So its the day before Christmas. And there're already clips of the Queens Speech all over the TV. Can't they wait? But while the Royals will always live it up no matter what (even if the speechwriters have chosen to make the credit crunch a feature of this year's address) the economic problems that are the feature of this current festive season were underlined this morning when it was announced that entertainment chain Zavvi had gone into administration. Another high street casualty. Now if you're old school like me you remember when it was called Our Price. That made it particularly distressing.

And you can't blame it on the internet cutting into record sales or even film piracy. Your local bootleg DVD salesperson doesn't have the latest Wire/Gavin & Stacy/Tracy Beaker box set now do they?

More harrowing evididence of the global money troubles come with the suicide of one Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet. The hedge fund manager, one of the most powerful Frenchmen on Wall Street, was found in his plush office with his wrists slit and a bottle of sleeping pills by his side just to make sure. He had just lost $1.4 billion of the $50 billion that Bernard Madoff was playing with as part of his record breaking fraud. After searching in vain for a way of recovering his investors cash, he couldn't face telling them that their money was gone. It seems like there's a lot more to come from this story. You can't run a scheme like that for around two decades alone. Madoff might start snitching if no one can get to him first.

Against all odds, Robert Mugabe will spend Christmas as Mr. Run Tings in Zimbabwe. He is being his usual crazy self by insisting that he can be part of the unity government he is still apparently committed to. On the other hand, he is right when he says that the US and Britian ignore that the solution will have to come from within Zimbabwe.

Did the Pope have a go at gays just in time for Christmas? He's certainly been very clever about how he phrased things. If you want to have your homophobia justified then you're in luck. If you prefer to pontificate about gender theory and nature vs nurture, you can do that too. But he knows what he's doing. And The Catholic Church's record on homosexuality speaks for itself. It's a pity they're not so forthcoming when it comes to priests who are still abusing kids even after they've been transferred.

On a brighter note, this is the last Christmas during which George W Bush will be President. He's peformed so badly that it's difficult to see anyone else with that same surname - particularly his vastly more talented younger brother Jeb - from running for America's top job. Has he singlehandedly ended a poltical dynasty that began with his grandfather Prescott Bush in the postwar years? Let's hope so.

Now, if you're not jockeying for position on a crowded train, or stuck in the middle of a never ending post office queue, or perhaps staring ahead in vain at a seemingly never ending line of traffic, try and have a Happy Christmas.