Morning:
8°c
For a working mother, organising Christmas can be a challenge. Fortunately, my day job involves a certain amount of contact with politicians and businessmen, and I have gleaned some handy techniques from them to help me get through the difficult days ahead (like talking about a "challenge" rather than a "hideous ordeal akin to chewing razor blades"). In a spirit of seasonal goodwill, I'm passing them on to you.
* Managing expectations. In the run-up to by-elections, governments put it about that they are expecting to lose by a landslide, so that when the opposition candidate is caught drunk in a brothel with public funds stuffed into his trousers and the government's candidate scrapes home by a whisker, they can call the outcome a triumph. Similarly, in the run-up to Christmas, I have told my children that I have bought them a goat in Somalia, so that when they get a book token and a pair of slightly used socks, they'll be delighted.
* Capturing the moral high ground. Gordon Brown tells the nation that he has saved the world; David Cameron rushes off to the Arctic to be photographed cuddling huskies. I am planning to explain to the relations that I have bought them all carbon offsets. This will not only save me from trawling round any more horrible shops but will also catapult me up the family virtue hierarchy.
* Creating effective incentive structures. Managers think a lot about how to get the best out of their people. So do I. "Father Christmas only comes to good girls" doesn't really wash with urban 11-year-olds (of whom I have two) but I know how to give them a look that means much the same and ensures speedy completion of household chores in the run-up to Christmas.
* Repackaging subprime assets. The banks' practice of polishing up dodgy loans and selling them on may have got the financial system into a certain amount of trouble but the principle is a sound one. I have a box full of slightly dusty bottles of shower gel and boxes of chocolates which, when wrapped in some shiny new paper, will do nicely as emergency presents.
* Outsourcing. Businesses have improved their efficiency no end by employing oppressed children in poor countries to do their work for them. I plan to do something similar, using labour nearer home. I am lousy at choosing Christmas presents for my children, so this year I am getting them to choose them for each other. That way, they're likely to be happier with what they get - and if they're not, they'll blame each other, not me.
* Delegation. Very large numbers of relations will be coming to my house on Christmas Day. Experience tells me that if I give each of them a job - peeling the parsnips, making the brandy butter - I can retire to bed with a champagne cocktail and nobody will notice.
* Blaming everything on the economic crisis. This is proving tremendously handy for the Government. Ballooning government debt? Tax rises on the horizon? Sorry, everybody, it's the collapsing world economy. If it's good enough for Gordon, it's good enough for me. Cheapo turkey? No X-box 360? Sorry, children, it's the politicians and the businessmen who are to blame.
No more Madonna for free
Warner Music has fallen out with YouTube (owned by Google) and is no longer going to provide music videos for free. No more Madonna, Led Zeppelin or James Blunt, then. I'm afraid that this is the beginning of the end of free content on the web. Warner Music was one of the first companies to go down that road and is apparently the first to realise that it's unsustainable.
It's a big shame for consumers. I have had hours of fun showing my daughters the mullet hairdos of the Seventies and the nasal safety pins of the Eighties while they show me the slightly less embarrassing stuff they regard as hot. But it's the only answer for music and publishing businesses. If they keep providing content for free, they will all go down the YouTube.
Stockwell's street of shame
A suggestion comes from the New Local Government Network that local residents should vote to rename streets after local celebrities in order to boost civic pride. This puts my impoverished neighbourhood, Stockwell, at a disadvantage. Astonishingly, pop singers and footballers do not choose to live in deprived areas.
I have Googled all the sites for sad sacks who like to hang around outside celebrities' houses, and come up with very little. Apparently we had a short visit from Voltaire, whose vision of a world racked by corruption and syphilis may have been informed by his stay here, and a prolonged one from Van Gogh, who declined into madness shortly afterwards. The famous contemporary name most closely linked with Stockwell is that of Jean Charles de Menezes but his story doesn't make me feel terribly proud. Let's not take up this suggestion.
