By Lesley Thomas (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-21 07:24

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.

The Association of Head Teachers expressed concern last week that got-rich-quick celebrities such as Victoria Beckham have warped the minds of the young who no longer believe that hard work is important.

I do not think it is just small children whose priorities are being twisted. It is around the age of 37, when you are getting as close to the top of your career ladder as you are going to and you cannot afford to replace the stair carpet, fix the exhaust and have a holiday all in the same year that you start fantasizing about lucrative eureka moments and giving up the 9 to 5 graft.

Every day I hear of a new tale of easily won money - usually from some net-based scam - sorry - enterprise, and feel like a sad loser foolishly attached to a work ethic.

What about the woman at work writing a naughty little blog on company time, got caught and got fired? Instead of going to the job center, she secured a massive book deal based on her online ramblings. Can head teachers please explain to me the moral of the story of la petite Anglaise?

The closer the speed-success story is to my line of work the more painful it is. At the moment, I am especially worried about the raft of lifestyle websites that could make some of my contemporaries and co-workers very rich indeed.

Style guru Nathalie Hambro's fullofchic.com with advice on how to be the in-thing in everything is worrying. Fashion journalist Mimi Spencer's new site wonderstuff.com, with its expert lifestyle tips, is disquieting too.

I look at some of these websites the way many look at the work of Jackson Pollock. "Anyone could have done that," I moan. If only I could get off my backside and stop working so hard, then maybe I could too.

We are drinking more champagne than ever. France is trying to redraw the boundaries of its champagne-making region to cope with the demand. It is difficult to see what it is we are all celebrating, but its ubiquity and popularity can mean only one thing.

The Observer

(China Daily 03/21/2008 page9)