Insalutary Tale.

From John Snow's blog:

As we sweat ourselves through what is promised to be the most painful UK budget in thirty years, there is an insalutary tale from far afield.

Ken Talbot and the entire Board of the Australian Sundance Resources company has been wiped out in an air crash in the Congo. Their plane, piloted by French and British pilots was flying from Cameroon into the Congo to visit a mine.

Ken Talbot was worth a billion Australian dollars. In flying in the same plane he and his board broke corporate protocol.

Talbot had also been mired in a corruption scandal, and was due to appear in court in August. He was the CEO of Macarthur Coal, but had stood down after being charged with bribery in his home state of Queensland. He had pleaded not guilty to all alleged charges.

At one level it is of course the most terrible tragedy. But on another it may say something about finance, politics, wealth and the frailty of human life.

Talbot faced some thirty five charges of paying ‘commissions’ to the disgraced Australian Labour MP Gordon Nuttal, jailed last year in Queenland for corruption. Named in his trial was one Ken Talbot.

Mr Talbot now only has to make his reckoning with the grim reaper, the charges against him are wiped from the slate.

But how fickle life is. By all accounts Talbot had everything. But there it is, it’s all over. He leaves an awful lot of money, a lot grief, a company with no Board, and criminal charges the outcome of which we shall never know.

Why do I blog about it?

Because on Budget day it tells us something about our transitory lives. Perhaps too that money isn’t everything – whatever the Chancellor may do about it – and that we are all well advised to play it straight.

Oh, and if we care about those we leave behind, we shouldn’t all be found aboard the same plane when flying in inhospitable conditions on a twin turboprop a long way from home.

John Snow.

Luke 12.

Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

And he told them this story: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'

"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." '

"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'

"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."