City Spy: Wandsworth set to snub Abramovich

While its first choice would be to increase the capacity of Stamford Bridge, Chelsea FC has also been making overtures to CapCo at Earls Court and the Battersea receiver Ernst & Young for a new 55,000-seater. They have already had the thumbs-down from CapCo, and now Wandsworth Council's planning chairman, Nick Cuff, has expressed serious reservations about the Battersea site.

"It is very difficult to see an occupier like Chelsea delivering around our existing vision for the site," he told Estates Gazette. One major element of the "vision" is a new Northern line spur from Kennington via Nine Elms, to which the current scheme has pledged £22 million.

"We would expect any developer or investor to buy into the Northern line extension", Cuff said. But he added that it would not make sense for Chelsea, as many fans would be coming from the north and west - the opposite direction of the new line.
An own goal, then?

In search of good Karma - let's play ping-pong for 24 hours!

This makes running the marathon seems like a doodle. Dave Buonaguidi, co-founder of advertising agency Karmarama, has been playing ping-pong non-stop for the last 24 hours with assorted partners. It's all part of a campaign, called PingPong24, to raise cash for Age UK, which is highlighting the importance of the elderly staying warm this winter. He was due to finish at noon today in Karmarama's Olympia offices, having tried out various states of fancy dress, including a hippo costume. And, as befits any self-respecting ad agency, the event was streamed live online.

Christmas blues strike at Wapping

Can News International supremo James Murdoch do nothing right? After an annus horribilis for his Wapping newspapers, staff on the Sunday Times are grumbling about their Christmas party next Monday. A hack wails: "Not only does he not seem to care that is a day off, but because Christmas Day is Sunday, and we would never publish, he seems to expect us to come in on a week off for most journalists. Not a lot of joined-up management thinking! Attendance will be thin on the ground." City Spy is sure there will still be a good turnout. But it may be too much to hope for joined-up management thinking, given that Murdoch's defence over phone hacking now appears to be he doesn't read his emails.

Lloyds boss should follow the Army way

Antonio Horta-Osorio is said to have had 13 senior executives reporting directly to him when he was running Lloyds Banking Group before he went on medical leave for sleeplessness and overwork (that included taking a spell in The Priory). Says a boss at another smaller firm: "13 direct reports! No wonder he felt overworked. In the Army, people have only three direct reports, and they've been doing it for hundreds of years."
Now the Lloyds chief executive has seen sense - and is going to slash the number of lieutenants directly reporting to him when he returns to work on January 9.

*Maybe H-O, as Antonio is known within Lloyds, should take up more recreations. He lists "tennis and scuba-diving" in Who's Who but makes no mention of clubs. Lloyds chairman Sir Win Bischoff lists no fewer than three clubs: "Woking Golf, Swinley Forest Golf, Frilford Heath Golf." Regular rounds of 18 holes away from the office could be what the doctor ordered.

Is HuffPo paying off for AOL?

A lot of people mocked AOL for buying The Huffington Post comment blog site for £200 million but, amazingly, Arianna Huffington's site is eclipsing established news rivals - at least in the US. Facebook has named who had the 40 most-shared political news stories of 2011 on the social-networking site. Here's the score: Huffington Post 10, CNN 7, MSNBC 6 and Fox News 5. The Washington Post had only one story in the top 40 and the New York Times none.