GROUND FLOOR / SHEILA O'FLANAGAN: Last week it was bonds beating equities into a cocked hat; this week it turns out that we'd all be better off working in the public sector. That certainly wasn't perceived as being the case a couple of years ago when, as I recall, public-sector workers were protesting about being left behind by the Celtic you-know-what. It wasn't fair, they complained; they were keeping the wheels of State oiled just so whippersnappers could earn a fortune. Now the fortunes have disappeared but the public sector is still happily greasing the wheels.
My old rivals in the stockbroking stakes, Goodbody, recently carried out an analysis of pay and conditions in the public sector versus the private sector and - just as in the case of bonds and equities - the results, published in the Sunday Times, were startling.
It appears that average earnings when you're being paid by the State aren't all that different from the private sector - with average public-sector pay at €36,674 versus €39,660 for the skilled construction sector and €25,867 for general industry.
It also appears that employment in the public sector increased in the period from 1998-2002 at a higher level than anywhere else.
More startlingly, and taking some conservative assumptions into consideration, Goodbody concluded that the value of a public-sector pension was worth about €800,000 more at retirement, which is as good a reason for sticking with the civil service as any I've ever heard.
Of course, there are private-sector workers who have managed to do extremely well in the 1998- 2002 period. Or, more likely, they did extremely well before then and just about managed to hang on in those four years.
As with everything, it was only the stellar few that really made good. But the bottom line seems to be that slow and steady can, indeed, win the race and that working in a Government department isn't the financial wasteland that we're often led to believe. Especially when you retire!
At the end of her first full year as chief executive of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), Clara Furse was paid £975,000 sterling (€1,434,667) in salary and bonuses. Whether she'll stick it out for much longer is the subject of some gossip in City circles because the trading rooms have been full of rumours about her private life for the past couple of weeks.
The LSE issued a statement defending Ms Furse and threatened to sue those spreading the rumours.
The whole thing has, naturally, taken on a "sexism in the City" slant - many people are suggesting that any man would be subjected to the same kind of rumours and that Clara had better just take it on the chin and deal with it.
(Don Cruickshank, the LSE chairman, by publicly defending her, counts against taking it on the chin and there is a general feeling that his intervention has only made things worse.)
Many people are arguing that the rumours are based on jealousy and that Ms Furse has never been accepted by the men she beat to the job. She agreed that it came with "a lot of baggage" (although it isn't clear whether she was referring to the men she had to deal with or the history of the exchange).
But three men before her resigned following a variety of controversies, so the job doesn't have a good history. The only difference, of course, is that Gavin Casey, Michael Lawrence and Peter Rawlins didn't have stories about their personal lives plastered all over the tabloids - their pastings were purely on their commercial abilities.
And that is the killer blow. All of us can take criticism of our professional conduct and Ms Furse failed to nail a partnership agreement between the LSE and Liffe, for which she can rightly be slated. It's part and parcel of having a job in the first place.
But when our private lives are taken out for an airing and used against us, it's quite different.
And there is a double standard. If a bloke strays from the personal straight and narrow for what is called a bit of "offside", he's generally given a slap on the back and is feted by his mates. They may or may not actually approve of their colleague's behaviour but they certainly wouldn't consider condemning it. A woman in the same situation suddenly turns into a "slapper" and is lucky if she's not subject to a variety of propositions from men she's never heard of before.
A good number of years ago, a female colleague and I were at a business dinner with a group of male clients. Afterwards they wanted to go to a nightclub. We were footing the bill and so we had to go too. (Not that I have any objection to nightclubs but I'd rather go with people I know and like than a bunch of blokes who were getting drunk on my expense account!)
Anyway, the "lads" - none of whom was under the age of 50 - got progressively more and more frisky and their suggestions of how we might spend the rest of the night more and more unlikely. Eventually my friend and I bought another two bottles of champagne, dumped them on the table in front of them, and legged it to a nearby hotel for a restorative cup of tea - which wasn't exactly easy to come by at 3 a.m.
Corporate culture is such that everyone is vying for success. Many men do this by stamping their authority on their territory in the way they know best - aggression coupled with talk about their sexual conquests.
Clearly you take it with a pinch of salt but it's still a jungle out there. If you look feminine and sexy you can end up as prey. If you don't, you end up like Clara Furse. Or like Rosalind Franklin.
Franklin was the female scientist who worked on the discovery of DNA. But her contribution was denigrated by her male colleagues. One of them, James Watson, described her as sexually frigid and aggressive. A woman who "did not go out of her way to make herself look attractive".
Rosalind Franklin died in 1958. Things really haven't changed all that much, have they?
