I imagine we will do a mixture of the three

I imagine we will do a mixture of the three.”Companies’ options will be constrained by their individual economic circumstances. Falling prices for food and many other goods thanks to the hyper-competitive environment will make it impossible for retailers to raise their prices.Services sector companies, where inflation is rampant, will find it easier to raise their prices.Economists said it was hard to see where the impact of the increase would manifest itself. While some employers might decide to cut jobs this could simply exacerbate a process that, for instance in manufacturing, has been under way for some time.The share of jobs taken up by public administration, education and health has risen to 24 per cent now from 20 per cent during the previous Labour government of the late 1970s. While 155,000 jobs are being lost every year, an extra 225,000 are being created in the services sector of which more than six out of 10 were in the public sector.With Whitehall spending set to accelerate further, increasing demand for public sector workers can be expected to mop up redundancies elsewhere. This in turn could worsen the Chancellor’s Budget forecasts as public sector employment is less revenue-generating than private-sector recruitment ­ although this is a trend the Treasury is already aware of.The main impact therefore is more likely to fall on companies and, for large institutions, their shareholders.Simon Rubinsohn, the chief economist at the City stockbrokers Gerrard, said rough analysis showed NI increases could slice a percentage point off a forecast 5 per cent growth in corporate earnings this year. “The bottom line is that the bottom line of NI will be on profits,” he said.

“But in the grand scheme of things it is not that major given the scale of the impact from the weakness of global demand.”But the CBI is not so relaxed. Asked whether the increase could trigger a wave of corporate collapses, Mr Godden said: “There could be a danger of that ­ small companies in particular.”. A leading scientist will today spell out his fears of a future of “genetic apartheid” where those with low-grade DNA could be stigmatised. The card would provide a comprehensive map of a child’s genes and the associated risk of developing certain diseases.While this would enable people to seek preventative measures and adopt healthier lifestyles, Sir Paul warns it could also lead to a sinister form of separation. Individuals could find themselves being dismissed or overlooked by employers and insurers because of genetic defects. If genome sequencing was only available privately to those able to afford it, a genetic underclass could result.Sir Paul, chairman of the Royal Society’s Science in Society Programme, will warn: “This issue is too important to be left to scientists and policy makers alone.”In the coming years, the public will be offered more and more opportunities to take genetic tests and peer into their genetic destinies, but legislation must keep pace with the technology and help shape a fair and equitable society.”He pointed out that the American gene pioneer Craig Venter was already offering people the chance to buy a map of their genomes for £451,338.

Dr Venter anticipated that price coming down to about £600 in years to come.Sir Paul tempered his warning by stressing the benefits of a technology that enabled scientists to examine a person’s genetic make-up. “Genetic technology could lead to an era of personalised medicine and better-tailored preventive treatment.”. Every journalist is supposed to harbour a novel somewhere inside, and when the fashion journalist and TV presenter Lowri Turner decided to delve into her literary soul and disgorge hers, she didn’t have to search deeply for a theme. Best known as the presenter of BBC1’s makeover programme DIY SOS, she set her first work of fiction behind the scenes of a DIY makeover programme called On the House. Some are obvious, such as changing the name of Big Brother to Big Sister and Through the Keyhole to The Other Side of the Letter Box.

There is a foppish presenter named Liam Smith, whom Turner describes as “nothing more than a jumped-up painter and decorator” and adorns with a Mohican haircut dyed orange to match his jacket and trousers; he is obviously based on the flamboyant Changing Rooms designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.But the dreaded libel laws mean that Turner’s bitchier portraits of egomaniac female presenters and killer producers had to be disguised. “When I produced the first draft,” she says, “the lawyers went ballistic, saying things like: ‘Oh my God, that’s not Carol Vorderman, is it?’ Some of the characters had to come out altogether if there was no way to disguise them.”The trick is to disguise people enough so you don’t get sued but not so much that the readers can’t work out who they are. I took elements of one person and amalgamated them with elements of another. Although I am bound to say that it is all fictional and none of the incidents ever happened.”Turner was fashion editor of the London Evening Standard at 24, then a columnist on The Sun then the Sunday Mirror before moving to GMTV as fashion correspondent in 1993 and on to Good Morning with Anne and Nick the following year. In 1999, she began presenting DIY SOS, in which she travels the country with a team of professionals, rescuing householders from their DIY disasters; she is now filming her seventh series.She says that no one has phoned her in a rage after recognising themselves in the book.