Business Diary: Cable's message fails to attract

In response to today's CBI call for the Government to bolster the UK's attractiveness, Vince Cable claims: "The UK inward investment regime is among the most welcoming in the world." He clearly hasn't got that message across to Britain's businesses.Yesterday Bendicks said it will move production from Winchester to Germany with the loss of 84 jobs, while Orange told workers at a Darlington call centre that they would have to relocate to Manila if they wanted to keep their jobs.

Putting a positive spin on holidays

The impact of the royal wedding on the economy is hard to gauge, although what is certain is that PR surveys about the day are comfortably outstripping demand. Among our favourites is a survey from BDRC Continental which optimistically states that while 45 per cent of small businesses expect the two consecutive bank holiday weekends in April to cause some disruption, 30 per cent said this would be outweighed by the "positive lift it will create". Have these firms never heard of Brits' penchant for spending their holidays down the pub and coming into work with a steaming hangover?

The ultimate in property upgrades

More royal wedding nonsense. The happy couple's first official home is worth £47m, according to the online valuer Zoopla. That's 343 times the average newlywed starter home. Meanwhile, their weekend country retreat, Windsor Castle, is worth £171m and has more than 1,000 rooms. By contrast, Kate's parents' five-bedroom home in the village of Bucklebury is in a street where the average home is worth £790,951.

Brokers spitting in a good cause

Working in insurance is enough to make you spit, but employees at Hastings Direct have been using all that bile to good effect. Some 56 workers at the Bexhill-based broker donated a saliva sample for the Anthony Nolan charity's bone marrow register. The charity uses the register to find people who can donate their stem cells for leukaemia patients who need a life-saving transplant. It's currently almost halfway towards reaching its target of having one million registered bone marrow donors. Find out more at www.anthonynolan.org.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk