Here's a headline you are likely to see more often: staff find out about redundancies via social media.
Just ask Louis van Gaal, former manager of Manchester United.
In today's case, it is more accurate to say staff at Austin Reed, the failed clothing seller, found out about branch closures on social media, but it amounts to the same thing.
An employee with a statistical bent told free-sheet City AM, “About 80% of the staff found out about it on social media”.
Perhaps Facebook and Twitter have stats and analytics for this sort of stuff.
Said employee said staff were given no warning about the closure.
"We addressed the managers yesterday morning, and there was a communication plan in place, but social media just blows everything out of the water,” the paper reported a spokesman for the administrators as saying.
So, the administrators appear to have done the decent thing, but evidently one or more insensitive types among the managers decided social media was the way to break this life-altering news.
Lend me a Winnie
The full design of Britain's first plastic bank notes is to be unveiled by the Bank of England, the Daily Telegraph reports.
The notes are apparently almost impossible to tear, but are prone to sticking together.
The new fiver will feature UK war-time leader Sir Winston Churchill and will be revealed this afternoon at Blenheim Palace, the modest digs in which Churchill was born.
Winnie's physog will replace prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, currently the only woman, apart from HRH, to feature on Britain's bank notes.
A house is not a home
Britain's obsession with dwellings as investments as opposed to places in which to … er … dwell, continues, with specialist residential investment advisors London Central Portfolio Limited (LCP) trumpeting how expensive it is to live in Greater London these days.
Its analysis of Land Registry data comes up with surprisingly unsurprising data: the housing market in London is a lot more over-heated in Greater London than it is in the rest of England or in Wales.
In what it calls prime central London, average prices have risen 4.7% year-on-year and 2% quarter-on-quarter, which is tremendous news for international money launderers.
The average price is now £1.67mln.
In Greater London, average prices broke through the £600,000 barrier for the first time.
Average prices have increased 14% year-on-year and – one in the eye, this, for Russian oligarchs, hard-pressed oil magnates and people who will probably never see the new Sir Winston Churchill bank note in their lives – rose 7.9% quarter-on-quarter.
In the rest of England and Wales average prices fell 0.87% - LCP is so anxious to talk up house prices it termed this a fall of -0.87%, which would actually be a rise of 0.87% - from the previous quarter.
Average house prices outside the Smoke are a still chunky £235,844, which is sure to be a source of joy for university students getting their degree results round about now.
Of mines and men (and women)
Enough of the circa-1985 Ben Elton diatribe, on to small cap news, and Tanzania-focused Kibo Mining PLC (LON:KIBO), which has attracted a lot of interest in its memorandum of understanding with Lake Victoria Gold that will result in the fast-track development of the Imweru gold project.
Lake Victoria Gold's Imwelo gold project is right next door, and the two are to be amalgamated into a joint venture.
Confession time.
Proactive Investors has a very limited number of lithium-themed images in its gallery and not many of them are that exciting, but I think we need to augment the selection as a matter of some urgency, given the number of mining companies that are branching out into lithium.
Savannah Resources Plc (LON:SAV) is the latest to move into the lithium space – the urge to bellow “the engines cannae take it, Capt'n” in a very bad Scottish accent almost always overtakes me whenever I see the word lithium, for some reason - following its application for licenses over two new projects in Finland, Somero and Erajarvi.
Others are sure to follow, although not necessarily in Finland.
There's a company, Enertopia Corp (CNSX:TOP, OTCMKTS:ENRT), that we follow closely on our North American site, and it recently branched out into the lithium brine sector from its regular line of work, which is the production of lubricant specifically designed for women.
And no, we do not have many pictures in the Proactive Investors images gallery for that subject matter, either.
Were Victor Kiam, of “I liked the product so much, I bought the company” fame (we've moved on from female lubricant now, in case you were struggling to keep up), still alive one imagines he'd be getting into lithium in a big way.