From a New York Times report…

The Conference Board, a private research group, found that at the start of the summer, 40 percent of consumers had no plans to take a vacation over the next six months — the lowest percentage recorded by the group in 28 years. A survey by the Gallup Organization in May based on telephone interviews with a national sample of 1,003 adults found that 43 percent of respondents had no summer vacation plans.

About 25 percent of American workers in the private sector do not get any paid vacation time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Another 33 percent will take only a seven-day vacation, including a weekend.“

The idea of somebody going away for two weeks is really becoming a thing of the past,” said Mike Pina, a spokesman for AAA, which has nearly 50 million members in North America. “It’s kind of sad, really, that people can’t seem to leave their jobs anymore.”

Shrinking-vacation syndrome has gotten so bad that at least one major American company, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, has taken to shutting down its entire national operation twice a year to ensure that people stop working — for about 10 days over Christmas, and 5 days or so around the Fourth of July.

“We aren’t doing this to push people out the door,” said Barbara Kraft, a partner at the firm in the human resources office. “But we wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 e-mails.”

Ye Gods! What a country. I have a friend who’s a senior executive in a major US corporation. He gets two weeks of holiday a year, and reports that his colleagues get annoyed by his refusal to take a laptop away with him.

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, issued an ultimatum to the government yesterday to restore “normal” security procedures at Britain’s airports within a week or face legal action.At a press conference where he sat in front of a union flag with the words Keep Britain flying and beside a Winston Churchill lookalike, Mr O’Leary said he had asked the transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, to restore the pre-August 10 security measures, which include fewer body searches and fewer restrictions on carry-on bags.

If things did not return to normal by Thursday, Mr O’Leary said he would ask for an unspecified amount in compensation from the government, which he said airlines were entitled to under the Transport Act. The government says the measures were taken under the Aviation Security Act and there are no grounds for compensation.

Mr O’Leary also offered his views on the “war on terror”. “The way to defeat terrorism is, one, to arrest the bloody terrorists, and, two, keep the system working normally,” he said.

By keeping in place the emergency measures Mr O’Leary said Britain had handed the terrorists a victory. “They must be rolling around the caves in Pakistan laughing,” he said.

He said the measures were “completely insane and ineffective” and the product of “a committee of Keystone cops”.

Come, come, Michael. That’s a bit hard on the Keystone boys.

[Source]

From Guardian Unlimited…

The high rewards on offer in the exclusive world of Britain’s boardrooms and City dealing rooms were exposed yesterday by figures showing a jump of 16% in bonus payments this year to a record £19bn.That is equivalent to the country’s entire annual transport budget. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released its annual estimate of the scale of bonuses showing they rose by £2.5bn this year, following a £1.5bn rise last year, meaning they have leapt by a quarter in two years….

From PC World…

Boeing will phase out its Connexion by Boeing service, leaving what it once considered a promising market for in-flight Internet access.

Connexion offers broadband Internet access via Wi-Fi, using a satellite connection to the Internet, that costs about $10 to $30 per flight on commercial airlines. It also offers high-speed Internet access on executive jets and ships.

Connexion is offered on some commercial flights in Europe and Asia but was never adopted by a major U.S. carrier. First conceived in 2000, the service was approved by the Federal Aviation Administration in May 2002 as the nation’s airlines were reeling from a travel slump that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Besides, it’s not that good when your laptop is in the hold!

This obnoxious sign (photographed by Scott Beale, to whom many thanks) greeted visitors to LinuxWorld. The cretin responsible for it should be taken out and shot. It’s an example of what happens to a movement when idiots with MBAs get their hooks into it. Apart from anything else, Linux is the creation of people who did it for the love (or the sheer hell) of it. Since when did ‘professional’ become a term of approbation?

If, like me, you are repelled by the spectacle of millionaire rock stars miming statemanship, then you will be cheered by John Harris’s acute piece in today’s Guardian…

In response to the fact that the Irish government has recently changed its notoriously cuddly fiscal regime, so that creative types can only earn a trifling £170,000 before paying tax, Bono and his friends have moved part of their empire to the Netherlands. This may seem like a rather cruel interpretation of the news, but I don’t think I can help it: though Bono is very keen on feeding, watering and healing the world, he and his group – collectively worth £460m, it says here – don’t seem to be too keen on paying for Irish schools and hospitals. That’s good, isn’t it?

Thanks to Pete for pointing it out.

Nothing escapes Dan Hill.