This probably had more to do with Messrs Enfield and Vickers and no health and safety legislation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7rrIlPu-Ao

But anyway I digress. Here are a few examples of the plainly stupid levels of management leadership I have come across. Extremely well paid business leaders and executives who really just don't have a clue.

1) An IT executive manager of a well known merchant bank (the one that went bankrupt and precipated the whole financial crisis) who didn't know what an IP address was.

2) An executive for a one of the largest communication companies in the world, who screamed at me to get her Internet working. Yep she hadn't had her router turned on the previous 3 days, 'Try turning it on'.

3) A systems developer executive who had lost all of his emails from his web mail. 'Try looking in your Outlook client'.

So it doesn't really surprise me that the Chief Executive of the RBS (Fred the Shred, who had no banking qualifications. If only someone had let him take up Lion Taming instead ) didn't know that his bank was effectively insolvent. I really wouldn't be surprised if he had been reading the accounts and not realising that the entries were for thousands and not the actual amount. i.e. a Billion pound entry was in fact a Trillion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0uE1qi2A68

High levels of renumeration and actual ability or competence are not necessarily mutually inclusive.

BTW Jack Bauer always calling his IT support at OCU is so far fetched as to be laughable.

I wonder who exactly did the SEC executives/employees called when the porn stopped working on their computers.