Is nothing sacred? Even Nat Rothschild’s Atticus Capital is laying off staff. I hear that a review of the firm’s operations has identified eight people as surplus to requirements, three of them in London. As the firm’s total workforce is unlikely to creep into three figures, this is a fair proportion of the staff.

No one is saying much, but it seems that the lay-offs are among the back office staff and do not include any of the high-flyers or moneymen. The clean-out is nothing to do with the state of the market and the firm is not in any sort of trouble, sources insist.

But it has not been a brilliant year for Atticus. Nor, yet, for co-chairman Rothschild, I suppose, who I am reminded is not involved in day-to-day money management. Just as he was having his well-publicised row with George Osborne, a letter from David Slager, who runs the European end, was leaked. It revealed that the European fund had lost 43.5 per cent of its value this year and the other main fund, Atticus Global, was down 27 per cent.

If in doubt, talk about it. If in doubt in Wales, talk a lot

They are advertising - in The Guardian, needless to say - for a chair and members of “a new Ministerial Advisory Group On Public Service Delivery in Wales”. Plenty about driving innovative initiatives, etc, etc. This was apparently set up a couple of weeks ago, not that anyone noticed, and will advise the Welsh Assembly. A quango to advise a talking shop, then. Can anyone think of a reason, possibly with reference to a couple of recent news headlines concerning the public finances, borrowings, looming sterling crisis, you know the kind of thing, why it is a bad idea to spend yet more public money just now on yet another useless bloody quango?

Speaking of absurd wastes of public money, I have been perusing the report compiled for the Department of Business, etc, etc on the 2008 Consumer Conditions Survey . Page 1, of 40-plus, contains the following proviso: “It is important to note that the findings reveal consumers’ perceptions. These may, or may not, be a reflection of actual conditions in the marketplace.” Not a lot of use, is it, then?

Jurys service

In the blue corner: Barbara Cassani

Three cheers for Barbara Cassani. The woman who came to prominence running Go, then BA’s low-cost airline, today chairs the Jurys Inns chain of hotels owned by Derek Quinlan. She was at a hotels conference the other day to hear various worthies, including the economist Roger Bootle, chuntering on about how awful everything was. Bootle said we were heading for something “more like a depression”; another expert likened the situation to the Black Death.

“There are so many ‘big time Charlies’ out there - what did you think would happen?” Cassani countered, in typical feisty, nononsense manner. “You need to shut up, quit whining and get back to business.” Cassani famously saw Go sold to easyJet at a price she said at the time was a steal. Events have confirmed her view.

I once asked her why she thought low-cost airlines had a future. She replied that it was cheaper to fly to many UK destinations than use the train. “What is wrong with this picture?”

I have been puzzling, as you do, over Oil , the rather chic newsletter of Italian energy group Eni. This contains, for no apparent reason, an interview with a well-known comic director. “Woody Allen: we need to see an alternative to oil.” Whatever next? Adam Sandler on the next generation of nuclear power stations? The Coen brothers on prospects for hydrocarbon extraction from shale?

Seen ambling disconsolately around Finsbury Circus yesterday in the winter sunshine: Andy Hornby, the HBOS chief executive. Surely he’d be at the Lloyds TSB meeting on the HBOS deal in Glasgow, if only to keep an eye on things? “It’s either him or a very, very good lookalike,” says my informant. No one ever accused the average Nigerian fraudster of being the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this lot take the biscuit. Further down, they’ve pasted the logo from some windows company called Abbey as well. Beyond belief.

This Christmas is going to be a little bit bleaker for 17,000 retired brewery workers, who will not be receiving their £30 vouchers to exchange for Scottish & Newcastle products. This pensioners’ perk has been scrapped on the ground of cost. Do I detect the hand of new owner Heineken? “Absolutely not. It’s a decision which Scottish & Newcastle took.” I’d have blamed the new owner.

Sign of the times: the financial newsletter breakingviews is making a free “gardening leave” offer to anyone who has lost their job in the financial crisis. They will continue to receive the newsletter for three months. Obviously, such readers are out of the market; their surviving colleagues who are subscribers are asked to forward the offer. Crunch, “a comic tragedy with an ingenious Shakespearean twist”, is described to me as in talks with West End producers, which suggests that it doesn’t actually have a theatre yet. The two writers have a previous production to their credit. They wrote Vision after accepting a bet they couldn’t make the story of Lourdes into a musical. A previous attempt, Bernadette, had been one of theatreland’s most famous flops.

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