As one of the one million or so people in the UK with an HGV licence who isn’t driving lorries for a living, I recently received a letter from the government trying to tempt me back into the cab. It won’t work. I started off in the 1980s delivering bedroom furniture. This involved being nice to people while carrying heavy loads upstairs and trying not to rip their wallpaper or drip sweat on the carpets. It was gruelling, relentless work and some days there was barely enough time in the schedule to eat lunch. A few of the established drivers set their tachographs (the so-called spy in the cab) to ‘break’ but used the precious down time for unloading instead.

Today is the last day for sending first-class post if you want it to arrive before Christmas. You’re lucky there’s anyone to deliver it. In October, the Communication Workers Union held a ballot which came out overwhelmingly in support of strike action – 89.1 per cent in favour on a turnout of 73.7 per cent – but the Royal Mail got a High Court injunction to stop the strike.

The Sheffield Working Women’s Opportunities Project has reported a steep rise in the number of women starting or returning to sex work in the city. The English Collective of Prostitutes says the pattern repeats itself across the country. ‘Zero hours contracts, benefits sanctions and family care needs’ are among the reasons women give for turning to sex work.

From Glasgow to Brighton to Manchester, the party conference roadshow grinds on and, as every year, the big relief with the Tory do is that it’s the last one. The party shindies – still called ‘conferences’, but rallies in all but name – offer televiewers (and who watches this stuff?) a window on Totalitaria, a Lego Pyongyang. One-liners are delivered, opponents are trashed, and it often takes the somnolent claque a while to cotton on that they’ve missed their cue to ovate. Speakers offer little in‐jokes to nervous titters from the floor. Why don’t the party managers go the whole hog and have the rank and vile simply holding up cards, North Korea-style, to make a big smiley face when Osborne or Pickles reaches a claptrap moment? The telly coverage, too, is a pain in the arse, with kitsch‐complicit cutaway shots from whichever hack is on the rostrum, to their spouse or arch-enemy, to humanise the whole ghastly spectacle.