Yesterday witnessed one of the most astonishing games of rugby in the history of the sport, not just the history of the Six (or Five) Nations championship. England scored five tries and a penalty in roughly 40 minutes, Scotland six tries in pretty much the same time.

Rugby is a mathematician’s dream, with the scoring system based around prime numbers (2, 3 and 5 points). It is therefore a game like any other (American football’s system has much more differential between the points) when one team can score more often than the other, and yet still not win. The irony yesterday is that England scored all their kicks, accumulating thirteen ponts in the process, but Scotland missed two of theirs and therefore only accumulated eight points from them.

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One of my oldest friends called me the other day. So far, so not unusual, but there was a tone in his voice that I couldn’t quite place. After a round of meaningless pleasantries, he suddenly said “So I guess we’re not going skiing this year then?”

He and I haven’t been skiing for 16 years, and haven’t even discussed the possibility for at least ten. Confused, I asked him what he meant. “I saw on Facebook that you were in Austria”.

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There is always a danger in sticking your head above the social media parapet, but I am genuinely interested in people’s thoughts on something that has become increasingly obvious to me.

When I first started in recruitment, when Methuselah was a lad, the ecomony was enjoying a period of high employment, and this seemed to place recruitment agencies in charge, allowing them to levy inflated fees because they could get multiple offers for the best candidates and encourage those individuals to take the role that would pay the highest fee.

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