Business Diary: September 28

A fund of ideas from top banker

IF you're going to teach fiscal prudence in the classroom, it's always good to have an old boy who knows a bit about banking.

In the case of Easingwold School, in North Yorkshire, they had one of the best qualified men in Britain – Stephen Hester, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

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Mr Hester spent most of his childhood in Easingwold and was a star pupil at the local school.

He was the obvious choice to come and talk to pupils about the opportunities and pitfalls of the world of business.

"It was lovely to see those fresh-faced youngsters about to make their way in the world,'' he told Diary during a trip to Leeds.

So did he tell them all to become bankers? Banking has, after all,

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had something of a mixed press lately. "I told them the main thing was to work out what's going to make you happy in life and fulfil you,'' he said;.

"My parents have lived in Yorkshire since I was seven years old. I love Yorkshire. It's a very beautiful county, so it's always nice for me to come back."

Suits you, madam

The different mindsets of men and women were highlighted at the Women's Business Forum last week.

Former government minister Baroness Virginia Bottomley revealed her reaction when Margaret Thatcher offered her the job of Environment Minister during the 1980s. "I was summoned in by Mrs Thatcher who said, 'Virginia, we'd like you to go to environment as a minister'. I said, 'I don't know anything about it' whereas a man would have said, 'Well, Prime Minister, I'll bring a clear mind to the problem'."

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Baroness Bottomley also revealed the fashion mistakes that women often make in industries dominated by men. "When I first became a Member of Parliament, it was a very different world. We were 23 women out of 600 people in the House of Commons and I wore a grey suit, a black suit or a blue suit on the basis that if you don't mention the fact that I'm not a bloke, I won't mention it either."

Stepping up

IT has been the butt of hundreds of jokes, but for one Yorkshire company Morris dancing has proved serious business.

A collaboration between graphic artist company, Playpen, and Leeds-based Digital Plus, led the large format printing company to win a deal with a London exhibition.

Whitby artist David Owen asked Digital Plus for help publicising "5000 Morris dancers" at the Southbank Centre – on a budget of 1 per dancer.

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Digital Plus had worked with the artist before, collaborating on a number of specialist displays for exhibitions, so agreed to get involved – inspired by Lord Coe's joke about recruiting 5,000 Morris dancers for the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

Chris Stringwell, director of Digital Plus, said: "We struck our Yorkshire deal with David as we knew it would be a very exciting project to work on. To get all the printed publicity to all the different venues in time was a tough challenge, but we are very proud of what we have done for our fellow Yorkshire company."

Digital Plus produced and printed 36 giant window stickers, 15 suspended cored graphics, 10 large removable prints, wallpapers to wrap around the trees on the Thames' frontage and 12 huge wrappings for columns. They were delivered to London for the exhibition which ran across venues of the Southbank centre in London earlier this month, supported by a programme of dance, live music and film, before moving to the Stark Gallery in Blackheath.

Bed and breakfast

They're a canny bunch at Asda. Knowing that journalists are a lazy bunch of layabouts who would rather loll around in bed than attend unnecessary breakfasts, they gave us an early morning start for the mysterious launch of their Food Quality and Innovation event in London last week.

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We were told to turn up prompt for the presentation, but were then led upstairs for a sumptuous breakfast of pastries, artisan breads, fruit jams, cakes, cookies, freshly squeezed juice and freshly ground roast coffee.

The presentation itself didn't start for another 45 minutes, but by then we'd all unwittingly gorged ourselves on the new "Chosen by you" range of relaunched own label goods.

Jolly tasty they were, too, although next time we'll be asking when the events actually starts. You don't want to waste a precious 45 minutes in bed.

Dire outlook

Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, isn't the cheeriest of souls.

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According to Mr Archer, current Bank of England boss Mervyn King often referred to the decade before the recession as the NICE decade for the economy – Non Inflationary Consistently Expansionary

"Given current concerns about the strength and sustainability of the recovery in the face of serious headwinds (most notably extended major fiscal tightening) and persistent above-target inflation, let's hope we are not now embarking on an extended DIRE period – Disappointing Inflation, Rotten Expansion!" he says cheerily.

We'd hate to see him when he's in a depressed mood.

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