For our own part, CSC is somewhat wary of religious-sounding language.

For one thing, it tends to come with the suggestion that there is one right answer to everything, but in our experience, believing that there is one answer to everything has a nasty tendency to destroy you when the rest of the world changes its mind.

And for another thing, emotive, evangelical rhetoric seems to belong to an age in which brands feel that presentation rather than product quality is key, and in which politicians believe that emotional appeal outstrips facts and rationality.

Aren’t we sick of this yet? Doesn’t it make you yearn for some solid facts, powerfully used, ie a rational argument? Perhaps this was behind the popularity of Clinton’s anti-Fox outburst, the best bit of political marketing since Maggie had her hair done in ‘78.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPyQ4Ae6Ei0

By the way, doesn’t it seem to you that people actually busy doing good work seem uninterested by evangelical missions? Nurses, for example. Or operations or logistics people. Or the best teachers.

Could that be because to be effective, you need to understand human fallibility - or even enjoy it?

Now, what about we the people?

We were promised by various prophets and evangelists that we would get ever-greater control over our lives through anything from personalized services to education reforms to customisability to our own named bank manager. Seemed like a good idea of everyone didn’t it?

Except that no one realised that the means of giving us greater control were equally the means of taking it away; from identity fraud, and computer records to someone videoing you and putting it on YouTube.

In fact the general fear of losing control now seems to vie with the
pleasure in having more of it. Which can be tricky for business, because...

As anyone who has been accosted by charity stormtroopers or over-zealous bank staff pitching financial products will know, businesses trying to “reach out” to us can easily seem like yet another entity wresting away our control over our time.

People seem increasingly willing to resort to rudeness to rid themselves of such time-suckers - and as anyone who has taken sadistic pleasure in hanging up on a cold call knows, once people get a taste for rudeness, they can find they rather enjoy it.

Could it be a long-term worry for businesses if rude resistance means consumers grow less willing to have that initial conversation? The business model for the future might be more about pulling people in than pushing yourself at them.

A sense of choice makes you feel powerful. Obligation makes you feel weak. The evangelists always knew this; that’s why they invite you to invite whatever-it-is into your life, rather than warning you that you’ll be damned if you don’t.

This could explain why we see people wishing to retreat from the old idea of society as a whole, while simultaneously seeking to join up with groups and communal events that they choose.

On the one hand we have gated communities, time spent at home rather than in pubs, disillusion with public services, the 17 year old working class girl who we recently heard describing buses distastefully as “peasant wagons”; on the other, booming on-line communities and moments of large scale celebration; Glastonbury, the World Cup, even, in a way, Christmas.

The only time when people lose the tremendous urge to belong to something bigger than their self is when they are told which something to sign up with.

We don’t like to comment on ecumenical matters, but as folk who spend much time discussing the ways in which large groups of people function together, we did rather enjoy a comment recently overheard after a prolonged requiem mass*.

‘Bloody High Anglicans. The only organisation I know without a single redeeming feature’.

*The overhearing CSC member would like to point out that he was there for the tunes, not the service.

On the subject of difference - would anyone care to join in with two unfashionable cheers for the Rawmarsh mums who passed the sandwiches and fish and chips through the school railings in September?

We were interested by what one of them said, in passing, about St Jamie Oliver, ie “We don’t like him or what he stands for.” (Our italics).

Eh? The middle class Metropolitan media set thought Jamie stood for The People! What do the ingrates of Rawmarsh mean?

In fact, seen from Rawmarsh, millionaire Jamie O seems like what he is; the spirit of paternalist we-know-bests reincarnated in a young person with trendy hair and a mild regional accent. Gillian McKeith, Trinny and Susannah, Supernanny; they’re not all bad all of the time, but this sort of TV person is, for all their soft edges, still concerned with disseminating their opinions - which are those of the establishments they represent – to the silly old lumpen proles.

Imagine them with a Mr Cholmomndely-Warner voice and it all becomes clear. Fook off the lot o’ yer!

One of the most strangely insightful comments we’ve heard this year came from a someone we know who was working to flesh out some consumer profiles he had been given by a brand manager. We had a look, and said it was obvious that these people didn’t really exist in the real world. He agreed. “They’ve fallen into the trap of inventing consumers to match their products,” he said. “The product is original and beautiful, so they have subconsciously skewed the research so that it reveals the existence of millions of original and beautiful people who will buy it.”

Did anyone ever see, when we were going through the transformation to customer-focused businesses, the pitfall of merely inventing a consumer on which to focus?

Is a law compelling all consumer businesses - especially technology-based ones - to run free, well-staffed help and complaints lines.

Far too often, when a company does something wrong, or fails, it becomes the customer’s problem, not the company’s. How to get through? How to argue with a better-informed bully? Is it worth £1 a minute anyway?

If churches applied this logic, they would bar converts from worship unless they could redeem themselves via a premium line pay-per-prayer service. Luckily for them, they realised that without the after-care package, you would have to work at converting people over and over again. It is a lesson that some of us could do with thinking about.

And finally...

In the light of YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Kazaa and the rest of web 2.0, do encourage the children to tell the elderly Christmas visitors who say that before TV “we made our own entertainment”, that they do the same. Yes, we do too, they should say. Look, here’s a video of someone hand-farting the theme tune to the Flintstones!

We’re not joking about the hand-farting, by the way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Twr8yWniM&mode=related&search

And to be fair, we feel we should acknowledge the Grandad who not only embraced the new make-your-own, but rather dominated it. A few months ago Geriatric1927 became the 3rd most watched video on YouTube of all time, with his daily webcasts posting his ‘bitches & grumbles’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrqsBMzW6s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTmkT6m-SJg&mode=related&search=

Although at CSC Towers, we prefer the inexplicably addictive Swedish horse doo-wop group:

http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.swf

or even, at this time of year, Merry Christmas in 350 languages at

http://www.flw.com/merry.htm

As they say in Colombia and Venezuela,

PEXANIA NAVIDADMATACABI PIGINIA PEXANIAPEJANAWAI PAXAINAENAME!