AN engineer was crossing a road one day, when a frog called out to him and said, “If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess” …

SPINNAKER has been crunching salary and bonus numbers for the Maritime HR Forum in recent months – a fascinating and useful bit of global salary research carried out regularly for over 40 leading shipping employers…

AFTER two years of gloom and doom on the pay rise front with plenty of restraint on the part of employers, employee expectations are once again on the increase according to one HR director we know…

COMPANIES that got burned by the recession are understandably being more reticent about announcing pay rise information as circumstances and markets continue to be changeable and we are noticing that companies are not committing to budget figures as far in advance…

NAVAL gazing was certainly the order of the day at accountant Moore Stephens operating costs seminar in London on 27 October…

WHILE on the topic of taking care of your crew there will have been some red faces at AP Moller-Maersk who pleaded guilty to eight charges of failing to provide adequate hours of rest for the crew of the Maersk Patras and one charge of failing to improve the situation…

THE next event in the London Shipping Law Centre calendar will be the hugely popular Cadwallader debate due to take place at Lloyd's of London on November 24th. Politicians, the European Commission and Shipping: What is the missing link and the way forward will be under discussion in what promises to be a lively and doubtless robust exchange of views.

WE'VE all heard of parents checking up on what their kids are up to by looking at their Facebook entry, but now Germany is seeking to pass legislation to stop prospective employers doing it…

ALL of us have agonised over our CV at one time or another. How to account for inconvenient gaps in the employment record in a way which does not suggest that we've been spending time locked away at the taxpayer's expense…