The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rate fell from 4.5% in October. Some economists had expected the CPI rate to fall to 3.9% in November.

The headline rate of Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation, which includes housing costs, declined to 3% in November from 4.2% in October.

Inflation is continuing to fall on the back of lower oil and energy costs.

Mail report 'to suggest sell-off'

A report into the future of the Royal Mail due out later is expected to call for the service to be part-privatised.

The study by former media watchdog boss Richard Hooper was commissioned by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).

A BERR spokeswoman has declined to comment on whether it would back any partial sell-off recommendation.

The spokeswoman said no comment would be made by the department until the report was released.

Former deputy chairman of Ofcom, is also expected to show a big rise in the Royal Mail's pension fund deficit.

This may now total as much as £7bn.

Strike action

The report is further expected to recommend modernisation for the service, with potential job losses as a result.

The government has committed itself to maintaining the "universal service" – daily deliveries to every UK home, and collections from all post boxes.

The key principle of the proposed Directive is the equal treatment of permanent employees, and temporary agency staff. The proposal is that basic working and employment conditions of temporary workers would have to be no less favourable than their permanent employed counter-parts. As currently drafted, the Directive aims to give temporary workers full employment rights after just six weeks.

The EU Council, in considering the Directive, linked the rights of agency workers to the Working Time Directive, and had put pressure on Britain to sign up to the Directive in exchange for guaranteeing the continuation of the 48-hour week opt-out. To date, Britain has persuaded EU Ministers to reject the Agency Workers Directive, but the majority of EU Nations are pushing for the measure to be introduced within weeks. We will keep you updated on the progress of negotiations.

Today we have access to all kinds of careers advice, but most of it is "one size fits all" which can mean that no one learns how to really stand out.

This is a problem; very few people are given the opportunity to develop an awareness of what makes them special, and even fewer learn how to turn on that "special something" when it matters the most.

There is great pressure to stand out from the crowd. Some people seem to know how to shine at interviews and they are the ones who seem to enjoy the pick of the opportunities; they really know how to work the so-called “halo effect” to the full.

Self-awareness is the key to interview success yet careers agencies routinely neglect self-awareness as part of standard interview preparation. Very few people have great self -awareness; modesty and lack of confidence at interview can seriously damage the career prospects of even the most highly qualified candidate. Countless positions have gone to candidates just because they interview well.

If you are looking for an instant overhaul of your interview technique, think about how you can make the interviewer’s job easier; aim to help the interview run more smoothly. Do your homework and have plenty of relevant things to say – the interviewer should not have to drag it out of you. Pay attention to your listening skills; really concentrate on what the interviewer is saying – this will help you to feel less nervous, and the interviewer will warm to you.

People who fail to develop their interview skills can face a lifetime of needless frustration in their career, yet the investment in a few hours of interview skills training will repay you many times over.

In the words of the Chief Inspector of Schools, Christine Gilbert, "I think that it’s really important that we have a focus on [communication skills]. I have seen well qualified young people not getting jobs because they are not sufficiently articulate in interviews. This is sometimes described as soft skills but I don’t think they are soft at all; they are work skills."

Research from TakeLegalAdvice.com – the law firm search and comparison site – examines the way in which government regulation is received in UK boardrooms. The report reveals a worrying picture of senior management struggling to keep up with a constant barrage of legislation, thereby resulting in widespread employment discrimination against women.

New laws on maternity leave were highlighted as having the reverse effect of what they were intended to achieve.

As a direct result of the rules governing maternity leave, directors in Wales, and their counterparts in the North East are least likely to hire women of child-bearing age than any of their counterparts in the UK – citing the legal risk of being caught out by constant changes in rules in this area as the main reason for their discrimination.

Four in ten directors in the North East (43%), and three in ten directors in the wider North-East, Yorkshire and Humberside region (32.5%), openly admitted to deciding against employing women who fit into this category.

They are almost twice as likely to shun female employees of child-bearing age than directors operating in the East & East Midlands (17.5%) or in London and the South East (18.5%).

Directors operating in the South West of England and in Northern Ireland are the most willing to hire women of child-bearing age. Here, just over one in ten directors (16% and 13% respectively) admitted to actively discriminating against women of child-bearing age.

Directors were also asked about their views on their company’s policy surrounding hiring women of child-bearing age.

Welsh businesses fared better here. Alongside bosses in Northern Ireland and Scotland, they had the lowest perceived levels of workplace discrimination against women of child-bearing age – at 14%, 13% and 16% respectively – revealing that discrimination against women of this age is not found at uniform levels in different regions in the UK.

Over a quarter of directors (27.5%) in the wider North East, Yorkshire & Humberside region felt that their company had avoided hiring women of child-bearing age in order to avoid the legal risk posed by the constant changes in regulations regarding maternity pay and maternity leave.

One in five directors (22.5%) in companies based in the East & East Midlands believed their company had behaved in a similar way and a quarter of all directors in the North West and the South West (25% and 24% respectively) believed that their company had shunned women of child-bearing age.

Mark Wyatt, Managing Director of TakeLegalAdvice.com said, "Regulations on maternity leave and pay are meant to help working women but they are having the opposite effect. The maternity leave rules have made life much more difficult for businesses, who end up having to cope without a key person for anything up to a year and, as the report reveals, one in five nationally have avoided hiring women of child-bearing age, and in doing so actively discriminate against women in the workplace."

Announcing the reforms, which includes mandatory skills tests and training, Brown said the "old system" no longer met the "aspirational society" Britain needs to be and added: "While in the old days it was seen as the duty of government to create work for the inactive, in the new world there has to be a duty on the government to help the inactive become employable and a duty on the inactive to take up those responsibilities."

Harvey Nash chief executive, Albert Ellis, said: "Putting the war for talent into a global context, Brown said that UK businesses needed to wake up to the battle that was emerging. Five million graduates are qualifying each year in China and India, so there is really no choice for UK firms but to compete on a high skills and value-added basis."

"It is a very good day for the people industry. The PM was talking specifically about skills, people and talent. Speaking as a head-hunter, I am delighted that such emphasis was placed on education, training and assessment, and that the recruitment industry can play a bigger role in achieving that."

This will be the 4th time in the last 5 years that they have received this honour.

“Wales Fast Growth 50” recognises the 50 fastest growing companies in Wales.

"I think that group faces significant problems", said Professor Mike Campbell, development director of the Sector Skills Development Agency, speaking at a roundtable discussion on 14 September. The roundtable accompanied the launch of a report on careers advice and the UK skills gap, both of which were sponsored by recruitment firm Harvey Nash.

Harvey Nash chief executive Albert Ellis said that IT technical professionals are among those who may experience career dislocation problems, after having enjoyed a heyday "as the darlings of the 90s", if they have not developed their client-facing skills along with learning new technologies.

Scotland is the only UK nation with a careers advice service aimed at adults, Campbell said. However, the Leitch Review of Skills in England, for which Campbell was an adviser, has recommended the implementation of a universal skills service for adults in and out of work.

Campbell also sounded a call for revising the traditional view of career services aimed at youth to reflect changes in how they seek information and careers advice. Informal sources such as social networking sites online are likely to provide the kind of personalised approach, customised to their 'profiles', and peer-to-peer interaction that will successfully influence their decisions.

"Institutional solutions are not the only way you want to go", Campbell said.

The Chairman of the Low pay Commission stated that their "cautious approach this year should not be taken as a signal that the minimum wage is too high. After four years of substantial increase, this year the evidence pointed to the need for moderation. Next year that might change, or the need for caution might be even stronger."

The minimum hourly rate from 1 October 2007 will be:

• 5.52 for workers aged over 22, a rise of 17p;
• 4.60 for workers aged 18-21, a rise of 15p;
• 3.40 for workers aged 16-17, a rise of 10p.

The following changes will apply to those employers that do not provide 24 days' holiday, as of 1 October 2007:

• All workers will be entitled to the equivalent of 4.8 weeks' annual leave regardless of length of service;
• The holiday entitlement for part-time workers needs to be calculated on a pro-rata basis (4.8 times their usual working week), regardless of whether or not they usually work on bank holidays;
• Partial days' holiday need not be rounded up to the nearest full day;
• The increase should be calculated proportionally depending on when the leave year starts. Due to concerns raised by employers about the difficulties in calculating workers' increased holiday entitlement during the transitional period.
• Some or all of the additional holiday may be carried over to the following leave year by mutual agreement of the employer and worker;
• Payment in lieu of the additional holiday entitlement (the additional 0.8 weeks) will be permitted until 1 April 2009 and after this date, payment in lieu will only be allowed on termination of employment.

The UK is on the brink of a financial professional skills crisis, according to ACCA. The stark warning came at the launch of its learning and skills manifesto 'ACCA Championing Learning and Skills – an agenda for England'. To tackle this crisis, the global accountancy body says that the accountancy profession must be truly involved in the government's curriculum development and qualification reform, so that qualifications meet the real needs of employers.

Clare Minchington, ACCA's managing director – education, learning and development who launched the manifesto at an event at the Labour Party conference, said: "An increase in world trade and regulation has created high demand for professionally qualified accountants. But the supply has not met this demand, leading to a shortage of finance professionals required to support the growth of the world's major economies."

"To tackle this skills shortage, it is vital that the accountancy profession is not overlooked when it comes to the implementation of the Government's education and skills policy, such as the recent Leitch Report into World Class Skills. And there also needs to be an Accountancy Sector Skills Council – these Councils exist for other professional areas, why not for accountancy?"

Recent findings from the Public Oversight Board (POB) said that the Big Four accounting firms are recruiting internationally to meet their staffing demands, despite the fact that almost 34,000 professional accountants qualified between 2000-5 in the UK. In addition, it has been recently reported that the shortage of skilled accountants is pushing up salaries, with the average accountant now earning more than £100,000.

Minchington added: "The skills shortage issue is likely to continue for some time. It will be exacerbated by the impact of an ageing demographic across most developed economies, leading to further skills shortages. And if businesses are forced to employ the services of unskilled finance staff, the quality and integrity of financial information relied upon by investors may be jeopardised."