Golfing tantrums on the green

I like the 'idea' of golf, but I've never personally been able to work up much enthusiasm for playing this particular game. It has always seemed to me like a good walk spoiled and efforts by friends in various countries (including Scotland, of course) to get me to take up playing have borne little fruit. The nearest I ever came to succumbing was when I did serious research about purchasing a set of left-handed clubs when I lived in Dubai. However, I saw sense in time!

But golfers do take their little rules extremely seriously - and 'serious' crimes like this are considered completely unacceptable and drastic and humiliatingly public punishments are the result if the club committee upholds complaints by one member about the conduct of another. 'Drastic' in this context equates to being suspended from the club - it could have been worse, I suppose, he could have been expelled. An exquisite aspect of this particular incident is that 'news of the dispute reached Sir Fred Goodwin, the head of Mr Lindsay's employers [The Royal Bank of Scotland]'. This is the allegedly adult equivalent of a school headmaster chastising an unruly pupil and terminating a disciplinary interview by saying 'I have no alternative but to inform your unhappy parents'. God, how I despise the juvenile conduct of everyone involved!