Pembroke: Grave problems on the tube

GHOSTLY goings-on are hindering construction on the Jubilee Line extension to London Docklands.

A number of skeletons seem to have found their way from the graveyard at Southwark Cathedral to the vast caverns under London Bridge station, where contractors keep stumbling across them. Every time another collection of bones is unearthed the police launch an investigation and the Irish nightwatchmen insist on working in pairs.

A LOT OF Treasury mandarins seem to have chosen to eat out on Wednesday. It was India Day at the canteen. And what was on the menu yesterday? You guessed it. Beef Madras.

ANYONE worried that Hugh Sloane - previously a highly respected international investment manager at GT Management - had gone missing can put his mind at rest. Sloane, 38, left GT last summer saying only that he was returning to Oxford University to study Greats.

When he failed to turn up at the Fresher's Ball tongues started wagging. But we are pleased to report that he is safe and well and running his own hedge fund.

UNION DISCOUNT COMPANY of London would like everyone to know that it is changing its name to Union plc. George Blunden says: 'The new name will better reflect the broad scope of businesses now associated with the group, etc, etc.'

But it may be that the company wishes to stop reminding people that following crippling losses in its leasing business a few years ago it is at a large discount to its former self.

STORIES AT AT&T Global Information Solutions - until this week known as NCR Computers - suggest that AT&T, the US parent, narrowly avoided an embarrassing blunder. The corporate image gurus are said to have favoured AT&T Global Information Technology Solutions - until someone spelt out the acronym AT&T GITS. A spokeswoman strenuously denies this.

IN MALAYSIA the government seems at pains to discourage wider share ownership. As every noodle salesman and his mother piled into the stock market earlier this month, Daim Zainuddin, an economic adviser to the government and widely recognised as the savviest speculator of all, said the market was too speculative and down it plunged.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad denies this was intentional: 'We don't want to be interfering because the stock market must function on its own.'