Just another blue Monday | Financial Times

This article is an on-site version of our The Week Ahead newsletter. Sign up here to get the newsletter sent straight to your inbox every SundayHello and welcome to the working

week.How are feeling? Are you ready for Blue Monday, the day that falls this year at the start of this week, calculated by former Cardiff University psychologist Cliff Arnall in

2005 to be the most depressing 24 hours in the calendar? Arnall’s damning conclusion about the third Monday in the first month (which he has since tried to counter) was based on

analysis of data, such as consumer surveys, divorce filings and weather reports. The main conclusion many of us draw from this analysis is that not all academic research is useful

to society.If you are a world leader or senior executive at least you have the World Economic Forum in Davos to distract you from the January blues. The FT Live team will also be

at the Swiss resort town, hosting several in-person and digital events in which leaders in policy, business and finance will share insights into the big issues being debated. You

can view the events and register for free here.For the rest of us, we will just have to live with the grim economic news going into 2023 and hope things can only get better.If

you’re in the UK, the dominant reality is mass strike action. This might not yet be near to being a second “winter of discontent”, at least according to my colleague Jonathan

Guthrie, but another strike ballot among ambulance workers is due this week while the University and College Union will announce a wave of 18 strike days covering 150 British

universities in February and March after its members voted last week to reject their latest pay offer. More details of this week’s walkouts below.The Gordian knot of a problem

that is the Northern Ireland Protocol will rear its head again with Thursday’s deadline for the restoration of power-sharing at Stormont. Do not expect this to make you feel

better about life or cross-border politics.Sunday is the 50th anniversary of the Roe vs Wade ruling by the US Supreme Court that enshrined Americans’ constitutional right to an

abortion. This is of course a very live debate — stretching even into the boardroom — in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision to strike down the 1973 decision.

Pro-life campaigners will march in Washington on Friday, sparking further commentary on a fundamental US political faultline.The week will end with another man-made day, this time

based on astronomy: the lunar new year celebration. This year’s mass movement of people to visit families and friends celebrating the occasion will take place under the shadow of