small fee – just being there, let alone borrowing a book, strikes us as a privilege.)

But casting our minds back to Frances Gibb’s recent interview with Jonathan Sumption – who was last week sworn in as a Supreme Court justice – we seem to recall our learned friend contending that forum-shopping is good for the UK economy.

Does he have a point, we wonder?

What’s not eating us, however, is concern for AWT on the PR front. We hesitate to describe his mea culpa as textbook, for there is a many a slip twixt front page splash and the death of a story, but by holding his hands up so fulsomely as soon as the story broke AWT did himself a huge service. His apology was heartfelt and sincere, and resonated with real contrition. It embraced the staff at his local Tesco in a human fashion, alluding to the way in which AWT had come to know them well over the years. We don’t know if AWT has a PR adviser, or whether his apology was the result of his own instincts, but regardless: he did the right thing, and may yet live to shop at Tesco, sans red face, again.

Superb image courtesy of Flickr user elycefeliz.

Let us rephrase the question. Who among us is happy to admit that he (or she) is not PC?

We suspect that few people would be so bold, and this piece, by Miranda Sawyer in yesterday’s Observer, explains why.

There could be several implications in adding a client on some social media sites. Your professional integrity could be questioned if details of your private life is revealed while the client could unwittingly post sensitive information on your page, which would compromise confidentiality or impact ongoing cases.

You may think your profile is reasonably innocuous but you cannot always control the information other people share, such as comments or photo tagging.

We advise keeping your professional life separate from your personal social networking activities.  Anything posted online is accessible in the public domain.

To a solicitor with a half-decent sense of professionalism, this is not rocket science. But the fact that the Law Society feels compelled to issue such guidance is, we feel, somewhat troubling.

Pictured courtesy of this site: advice for lawyers.