Pembroke: A job in virtual reality

IF YOU are a manager worried by new technology, look at this for a job advert: 'Televisual, 'Martini' manager to control core team of global, outsourced worker network. Must have the 'knowledge' (information superhighway code), be a confident strategy planner and an excellent communicator. Knowledge of hacking desirable. Ambitious, Sega-conversant teenager preferred.'

Relax. The ad comes from a report, Communication Futures; Technology, by the consultancy Smythe Dorward Lambert on the future of the 'virtual organisation'.

GREAT THINGS, message pagers - when they work. In the US, the main reason for complaints when they do not is, according to one senior communications executive, that the batteries are low. In Britain the reason is that men accidentally drop them into the lavatory and then expect them to work after a quick dry-off.

THE HEAD of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, gave his annual report on the state of the US economy yesterday in the Humphrey Hawkins lecture. But who was Humphrey Hawkins? The lecture is named after two US politicians, Senator Hubert Humphrey and Representative Augustus Hawkins, who introduced the Full Employment and Growth Act in 1978, which stipulated that the Fed chief should give regular explanations of his actions.

THE PEOPLE of Kingston- upon-Hull are trying to attract more visitors and are working hard to revamp the city's image into 'something like a thinking man's York'.

It is embracing the theme of independence - since it was the first city to refuse entry to Charles 1, thus starting the English Civil War. In a nod to the Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico, Hull's leisure services department has decided to give the city its own passports, currency and even a national anthem. The documents should be ready by the end of next month, and will be issued to tourists to be stamped with visas at various scenic spots. The new currency will be acceptable in souvenir shops and the like, but not at local banks.

An anthem has yet to be written - but bear in mind the local poet was Philip Larkin.

WHIZZ kIDZ, the movement for non-mobile children, is still looking for City folk to run on its behalf in the New York Marathon in November. The charity already has teams signed up from Goldman Sachs, Slaughter & May and an eight- strong group from the City gym. A key team member will be Jeremy Kemp Symonds, a derivatives trader at NatWest Markets, who took up running by accident. Mr Kemp Symonds was on a solo safari in Kenya a few years ago when his jeep broke down. Not wishing to provide the wildlife with their evening meal, he ran 15 miles to the nearest camp. By comparison, he says, a 26-mile marathon is a breeze.