Even in the financial pages, which normally take such things in their stride, the £10m pay packet of BSkyB chief James Murdoch, who took over from his father, has raised eyebrows. "I have not, do not and will never believe that any human being is worth paying £10m a year,'' one commentator fumed.

But it was only the day before yesterday that the entire nation was up in arms over the £400,000 or so collected by Cedric Brown, boss of British Gas. Now, annual pay or golden goodbyes of over £1m have become routine, even rewarding poor performance.

Tomorrow, for instance, the annual report of Shell is expected to show that ex-chairman Sir Philip Watts, virtually sacked for allowing the extent of the company's oil reserves to be overstated, has received a payoff of almost £1m, to add to an option on two million shares and an annual pension of £500,000. This echoes the £2.4m in shares awarded to Sainsbury chairman Sir Peter Davis, following a profits' fall of almost three per cent.

Soon boardroom packages the size of James Murdoch's and larger will be commonplace. Beneficiaries might well adopt as a motto some lines by which the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins expresses the lushness of spring, which brings them into my mind: "Have, get, before it cloy, all that juice and all that joy.''

Except, of course, that the boardroom bonanza, overseen by its once sworn enemy Tony Blair, shows no sign of cloying.

When the American Barbara Cassani was appointed to head Britain's Olympic Games bid less than a year ago, objections that it seemed weak to depend on a foreigner were swept aside. Ms Cassani, founder of budget airline Go, was the best person, full stop.

Now it emerges she has been trying to quit since the beginning of the year. It is said she feels unsuited to the next stage of the bid, which requires, as one report put it, "hours of hobnobbing with IOC members in hotel lobbies and bars across the globe''.

Presumably, Ms Cassani somehow was unaware of this tedious, doubtless grubby duty. And isn't the fawning picture it summons up an unappealing image of the world preparing for its once most-noble global occasion?

Four of the final five candidates will lose. What a waste of money that could be put to useful purposes. Likely to swell double, the £50m budgeted for Britain's bid could regenerate the run-down area of London earmarked for the games, almost certainly destined to be staged elsewhere.

Where is Planet Judge? Far, far away, for judges, truly, dwell not even in our galaxy. First comes the staggeringly unbelievable sentence of just three-and-a-half years (in reality less than two), imposed, if that is the right word, by Leeds Recorder Norman Jones, QC, on the Darlington GP who filmed sex assaults on women patients.Then, two Appeal Court judges, Mr Justice Fulford and Mr Justice Aikins, quash a £25,0000 fine on a bent antiques dealer who tried to sell £130,000 worth of heirlooms stolen from a Wiltshire stately home.

Previously also given only a suspended sentence, the offender thus got off virtually scot free for his part in a major burglary. There are so many such instances of wildly ill-judged leniency that our judiciary has forfeit just about all credibility.