Rube Goldberg remembered

Back in the thirties and forties, there was a noted cartoonist, Rube Goldberg (and a similar British humourist, Heath Robinson) who drew pictures of very complex arrangements of mechanisms to accomplish mundane tasks. Bubbling tea kettles and bouncing balls combined with other devices to turn pages in newspapers or stir soup pots.
After sitting in court for seven days listening to the description of the Lansdowne Partnership Plan, I could not help thinking of those cartoons from the past. The lawyers from both sides described an extraordinarily complex business arrangement. But try as I might, I could not see the need for such complexity.
Much of the humour in the old cartoons comes from imagining the foolishness which would prompt anyone to assemble such ludicrous arrangements. I would have enjoyed the humour in the complexity of the Lansdowne setup, but I kept remembering that somehow I was paying for it all.
In fact, the more the complex arrangement was explained to the judge, the less funny it seemed. The complexity looked as if it were designed to conceal the reality of the arrangement rather than actually contributing to a positive outcome.