Date for the 2009 diary: Zac Goldsmith, wannabe Tory MP and former editor of The Ecologist, is to present the Sustainable City Awards on behalf of the City of London Corporation on 19 February.

Goldsmith says: “Climate change represents the biggest threat we've ever faced and it is wonderful therefore to be able to recognise the huge range of companies, organisations and individuals that see it as their responsibility to take sustainability to the heart of what they do. Almost everything that needs doing is already being done, somewhere, and by showcasing best practice, these awards will provide real motivation.”

Hmmm. Will Zac be able to persuade Tory high command too? The chatter in the Westminster tearooms is that Tory MPs want David Cameron and his embattled shadow chancellor George Osborne to drop the touchy-feely green stuff and offer some good old-fashioned Tory red meat in the shape of proper tax cuts.

* A silver lining for hard-pressed bankers. The end-of-year deadline for some of the big US banks is 30 November, when bonuses will be decided. Of course, many staff will be barely collecting a bonus at all — indeed, some of the Goldman top brass have waived their right to a bonus this year in recognition of the bank's troubled fortunes. But plenty of London executives can still expect a payday — and it will be in dollars.

So at least the 25% slump in sterling this year will mean the meagre bonus goes further...

Lawyer in a fury over soup

Lawyers at Reed Smith seem to have far too much time on their hands. Roll On Friday, the legal trade website, has got hold of an email sent from an associate at the firm to the caterers, musing on the quality of the soup on offer at its St Botolph Street office canteen, Writs.

“There has without doubt been a noticeable deterioration over time in the quality of the soup, and I fear today the Writs soups reached a new low. The substance was inedible even for me.

It was described as Winter vegetable' but was in fact cream, discoloured beige, with a very few cubes of root vegetables, some of which, curiously, were overcooked and some of which were undercooked. It had no flavour at all, except that afforded by lukewarm cream.”

The associate then suggests a remedy. “Would it not be possible for the appointed soup maker to read the ingredients of decent commercial soups on offer — e.g. Covent Garden Soups — and simply copy them? There seems little room for error if such a policy were pursued, and your patrons would not then run the risk of purchasing lukewarm cream.” Given that there clearly can't be much work around, perhaps the lawyer should consider quitting the office for the kitchen.

* HR consultant Chrysalis Solutions clearly likes to cover all bases. Marketing literature for forthcoming training courses reads:
“25 November, £299 per delegate: Handling redundancy: are you considering making redundancies? This course will give you all the information and confidence you need.” Next up: “3 December: Effective recruitment and retention. All the information you need to make your recruitment processes effective.”

Clever plug by Soros in Congress

Why the rich are rich. In the grilling by the House Oversight Committee in Washington of hedge fund bosses, in front of millions of TV viewers furious about how outfits like his have added to the world's financial crisis, George Soros manages to get in a plug for his book.
Nice one George.

* Discount retailer Lidl has been forced to apologise after poisoning its waste food to thwart homeless scavengers. The incident happened at a store in Sweden. “Lidl Sweden has been informed that cleaning liquids have been poured into the trash to stop trespassers from stealing garbage at one of our stores during a short time period,” Mathias Kivikoski, Lidl's chief executive in Sweden, said in a statement. “We deeply regret what has happened and this is not something the company recommends or permits.”

Mathewson attacks Pesto in HBOS row

DESPERATE stuff from Sir George Mathewson. Discussing his surely doomed attempt to get HBOS to bin its management team, replace it with himself and Sir Peter Burt, and scrap the deal with Lloyds TSB Mathewson turns on Robert Peston in the Scottish Sunday Times.

The BBC business editor is “an instrument of the Treasury”, he rants. “Everything it knows goes straight to Peston. It's shocking. They are telling him everything. He is not an independent reporter any more. He is in the pay of the Treasury.”

Peston responds calmly, calling the claims “completely absurd”. Memo to Mathewson: concentrate on the bigger issue, like trying to take over a bank. PS, if he is really that powerful do you think it's wise to upset him so?

* Times are so tough over at Goldman that rainmakers now have to buy their own deal “tombstones”. The bank used to award these little plastic trophies to execs to commemorate their success in advising on big transactions. Alas, no more. Thankfully, there are so few deals around that few bankers have actually noticed the difference.

* No such tightness over at Merrill Lynch, where, the New Yorker reports, an inventive soul in the mergers and acquisitions department bought a job lot of “floating globe” desk toys to celebrate a takeover deal. They're those things with a base and a little globe that floats in the air thanks to hidden magnets. Trouble was, the dim bankers couldn't work out how to do it. Stephen Sokoler, boss of the shop that sold the toys, recalls: “It was a real pain in the ass. People were calling me in the middle of the night saying: It's not floating!' And you'd have to, like, walk them through it. You'd say: Yes, it is floating, you just have to hold it in the right place'.”

* Tumbleweed blowing through the corporate hospitality section at Twickenham at the weekend as the credit crunch left as many as four neighbouring boxes at a time uninhabited...