Gone are the days when the world went quiet over the summer as the work shut down for the school holidays. The advent of 24-hour news and the scrutiny of social media has left us all with a silly season that's barely ironic. 

August does provide a slight respite and I recently caught up with a friend who no longer works in local government, but had an interesting take on its current position. She described it as like the opening of Winnie the Pooh. For the uninitiated, it goes: