There’s a silver lining in the cloud of every recession, and today I read that the downturn has led to a 21.6% increase in baked beans. Celebrations all round at HJ Heinz, not to mention Crosse & Blackwell (depending who won this particular bean war). Beans really are a recessionary barometer, as cheap comfort eating comes back into vogue. If you pour them, steaming, on a slice of toasted, buttered Hovis, you can get right nostalgic.  

As usual, however, this isn’t entirely good news. As we all know, the haricot bean once consumed has its complex carbohydrates broken down in the gut, and one of the by-products is methane. And a colleague tells me that methane is several times more potent as an agent of climate change than carbon dioxide. You just can’t find an unalloyed positive story anywhere at the moment, can you?

But this socio-economic/political funk we’re in does lead to acts of total idiocy. The news reaches me today that such is his level of disgust with the UK political system that David Van Day, one time member of Dollar, mobile burger salesman and pantomime villain from ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’, is planning to stand for Parliament. Given a toss-up between him and the poisonous nastiness of The Telegraph’s Simon Heffer (also mulling an election bid), I wouldn’t know where to place my cross. Even dear old Terry Waite, who spent years chained to a Beirut radiator, is threatening to come out of retirement and stand for the House on the Squeaky Clean ticket. 

Whichever way you look at it, there will be no shortage of waste gas being emitted over the coming months.

In today's bulletin:
FSA planning for worst recession in 60 years
Psst, wanna buy a car maker? Vauxhall jobs in balance as GM talks stall
Nestle encourages staff to take a long walk
Editor's blog: Recession puts wind in bean sales
Nick Hood: Wall Street worries about crypto-Communism

Those of you who don’t live or work down in The Big Smoke may be unaware of the joys of the capital’s Metro. Metro is a freesheet distributed to London commuters who – if they have nothing better to do - take on average about two and a half minutes to consume it cover to cover.  It is not high-end editorially. It’s cheap, tries to be cheerful and makes ‘Take A Break’ look like the Wall Street Journal. 

Anyway this morning it has a screaming headline about – you’ve guessed it – MPs’ expenses. The headline reads ‘From the sublime to the ridiculous…’ and under it are the contrasting stories of Anthony Steen, the pompous MP for Totnes who’s been caught milking his expenses for his Devon mansion and Laura Moffat, MP for Crawley, who’s taken to kipping on a camp bed in her Westminster office because she has, ‘always believed it is wrong for public servants to make money out of the public purse’. Quite apart from the fact that it’s an illiterate headline, even for the sub-Daily Mail outrage they are trying to express, this story is so wrong-headed it’s hard to know where to start.

The new Puritanism currently taking the nation by storm, in which everyone tries to outdo the next man in acts of self-denial, is both tedious and daft. Puritans are a short-sighted, monotonous lot. If you wish to be ruled by a bunch of incorruptibles like Robespierre and Lenin – bloodless, witch-hunting technocrats with no sense of imagination, creativity or humanity, then fine. I don’t know about you, but my reaction when hearing that Esther Rantzen was planning to stand for parliament was one of dumbstruck horror. What has this woman ever done apart from introduce the great British viewing public to carrots shaped like the male reproductive organ? I’d take Anthony Steen with his rabbit-guards or Sir Peter Viggers and his duck island over Esther any time. 

Sleeping on a camp bed in your office is not the answer to anything. It’s a dumb, symbolic act that is uncivilised, impractical, demoralising and will probably mean the sublime Ms Moffat winds up totally exhausted and unable to work properly for the benefit of her constituents. But she has a wafer-thin majority of 37, so she’s clearly absolutely desperate to be seen to be doing 'The Right Thing'.

The same applies to Puritanism in business. If you send your people economy-class half way across the world for important meetings at which big contracts are at stake, they are going to feel firstly hard done by and secondly like death warmed-up when they spill out bleary-eyed into the arrivals hall at Mumbai or Los Angeles. It’s a false economy. Likewise, if you remove biscuits from meetings it might save you a few quid, but it makes everyone feel miserable. But misery is what seems to be in demand at the moment. We all have to don our hairshirts and suffer. We’ve all been very bad and have to sit it out on the naughty step. But naughty steps are as ineffective and unproductive for adults as they are for boisterous children.

In today's bulletin:
Fasten your seatbelts - BA nosedives to record loss
Non-Standard and Poor outlook for UK economy
Editor's blog: Why this new Puritanism is pointless
Why green shoots lead to recovery
Resigning in style, with YouTube

I did warn readers that my last attack on the ludicrous Twitter twaddle wouldn’t be my last.  Well, two pieces of news give me a chance to return to the fray and toss more ordure in the Twits’ general direction. Firstly, there’s the hilarious outburst from Kanye West, reacting to the news that an imposter has been posing as Himself on Twitter.

Yes, someone on Twitter has been taking the great Kanye in vain, posting the usual moronic 140 character updates. And he’s so pi**ed that he’s posted a rant on his own website with the caps lock on. Amid the narcissisms and expletives you’d expect, West wisely declares, ‘EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS, I NEED LESS OF’. There are just better things to do with one’s time – ‘I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY (sic) BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON THE BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD.’

I feel you, Kanye, as they say in ‘The Wire’. Too much data, too many worthless opinions, too little insight. We’re being engulfed in a digital Tsunami of useless noise. The simple babblings of a two-year-old learning to speak are charming for its parents but do not require broadcasting to the world. Indeed, a little ‘hush now’ wouldn’t go amiss. I think this is what the saintly Maureen Dowd of the New York Times was hinting at recently when she dared to suggest: ‘I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account.’

Which gets me onto reason two. This is the hot news that the government has hired a Twitter Czar (Nero and fiddling, deckchairs and the Titanic, all come to mind). Andrew Stott is to be made the UK’s first director of digital engagement (and he’ll have no need to fiddle his expenses – he’s getting paid an exorbitant £160,000). You couldn’t make it up, could you? Maybe this means Andrew will be given the ticklish job of masterminding the PM’s next appearance on YouTube. The first, you will recall, plumbed new depths of the gruesome as Gordon was told to try ‘smiling with sincerity’. What came out was something truly ghoulish, as if Tim Burton had been given the director’s gig. If Mr Stott wants something valuable to do in the digital arena, why not start with trying to work out how the government blew all those billions on the failed NHS IT system?

I got a minion to check out Andy Stott on Twitter, and apparently he was: ‘Sat in the office doing nothing. Joy.’ (A typically helpful and enlightening Twit.)  Maybe this isn’t the right Andy Stott, and merely a Kanye West-style vile impersonation. Who knows and, indeed, who cares? Actually, it must be another Stott – because the Twitter Czar will undoubtedly have been attending numerous high-level meetings in Whitehall with his two Blackberries and GCHQ-approved laptop, discussing digital engagement and how to get down politically with the youth. Going forward. Lord give us strength.

In today's bulletin:
Never mind our expenses, what about your bonuses?
John Lewis figures supported by new knickers
Editor's blog: Twitter? Twaddle, Part Two
Want to be an entrepreneur? Move to Scarborough
Cutting your expenses, with YouTube

I steer clear of politics in MT, and not simply because our boss used to be Deputy Prime Minister and now sits in the Lords. But this diabolical hoo-hah about MPs' expenses requires some small comment.

1. You pay peanuts and you will get manipulative monkeys. The MPs' stipend of sixty-three grand a year wouldn’t persuade a GP, small-town solicitor or even middle-to-upper-ranking social worker to get out of bed in the morning. If you regard being a Member of Parliament as an important role in society – which I do – you have you pay them properly. You cannot make them fiddle – within the daft existing rules – to gather together a proper wage. It’s a bad system.

2. The run-of-the-mill out-of town MPs I’ve come across lead fairly miserable lives, separated from their families during the week and kicking their heels in the shark-infested Westminster hurly-burly. Taking part in tedious votes at all hours of the evening. They have to lay their heads somewhere. and there is no MPs' dormitory. They cannot sleep on the Embankment or occupy the odd free bed over the river at St Thomas’s.    

3. It is in nobody’s interest that the democratic process in Britain is regarded by the general population with contempt and ridicule. Just ask those in Zimbabwe or Burma or China who cannot vote freely what they think about us behaving in this way. Sneering at and turning our backs on such a privilege. The expenses mess needs sorting out, but it is time-wasting indulgence to allow ourselves to be so completely diverted by it while there are infinitely more important things to attend to. There are plenty of UKIP nutters and BNP boot-boys who are regarding the furore surrounding Oliver Letwin’s tennis court repairs with sly glee, and who will be looking to reap a rich electoral reward at the polls. 


By an amusing coincidence, I spent yesterday morning with a journalist who used to work on the Telegraph, which has paid a large sum to buy all this stolen information (£300,000, some say) from a disloyal miscreant, and is now expecting a visit from the boys in blue. This now ex-journalist was reminiscing about the days when he was able to add £250 each week to his – very reasonable - salary by making up billable meals with fictitious contacts and filling in blank taxi receipts. The sort of behaviour that would make even Barbara Follett and Alan Duncan blush.

In today's bulletin:
Recovery hopes surge as Easter eggs on retail sales
Businesses landed with higher minimum wage
Enterprise Inns spends millions propping up its own bars
Why UK shoppers still don't trust the internet
Editor's blog: MP expenses are a dangerous distraction

When times are bad, the money you spend on your marketing and advertising should be made to work even harder. The pain any organisation must feel at handing over hundreds of thousands of pounds to ITV or Sky, while laying off staff and slashing the R&D budget, is enough to make most FDs weep. But it has to be done – pity the fool who loses market share during a downturn because he stopped marketing.

But looking at the sad array of 30 second spots during the commercial breaks of the Champions League semi final last night (tough luck Didier, Ashley and Roman – it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys) made me wonder whether shedloads of precious marketing budgets are being wasted.

Take the Heineken spot, for example. This features a bunch of youths generally grooving around and texting each other – because texting is what the happening youth does these days, according to the bloke in planning – sending messages such as ‘Come on over if you  fancy a Heineken!’ Tragic really. When was the last time any youth tried to entice a mate over with the prospect of ‘a Heineken’? And then you get a load of operatic singers in a pool singing the UEFA theme. Really surreal. 

I’m probably resistant because I’m not a UK lager drinker – for a number of reasons. The main one is that British lager is the product of a grim industrial process; the best thing you can say about the product is that it’s wet and it’s got alcohol in it. The fact that you can usually buy gallons of the stuff for £9.99 at your local supermarket tells you all you need to know about its inherent value.  

But this kind of material makes an old fart like me yearn for the ‘Reaches the parts that other beers cannot reach…’ campaign, or some Carling Black Label Dambusters stuff. Knowing ad people are now shaking their heads at my naivety.

The problem is caused by the harsh efficiencies of global product marketing. These days, big international brands like Heineken have to produce ads that will be shown all over the place. Pan-European, even pan-global.  The result is a dull, lowest common denominator approach where everyone has to be kept happy. It’s bland and forgettable, just like the product. There may be a few saddo youths in Macedonia who think that the UEFA Heineken ad is the coolest thing they’ve ever watched, and are so moved to action that they instantly go out to throw six pints down their neck, but I doubt it. (I’ll probably now get an angry email from the research organisation that tested it to destruction on lager-swilling 18-25s from Barking to Burkina Faso. But research has always been the death of a good idea. That’s another story.) 

The one exception to this reign of mediocrity is the utterly brilliant Meerkat ad for Comparethemarket.com (which is much more entertaining than watching Chelsea). This is clever, highly effective advertising at its very best – I still snigger on the twelfth occasion I’ve watched it. But I don’t just gladly accept a free laugh; I remember why. The branding is so good you instantly remember the name of an otherwise completely tedious price comparison website fighting hard for recognition against Moneysupermarket.com and all the rest. I even used it when trying to research car insurance. And they have produced a very amusing meerkat site, www.comparethemeerkat.com, which is good for a quick giggle over your lunchtime sandwich.

It’s so good they’ve even whipped up a story carried by the BBC (and probably the subject of millions of hits) about why meerkats don’t make good pets. Having spent several Sunday mornings recently watching these weird critters in the local zoo, I suspect that advice is entirely accurate. They’re so hyper they need to watch a few lager ads to calm them down. 

In today's bulletin:
Barclays bounces but Lloyds still a loser
Unilever profits hit by cheapskate shoppers
Editor's blog: Advertising in a global meerkat
'Patronising' Branson ad leaves Virgin staff steaming
The dangers of office politeness

One of the effects of the hideous news about the UK’s banana republic-style national debt will be to shift attention onto waste in the area of public spending. For the foreseeable future, all those in the private sector will be huffing and puffing about cost in everything from health, through education, to transport and defence. ‘Why can’t they just lop 10% off their annual budget? We’ve had to,’ is the typical cry, usually followed by a rant about index-linked retirement pensions for layabout civil servants.

This is going to make pretty boring reading for public servants while they are engaged in the perfectly laudable activity of trying to improve our roads, schools, hospitals and cruise missiles. They went through it with the Gershon efficiency review of 2004, which led to what is claimed to have been £26.5bn of government savings. Now a further £9bn by 2013-14 is promised.

The problem is, Gershon hasn’t changed the way in which the public sector operates. Sorry to be parochial, but nowhere is this better illustrated than outside my house at the moment. Late last year, our local council decided it was time to relay the pavement on both sides of the road. This was not a bad idea as the existing pavement was an ugly patchwork of broken paving stones, tarmac patches and stretches of concrete. The contractor did a surprisingly good job – a couple of workmen spent about two months carefully replacing all the paving stones and created neat, herringbone brickwork sections for the lowered crossovers onto people’s driveways.  It must have cost a small fortune but everyone was pleased. Not often you can say this about the efforts of Lambeth Council.

Imagine our dismay, therefore, when last month we received a letter from Thames Water (a private sector organisation feeding, as some utilities do, off a monopoly) informing us they were about to rip up the road and large swathes of the pavement as part of their quest to replace London’s ageing Victorian mains water supply.  This is a classic example of ‘non-joined up’ – i.e. stupid – practice. And it drives both us and the local authority (who can do nothing to resist Thames Water) around the bend. It’s inevitable that it will spoil what has been done, and hasten the day when the pavement needs to be re-laid all over again. With us footing the bill. The paradox is that it’s the weakness of the council that is causing the waste.

In the private sector at the moment, nobody does anything without thinking about the cost implications. Does it have to be done? Could it be done cheaper? Could I get two for one if I am doing it? Far too often they are terrible negotiators in the pubic sector – they do not have the skills of the souk, simply asking where they sign after being given a price. If we are all going to be broke together then this is going to have to change.  In the meantime the public sector is keeping our economy afloat.

In today's bulletin:
BAA losing passengers, money and business support
Fiat to acquire GM Europe?
Adidas takes a shoeing as profits plunge
Editor's blog: Crazy paving highlights public sector waste
Nick Hood: Austria gears up for insolvency rush