So this is Christmas.

Well it self-evidently is not, but my generous employers can't help themselves and are falling over each other to be the first to dish out the P45s.

Yes.

It's the Annual Merry Yuletide Redundancy spree.

This time last year, or rather, in few weeks' time this time last year, I was made redundant and had to re-apply for my own job.

Naturally, this created a good deal of seasonal angst and more than a touch of tinseled turmoil in my already exploding head, and it wasn't until Christmas Eve that I learned I was "safe."

Many colleagues weren't so fortunate and got the axe, and my own small part of the Evil Empire was decimated.

Now we're approaching the year-end, and off we go again.

Time to cash-in on a few quick job losses and get the headcount savings into this year's P&L ledger.

The London head office "benchmarking exercise" again is in full flow and we're being softened up by the executive class for their trite weasel words of how losing a few editors will "Bring-Our-Newspapers-Closer-To-The-Communities-We-Serve."

Arrant nonsense of course; cut and pasted from the dead lexicon of Management-Speak that's handed out to them along with the company BMW and BUPA health plan upon taking office.

Clipboard holders, Blackberry botherers and thrusting young corridor walkers of every stripe have a renewed spring in their step this month.

They perch, Meerkat-like, on the fifth floor, nostrils wide and twitching, their slitty eyes darting hither and yon for the next cost-saving scalp they can offer up to the chairman in the hope that, if they can prove themselves ruthless enough, they'll be invited along to the company summer golf weekend at La Manga, where they will serve the drinks and tug their forelocks to the board's best friends.

I KNEW it would happen again. I KNEW I should have flicked them the Vees and got out.

But...

Tag THAT.