Christmas this year is like wading through treacle. Everything seems set against achieving that unjustified mixture of merriment and cheerful optimism that is usually the excuse for going out and hammering the bank balance with totally unjustified gifts to all and sundry. Every time I turn on the TV there is some tale of increasing unemployment, homelessness or worse, a politician peddling their particular brand of half truth, untruth or just peddling.

So here's a gripe against Tesco's - that perniciously pervasive purveyor of almost everything in every possible corner of the UK. Compared with the old fashioned high street shops run by ruddy faced butchers, bakers and candlestick makers they represent all that has gone wrong with Britain. In the search for profit everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, including apparently their regard for the intelligence of their customers.

We wanted to buy some presents for our grandchildren who live 600 miles away at the other end of the country. Unfortunately we won't see them this Christmas or probably any other Christmas since their parents are having a particularly bitter divorce. We wanted the presents to be delivered to their father who is currently working every hour he can to pay the divorce lawyers, his cheating ex-wife, the taxman and everyone else. In order to make it easier for him and cheaper for us we opted for a delivery arrangement of the presents to the nearest Tesco store. He could then toddle along there after work and collect them and make sure the kids got them at Christmas.

Unfortunately, Tesco's insist that if we were to pay for the presents by credit card in the north of Scotland, when he went to pick up the presents from the store, 600 miles away, he would have to take along the same credit card to collect the goods !!!!!!

"Why" I asked the lady from Tesco's on the phone, "surely the goods have been paid for, all he should need is a copy of the order confirmation?"

"Its for security" she replied.

"Can you explain why it is more secure for us to post our credit card 600 miles and presumably for him to post it back to us through a Post Office system overloaded and about to go on strike?"

"It's the Rules" she said, adding helpfully "Its for security"

"So the only alternative is for us to pay for the presents to be delivered to his home when that will cost us £6.85 and him much more in lost wages?"

"Yes. Its for security."

By now having spent all morning trying to complete this transaction on the computer and then by phone, like the coward that I am, I gave in and paid the £6.85p.

By contrast reading in todays paper that some very rich people have lost millions in yet another Amercan Financial Fraud Scandal is merriment indeed.

Happy Christmas and Dreadful New Year Wall Street.