NewsBiscuit

A travel company has bucked the trend of lower bookings by introducing ‘proxy holidays’ which remove the need to go away at all.

Grant Sanders, head of Stevenage-based ProxyHolidays, said he had the idea on a recent trip to Paris. ‘I was queuing to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and I couldn’t help noticing how bored everyone looked. When they finally reached the front, they held up their mobiles to get a picture and then moved on to photograph something else without even having a proper look.’

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Brewer-Sharp Systems, makers of software for pub tills, has succeeded where generations of video conferencing and meeting room systems have failed. It has invented a simple method for instantly gathering the entire staff of a pub in one place.

‘Simply install a new electronic till in a pub and, in minutes, the entire staff will be gathered around it, staring it as if waiting for aliens to emerge from the mothership,’ said MD Fee Brewer.

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History was made in Exeter High Street yesterday morning, when Avis Bentley purchased the final item of stock in Edinburgh Woollen Mill’s ‘Mega Everything Must Go Sale’.

This is thought to be the first time that everything has actually been sold in such a sale and is being acclaimed as a sign of economic recovery with Mrs Bentley, 68, becoming something of a retail heroine.

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Britain’s homeless community are preparing for the switchover to the chip & pin card payment system this weekend, with some admitting that they are unhappy with the upgrade from the current spare change system.

The hi-tech system is intended to bring those living on the high street in line with High Street retailers, who switched to the system in 2005. From the weekend, homeless people and other beggars will have to use special portable card readers in order to obtain payment from passers-by and good Samaritans.

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Two more U.S. financial institutions were closed December 11 by federal regulators, bringing the total number of U.S. failed banks this year to 132, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said. Republic Federal Bank was the first casualty of the morning. More surprising was the announcement that officials had seized the assets of and shuttered the Bailey Savings & Loan in Bedford Falls.

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