Agenda likes to keep an occasional ear open for cute uses of horrible corporate-speak by businesses under pressure, used either to big themselves up or to deflect well-merited blame. A classic case occurs this week in this press statement by T in the Park's Geoff Ellis, discussing the (accurately predicted) traffic problems with the new festival site at Strathallan Castle.

"We'll take learnings from this year and will work on improving the [travelling] times for the future," he is reported as saying. Learnings? Since when has that been a word? What's wrong with "lessons"? Agenda suspects that saying you have "learned lessons" is tantamount to an admission of a cock-up, while "taking learnings" suggests something fuzzy but somehow corporately socially responsible. Agenda suspected the hand of T in the Park's formidable Glasgow-based PR operation Wire Media of putting such fudge in Ellis's mouth but they insist otherwise: "Although we type and issue his comments, all statements come directly from Geoff... he is impossible to be ‘PR-ed’."

SMALL FIRMS ARE STRIKE READY

IS the government’s proposed crackdown on industrial action really necessary? The answer to that question might well be yes for anyone caught up in the recent London tube strike, but research published by alldayPA, a company which provides answering services for businesses, finds small companies in particular are better prepared to handle strikes than ever before, with 41 per cent having contingency plans – not in the event of their own staff striking but in the event of them getting caught up in another company’s industrial action.