Monthly Archives: February 2013

Turbulent times in the airline industry

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Passengers won’t be the only ones checking on the location of emergency exits if the current stream of bad news in the airline industry continues. Shareholders could start to look for them too – because the outlook is distinctly bumpy.

Plans by Ryanair to take over smaller Irish rival Aer Lingus have been grounded by Europe’s competition authorities. It may appeal the judgment but rival Flybe, which stood to gain some of Aer Lingus’ slots at Gatwick, will still press ahead with job losses, cutting around 10% of its UK workforce as it fights to get back into the black. Continue reading →

Sports books – what are we paying for?

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Having recently reviewed the autobiography of three-time Olympic slalom champion Tony Estanguet, I spent a few days trawling the sports biography section of my local book shop. I was struck by the number of books by people whose literary skills I have good reason to question. So what do we think we’re getting when we buy a sportsperson’s autobiography?

I’ve seen the speculation that people who bought Lance Armstrong’s books may try to sue him on the basis that they were mostly a pack of lies. The BBC is reporting that some US readers are trying to launch a class action lawsuit against the disgraced cyclist. Continue reading →

Fake it till you make it

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Ageism is a fact of life in the work place. Once you get past 50 it’s way more difficult to find a job than it was at, say, 30. This isn’t necessarily because employers don’t like older people (though evidence suggests they don’t, they’re generally more expensive) but because there are also fewer senior roles around and most of the so-called ‘grey beards’ looking for work tend to have climbed some way up the corporate ladder. But young applicants present problems all of their own.

A friend of mine who works in HR tells me, however, she is fast becoming disillusioned with some young job-seekers she comes across. Why? Because there is so much embroidery, exaggeration and outright dishonesty in some of their CVs.

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Row, row, row your, er, canoe

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Canoeists everywhere get frustrated when their sport’s described as ‘rowing’.

It seems only yesterday that we were busily collecting entries for ‘hapless sub-editor of the year’ and ‘clueless sports reporter of the Olympic Games’ in which our gallant entrants got to ask Britain’s top kayakers how long they’d been rowing, how much their oars cost and topped their journalistic credentials off with such classic headlines as “Oar-some duo rowing for Gold!!!!!”
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