Pure agony

In this week's Ask Louisa, the pointless "agony aunt" careers advice column in the Daily Telegraph, the paper's "jobs editor" Louisa Peacock replies to Mike, a 62-year-old former public sector worker who is having trouble getting a job in the private sector.

Having informed him that few people in the private sector rate public sector workers ("The ball is in your court, Mike, to show to the employer that you can hack it in business," Louisa patronises) she then moves on to discuss the age issue.

"I can see where you’re coming from on the age front," she waffles. "It is bizarre that despite all the anti-discrimination law out there, employers are still legally entitled to ask for your date of birth before they’ve offered you the job".

This is something that young Louisa might know something about. To most intelligent readers, it seems that the only relevant experience the 20-something hackette possesses for doling out this dross, is a rather pert-looking photo byline.

City Index joins GC-H creditor queue

A fabulous story from the Daily Telegraph today which should act as a warning to anyone thinking of opening a spread betting account.
Geoffrey Conway-Henderson (crazy name, really crazy guy) was one of the first people hired by Michael Spencer, the founder of interdealer broker ICAP, when he was setting up the business. So one can assume he trousered a few sovs during his career.
Sadly, GC-H seems to have given most of it back to Spencer via City Index, the spread betting business the Tory treasurer also set up.

This prompts a couple of thoughts. One: these people can't help themselves - if you make a million in the City, go home, stop reading the FT and learn how to cook.
Two: If even City "experts" like Conway-Henderson can lose their shirt (if not all of their names) spread betting really is very risky. Like the ads say, you may lose more than your initial stake...

Kyle MacLachlan gets his finance lines wrong

For reasons quite unfathomable, Kyle MacLachlan - the actor who female readers may have watched in television's Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives - has been talking to the Telegraph about personal finance.

He says: "My first professional acting job earned me $550 – it was a Shakespeare festival in Oregon. I shared a house with three other people for $97 so we lived pretty well, all things considered. Nowadays, I'm much less of a spendthrift – I get it and spend it, so I have to keep working!"

I wouldn't expect a small screen American actor to know that the word 'spendthrift' means someone who is profligate, not parsimonious, but surely Telegraph sub-editors (even the ones now located in Australia to save costs) should know better?

It wasn't that long ago that the whole of the newspaper's staff received a Christmas bollocking on this very subject from associate editor, Simon Heffer. As the Heff lectured: "If you don't know what a word means it is generally a good idea not to use it until you have found out". He might have a point.

Mousetrap

Wading through today's Telegraph City Diary, I come across a tale of a mouse infestation at the offices of financial advisory house, Smith & Williamson. What fun there is to be had teasing companies who endure this embarrassing irritation. Sadly, the column could not find room to recount the recent tale of another rodent outbreak at the swanky new offices of a far more famous company: it was the, er, Telegraph Media Group.

Pedants' corner...

Sometimes hacks are so certain they know something, they don't even bother to check it.
Today The Times and The Telegraph both tip their bowlers to Rolling Stone magazine, referring to Goldman Sachs as being a "giant vampire squid".
Just one problem. The actual words used in the famous piece by Matt Taibbi were: "great vampire squid".

It's a small matter, admittedly, but I happen to notice these things. Taibbi's full (entirely fair) line on the investment bank, actually went: "A great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
City journalists should find the time to read him. The boy can write.

Fancy that...

"A windfall tax on bankers would be lesser of two evils" - Daily Telegraph, B4, October 20, 2009.

"Nothing would be more futile than unilaterally to impose a windfall profits tax on bankers" - Daily Telegraph, B5, October 20, 2009.

Oh FT - no comment

What has the Financial Times' Lex column done to upset blogger Trevor E Brown so?
TEB has started a new feature called Lex Watch which seems to be designed solely to slate the Pink 'Un's back page comment section.
He writes: "The Financial Times Lex column was once thought provoking, informative, and occasionally witty. Now it is lazy warmed-over, regurgitant, boring, with a narcissistic emphasis on style wrapped around flabby content – or am I just having a bad day?"
It seems not - as he's followed it up with a couple more scathing Lex postings, making my obsession with the Telegraph's Jeremy Warner seem positively healthy.

Jezza gets a whack on the bonce

Jeremy Warner must have suffered a severe blow to the head. Or perhaps he's been got at.
But today's piece in The Telegraph gets awfully close to reaching an actual conclusion on what to do with the banks.
"Let's please learn the lessons and break up these goliaths, rather than fiddling around with capital controls and reform to banking supervision. Bankers will always find a way around those constraints."
Blimey! Of course, few people will have managed to read that far, given how turgid is the rest of his shoot-me-now prose.

Warner reports that he still can't make up his mind

Jeremy Warner, the Daily Telegraph's "brilliant new columnist", still can't make his mind up about anything that matters.
Musing on the massive Goldman Sachs second quarter profits and the bank's role in the financial crisis he offers: "It’s pointless to get into the debate over Goldman’s culpability in what happened."
Why is it pointless? Surely deciding if Goldman is culpable or not is central to any description of how the bank is doing.
Warner says Goldman "rightly or wrongly is judged to have contributed to the near collapse of the banking system and a deep recession in the real economy".
Well, which is it?
As usual, Warner doesn't know, and is too timid to even venture an opinion.

Update: for a more critical view of Goldman Sachs during the credit crisis, click here.

Warner homes in on tedious new challenge

So after 87 years and 67,000 turgid on-the-one-hand-this, on-the-other-hand-that columns, tedious Indy City editor Jeremy Warner is finally moving on.
He managed to make his Gorkana entry about his move even more boring than his wittering Outlook pieces. An achievement of sorts.
Some unkind wags reckon his arrival at the Telegraph could wipe out the entire uplift in circulation gained from the MPs expenses scandal - due to the number of readers who die from boredom. Surely not!

How (modern) market reporting works - part 2 ...

"Advertising giant WPP was the biggest loser on the Footsie this morning after Citigroup warned that now is not the time to buy.
The big-hitting broker has cut the rating on Sir Martin Sorrell's company from buy to hold and slashed its price target from 552p to 440p.
WPP's shares dropped 6p to 397 1/2p in a widely higher London market after analysts said that the seasonal nature of the business, with the last three months of its year proving its most profitable thanks to a Christmas advertising rush, means it no longer thinks clients should snap up the stock." - Evening Standard market report, Monday March 23.

"Advertising giant WPP was one of the biggest losers after Citigroup warned that now is not the time to buy.
The heavyweight broker cut its rating on Sir Martin Sorrell's company from buy to hold and slashed its price target from 552p to 440p.
Citigroup analysts argued that now is not the time to buy the company's shares because of the seasonal nature of the business, with the last three months of its year proving its most profitable thanks to a Christmas advertising rush.
WPP shares shed 33/4p." - Daily Telegraph market report, Tuesday March 24.

How (modern) market reporting works...

"Cash-strapped Barclays closed back above 200p for the first time since October"- Evening Standard market report, Thursday April 16.

"In fact, cash-strapped Barclays climbed above 200p for the first time since October" - Daily Telegraph market report, Friday April 17.

Time to warm up the subs at the Tel?

I know I said I was having an extended Easter break, but the pisspoor subbing of today's Telegraph Business pages has forced me out of my armchair. It seems that those responsible for checking the section's front page can't even be bothered to spell the name Damian Reece - their own City Editor (or Head of Business as he now prefers to be called) - correctly.
So there's more ammo, it seems, for those churlish souls who insist that standards have slipped at the once great rag (which now outsources some of its sub-editing to, er, Australia).

Breaking media news...

I hear that Independent City editor Jeremy Warner is off to the Telegraph to write three columns a week...

Collins reaches out for new opportunity

What now for Neil Collins? I hear that the very godfather of modern financial journalism is leaving the Evening Standard, the victim, perhaps, of a recent Russian coup.
After twenty years duffing up chief executives as City editor of the Daily Telegraph, and a few more writing a punchy column at the Evening Standard, Collins knew to expect a few hits back.
He is, as they say, available for hire. Might fresh opportunities present themselves in some of Collins's pet areas - such as our economy's only growth sector?