Sixty six extra days: that's how long it'll take Australian women to work after the end of the financial year to earn the same as men -- research released this week by the Diversity Council Australia and the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace agency finding Australian women on average still earn 18% less than men. And a recent report from KPMG found the biggest contributing factor to the pay gap is simply being a woman - in other words - discrimination. So what can be done to change the status quo? Few are better qualified to comment than Cherie Blair (aka Cherie Booth QC): mother of four and one of Britain's top barristers (specialising in public law, human rights, media and information law, employment law and European Community law); someone who put her own political ambition on the back burner in favour of her husband, carrying the unofficial mantle of Britain's First Lady for over a decade alongside Labour's longest-serving Prime Minister Tony Blair.

As the 19th Century English businessman, essayist and journalist Walter Bagehot once observed: "Much has been written about panics and manias, much more than with the most outstretched intellect we are able to follow or conceive ... but one thing is certain: at particular times a great deal of stupid people have a great deal of stupid money ... at intervals, the money of these people - the blind capital of the country - is particularly large and craving; it seeks for someone to devour it, and there is a "plethora"; it finds someone, and there is "speculation"; it is devoured, and there is "panic". Roger Nightingale (celebrated market watcher) and Roger Hambury (head of EMEA, City Index London) cast aside the panic of failing economies to arrive at some clarity over the state we're in.