links for 2009-03-06

If you were invited out to a business lunch, you might, out of sheer misguided politeness, reach towards the bill when it arrived. Just to show willing. Not that you seriously expected to pay. "Inevitably what happened was that the person who had invited you would rush to grab the bill before you got it. It was like two gunslingers trying to be the fastest draw in the west, and you always secretly knew you were going to lose." So says a fund-raising director for a large UK charity.

"Now what happens is that you'll reach – and find that you're paying. Sometimes it's even worse than that: you're invited out for lunch by a donor and when the bill comes and you offer, just to be polite, to go 50-50, they accept!