Column Eight: The place to get the push

There's never a good time to get the old tin-tack, but we can at least reveal the best place to be when the P45 and dustbin liner thunder on to the desk. Come on down, er, Fareham, the small Portsmouth satellite.

The average leaving package there is a staggering pounds 63,000, according to DC Gardner, the outplacement agency. Place to avoid? Cardiff, which comes bottom with pounds 14,000. Promoters of Scotland will be pleased to note that Glasgow (pounds 58,000) beats the City of London (pounds 51,000).

Here's hoping that City leaving package may help the 36 staff at Barclays Insurance Brokers International, who learned they were to lose their jobs only when the news dribbled from the office fax machine on Thursday night. Barclays, which had intended to break the news gently at 10.30am yesterday - 'It's not our policy to sack via the fax' - blames a mischievous soul for wiring an internal memo.

With British Rail busily preparing to hive off its various subsidiaries, the first to be privatised was to be its Transmark consultancy, which advises Third World railways and employs 114 people. Ah, no it doesn't. The eight members of its economics department have just resigned en masse, unwilling to face the chaos of privatisation.

An unusual note of optimism rang out from Burtons yesterday, coinciding with the company's call for pounds 163m from recession-damaged shareholders. 'We are prepared to stick our necks out and say we believe there will be a recovery within the next three years,' said Richard North, finance director. Ooooh, daring.

Trooping round the Treasury this week were 19 officials from the Russian Finance Ministry, mugging up on how it's done in the West. Imaginary dialogue. Moaning Russian: 'What do we do about the crashing rouble?' Didactic mandarin: 'Raise interest rates of course.' MR: 'And what do you do about the falling pound?' DM: 'Cut interest rates, stupid]'

The fate of the disastrous Stead & Simpson shoe shops hangs in the balance. Clayform Properties, which paid pounds 120m for them in 1988, is desperate to sell. Laurence Cooklin, the former chief executive ousted from Burton Group last February, denies he is backing a management buyout. 'I'm not involved in the Stead & Simpson bid. I'm not involved with anything at the moment,' he insists.

Surely he's doing something? 'If you must know,' confided the man who got a pounds 773,000 pay-off from Burton, 'I'm in the middle of writing to the Inland Revenue . . .'