The Weekly Round-Up: 15.06.07

For three years the Round-Up has tried to resist the temptation to watch the BBC's Alan Sugar vehicle, The Apprentice, but this year finally gave in. If you're not a fan, please bear with us or scroll down just a little way (and don't miss this week's caption competition).

The Round-Up joined the fun about halfway through the run, which ended this week, to see which desperate wannabes were vying for a job at Amstrad, the forgotten name of the UK technology industry.

Picking up the largely uncomplicated format of the game, the Round-Up quickly worked out, in about week six, that the impressive Irish battleaxe, Kristina, would march to success over the trampled bodies of the obligatory upper class twits, call centre workers and assorted makeweights such as the laughable (or should that be 'warfabbable') Paul and so-called 'internet entrepreneur' Simon who the Round-Up originally suspected was added late to the series, purely for comic effect.

Of course, reality television being what it is, Simon in fact romped to success by the time the final - something of a sadly predictable dead-rubber - came around.

Even before the final, it became clear Simon had wowed 'Sir Alan' with his spluttering and stuttering displays of utter incompetence.

In fact the only field in which Simon was adjudged to have shone appeared to be his ability to reel off Amstrad's financial results - a parrot-fashion recital which served as a damning indictment on the public school system and the gulf that exists between academic achievement and actual human development.

However, the Round-Up has a theory which possibly explains the inexplicable.

Given the name of the show - The Apprentice - perhaps the BBC and Sugar have grown fearful of the winner turning their back on Amstrad once their 15 minutes of fame is guaranteed, thus undermining the title of the show and casting it down to the depths of other reality TV shows which serve as little more than vehicles for those seeking the spotlight.

Perhaps Sugar and the Beeb are aware that winning a job at Amstrad isn't everybody's idea of winning.

Therefore, this time around, perhaps Sugar threw all reasonable criteria out of the window and went for the one contestant who was guaranteed to follow him like a love-sick puppy for as long as Sugar was prepared to stroke him, throw him biscuits and give him toys to play with in the corner of his office.

It's just a thought.

One aspect of The Apprentice which may yet be revisited time and again, as reality TV shows increasingly become subject to trial by sociology, is Alan Sugar's attitudes towards two female contestants in this year's show.

Both Katie and Kristina were quizzed at length about their family situations and children, while other contestants' potential impediments to working (such as Simon's ability to find the office or tie his own shoelaces) went uncommented-upon.

And the issue of women in the workplace - particularly the IT workplace - was back in the news this week after it was revealed that promotions are easier to come by than jobs for women working in IT.

How so?

Well, research from The Training Camp found that women are struggling to get taken seriously at the interview stage but once they are working in a company, having overcome those initial hurdles, they are able to secure promotions with relative ease as they prove their worth.

It seems the glass ceiling is becoming a thing of the past but 'glass walls' are very much the modern reality. Or at least the latest buzz word.

Claire Taylor, a systems administrator at software and services company APT Solutions, said when she started going for IT job interviews she came up against an attitude of companies being "less willing to employ women".

However, Maggie Berry, UK communications director of online job-board womenintechnology.co.uk, perhaps choosing not to be the turkey voting for an early Christmas, disputed the notion that the IT industry is unwelcoming to women.

Berry told silicon.com that, certainly at graduate level, the sector is "incredibly open" to recruiting women.

She said: "Companies are crying out for women to join their IT departments and are keen to attract more women to join them."

And what's more, she knows just the place for people to advertise their jobs or search for new positions. In case you missed it, that's womenintechnology.co.uk.

Of course any mention of women in technology, mothers, the modern workplace and attracting staff to the industry takes us naturally onto the subject of flexible working and the need for companies to better address the issue of work/life balance.

According to the Equal Opportunities Commission, the UK is currently lagging behind most of Western and Northern Europe in this regard. The Scandinavians, for example, are particularly flexible... which pretty much backs up something the Round-Up once saw on a video.

While around 90 per cent of Danish and Swedish companies are able to embrace some degree of flexible working, fewer than half of UK companies are so well equipped.

The Tories, not shy of sounding off on the latest political hot potato, piped up on the issue this week.

Tory leader David Cameron said: "In the past some people have claimed that flexible working is a soft or fluffy issue. No serious observer believes that today.

"But there's still too little understanding of the sheer scale of the transformation in working practices that is taking place.

"We can't just wait around for the future to happen to us."

In fact, the Tories are such long-term advocates of flexible working that, let's not forget, the last Conservative government positively encouraged many UK workers to spend their whole working week at home by closing down whole swathes of British industry.

There was nowt so flexible as miners, for example, in Thatcher's Britain. If they wanted to pick the kids up from school there was very rarely a clash with work. A few clashes at work, or rather just outside the gates, but their time was largely their own.

Of course, also synonymous with the previous Tory government was the introduction to society of the 'yuppie' - the young and upwardly mobile professionals - easily recognisable because of their waxed jackets and mobile phones the size of Geoff Capes' (actual) lunchbox (rather than his nudge-nudge-wink-wink 'lunchbox' which nobody wants to think about).

This of course was back in the day when these social climbers could justify driving around cities in spotlessly clean, gas-guzzling Land Rovers because it was the only vehicle that could transport their mobile phone as well as their colossal ego.

However, cometh the 21st century, cometh (belatedly) the 'Yappy' - the young affluent professionals - as defined by insurance company More Than this week.

More Than classes this group as those individuals living in areas with soaring property prices who boast a high number of gadgets such as iPods and plasma screens and broadband internet connections - regarded as the trappings of a large disposable income.

Still staying largely - if somewhat stereotypically - among the middle classes, word reached the Round-Up this week that Cricket is a Mickey Mouse sport: official.

The Walt Disney company has bought the hugely popular CricInfo cricket website from the Getty-owned Wisden group for a sum believed to be in the tens of millions of pounds.

CricInfo has grown rapidly in recent years and boasts between seven million and 10 million monthly readers worldwide.

Such popularity clearly brought it to the attention of execs at the Disney organisation which owns the ESPN sports network, placing the genteel British-born sport alongside such popular US staples as Nascar, tractor pulling and MONSTER TRUCKS.

The Round-Up would like to have been a fly on the wall as US sports execs were talked through the appeal of cricket.

"It's kinda-like baseball, Hank, but both sides wear white, there's a lot less steroid use and a whole lot more tea.

"The whole game is built around two meals - lunch and tea - while the crowd entertain themselves during the slower moments with the sideshow event of drinking themselves blind so they can no longer see the rain when it leads to the inevitable abandonment of the game."

And finally, regular readers of silicon.com may have noticed the launch last week of the CIO50 - a new special report which names the 50 most deserving, innovative and influential CIOs in the UK.

The list recognises those individuals who have delivered the most value to their business with the resources available to them.

If you've not had a look already, check it out... and if you fancy it, there's a competition where you could win yourself an iPod Nano (the very possession of which might push you up into the 'yappy' category).

And finally, finally, while shopping online for a new pen this week the Round-Up was struck by a thought. If you're going to call your website Pen Island, give some thought to whether or not you'd want to hyphenate that.

Penisland.net chose not to.

Still here? Check out the Weekly Round-Up podcast - for lively discussion on Second Life press conferences, HP bringing artworks to the streets of Soho and a whole lot more. And don't forget to try your luck at this week's caption competition.