Ten green bottle time

Its all a bit subdued at Colmore Circus after the news that one in 4.3 will be losing their jobs here at the old Post & Mail. We are not quite sure who the 0.3 is although I can tell you Paul Fulford, our estimable, small but perfectly formed, restaurant spy, denies it is him.

Journalists are cynics by nature and love a good conspiracy theory so there have been enough rumours to choke a donkey, to quote a former Mail editor, about impending changes. When the announcement finally came it was, in a strange way, a relief that we finally knew what the future held, good or bad, for pretty well all of us.

Talks of new opportunities, new beginnings, securing the business and the like are abstracts, divorcing the company and its newspapers from the human element, the people who work here. The reality is that 65 people or so no longer have a job.

Some will eventually leave satisfied with offers that are made, others will go hoping to find a brighter future elsewhere. We just all hope that no one has to leave by a decision that was not theirs in the making.

Old hacks like me have seen it all before in the industry both among journalists and the decimation of printers in the 1980s here and elsewhere but that hardly makes it any easier. Share prices, profits, dividends, bonuses, yields and all the city speak that surrounds companies these days doesn't mean that much to someone wondering how to pay the mortgage and tell their spouse and kids they are out of work.

Looking for someone to blame we could start with the bankers whose greed and arrogance in creating their own South Sea bubble in virtually worthless mortgages started the whole credit meltdown and I suspect you would be hard pushed to find any of them have lost their jobs or even their bonuses.