Pembroke: March to market

WHAT DO military men do on leaving the forces? Old soldiers never die, but a goodly number fossilise as bursars of Oxbridge colleges. Others become scions of the local bridge club. But a better career path for those headed for Civvy Street might be to join Towry Law, the firm of financial advisers coming to the market.

There, a brighter future free of defence cuts could well be in prospect. Glancing at the eight-strong board we see an admirable record of duty to Queen and Country.

Viz: The Hon Cecil Law, (King's Dragoon Guards); John Bridel (eight years a Fleet Air Arm pilot); Alistair Gregory-Smith (Royal Marines); Kenneth Holmes (Royal Navy); and Clive Scott-Hopkins (14th/20th King's Hussars) - 62.5 per cent of the board.

IF THE 'Santa's Grottos' already sprouting in department stores are anything to go by, an organisation selling charity Christmas cards has been a little late off the blocks in sending out its information. The Christmas Collection has been set up to promote tasteful corporate charity cards. All yucky ones have been weeded out including, it seems, snowscapes, since research shows that they are the 'least popular'.

The research also threw up the extraordinary statistic that one merchant bank sent 30,000 cards last year, and a leisure company 50,000. Very selective. Scottish companies, on the other hand, 'order small quantities'.

IT'S TRUE what they say about second-hand car salesmen, if the Office of Fair Trading is any yardstick. The September issue of Fair Trading, uncompromisingly subtitled Weeding out the Rogues, includes tables of customer complaints.

Familiar whinges, nearly always justified, about package holidays abroad account for only 952 complaints in the first quarter of 1993. Even car repairs and servicing attracted just 3,083.

The figure for second-hand cars? 9,234.