Twitter ye not

Getting myself out of bed early this morning was no laughing matter as there was an orchestra of hammers playing the 1812 overture in my aching noggin. I was supposed to be fresh for a meeting at number 10 with Vanessa Doublechin of the Cabinet Office and the Witchfinder-General Sandy Burnham-Drownham. However, I had a tupperware party at my East Lambeth pad last night for local talent, which all got a bit messy.

I invited my counsellor and two dynamic, nay brilliant Lambeth brolly vendors, and we were joined by my irrepressible and irreplaceable director of strategy Fab Jobsworth. I am a bit worried that Fab will look to move on to bigger and better things soon but fortunately employment contracts at BUBB are carefully worded so that using such terms about someone as “irreplaceable” in a blog essentially ties them into the role until I say they can go. And I can always create a new role at BUBB, then get Donald Holding at Feudal to headhunt Fab for it so that DH gets a slice of commission.

My counsellor had just bought a new brolly so needless to say we got stuck into the cheap fizz. We sorted out the problems of the brolly sector but were too battered to remember any of it.

We also hit upon an ingenious, or so I thought, plan to both discredit BUBB’s shiny new Herbert-lite nemesis Dylan Twirley at the National Association for Visor and Canopy Action (NAVCA), and simultaneously raise the profile of BUBB’s pouting cover-girl deputy-chair the gorgeous Hillda Ogden-Newton&Ridley.

Fab explained that he knew how to hack into other people’s Twitter accounts, a skill he learned doing spy studies at Oxford, naturally. We thought it would be a wheeze to post some ludicrous comments from Twirley about Hillda having a veneer of allurability or something, thus giving her a chance to respond magnificently and show up the quisling prison-denier for what he is.

However, it has all got a bit out of hand and an unseemly row as broken out, with some childish snidery on Twitter. It is quite sad that these new social media outlets are being used in place of the more traditional forums for debate. What is wrong with sounding off when drunk in a blog, for instance, like we did in the old days? Sometimes, the world moves on too quickly to the benefit of no one.

The other big event this week was the Brolly Investment Business (formerly Umbrellabuilders) away day, which we held in Blacbury. I am firm believer in away days as a way of both avoiding the office and getting everyone into a new and different environment to informally discuss things. Holding it just down the road from my Blacbury cottage was ideal as it meant I could keep nipping home to get some domestic chores done.