Is Disneyland Paris still a bonne idée?

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Christmas Winter Season at Disneyland Paris

A trip to a Disneyland Paris is almost a rite of passage for British kids these days but such is the rate at which the French theme park has expanded over the past five years, parents still need to precision plan their visit to ensure everyone gets the most out of it.

It’s not just the size of the park that makes a two-day stay essential – queuing, already a familiar sight at UK theme parks, is something you’ll get very well used to at Disneyland Paris and can severely reduce the number of attractions you can squeeze into your day. Continue reading →

Kids on the piste

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Skiing with kids is always a challenge, not just because the little darlings learn how to whizz down slopes much more quickly than their parents do, but for the occasional difficulty of finding suitable apres-ski activities.

Resorts like Val D’Isere struggle to cater for families because they’re so tuned in to the needs of older teenagers and twentysomethings, for whom a copious supply of alcohol and loud discos are the order of the day. Continue reading →

Escape to the country

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A shortage of suitable property may have driven up urban prices over the past few years but a mass exodus from towns across the UK is likely to do the same for country homes.

New research shows that more than a quarter of metropolitan househunters are trying to find properties well away from larger urban areas.

Some 27% of would-be buyers are trying to get away from City pollution and noise to find some rural calm, according to the survey by assertahome.com. Continue reading →

Insurers turn to lie detectors

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Insurance companies are turning to technology in a multi-million pound fightback against fraud. Wrongful claims cost insurers about £3bn a year and now companies are investing in industry-wide IT systems that analyse data to detect patterns in the claims submitted.

Other insurers are turning to lie-detector systems and psychological analysis to uncover when policyholders aren’t telling the truth. Continue reading →

Managers need advice on IT

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Senior managers in firms need help with their IT decisions if their businesses are going to benefit in the information age, says a new book on IT Management, “Tricks of the Trade”. According to its author, Guy Dresser,  senior managers are not making the best use of information technology because of their lack of IT knowledge, expertise and skills. They do not understand precisely what it is they need, so they are not making the best IT investment.

“Consultants and software get blamed for the problems because the people responsible for IT – the financial directors – do not know their IT market,” said Dresser. Continue reading →