Anecdote of the day

"At a party last week, I met a man who until recently was a government minister. We chatted about this and that, and he said how much he was enjoying his assortment of sinecures - non-executive directorships, speaking engagements and so on. He had both more money and more spare time than he used to have; in all, life was good. I asked him if he was missing the power. He looked at me as if I were a simpleton. Government ministers don't have any power, he said."

Lucy Kellaway in today's FT.