H+

"Two things you don't want to know how they're made... laws and sausages"

So said Leo McGarry in the immense West Wing and he was correct. Politics is all about quid pro quo, you scratch my back if I scratch yours, I'll do this if you do that and that person's getting dropped like a hot rock because their stock sunk overnight. So it has been and so it will be for ever more.

Sausages? It's probably best not to dwell on that too much or tomorrow's 'pigs in blankets' will go untouched!

So, given this give and take nature, I sometimes wonder if those immersed in the unavoidably unseemly world of Politics novate that philosophy of everything having a cost into their day to day lives. The most political person I ever knew used to boast that he could control people and he was, without a doubt, the unhappiest and most unsettled person I've ever met. I hope he was a special case but I can suggest a potential remedy either way.

Tomorrow is Christmas and at the core of this festive time, even with a recession, there remains a clear, heartening, genuine, invaluable sense of goodwill.

I have no way of knowing if Christianisty or Catholicism or what have you is on the wane in the UK, Christmas is after all a religious holiday, but irrespective of that it would be nice to build on the good-natured empathy that is at its most potent at this time of year.

To that end, I would humbly suggest 'H plus' as a day to day philosophical consideration. Billed as a new religion but simply a bolt-on to any existing religion one may or may not follow, H plus involves doing good, selfless things for people for the simple satisfaction and contentment that they derive.

It may be letting others on a bus before you meaning you don't get a seat, volunteering or the classic helping an old person across the road but pushing to live outside of ourselves a little more and putting others first can be no bad thing. It is nice to be nice and building a mountain of goodwill can be the strongest defence a person can have.

Politicians don't go spending their political capital willy-nilly and for good reason but as simple human beings, although it's easy to be cynical, we do have a limitless capacity for love. Relaxing our inner fears and allowing that to shine through, even in the more mundane moments in life and all in the spirit of H plus, is about as close as I'll get to a pause for thought on here, a Christmas message and it's something that'll be on my 2010 resolution list.

So a Merry Christmas to anyone reading this, a massive thank you for all the comments and fine, largely good-natured debate and a final good luck from Leo McGarry and I with those man-made chipolatas....