This newspaper's recently enhanced coverage of business news has thrown up some temporary logistical problems, such as providing appropriate desk space for additional staff. The result has been a virulent outbreak of "hot-desking", apparently contemporary slang for too many office colleagues scrambling for territorial rights over too few desks. This, and other weird and inventive examples of new age business jargon, has gained a place in the recently published Oxford Dictionary of New Words, a collection of the most popular buzz words and phrases to have emerged over the past decade which, through current usage, have become part of day-to-day spoken English.

Another example much favoured by evangelical business gurus is the John the Baptist "mission statement", an outline of policy objectives generally couched in terms of religious zeal, as if the message was some sort of divine truth to be brought to the heathen. More creative is the description of a segment of the white collar workforce who, while having moved away from the coal face, remain in an intermediary no-man's land, not having made it quite far enough up the greasy pole. These unfortunates are collectively referred to as the "marzipan layer", a sticky territory doubtless familiar to many.