Maybe that wretched meerkat has a point after all: why can’t everything be simples?

LIFE has somehow got out of control, lost in the admin, rules and regs.

Just this week there were two startling examples.

First – troops were called in to clear the snowy streets of Edinburgh.

As if the army didn’t have enough to do with the day job.

Meanwhile, the unemployed and people on benefits could stay in the snug and warm watching Jeremy Kyle.

Even to my wishy-washy way of thinking that sees a bit... unfair.

In some states of America local authorities can just give people a spade, put them in a gang and pay them $20 for a few hours shovelling, no questions asked, no forms to fill in, no taxes to pay. So why can’t we?

The reasons are the usual suspects – health and safety, minimum wage, tax, national insurance, working while claiming benefits, etc., etc., etc.

All the things originally designed with the best of intentions to make things better, but sometimes ending up making things worse. Was that meant to happen?

There are plenty of people – those out of work, students, strapping teenagers whose schools are closed – who would be more than willing to do a few hours snow clearing for cash in hand.

And why not? Our pavements have stayed like ice for the past weeks and are about to be iced again.

Anyone who’s slithered along icy roads or walked carefully, penguinlike, on treacherous pavements or, worse, fallen and broken a hip, a leg or a wrist, would I guess be more than happy to pay someone cash in hand to get it cleared.

If people are claiming benefits, so what? Even in our current Ice Age we’re talking of only a couple of days a year. Whatever it costs, it will be cheaper than the cost of the soaring A&E admissions as people slide and fall and crash.

But it’s too simple. That’s the trouble with that idea.

Chancellor George Osborne also had a simple idea. He thought he’d ask someone to nip out to B&Q and buy a £40 Christmas tree for the Treasury.

Ho ho ho… Not allowed, he was told – who would buy it, bring it home, water it, decorate it, get rid of it after Christmas?

The only answer, apparently, was to do as in previous years and get the Treasury’s building supplier to provide it as part of a PFI deal. It would cost £900 – including safety tests and a ladder.

In the end, the building supplier gave them a tree for free and let them get on with it. The star at the top was put on by the Treasury’s most senior civil servant, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, who, without a safety-tested ladder, had to stand on a chair to do so.

But all it cost was the baubles.

Multiply that by every Whitehall department and just on Christmas trees alone, you could probably save enough for an extra nurse or two each year. Simples.

If only...

WE’RE not sending as many Christmas cards as we used to. Shame.

Maybe because we worry about the environment, or because we can’t afford the cards and stamps. Or we just can’t be bothered when there’s so much else to do.

Whatever the reason, Oxfam – whose card sales are down by 14 per cent – reckon that 882 million cards will be sent this year compared with 1.02 billion in 2005.

Which stills seems quite a lot to me, enough to cover a fair few mantelpieces at least.

I quite enjoy the annual battle with address books, phonebooks and lists from the back of last year’s diaries.

And I love receiving cards.

Apart, maybe, from all those cards with love and best wishes from Squiggle and Scrawl. Who? And do we really know someone with a daughter called Petronella? Or maybe it’s the cat.

And the card that always arrives on Christmas Eve from someone you haven’t sent to.

And the card from the people you met on holiday. Oh Lord, they’ve got your address and you dread them turning up...

It’s the grown-ups who send most cards. The young, in any case, have given up on cards of any sort. Birthday greetings arrive via Facebook.

Even Valentines get texts these days, so what hope for Christmas? They have swifter means of communicating.

More people, less time.

Virtual cards are not quite as special.

On the other hand, they’re an awful lot cheaper and easier. And you don’t have to bang nails in the wall to display them. Or keep propping them up when they fall over. Or rescue them from the back of the Christmas tree/coal bucket/dog’s basket. And you don’t have to take them all down covered in dust and recycle them either.

I’ll keep sending the real thing, but maybe the young ones aren’t so daft after all.

A leading lady made of stern stuff

DAME Judi Dench has been voted the greatest actor of all time by readers of Stage magazine.

She’s been acting for 50 years, still triumphs in demanding roles, is brilliant in lighter ones, and shows no sign of giving up or giving in.

Fantastic.

Back at the start of her career she was told she’d never be a leading lady. Not good enough.

Amazing how powerful that “I’ll show ‘em” attitude can be.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,

I WONDER how many people complaining about the state of the pavements in the snow are wearing proper shoes. For every person wearing sensible boots or walking shoes, there are at least as many slipping all over the place in smooth-soled trainers. It’s mainly youngsters, but some of the “oldies” seem just as ill-prepared, and they are far more likely to break old bones if they fall.

It’s taking an age for the councils to get minor roads and pavements clear. Until they do, wearing shoes with a good grip seems only sensible.

We all expect to wear the same clothes all year round now, whatever the weather and I suppose that goes for shoes as well.

Carol Middleton, by e mail.