When hard work no longer counts

Hands up who feels very happy for the founder of Bebo, set to make $573 million from the sale of his networking site to AOL? I do not.

British-born Michael Birch cannot have worked that hard or, indeed, for that long since the site was only established in 2005. Have you seen him? Even his hair speaks of a non-industry. It hurts.

I felt just the same way when the Forbes list of the world's most loaded was published recently. It is the younger people on the rich register who inflict the greatest agony, especially when they have made stacks of money from one simple idea in the manner of Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, and the youngest-ever self-made dollar billionaire.