I don't know about you, but every time I make the 30 minute journey to pick up a parcel I'm always very impressed with the service. The queues, the inability to deliver to your requirements, the surly staff, the opening hours designed to suit anyone who is free at midday during the week, and the helpline that is never answered. They all bear the mark of an organisation doing its very best to provide a 21st century service.

As for my daily delivery, which is very nearly always with me by 5pm, and the mysterious pattern of missing parcels over a three week period that they refused to investigate. Nothing could have impressed me more.

So it is with great joy I read about the new settlement for Royal Mail staff, who are apparently set to get a 7% pay rise over the next three years, £1,400 bonus and increased maternity leave. They will be allowed to work one hour less each week, with a typical working week cut to 39 hours.

The business has also promised to keep 75% of staff as full time employees, without any forced part time work.

Now I know the rest of us are struggling with pay freezes or cuts, and that bonuses are the stuff of dreams. And I know that as the workforce has been slashed all around us, those of us who cling on to jobs are working all hours.

But this is a special class of employee.

The world's biggest companies are missing out on female talent, says the World Economic Forum.

Plus ça change. On the day that Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win best director at the Oscars for her Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker, it emerged that there are still precious few women in senior management or on company boards. The US led the way with the highest proportion of female employees (52%), while India had the lowest (23%).

"The findings of The Corporate Gender Gap Report are an alarm bell on International Women's Day that the corporate world is not doing enough to achieve gender equality" said Saadia Zahidi, who co-wrote the WEF's report.

Some of us have been feeling rather smug about Greece's debt crisis and slow descent into chaos. But you'd be well advised not to gloat too much.

Things here aren't much better. Up to 270,000 British civil servants have now gone on strike over redundancy pay, the biggest unrest since 1987 – and more action is planned in the run-up to the election.

The strike could be a sign of things to come if the cash-strapped government introduces swingeing cuts to plug the gaping black hole in the public finances.

Unless you work as a shepherd it's very likely that you do a lot of your work on email. Most people have a phone on their desk as well as a computer but this is slowly gathering dust. That's a shame, because good use of the telephone is good business and, if you're really good at it, you don't even have to use email!

Calls = profit
When a phone rings in your office do people look round slightly startled wondering what that strange ringing is? Do they start filing out of the building thinking it's a fire alarm? And if your people know what the ringing is are they slumping lower in their seats hoping someone else will stop the awful noise. Ideally people will be vying to take the call in the shortest possible time. That's because it could well be a customer on the line or your boss asking you why you didn't answer the last customer. Learn to love the phone; it's your chance to meet interesting new people and take money from them.

The cost of a nanny or nursery place can be forbiddingly high and make it uneconomical for many mothers (and sometimes fathers) to return to work after having a child.

So what is the cost of childcare and can you afford to work?

I find the whole debate about working mums misdirected. Everyone always focuses on the mother when there is a baby and whether she should go back to work or stay at home - but what about the father?

I think every couple should sit down and think about how they can jointly juggle kids and work. This could mean one parent working part-time for a while, or both, or one parent staying at home until the kids are older.

The problem is that in many cases men are still the main breadwinners, which means that their career usually comes first while their partner's suffers when they stay at home with the kids. As a result, women earn much less than men over their lifetime and often face poverty in retirement as their pensions also suffer.

We're all becoming much better at saving money. Our shopping is just as likely to be labeled 'value' or 'basics' as it is to be 'luxury' or 'finest'. We shop around and compare prices, haggle and wait for the sales. It's a whole new way of life for a generation for whom reaching into the wallet almost became a reflex action.

Even government and local government have been getting into the act. However, being branches of government it's safe to say they are fouling it up completely.

One shining example of Local Government ineptitude was Northampton County Council, which launched a campaign called You Choose, which used a bunch of consultants to launch a campaign to ask taxpayers to identify costs they could cut in order to shave £100 million off their spending by 2014.

And the cost of the campaign? £100,000.

So in an effort to save Northampton, and any other council planning a similar initiative from themselves, we have come up with five vital lessons they could learn from the rest of us...

That really is it. March 2010 and ambition is actually dead.

What other conclusion could you logically reach when it turns out that people would rather work for Nando's than Goldman Sachs.

That's Nando's, the Portuguese-themed chain that specialises in piri-piri chicken and endless refills of soft drinks. And Goldman Sachs? Well that's the US-based but global bank that has just defied the rest of the world and paid out billions in bonuses to its employees.

I know a fat salary isn't the only thing to make a job worthwhile, I would like to think that the opportunity of some sort of career path would be attractive. What exactly is that trajectory at a restaurant chain that manufactures a taste of Portugal on the retail estates fringing our towns and cities?

There were hopes that Wayne Bridge might change his mind and play for the England football team in the World Cup in South Africa this summer. His public humiliation of John Terry this weekend, by refusing to shake his hand, would indicate he will stick by his plans, and turn down the chance to play in any team featuring Terry.

Bridge is upset about the affair his former partner - and the mother of his son - the lingerie model Vanessa Perroncel, had with Terry, who was relieved of the England captaincy after the scandal broke.

After mulling his departure for a long time, Bridge told England coach Fabio Capello that he can't bear to be in the same changing room as Terry and declared he did not want to be selected for the England squad at World Cup 2010.

For Terry and Bridge it's a public scandal, but in workplaces across the UK people are forced to work with colleagues after they have done something unforgivable. So how do you deal with a colleague you can't work with?

Got an hour or two to spare? Well rather than slouching in front of the telly, you could do some work - and get paid for it.

Several websites have sprung up that allow people to sell chunks of their time to employers or to bid for contracts online. This means you work when it suits you - which is particularly useful for working mums and dads.

How does it work?