Business Diary: Bogof doesn't quite hit the spot on 14th

We all know Valentine's Day is a wonderful excuse for companies to sell us more of their stuff – and in the current economic environment, who can blame them for grasping every opportunity? Still, we can't help feeling that WM Morrison, the supermarket group, isn't really entering into the spirit of the occasion with its Valentine's Day promotion. Two cards for the price of one? What is it suggesting: one for the wife and one for the mistress?

Football crazy, football mad

Another daft survey arrives, this one from an outfit called Results International. It says 44 per cent of workers say their boss's management style "is the same as relegation zone Wolverhampton Wanderers manager, Mick McCarthy, or dismissed Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson". The point they're trying to make, we think, is that lots of managers don't know how to get the best out of the people who work for them. We'll give them Hodgson, but well done for sending out the survey in the week that Wolves turned over league leaders Manchester United.

Is the City at the end of the line?

More proof that the City still isn't doing its bit for the economy. The Office of Rail Regulation reports that the number of people using Liverpool Street station in the heart of the Square Mile was down 6 per cent last year, which can only mean the banks told more people they didn't need to bother coming into work (sacked them, that is). Traffic at London Bridge, also in the City, was down too, says the ORR, though numbers were up almost 10 per cent at Euston. Who has been recruiting there?

Wall Street gets a facelift

Over in New York, however, things are obviously looking up for the bankers and their friends. The Park Avenue-based Long Island Plastic Surgical Group, purveyor of nips and tucks to the vain folk of Wall Street, reports that business was up by 30 per cent last year (compared with a 5 per cent increase across the United States as a whole). "Feeling good – and looking good – is in style once again," says Dr Kaveh Alizadeh, the president of the company. So that's why American bankers just can't stop smiling.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk