An embarrassing row has blown up at Westland in Yeovil, the cause of an earlier unfortunate row, some may recall. The Western Gazette reports that the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance has been banned from using the site after only a few weeks there because they use a rival maker’s helicopter.

The paper claims local staff were happy, but Giuseppe Orsi, chief executive of AgustaWestland, as the firm now is, flew into a rage and demanded the air ambulance be moved. Westland is not exactly denying the story, amid signs of a backtrack. The ambulance can now stay until it finds a site with a hangar. Orsi’s views are not known, but “certainly some people would have preferred it to have been an AgustaWestland helicopter”, the firm admits.

— Claims that businesses would sooner hire school-leavers than graduates because the latter have often wasted the past three years caused some upset recently. But take a look at the degrees still available on Ucas. Three years studying Reed Crafts? (Is that basket-making?) Men’s Studies – as opposed to Wimmin’s, I suppose? Sea Travel? Courses on Vibration, courtesy of no less than five seats of learning? Does anyone really require a degree in Flemish from Bangor or in Manx from Aberystwyth? Or need to spend three years acquiring “Office skills”? At Bangor again. How about three years working in an office instead?

— Western firms have been invited to bid to build two “large scale nuclear power plants in Iran”. It is an offer, I would have thought, fairly easy to resist, and I am told that there is unlikely to be much take-up in the UK. Still, the Iranians are taking it seriously; you have to pay €15,000 for the specification documents to prove serious intent and post a bid bond of €20 million. And make certain, as the projects near completion, that none of your staff is left at Ground Zero.

Whacko idea that smacks of spoofery

This useful device comes courtesy of a US website. “Friends, The state of Discipline of Children in the Western World is in CRISIS! We all see it every time we go to a restaurant, ride a plane, or go into a convenience store: Young people totally out of Control!” Here, then, is the ergonomically designed solution. Years of comfortable thrashing guaranteed, or your money back. Plenty of Biblical justification, too. “He who spares the Rod hates his son, but he that Loves him Corrects him” (Proverbs 13:24). The trick here is to decide if the site is a spoof or genuine. Have you decided? Well, my guess, after looking at some of the other products claimed to be on sale on childrod.com, is a spoof. At least, I greatly hope so.

Nothing ventured

Congratulations to Howard Leigh, whose Cavendish Corporate Finance won the boutique of the year award from the British Venture Capital Association at the Grosvenor House in Mayfair last night. Leigh is a touch puzzled by the award, though. Cavendish has done 11 deals so far this year, admittedly – but not one of them was with a venture capital firm. In these times, is this some sort of record?

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