Industrial giant Siemens has announced plans to axe 4,200 jobs worldwide in order to simplify its business structure and make its IT business “fit for the future”.

The company, which has a number of UK-based operations, said that 2,000 of the job losses would affect its German staff in Minch and Paderborn, as well as the Nuremberg/Erlangen areas.

Siemens Chief Human Resources Officer Siegfried Russwurm said the measures would of course be implemented responsibly.

The German company said that the job cuts were a necessary side effect of its need to “provide the labour-intensive business with considerably more flexible and market-oriented structures.”

“The demands on IT and software expertise in our strategic businesses are steadily increasing, and the attractive growth fields of smart grids, product lifecycle management (PLM) and efficient healthcare solutions are all strongly IT-driven,” explained Mr Russwurm.

“The ability to operate customer IT infrastructure as well is also an excellent add-on and generates substantial customer value. In the past, we’ve frequently demonstrated that we vigorously tackle all necessary measures. Only this approach ensures competitiveness and, thus, safeguards jobs in the long term.”

Siemens anticipates that the job losses – which affect more than 10% of its total staff – will be confirmed by April 2011 and hopes that most will go through mutual consent or the non-renewal of temporary contracts. It will begin consultations with staff immediately.

Nissan has announced plans to build its new electric car – the Nissan Leaf – in Sunderland, creating 550 jobs and helping secure the jobs of 2,250 people across Nissan’s UK supply chain.

The Leaf will be the UK’s first mass market electric car and production is expected to commence in early 2013, with annual production capacity of about 50,000.

Last year Nissan announced that the north-east city would be home to the production of the advanced lithium-ion battery. Together with this latest announcement it means a total investment of around £420 million will be injected into Sunderland.

The plant will also be supported by a £20.7m Grant for Business Investment (GBI) from the UK government and a proposed finance package from the European Investment Bank of up to £197.3m.

Business Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson, said: “Today’s news from Nissan, with support from government, shows that by working together we can achieve our aim of making the UK a world-leader in ultra-low carbon vehicles.

“The investment is a fantastic vote of confidence in the Sunderland plant and its excellent workforce.”

Andy Palmer, Senior Vice President responsible for Nissan’s global electric vehicle strategy commented: “The world is at the dawn of a new era in automotive transport. Nissan Leaf, which will go on sale later this year, is a five-seater hatchback that offers the same space, practicality and performance of a similar car in its class – minus the tailpipe emissions.”

There was more good news for the car manufacturing industry today as the government also pledged its support by way of £380m in loan guarantees, to a £1.5 billion investment by Ford for plans to create a new generation of environmentally friendly engines.

The announcement means that 2,800 skilled jobs in the UK at Ford’s manufacturing plants in Dagenham, Southampton and Bridgend, as well as at its research centre in Dunton, Essex, will be safeguarded.

The Co-operative Group has announced record 2009 annual financial results, with sales up 31% and a 38% growth in new customer bank accounts.

The year saw the group acquire supermarket chain Somerfield to become the fifth largest retailer in the UK, with each of its 3,000 food stores in every postcode in the UK bar one, serving a total of 21 million customers. Overall like-for-like food sales were up 5.5% compared with the previous year.

The financial services arm of the group also merged with Britannia Building Society to become the UK’s first ‘super mutual’, the most diversified in the country.

Peter Marks, Co-op Group Chief Executive, said: “Whilst we have expanded and evolved as an organisation, we have stayed true to our core principles and we continue to do what we do best: serving customers with excellent products and services, and bringing solid values and trust to the communities in which we operate.

“Looking ahead, we expect the economic pressures to continue until the end of this year or the first half of 2011. Sustaining the level of success we have enjoyed over recent years will not be easy. All of our businesses are operating in fiercely competitive markets which will only get tougher, so we will be redoubling our efforts to help our customers by providing even greater value and service.”

Continually building on its ethical and community work, around £6.7 million was raised for charity by the group, and £11.3m invested into local communities. It was also awarded ‘Responsible Retailer of the Year’ by the Oracle Retail Week Awards – for the third year running.

The group is unique in that it is a consumer cooperative, whose four million members are involved in democratic decision-making and who share the group’s profits. Anyone can become a member for just £1, and then benefit from offers and be rewarded twice a year depending on how much they spend with the group and how much the business has made.

The Co-operative Group covers many different business areas, from bank services to travel to funeral care. For more information, visit: http://www.co-operative.coop/

A folding plug designed to fold flat for easy transportation has been crowned the overall winner at the 2010 Brit Insurance Design Awards in London.

British student Min-Kyu Choi beat off stiff competition from over 90 nominees to win the Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2010. Min-Kyu designed a folding plug in response to transportation issues he was having with the cumbersome regular design. The young designer noticed scratches on his MacBook Air – the world’s thinnest laptop – from the plug and sought a solution to the problem.

British Sculpture and Jury Chair, Antony Gormley – best known for designing the famous Angel of the North in Gateshead, UK – presented Min-Kyu with his award.

“Thought-through, responsive and modest, the folding plug shows how intelligent, elegant and inventive design can make a difference to everyone’s life,” commented Mr Gormley on why Min-Kyu was the deserving winner.

This is not the first accolade for Min-Kyu’s design. In 2009 it scooped a gold medal in the International Design Excellence Awards and earlier this year was also named a finalist in the Wallpaper Design Awards 2010.

Director of the Design Museum, Deyan Sujic, said: “It’s great to see such a practical but elegant demonstration of what design can do to make everyday life so much better. Min-Kyu Choi is a designer just setting out on his career and he clearly has a great future ahead of him.”

Last year’s winner of the Brit Insurance Design Award was Shepard Fairey in 2009 for his iconic ‘Obama Hope’ poster. This year British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who died in February, was posthumously awarded the Brit Insurance Fashion Award.

The plug is on exhibition at the Design Museum in London until 31 October 2010 and it is anticipated that the plug could be released later this year following extensive health and safety testing.

The latest employment figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has drawn a mixed response as records show unemployment has fallen, but so has employment.

The unemployment rate fell by 0.1% for the three months to January 2010, to 7.8%, the first quarterly fall since May 2008, and the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance saw its largest monthly fall since 1997 between January and February 2010, to 1.59 million.

However, the number of people in employment also saw a drop for the quarter, falling to 72.2% – its lowest figure since November 1996.

Brendan Barber TUC General Secretary commented that the statistics show a bright picture and are further evidence that the economy is moving in the right direction.

Mr Barber said: “Today’s record fall in dole claimants is great news for the millions of people across the UK desperate to get back into work. The surprise fall in the number of people out of work for between six and twelve months gives hope that long term unemployment is not going to be as bad as previous recessions.”

In a surprise move Mr Barber cites the government and Bank of England stimulus package as the reason for the fall.

However, Dr John Philpott, Chief Economic Advisor at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said that the UK’s labour market statistics show a confusing picture.

“Unemployment is sharply down, however you measure it. Yet there are also 54,000 fewer people in work, with full-time jobs particularly hard hit. The apparent paradox is explained by a very sharp rise of 149,000 in the number of economically inactive people, with the number of students surging by 98,000.

“Jobless young people are thus turning to study in their households to avoid the dole,” explained Dr Philpott. “Whoever forms the next government will face a Herculean task in its efforts to return the UK economy to full employment within this decade.”

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) maintains that investing in jobs for the long-term should be one of the key priorities for economies across the world.

“The global recession has left deep scars,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “The only way to begin healing them is by taking effective action now to help our economies recover their lost potential.”

According to the OECD’s Going for Growth report, governments need to boost spending on training, and provide the right incentives to the unemployed. It claims that older workers, youths, those on low incomes and single mothers are at the most risk of losing out in the job market.

Across the globe there is a mixed picture for employment. The US, Japan and Canada are all enjoying falling unemployment rates, while Italy, France and Korea continue to feel the repercussions of unstable economies with rising unemployment rates.

Ireland has launched a competition – Your Country, Your Call – to “ignite imaginations and inspire thinking”, encouraging the public to put forward proposals that will secure prosperity and jobs in the country – and each of the two winners will receive €100,000.

Launched by Irish President Mary McAleese, her husband Dr Martin McAleese came up with the idea. He said: “This started where all good ideas start, during quiet moments of reflection, thinking about Ireland and how we moved so quickly from being a vibrant and dynamic and thriving country to the position of wondering how we are going to get back to that.

“It came about by realising that old ideas weren’t going to do it – that new ideas or proposals were needed to shift our thinking and our mindsets to where they used to be – and beyond.”

There are eight categories (including a category named ‘Other’) under which to submit your proposal. Participants are simply asked to title their proposal and write a couple of sentences summarising the idea. These will be made visible on the website, and anyone visiting the site is invited to comment on the idea.

The full proposal can be attached to your submission, and will not be made visible on the website – only judges will see it.

Twenty of the best proposals will be put through to the semi-final stage, and these semi-finalists will each be given a coach to guide them through the final stages of the competition and to help them refine the document.

Five will be chosen for the final stage of the competition. A development fund of €500,000 is available for each of the winning proposals.

The competition opens today, St Patrick’s Day, Wednesday 17 March 2010. For full details and deadline information, visit: http://www.yourcountryyourcall.com/index.html

Oxford University Chancellor Lord Patten of Barnes has announced in a speech that university tuition fees should be uncapped to help meet the cost of teaching students and help to maintain the world-class status of universities such as Oxford.

The former governor of Hong Kong said it was “preposterous” that institutions could only charge undergraduates a maximum of £3,225 a year – less than half of what teaching professors could pay for their own childcare.

The speech was made yesterday (16 March) at the Independent Schools’ Council (ISC) annual conference in London, and he emphasised that he was expressing his own views.

He said: “Speaking entirely for myself not, I emphasise, in any representational role, I do not think that at our greatest universities we should give up Government support for our teaching.

“We do after all meet a common good which deserves financial assistance.

“For myself, I repeat, I would however be prepared to cap the present funding of our teaching grant if we were able as a result to set whatever tuition fee we wanted provided that we could demonstrate that we were still guaranteeing needs-blind access with generous bursaries.”

Lord Patten, a Conservative education minister during the 1980s and then Governor of Hong Kong, said later that it cost just over £16,000 to teach an undergraduate at Oxford, about half of which was covered by publicly funded teaching grants and tuition fees.

And with these places becoming ever scarcer, there is an element to this reasoning that makes sense – made further convincing by the increased education spending cuts this year by the government of £1 billion.

Last year, some 584,000 applications were received from students in the UK and EU and 449,000 gained a university place, it was revealed. This meant some 135,000 either dropped out of the applications process or failed to get in.

This year, applications are up 23%, while the number of university places available has been cut by 6,000, according to an analysis by the Conservatives.

The party said that if the current application trends continued until the summer, as many as 275,000 students would be denied a place – more than twice as many as last year.

Lord Patten stressed also that some universities should focus on specialist areas, he said, instead of covering the same courses and research subjects.

“We pretend to give every 18-year-old qualified to go on to higher education the same experience at the same sort of institution. That represents an expensive and inefficient delusion.

“We should differentiate between different sorts of institution, prize these distinctions and devote our energy to ensure reasonable movement by students from one sort of institution to another according to ability.”

While Lord Patten’s suggestions are one solution, he seems to be completely disconnected to the fact that any uncapping would cause students to carry even higher debts into their working lives. It could bear a generation of debt-riddled young people who will face a difficult future and find it even more difficult to get on the property ladder for example.

He recently spoke out in Parliament against the government’s spending cuts, and said it was “lamentable” that Lord Mandelson was not replying to the debate. He said: “What we are actually seeing over the years 2012 to 2013 is the obliteration of the splurge of spending on higher education since 2005/06.”

However, he would do well to have listened to a fellow peer whose suggestions would be far less damaging to the education system and its students – Labour former Education Secretary Baroness Morris – who is Pro-Vice Chancellor of Sunderland University. She said that higher education had to adapt to deal with the cuts and consider ideas such as reducing the time it takes to do a degree: “We have a chance to create a new structure. Let’s take this crisis as an opportunity to do that.”

What are your thoughts? Should UK universities be able to charge large tuition fees like US institutions? Or would such uncapping create an elitist system where only the rich can buy a good education?

For economic recovery to continue, UK employees need to hone their skills while employers should invest in more training, according to a report from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES).

The National Strategic Skills Audit found that within the OECD, the UK has the lowest growth in highly skilled jobs, with leadership, management and technical skills being in most need.

What’s more, there has been a worrying increase – 24% from 2005 to 2009 – in the number of people classed by their employers as ‘not fully proficient at their jobs.’

Chris Humphries CBE, Chief Executive of the UKCES, said: “Despite having a more skilled workforce than at any time in our history, we still lag behind many of our major economic competitors. In order to catch up, skills investment needs to connect more to the jobs that need doing now and that will need doing in the future.

“We need more and better jobs not just to recover from the recession, but to be better than we were before it.”

A previous report published by the UKCES, the National Employer Skills Survey for England, surveyed almost 80,000 employers at the height of last year’s recession.

It found that around 93% of the UK workforce was deemed by employers to be “proficient at their jobs”, however 3% of employers had vacancies they could not fill because they couldn’t find candidates with suitable skills, qualifications or experience.

The Automobile Association (AA) is warning of a surge in petrol prices and is calling on the UK government to scrap the impending 3p rise in petrol duty due to come in on 1 April 2010.

A 17% rise in European wholesale petrol prices since the end of January is threatening to push the average pump price above the July 2008 record, says the AA.

Petrol prices have already begun edging towards 116.9p a litre across forecourts, but the AA warns they could reach 120.0p by the end of the month, rising to record highs unless the government reneges on the 3p a litre fuel duty rise on 1 April.

President of the AA, Edmund King, said: “The UK is barely out of recession yet petrol prices threaten to rise to record prices seen during the boom of 2008 – shortly before the collapse into recession. If families, drivers on fixed incomes and those on low pay were unable to cope with record prices then, they are even less likely now.”

At the beginning of the 2010 the RMI Independent Petrol Retailers Association predicted a gloomy year for drivers with the possibility of a 10 pence per litre price hike by the end of the year. This figure was seemingly relatively conservative as it did not take into account the rising price of oil.

“It’s going to be a tough year for both consumers and independent petrol retailers in 2010 and both are really going to feel the squeeze,” commented Chairman Brian Madderson. “RMI Petrol will be actively lobbying Government to minimise the tax increases in order to protect the vulnerable rural filling stations and maintain the momentum of any economic recovery.”

According to the AA, the UK suffers from some of the highest petrol prices in Europe. Since the pre-budget report in November 2008, fuel duty and VAT on a tank of petrol in the UK has risen by 11.46%, compared to an average rise in countries including France, Germany and Holland of just 5.07%.

Mr King added: “Political parties have started to jump on the bandwagon of high fuel prices, calling for a fuel price/tax stabiliser. In the AA’s opinion, the easiest and quickest stabiliser would be to freeze the fuel duty increase on 1 April.”

Joint venture (JV) HETCo – Ferrovial Agroman and Laing O’Rourke – has officially signed the £812 million (€900m) deal with BAA to build its new Terminal 2 at London’s Heathrow Airport.

 Under the contract – the largest construction job ever awarded by the airport operator – the joint venture will excavate the site and build the 40,000 square metres main structure as well as constructing ten aircraft parking stands.

The new building will replace the current Terminal 2 and the Queens Building, which date from the 1950s, and it is expected to be inaugurated in the first half of 2014.

It will have the capacity to serve 20 million passengers each year and its innovative design will reduce CO2 emissions by 40%. Heathrow, which inaugurated its new Terminal 5 in 2008, is set to become one of Europe’s most modern and sustainable airports.

The T2A project includes the design and construction of the new Terminal building, aircraft stands, the connection with the T2B satellite building, the access road, a new cooling plant and all related services. HETCo will also be responsible for the full coordination and integration of the baggage systems and the building’s information controls systems both within the new terminal and into the Heathrow wide network.

The JV was appointed to construct Terminal 2 in 2008, following its selection after a tender process as one of BAA’s nine construction suppliers.

The deal was signed by BAA’s Chief Executive Colin Matthews and Capital Director Steven Morgan and Ignacio Clopes and Ray O’Rourke of HETCo.

Steven Morgan said: “This is BAA’s largest ever single construction contract, and I am confident that it represents great value for our airlines and for the millions of passengers that will benefit from its modern, new facilities.

“The HETCo team has demonstrated to us that they will deliver this project in a timely and efficient way, and to a high standard.”

For more information on Heathrow’s Terminal 2, click here.