E-mailers returning to their desks this week may have been happy to renew their electronic contact with the outside world although the results of the latest 3-Comm survey on attitudes to IT indicate that some business people will have been less than pleased at the prospect.

While 3-Comm found that 68 per cent of business leaders using e-mail found it "indispensable" part of working life, some 29 per cent described it as a "necessary evil".

Worse, some 2 per cent of 240 respondents said they were sorry e-mail was ever invented! Welcoming the overall findings of the survey, the Small Firms Association said these people were "clearly overworked". The Margin sympathises. Y2K doom did not materialise - but after a two-week break, more junk than ever is likely to be clogging e-mail boxes everywhere. And that's just the non-work stuff.