Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Sir Richard Greenbury, the old Marks & Spencer warhorse, next meets his son, Adam, a director of Rothschilds.

In the latest Management Today, the father, who has been quiet for some time, resurfaces, advocating that the City take up the recommendation of his committee back in 1995 that a bonus could not be more than 20% of your salary. "I was told I was out of date, living in the past and this was the 1990s now." Adam, it can be assumed, earns a rather larger bonus than 20% of his salary.

* Sir Richard goes on to praise his son, saying that Adam is a “very successful investment banker”. Then the former chairman and chief executive of M&S bites back: “Having said that, he has spent the last 15 years — since he was old enough and wise enough — explaining to me that I ran M&S badly. Why? Because I did not have any debt. You were not geared; you have got to be geared,' he used to tell me.” The boy liked to say, “No, no, Dad, you are a 1970s, 1980s man, this is a new era.' That was his line.” Adds Greenbury — and you can picture the smile — “He has now had the most terrible shock to his system.”

Wrong today, wrong tomorrow

Some spectacularly wrong predictions are brought to the forefront, thanks to a new pundit-mocking website, wrongtomorrow.com. Here's ex-AIG executive Joseph Cassano on AIG's financial products' credit swaps in 2007: “It is hard for us, with and without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing $1 in any of those transactions.” No, but losing $62 billion should be manageable.

And Bill Gates in January 2004: “Two years from now, spam will be solved.”

* A tad unfortunate that the initials of G20's new Financial Stability Board is FSB, the same as Russia's spy agency...

Solicitors with their feet up...

Lawyers who have lost their jobs now have a virtual home. One of their number has set up a Facebook group called “Solicitors with their feet up” for those who have been made redundant. Currently, the group has only eight members, but with City law firms continuing to axe staff, membership may well balloon. Helpfully, the page includes the number to call to claim the jobseeker's allowance...

* What's the difference between a car worker and a City solicitor? Not much, judging by the staff at Norton Rose voting overwhelmingly for a scheme that could see partners and salaried staff put on
a four-day week.

* Meanwhile, at a recent graduate fair, Slaughter and May was still trying to tempt recruits with, wait for it, free Parker pens. But the Slaughters carrot was rather more appealing than the hologrammed graduate brochure that rival Magic Circle firm Linklaters was handing out.

Strewth! Kylie is going cheap

Sign of the times, part 984: spies Down Under reveal Princess of pop Kylie Minogue, who normally drips with designer labels, has been shopping at the Salvation Army.

* And part 985: at the Mipim property fair in Cannes, reports Property Week, a guest boarded Cushman & Wakefield's yacht moored in the harbour. “Thank you for inviting us on to your yacht,” said Clive Dutton of Birmingham City Council. Cushman's EMEA chief, Paul Bacon, replied: “Our boat — we prefer to call it a boat.”

* It gets worse for Bernie Madoff. Fresh from having his beloved New York Mets seats snatched by creditors, it emerges the fraudster's 55-foot yacht Bull, which is docked at a marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been confiscated by US marshalls.

The yacht, a 1969 Rybovich, is valued at about $2 million and was towed to the National Liquidators salvage yard. To compound his fall from grace, federal investigators also swooped on a $9 million Palm Beach mansion owned by Madoff's wife, changing the locks in the process. Next up for repossession? Bernie had another yacht, also named Bull but much bigger and valued at $7 million. It is currently located in the South of France.

Time for Sir Fred to get LinkedIn

Another case of green shoots, or just wishful thinking? Some 49% of UK business professionals say if they are made redundant, they would use a windfall to set up their own business. The poll of 3000 members of the networking site LinkedIn found that men are marginally more willing to go it alone than women. Older workers are also more likely to set up their own business if they leave their job. Over to you, Sir Fred Goodwin...

* The US practice of shipping kids off to summer camps has become popular here. Now camp organisers in the US have a new theme to add to the tennis/swimming/chess mix: personal finance summer camps. Participants will learn to “inventory their resources”, ugh, “create a plan for making their first million dollars”, God help us, and “take significant steps toward becoming financially literate”, that's a bit better. Fun times. Maybe some of the bankers will fancy going along with their kids.

* Kevin Rudd, the Australian Premier famously caught in a lapdancing club before he took office, knows a thing or two about stimulus packages. That's why he opted to hand out A$12.2 billion to Aussies to encourage them to spend — up to A$950 each. As well as snapping up new flat-screen TVs and the like, many are spending it in the legalised brothels that pepper the country's suburbs. As Pip Marquet, manager of the After Dark whorehouse in Sydney's Brookvale district, says: “People are using at least some of the package to stimulate themselves.”

* The new Enterprise Loan Guarantee scheme isn't as guaranteed as you might think. Subprime lenders such as State Securities have been warned off using the new facility because the mandarins at Lord Mandelson's business department will not pay the promised 75% guarantee if a lender lets too many loans fail. A Whitehall source tells City Spy the Government may refuse to refund more than 20% for serial offending lenders. That could be bad news for some of those subprime lenders...