Like lots of others we rushed to renew our passport early because of the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, which had more than nine months left on it Like lots of others we were impressed that HM Passport Office were pledging to add up to nine months that passports had to run to the expiry date. Indeed the helpful HM Passport Office information leaflet we got a few weeks ago from the Post Office, who processed our application, stated: “You can renew your passport whenever you want. You do not have to wait for it to run out. We will add any period your passport has left to run (up to nine months) to your new passport”.

Sadly this isn’t the truth. Apparently last September HM Passport Office quietly “altered their policy” and no longer add back up to nine months of validity. This is now made clear on their web site as their information leaflets distributed by the Post Office tell a very different story.

The concept of reduction in trust comes to mind…

The Vice-Chancellor of De Montford University, Dominic Shellard, has resigned over business links he had with the chairman of the university’s remuneration committee, Anthony Stockdale.

Shellard owned shares in the Metamorph Group, a holding company run by Stockdale, who approved a 22.4% salary increase for Shellard, the largest pay rise of any UK University Vice – Chancellor this year and one that bought Shellard’s salary to £350,000. Following Shellard’s resigning Stockdale has resigned his post on the university’s governing board.

The Office for Students watchdog has now launched a probe into “regulatory matters” at De Montford.

One concern many travelers have is being the victim of an infestation of bed bugs, something that unfortunately happened to the writer at the Moorfields Premier Inn, Liverpool last month.

So what’s it like? Well it’s horrible. The bites don’t really come out till two days after, when they itch maddeningly, and scratching too hard breaks the skin on the bumps that form and risks infection. Creams can stop some of the itching but I needed a course of anti-biotics and anti-histamine to properly clear it all up.

Just in case any of our readers, or their delegates, are similarly unlucky we are publishing the emails between ourselves and Premier Inn, part of Whitbread and these follow here.

1. From Premier Inn to Peter Cotterell 08 March 2019

Shoah, for many was the ultimate Holocaust documentary, taking its French director Claude Lanzmann 11 years to shoot and spanning more than nine hours after the selections had been made from the 350 hours of footage shot. Shoah is Hebrew for “catastrophe”, also “calamity” and “destruction”.

The film, released in 1985 concentrated on four main areas – the Chelmo, Auschwitz-Birkenhau and Treblinka extermination camps in Poland and the Warsaw ghetto in Poland, and Lanzmann interviewed survivors from, witnesses to and perpetrators of what has been called the greatest evil of modern times. Excepting a poor reception in Poland, where the hatred of Polish peasantry for the Jews was exposed (without balancing this with the help given by many Poles to the Jews) Shoah was a triumph, winning universal acclaim, a 100% score on the Rotten Tomatoes website, based on 33 reviews giving an average rating of 9.2/10, and a BAFTA award for the best documentary.

A study by Greek cardiologists has found that an afternoon nap is as good for reducing blood pressure as taking pills or reducing salt in the diet.

It’s also as effective as cutting down on drinking, so those who enjoy a snooze after a few lunchtime bevvys may well have it right.

Could bringing back lunchtime drinking and having healthy power naps spanning the after-lunch “graveyard session” ever catch on at conferences?

The credibility of those who are paid and used to promote products and services to their willing followers on social media has taken a significant nosedive.

Ten of the world’s models, including the likes of Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid were used along with another 400 influencers by organiser Billy McFarland, who is now in jail for fraud, to promote his Fyre Festival, puffed up as a luxury music festival in the Bahamas with five-star accommodation, private jets and limos for transport and gourmet cuisine. All this, and the paid endorsements of models that their followers trusted, persuaded 5,000 aspirants to pay up to £9,000 for a ticket to the event in 2017.

Those organisers and PR types who think they are being awfully clever arranging for planted question at their events should know that they are very easy for an intelligent audience to spot and that they are really nothing new.

One former orator and advocate of the deception once boasted “At all our meetings I had party members in the audience with orders to interrupt, along carefully prepared lines, to give the impression of a spontaneous expression of public opinion. These interruptions strengthened the force of my argument”.

The clever orator who orchestrated his own heckling? Adolf Hitler, in 1921.

Fine dining for up to 50 people with views over the Liverpool waterfront will be offered from next month on a new balcony at the 7th floor Carpathia restaurant at the 30, James Street hotel. The building was originally the offices of the White Star Line, owners of the tragic Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank in 1914, killing more than 1,500 passengers in the freezing seas; 1,352 men, half of which were crew, 109 women and 53 children.

On a happier note the restaurant menu offers such starters as pan-fried sea-bream with salt baked beetroot, lemon balm and olive oil (£9.50), and confit duck leg terrine with orange gel, baby onions, beetroot puree and sourdough (£7.50). Main courses are such as fillet of red mullet with a citrus and peanut crust, chilli and garlic greens and minted pea puree (£17.50) and 8 oz fillet steak, short beef rib and potato lattice with white onion puree, baby vegetables and roasting jus (£28.50). Desserts include sticky toffee pudding with vanilla bean ice cream, and almond brittle and baked rhubarb and custard cheesecake with set rhubarb jelly and stem ginger, both at £6.50.

International Confex, the Event Production Show and the PA Show are all moving from Olympia in 2020 and relocating at Excel in Docklands.

The events have been at Olympia since 2013 but the organisers, Mash Media, now feel that Excel is a better venue in which to grow the shows, which will take place Tuesday February 25 and Wednesday February 26, 2020.

Now all they have to do is to get the visitors out there.