Business group the CBI appoints Carolyn Fairbairn as next director-general

A FORMER member of the 10 Downing Street policy unit has been appointed as director-general of the CBI. Carolyn Fairbairn, 54, who has worked as a journalist, economist and management consultant, will become the business body’s first female chief when she takes over from John Cridland in November. She holds a number of non-executive directorships including Capita and Lloyds Banking Group, as well as the Competition & Markets Authority and the UK Statistics Authority. She will step down from these, apart from remaining a trustee of cancer charity Marie Curie. Fairbairn...

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Alan Jones comments on UN climate change report inaccurate: media watchdog

Broadcaster Alan Jones falsely claimed that a 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change draft report had "disproven" the panel's own climate change theories. Photo: Andrew Meares   He declared a United Nations report on climate change "got it wrong by almost 100 per cent", but shock jock Alan Jones was the one who blundered,...

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Alan Jones gives his blessing to "class act" former Wallaby taking on Bronwyn Bishop

Alan Jones has delivered a blow to Bronwyn Bishop's hopes of holding on to her safe Liberal seat by throwing his support behind a former Wallaby who will contest preselection for Mackellar. In a letter to Liberal preselectors, obtained by Fairfax Media, the conservative broadcaster recommends Bill Calcraft, a member of the Jones-coached 1984 Grand Slam Wallabies side. "Let me say bluntly, there could be no better candidate," Jones wrote. ...

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Broadcaster Alan Jones ordered to pay $10,000 for racial vilification

Alan Jones: "The words, in context, urged or stimulated listeners to hatred or, at least, serious contempt of Lebanese males''. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen   Broadcaster Alan Jones has been ordered to pay Muslim community leader Keysar Trad $10,000, ending a nine year battle over a radio segment found to have "stimulated...

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Who's for breakfast, Alan Jones?

It’s the tone that first strikes you. That slightly prissy, impatient, semi-sour way of speaking that makes his voice on radio so distinctive. Not the sleeves-rolled-up journalistic directness of Neil Mitchell, nor the deep, mahogany oiliness of super-salesman John Laws. He gallops through words, almost stumbling over his asymmetrical phrasing and peculiar patterns of emphasis. Language and the microphone have been his only real tools for twenty years, yet Alan Belford Jones – The Parrot – never seems quite comfortable.   That tone. Nagging. Insistent. Unrelenting. Even on the...

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