Neil Lovatt, director at a financial mutual, Scottish Friendly, reckons anyone who thinks they will get a good deal by cashing in an existing annuity is "living in cloud cuckoo land".
The reasons they cite are various: stress, homesickness, even "going cuckoo".
With Alstom's board due to decide no later than June 23rd, chief executives are nipping in and out of government ministries as if they were cuckoo clocks, sweet-talking Alstom's unions in the intervals.
Its breakneck growth makes it, as one leading Western economic commentator put it, a giant cuckoo in the global nest.
As the photographs above show, the two birds (cuckoo on the left, sparrowhawk on the right) are similar in size, shape and plumage, and both have a conspicuous pattern of bars on their breasts a pattern found on many species of hawk, but not on the cuckoo's relatives.
The cuckoo clock .Mathias Koenig-Archibugi London* Letter appears online only.
DISCUSSING his approach to foreign affairs this month, Silvio Berlusconi puzzlingly declared that he had "inaugurated the policy of the cuckoo".
However, there is more to this elaborate deceit than is generally realised.As far back as ancient times a similarity has been noted between many cuckoo species and hawks; in size, shape and plumage.
Upon hatching, the cuckoo chick eliminates any of its potential rival chicks by pushing them or their eggs out of the nest.
More recently researchers have discovered that hawk-like markings are more prevalent in cuckoo species that engage in nest parasitism than in cuckoo species that do not.
Unless, of course, "Billy Elliot" flops in New York.But Mr Spacey is conscious of the lingering perception that he is a cuckoo in the nest.
