Person of the Week

Sir Cameron Mackintosh

The theatre owner has pledged tp endow each of his seven London playhouses with enough cash to keep them open after his death, staging only musicals and plays. Though most West End theatres are listed buildings protected from demolition, uncertainty hangs over their use whenever they are sold. 63 year old Mackintosh has invested £35 million in theatre restoration.

Quote of the Week

Apparently enrolments from around the world at an Italian ice-cream "university" have increased by 90 per cent as former high-flyers look for a new career path. They are encouraged to experiment with some more 'flamboyant' flavours:

"In China they have experimented with fish-flavoured gelato. Gelato is a platform for flavours – you can adapt it to whatever culture you're in. Pear with Parmesan and lemon with basil are some of the more unusual ones our students have come up with."

Patrick Hopkins, director of Italy's Gelato University of Bologna which has seen enrolments double in the last year

Facts of the week

Mercure’s speculative planning application rejected

Bid to convert hotel into detention centre rejected

• In an interesting news item this week, Arora Management Services application for permission to convert the four-star Mercure Hotel at Gatwick Airport into an immigration detention centre was refused.
• Acknowledging that the economic climate had caused the business to look at a variety of options for a number of buildings, the company confirmed that the proposal was "speculative".
• However, local residents objected to the implications of such a facility surrounded by a security fence, whilst the Home Office stated that it had no plans to develop a third removal unit at Gatwick.

Source: bbc.co.uk

The jobs market - what will happen when the funding tap switches off?

Research high-lights reliance on public sector employment

• Concluding that the UK's business model prior to the financial crisis was undisclosed and unsustainable, a report by Manchester University's Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change demonstrates the impact of public sector employment by including both direct staff and those indirectly reliant on government funding for employment.
• Referred to as 'para-state', researchers included activities such as rubbish collecting or nursery education which depend on government revenue funding; parts of private healthcare and consultants employed by central government and local authorities.
• By incorporating data from official statistics and para-state, the research finds that of the 2.24 million jobs created between 1997-2007, fewer than 1 million were true private sector jobs.
• In the West Midlands no new jobs were created in the private sector, in fact there was a net fall of 37,000 private sector jobs, offset by a 105,000 rise in state and para-state work.
• What will be the implications of this issue post General Election?

Source: timesonline.co.uk

Article of the week

EP Condense is EP's weekly e-newsletter. But did you know that EP is also a bimonthly magazine available via subscription? Our Article of the Week provides a sample of what we have featured in past issue.

This week we feature a story from the EP archives. It is a business feature entitled "Fate and fortune". John Nugent’s time at Searcys is well documented. Simply type the words "John Nugent Searcys" into the Google search engine and there will be literally pages of articles and information. However in 2007, John left his post as CEO to branch out on his own at the newly opened Kings Place in London’s Kings Cross. EP met with John to find out more about this very artistic venture and what the future holds in this dramatically changing area.