Clearly this isn’t quite going well inside France Telecom, and there’s obvious echoes (though not quite so extreme) inside our own giant quasi-monopoly technology companies; I don’t think I know a single person who doesn’t have a “bolshy engineer” story – though all of those stop a bit short of seppuku when the cable comes out too short or there’s rat-shit in the junction-box.

So what’s the outcome of this sunday morning muse? It’s hard to stay away from platitudes when talking about this topic, and “when was the last time you hugged Busby” isn’t a T-shirt I’d willingly wear: but I think it’s just plain good manners to think about ways to stay way from the kind of grand corporate morose glum-fest that seems to have infected our neighbours over the channel.