WHAT do government ministers do with their time? It's a moot question, given the state the country is in, but some clue comes from the exchange of emails between the recently departed communications minister Lord Carter and his former employer, Brunswick. As previously disclosed in City Spy, they were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act search and, as seems par for the course, in this administration's desire to be seen to be transparent, are heavily redacted.

The identity of Carter's contact at Brunswick, for instance, is blacked out - although City Spy suggests it is Tim Burt, the PR firm's media partner. On 26 January this year, the then communications minister wrote to "X@Brunswick" about a breakfast they were planning: "Do we have a guest list tomorrow, I will be joined by [name withheld], he doesn't eat bread or any wheat-based products..."

Don't ministers have back-up staff for this sort of thing? And who is this mystery attendee with the strict dietary requirement?

Presumably his wheat-free existence was allowed through by the wielder of the black felt tip in Whitehall because it was so banal...

That Goldman memo in full...

GOLLY, Goldman Sachs has a giant-sized PR problem. First, Rolling Stone called the bank a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity" - a description that was picked up around the world. Now, the New Yorker offers its own take with a spoof "internal memo".

"ATTN: Employees of Goldman Sachs. We did it... They may have shot Lennon, but nothing can kill the Beatles. I admit things looked bleak for a minute there. We had to convert to a bank holding company and were forced to accept a taxpayer bailout. It felt un-American. Terribly unbanksmanly. But we accepted the money, knowing that we could magically weave it into a much larger mountain of money. With these returns we are making Madoff look like a little kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. Now, wanting to celebrate our renewed success is natural, but it's important that we don't go crazy here. So I ask that, in celebrating our raping of the stock market, we show restraint in the following ways:

"Please limit high-fives and chest bumps to a dozen a day.

"Don't wear your crowns, except around the office.

"Stop paying for things in Monopoly money-I understand it is the same as real money to us, but there have been some complaints.

For now, let's take down the giant scoreboard that reads 'Main Street: zero. Wall Street: a billion gazillion bajillion.'

Yours in money,

Lloyd Blankfein,

CEO, Goldman Sachs."

* HOW the mighty have fallen. Bust bank Lehman Brothers has its own official eBay shop, flogging branded $25 canvas duffel bags and silk ties printed with the LEH logo for $34.99. Proceeds go to creditors. Now it is opening a retail store next door to its Sixth Avenue, Manhattan office to sell similar branded merchandise. Up for sale is a silver-plated Lehman Brothers rattle (seriously), at $14.99. Former CEO Dick Fuld must be so proud.

* INTRIGUING appointment by media regulator Ofcom, which has come in for fierce criticism from Tory leader David Cameron. Norman Blackwell, who advised the Downing Street Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher and later ran the unit for John Major between 1995 and 1997, is to become a non-executive board director.

Lord Blackwell is also a long-serving director of the Centre For Policy Studies (which recently published a pamphlet calling for the BBC to be shrunk). Blackwell's appointment should help Ofcom chairman Colette Bowe, who also worked in Whitehall under the Tories in the 1980s, as she tries to make the regulator more palatable to the incoming Cameron administration.

* LEHMAN gets it in the neck - or rather, both necks -in Enron, the new play about America's biggest corporate fraud. The show opened in Chichester this week. Weirdly, Lehman Brothers is conveyed as a pair of wonkish Siamese twins who can't decide if they are going to turn left or right.

Enron bosses Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, played by Sam West and Tim Pigott-Smith, duly go down in flames. At one point Lay, a hoary old Texan, says to Skilling: "Jeff, will you pray with me?" Alas, the power of prayer was not enough to save their debt-bound business. The show, which is coming to the Royal Court in London after Chichester, is not the complete hatchet job on corporate buccaneers that you might expect. One line states that "within every great man there's a buried risk" and it closes with an encomium to the entrepreneurial spirit. What a pity that Enron was allied to, er, fraud.

* BIG respect to Bernie Madoff. Apparently, the fraudster's fellow jailbirds are impressed that Madoff pleaded guilty without bringing anyone else down with him. One convict said: "He's a regular dude. He's a really good guy, he's nice."

* IT'S a dangerous time for homeowners, according to insurer Aviva. But it's not worried about gun crime or burglaries - the company reports a 20% rise in broken glass claims during the Ashes, as budding Freddie Flintoffs and KPs smash up conservatories and windows.

* DEFINITION of accountants: "Those who come on to the field after the battle has ended to count the dead and bayonet the injured."

* HURRY, hurry. "Inspirational business women" are invited to apply for the NatWest everywoman Awards by the deadline of 31 July. The annual gongs "play an invaluable role in both recognising success and inspiring other women to venture into the field of business", says NatWest, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland (i.e. 70% by you and me).

Nominees should visit www.everywoman.com. Among the winners last year was that well-known business dynamo Coleen Rooney, who collected the NatWest everywoman Ambassador Award...