DIARY: Take your watering can and get out

<p>As every one of us knows, the global economic climate is not what </p><p>it once was. And in these straitened financial times, companies would be </p><p>foolish if they didn't engage in cost-cutting measures. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Some trim their headcount, as our angry anonymous contributor below is </p><p>all too keen to point out; others, as every reader of media will be </p><p>painfully aware, cut their marketing budgets; and then there are the </p><p>really clever ones, who fire the plant-waterer. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>As befits a global media corporation, with tentacles that span the </p><p>globe, and influential publications like The Wall Street Journal, the </p><p>Far Eastern Economic Review and Carp Fishing Monthly (we may have made </p><p>that last one up), Dow Jones has a retinue of employees whose purpose it </p><p>to make sure that the company's office plants are well-watered. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Or at least it did, until recently, when the downturn in the global </p><p>advertising market reportedly caused the company to fire the lot of </p><p>them. </p><p><BR><BR> </p><p>Rumour has it, however, that the company's Hong Kong office has escaped </p><p>the cull, through the simple expedient of only having plants made out of </p><p>plastic. And in a city where one of the leading tycoons, Li Ka Shing, </p><p>made a good part of his fortune selling fake foliage, who'd be surprised </p><p>if it turned out to be true? </p><p><BR><BR> </p>