Tight job market reduces opportunities for teens

Source: Natchezdemocrat.com
By Taylor Aswell
A tight local job market for skilled, qualified adults means younger, entry-level workers are without options now and without experience later.

photo by Ben Hillyer

McKenzie’s Popcorn employee Lacie Hicks scoops up a box of popcorn for a customer Saturday night at the Natchez Mall. Hicks is one of many teenagers that are hired by the owners of the popular snack spot.

And that lack of real-world opportunity for high school and college-aged students might be something that hurts the community in years to come, workforce experts said.

This problem is one that starts at the top and rolls down, Natchez Win Job Center Manager Peggy Ballard said.

Ballard said with the current local and national economy, she believes more and more workers are refusing to retire.

“Some of the more mature workers are not retiring as young as they use to,” she said. “People are afraid to give up their jobs.”

When retirement-age workers keep working, then middle-age workers can’t move up. When middle-age workers stay put in their current jobs, there’s not room for new hires.

Concordia Parish Economic and Industrial District Executive Director Heather Malone agreed saying many older workers are becoming unsure of their retirement.

“Many people are going back to work to supplement their income,” she said. “In some cases, older people are going back to work just so they can have health care.”

“There seems to be a lower turnover in these jobs. (Employers) are always looking for people to fill those positions, and that just doesn’t seem to be the case this year.”

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Trickle-down effect

Both the Natchez-Adams School District and the Concordia Parish schools have programs in place to train high school workers and put them to work.

But this year, that’s been easier said than done.

“My students are having a really hard time finding a job this year,” Fallin Career and Technology Center Mississippi Cooperative Education Teacher Martha Ratcliff said. “And you have to have a job to be in my class.”

Ratcliff teaches a class at Fallin — a vocational school run by the Natchez public schools — that gives juniors and seniors credit for working at least 15 hours a week while also taking classes on work-readiness preparation.

Twenty students are enrolled in the program this year and some of those students are even volunteering their 15 hours of work a week to get credit for the class.

“Even the traditional high-school jobs like McDonald’s and Burger King have stopped hiring them,” she said. “And most retail shops want someone 18 years of age or older.”

Ratcliff said she is constantly searching for employers for her students.

“I have not had any luck,” she said. “My students are not being helped.”

Vidalia High School Cooperative Education instructor Barb Crum expressed the same frustration.

“This has been one of the hardest years we have had,” she said. “No one is hiring, and no one is leaving their jobs.”

Crum said while she does hunt down job leads for the students, it is their responsibility to go out and apply for those jobs.

“Their first assignment is to find a job,” she said. “It has been very hard for many of my students to find work.”

Is older better?

Employers say there are some advantages to hiring older workers. Many times they come with more experience and a less hectic schedule.

Colleen Palmer, human resources manager for McDonalds in Natchez and Vidalia, said in the past year she has seen an increase in the number of adult employees coming through her orientation class, compared to the number of high school- or college-aged employees she has seen.

“In terms of those being hired, there has definitely been an increase,” Palmer said. “Like it or not, there is a belief that your older folks are going to be better employees.”

Palmer said that is usually because those adults have more work experience and understand the responsibility of having any job better than teenagers.

“There is a little bit more reliability, when you hire someone who is older,” she said. “They have the experience, usually, and don’t have the outside distractions and activities of students.”

Not having to work around a school schedule is a plus, but Jeff and Amy Gamberi, part owners of McKenzie’s Popcorn in the Natchez Mall, said they like being able to hire part-time teenage workers.

Amy said the workers need a chance to get work experience, and she is willing to work around schedules.

“We have some that are on dance teams, cheerleading squads, basketball or softball teams,” she said. “They will go to school and to their activities and come to work.

“We know it’s going to be difficult, but we do all we can to make it work for the ones that want to work.”

Amy said the employees she hires are often responsible for paying cell phone bills, car insurance, purchasing gas and providing their own spending money. For that reason, many of them understand the importance of coming to work.

But Jeff said there isn’t an exact science to picking a reliable and driven teenage worker.

“In the past year, I’d say it has gotten harder to find someone who will show up on a consistent basis,” he said. “Growing up, I worked with my dad in his grocery store, and Amy’s been working here since she was little, so we know what a work ethic is, (and) sometimes it seems like we are losing that in our teenagers now.”

Despite, the challenges that come from employing high school and college students, the Gamberi family said it is worth it when you find one that works hard to succeed.

“Most of the people who have been good workers for us, have gone on to finish college or are about to finish college,” Jeff said. “We think some of the responsibility and determination they learned here help them succeed in school, too.”

Job outlook

Though Malone points to new development such as the Vidalia port and municipal complex as things that will entice more industry and more jobs, major changes in the job market are never a guarantee.

Ballard hopes a new year brings new opportunities for workers of all ages, but said 2011 is still up in the air.

“I don’t know if I am expecting it to get better, but I am hoping for it to get better,” she said. “I just truly don’t know.”

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Ratcliff said until things get better, she hopes area businesses consider hiring high school students for their openings.

“I would like for the community to know that my students are excellent part-time workers who choose to be in my program,” she said. “They have few discipline problems, if any, and 99 percent of my students go on to higher education. Any business, whether they need a runner or someone to sell, could benefit from hiring my students.”

A degree you can bank on: MBA

Source: The Australian

AUSTRALIAN companies are knocking down the doors of leading business schools to secure the best master of business administration graduates.

They're also reinvesting in training, and in turn increasing demand for part-time MBA programs, which are typically well patronised by students sponsored by their employers.

"In Australia, I don't think the MBA has been as strong as in the US or even Europe and Asia," director of global development at Melbourne Business School Anna Parkin says.

"I think (that's because of) a lack of understanding of what an MBA graduate can bring to an organisation. But what we are seeing is a huge growth (in demand for MBAs) in Australia.

"The recruiters were a bit hesitant last year. Although the Australian economy was quite strong, they really didn't know what was coming. They are knocking down our door this year.

"They're saying, 'We want to come on campus, we want to build our profile, we want to get in early and see your best students'. We have had all the major consulting companies on campus in the past few weeks, doing cocktail parties, doing competitions to see what talent we have."

The experience at Melbourne Business School and others including Sydney's Macquarie Graduate School of Management, the Australian School of Business at the University of NSW, and the School of Business at the University of Technology, Sydney, reflects a global surge in employer demand, particularly in the finance sector, for MBAs.

Research conducted by QS TopMBA.com shows a 22 per cent increase in demand for MBAs in the financial services sector this year compared with last year, based on the 2010 QS Top MBA survey of 2145 employers worldwide, which was published last month.

The survey also shows a surge in demand for MBA graduates from schools in the Asia-Pacific region.

In Australia, part-time and executive MBA programs are typically the domain of local students who are in their early-mid 30s, in full-time employment and have management experience. Full-time MBA programs, on the other hand, are more often patronised by foreign students who eventually return to work in their home countries.

The exception to this is during an economic downturn, when local students who have been retrenched or are unemployed, for instance, are more likely to enrol in full-time programs.

Many MBA programs reported substantial increases in domestic applicants during the global financial crisis, but a decrease in international demand at some schools, including Melbourne Business School and the University of Technology, which both have large international student bodies.

This fall in demand has been attributed to the rise of the Australian dollar, better educational opportunities in Asia, and publicity surrounding apparently race-related crimes against Indian students in Melbourne.

"We've experienced a fall in our international applications for next year, but there's a small increase in the number of domestic student (applications)," director of the executive MBA program at UTS Ben Hunt says.

"We noticed that during the financial crisis a year or so ago, a number of our local students were unemployed. We are now seeing them increasingly getting work."

Most MBA students are motivated by career ambition and money. They want highly paid jobs and promotions, and/or to change roles, and some want to know how to set up and run their own businesses.

Research shows that students increase their salaries substantially on completion of an MBA, which can cost up to $84,000.

For instance, the increase in the average alumni salary of graduates of AGSM, the Australian School of Business, which ranked 36th in the London Financial Times 2010 global MBA rankings, is 87 per cent.

Melbourne Business School MBA graduates experience a 73 per cent increase in salary; and Macquarie Graduate School of Management graduates gain 58 per cent.

"Students want high salaries," Macquarie Graduate School of Management deputy dean and director of the MBA program Guy Ford says.

"They are generally in their early to mid-30s, they have topped up their education and they are looking for plum jobs."

About 80 per cent of MGSM's students are enrolled in the part-time program, and around 50 per cent of those students have their fees subsidised by employers.

"Companies recognise that they need to retain talent," Associate Professor Ford says.

"(Financial services) companies need employees who understand the numbers. They want people to be able to think ahead and interpret the signs.

"Many students say that finance is the area they've been working in. They don't want to be the chief financial officer, but they want to be able to engage with it and understand it."

Jobs in finance, particularly in investment banking, have traditionally been the most popular career track for MBA graduates. However, demand for good MBAs is increasing outside the finance sector.

MBA students have a range of professional backgrounds, including finance and banking, information technology, marketing, insurance, engineering, construction, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and retail.

Increasingly, traditional MBA recruiters such as banks, financial services companies and consultancies including Ernst & Young and Boston Consulting, are being joined by less traditional ones, such as Telstra, NSW Water and not-for-profit businesses.

"There's been a rise in the not-for-profit sector, which in Australia is very big," associate dean, postgraduate programs and director of AGSM in the Australian School of Business at the University of NSW, Chris Adam says. "The big players like Red Cross and Mission Australia are looking for management skills so there's been a little bit of a lift in that area."

UTS' Associate Professor Hunt believes Australian businesses recognise the value of an MBA more than ever before.

"The MBA, particularly in America -- the home of the MBA -- was designed to get your start in industry," he says. "Here in Australia it's played a different role. It's typically been a second degree for people who are employed. But I think employers are looking for MBAs more and more, and it's creating demand from students who feel they need that qualification from about age 30 or so."

To find out how Australian business schools fared in the FT's 2010 Global MBA rankings, go to http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-rankings.

Australian MBA programs are also ranked in the Global 200 Top Business Schools on QS TopMBA.com

Madoff's son found dead in his New York City apartment

Despondent over 2-year saga of fraud, son of Bernard Madoff hangs himself in NYC apartment
By The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – December 11, 2010
NEW YORK, N.Y. - A law enforcement official tells The Associated Press that a son of jailed financier Bernard Madoff has been found dead in New York City of an apparent suicide.

The official says Mark Madoff was found hanged in his Manhattan apartment.

A family member notified police around 7:30 a.m. Saturday.

The official spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't allowed to speak publicly about the case.

Mark Madoff and his brother, Andrew, were under investigation but hadn't faced any criminal charges in the massive Ponzi scheme that led to their father's jailing.

Bernard Madoff swindled a long list of investors out of billions of dollars and is serving a 150-year prison term.

Lost Civilization May Have Existed Beneath the Persian Gulf

Source: LiveScience
By Jeanna Bryner
Veiled beneath the Persian Gulf, a once-fertile landmass may have supported some of the earliest humans outside Africa some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago, a new review of research suggests.

At its peak, the floodplain now below the Gulf would have been about the size of Great Britain, and then shrank as water began to flood the area. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean, the review scientist said.

The study, which is detailed in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology, has broad implications for aspects of human history. For instance, scientists have debated over when early modern humans exited Africa, with dates as early as 125,000 years ago and as recent as 60,000 years ago (the more recent date is the currently accepted paradigm), according to study researcher Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.

"I think Jeff's theory is bold and imaginative, and hopefully will shake things up," Robert Carter of Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. told LiveScience. "It would completely rewrite our understanding of the out-of-Africa migration. It is far from proven, but Jeff and others will be developing research programs to test the theory."

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Viktor Cerny of the Archaeogenetics Laboratory, the Institute of Archaeology, in Prague, called Rose's finding an "excellent theory," in an e-mail to LiveScience, though he also points out the need for more research to confirm it.

The findings have sparked discussion among researchers, including Carter and Cerny, who were allowed to provide comments within the research paper, about who exactly the humans were who occupied the Gulf basin.

"Given the presence of Neanderthal communities in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates River, as well as in the eastern Mediterranean region, this may very well have been the contact zone between moderns and Neanderthals," Rose told LiveScience. In fact, recent evidence from the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome suggests interbreeding, meaning we are part caveman.

Watery refuge

The Gulf Oasis would have been a shallow inland basin exposed from about 75,000 years ago until 8,000 years ago, forming the southern tip of the Fertile Crescent, according to historical sea-level records.

And it would have been an ideal refuge from the harsh deserts surrounding it, with fresh water supplied by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by upwelling springs, Rose said. And during the last ice age when conditions were at their driest, this basin would've been at its largest.

In fact, in recent years, archaeologists have turned up evidence of a wave of human settlements along the shores of the Gulf dating to about 7,500 years ago.

"Where before there had been but a handful of scattered hunting camps, suddenly, over 60 new archaeological sites appear virtually overnight," Rose said. "These settlements boast well-built, permanent stone houses, long-distance trade networks, elaborately decorated pottery, domesticated animals, and even evidence for one of the oldest boats in the world."

Rather than quickly evolving settlements, Rose thinks precursor populations did exist but have remained hidden beneath the Gulf.

"Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago," Rose said. "These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean."

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Ironclad case?

The most definitive evidence of these human camps in the Gulf comes from a new archaeological site called Jebel Faya 1 within the Gulf basin that was discovered four years ago. There, Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tubingen in Germany found three different Paleolithic settlements occurring from about 125,000 to 25,000 years ago. That and other archaeological sites, Rose said, indicate "that early human groups were living around the Gulf basin throughout the Late Pleistocene."

To make an ironclad case for such human occupation during the Paleolithic, or early Stone Age, of the now-submerged landmass, Rose said scientists would need to find any evidence of stone tools scattered under the Gulf. "As for the Neolithic, it would be wonderful to find some evidence for human-built structures," dated to that time period in the Gulf, Rose said.

Carter said in order to make for a solid case, "we would need to find a submerged site, and excavate it underwater. This would likely only happen as the culmination of years of survey in carefully selected areas."

Cerny said a sealed-tight case could be made with "some fossils of the anatomically modern humans some 100,000 years old found in South Arabia."

And there's a hint of mythology here, too, Rose pointed out. "Nearly every civilization living in southern Mesopotamia has told some form of the flood myth. While the names might change, the content and structure are consistent from 2,500 B.C. to the Genesis account to the Qur'anic version," Rose said.

Perhaps evidence beneath the Gulf? "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands," said Rose, quoting Douglas Adams.

WikiLeaks cables: Vatican refused to engage with child sex abuse inquiry

Source: Guardian
Leaked cable lays bare how Irish government was forced to grant Vatican officials immunity from testifying to Murphy commission

A WikiLeaks cable details the behind-the-scenes diplomacy before Cardinal Seán Brady met Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, after which the pope said he shared the 'outrage, betrayal and shame' of Irish Catholics. Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters

The Vatican refused to allow its officials to testify before an Irish commission investigating the clerical abuse of children and was angered when they were summoned from Rome, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks reveal.
Requests for information from the 2009 Murphy commission into sexual and physical abuse by clergy "offended many in the Vatican" who felt that the Irish government had "failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations", a cable says.
Despite the lack of co-operation from the Vatican, the commission was able to substantiate many of the claims and concluded that some bishops had tried to cover up abuse, putting the interests of the Catholic church ahead of those of the victims. Its report identified 320 people who complained of child sexual abuse between 1975 and 2004 in the Dublin archdiocese.
A cable entitled "Sex abuse scandal strains Irish-Vatican relations, shakes up Irish church, and poses challenges for the Holy See" claimed that Vatican officials also believed Irish opposition politicians were making political hay from the situation by publicly urging the government to demand a reply from the Vatican.
Ultimately, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (equivalent to a prime minister), wrote to the Irish embassy, ordering that any requests related to the investigation must come through diplomatic channels.
In the cable Noel Fahey, the Irish ambassador to the Holy See, told the US diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes that the Irish clergy sex abuse scandal was the most difficult crisis he had ever managed.
The Irish government wanted "to be seen as co-operating with the investigation" because its own education department was implicated, but politicians were reluctant to press Vatican officials to answer the investigators' queries.
According to Fahey's deputy, Helena Keleher, the government acceded to Vatican pressure and granted them immunity from testifying. Officials understood that "foreign ambassadors are not required or expected to appear before national commissions", but Keleher's opinion was that by ignoring the commission's requests the clergy had made the situation worse.
The cable reveals the behind-the-scenes diplomacy in which politicians in the Irish government attempted to persuade an imperious Vatican to engage with the investigation.
The foreign minister, Michael Martin, "was forced to call in the papal nuncio (representative)" to discuss the situation. The ambassador reported that resentment towards the church in Rome remained very high in Ireland, largely because of the institutionalised cover-up of abuse by the Catholic church hierarchy.
Finally the Vatican changed tactics and on 11 December 2009 the ambassador stated that the pope had held a meeting with senior Irish clerics. The Irish cardinal Seán Brady and the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, went to Rome and met the pontiff, who was flanked by Bertone and four other cardinals.
At the end of the meeting, the Vatican issued a statement saying that the pope shared the "outrage, betrayal, and shame" of Irish Catholics, that he was praying for the victims, and that the church would take steps to prevent recurrences.
On 21 March this year, Benedict issued a letter savaging the Irish bishops for their earlier handling of the crisis: "Grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness."


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He also apologised to the victims: "You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the church. In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel."
In a section entitled "Some Lessons Learned, but Crisis Will Play Out for Years", the ambassador related that his contacts at the Vatican and in Ireland expected the crisis in the Irish Catholic church to be protracted over several years, as the Murphy commission dealt only with allegations from the Dublin archdiocese.
They believed further investigations into other archdioceses would lead, "officials in both states lament, to additional painful revelations".

According to Wikileaks Pope helped to free British sailors held by Iran, WikiLeaks cables show

Source: Guardian
Leaked cables show UK diplomats were reluctant to give pontiff credit for release of 15 sailors held for a fortnight in 2007
Heather Brooke
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 December 2010 21.30 GMT
The pope intervened to help gain the release of 15 British sailors captured by Iran three years ago, according to a confidential briefing prepared for President Obama.

WikiLeaks cables reveal the pope's hand in the release of the 15 British navy personnel from Iranian captivity in 2007. They were released as a gift to mark Easter. Photograph: Str/AP

This unexpected picture of the links between the head of the Roman Catholic church and religious fundamentalists in Tehran comes from a "scene setter" for Obama's then forthcoming visit to Rome, compiled in June 2009 by Julieta Noyes, deputy chief of mission to the Vatican.

The Vatican palace is allowed to send and receive ambassadors as though it were a real country, and seeks to claim membership of a number of international bodies. The US dispatch explains that the Vatican also claims "an ability to act as an intermediary" in international crises involving Iran.

Noyes adds circumspectly that: "It is unclear how much clout the Vatican really has with Iran." Nevertheless she tells Obama in plain terms that: "The Vatican helped secure the release of British sailors detained in Iranian waters in April 2007."

British diplomats in London are privately disinclined to give the pope as much credit as is being claimed. They say he did issue a message but was not necessarily key to the release.

The cables reveal several rival contenders for British gratitude. Diplomatic pressure is charted from many directions, which eventually got the sailors out.

A Dubai businessman saw the seizure as a deliberate attempt to push the west into greater conflict. He also believed the Iranians sought out British sailors, as a less risky stand-in for Americans, fearing a harsher reaction from the US.

US diplomats commented: "The idea that hardliners in Iran are seeking greater tensions to silence critics, unite the population, and divert attention away from economic and civil society concerns has been reported … by other contacts.

"It certainly appears Iran is using its seizure of the British sailors to prove its 'toughness', after facing repeated 'humiliations' on the international political front."

A Bruneian official said the Iranians could have been reacting to UN sanctions. He "believed that it may have been done for domestic reasons , in order to help President Ahmadinejad divert Iranian attention away from the bad news".

Iraq lobbied the Iranians immediately after the seizure in disputed Iran-Iraq waters, and the Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said they made two or three approaches, without success. The president, Jalal Talabani, also wrote in vain to Iran.

The Foreign Office minister Kim Howells next asked the Australians to intervene. Their foreign secretary Alexander Downer, phoned Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki on 29 March, six days after the seizure, saying the detainees were "ordinary sailors, not spies". He told Mottaki: "It was essential for Iran to resolve this issue before it blew up to a dangerous level."

Mottaki demanded the UK first admit its sailors had deliberately crossed into Iranian waters. The Australian warned: ''The revolutionary guards and others were calling the shots."

As the crisis wore on the crown prince of nearby Bahrain "wondered aloud how the 15 British allowed themselves to be caught and why the British decided against immediate action … He quipped that sometimes there is a need for quick, strong escalation (to send a message)."

But key help was apparently given by Britain's friends in Oman. The British ambassador, Noel Guckian, "expressed great satisfaction" that Oman's foreign minister had called Iran frequently urging the sailors' release, which came in April.

The UK ambassador wrote: "The Omanis had been very supportive throughout the crisis and [Guckian] even credited them in some part for the successful outcome." It was an occasion, he concluded, when Oman's "positive but non-substantive" relationship with Tehran actually proved useful.

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An Omani general said they had a "special relationship" with Iran. "The Omanis had engaged in low-key discussions with the Iranians to urge them to take a conciliatory approach to the problem. The Iranians had permitted Oman's ambassador to visit the captive British personnel."

One reformist member of the Iranian majlis [parliament] later told US diplomats in Dubai that the whole crisis was "simply a political stunt". "Citing a widely repeated rumour that the UK has influence over the clerical government ("everybody knows the mullahs usually obey England"), the MP doubted that the sailor crisis would … have escalated."

Cyber attacks by WikiLeaks' defenders hit online traders badly

Source: Guardian
Traders report big drop in sales this week, when attacks on credit card companies started
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 December 2010 18.37 GMT
Online retailers have been reporting worrying shortfalls in their orders this week after hackers wreaked havoc with credit card systems. In one of the busiest weeks pre-Christmas, attacks on MasterCard, PayPal and Amazon, the freezing weather and unrelated issues at the processing intermediary Sage Pay have left many online merchants far short of expected sales.

Emma Louise Ewing, owner of the Kitty Cat Boutique in Falkirk. Her online sales dropped to zero on Wednesday.

Emma-Louise Ewing, owner of the Kitty Cat Boutique in Falkirk, said she first noticed a problem on Wednesday, the day hackers sabotaged MasterCard's website in revenge for its decision not to take donations to WikiLeaks. "My credit card sales just dropped off to zero," she said. "I know I'm a small business, but I do expect to get orders every day."

At first, she thought the fall might have been related to the bad weather, which has been affecting deliveries all week in Scotland, but it was only when she started to receive payments by cheque in the post that she realised the extent of the problem. "I'm still getting the same number of web hits I would expect at this time of year, but unfortunately nothing like the same volume of business," she said.

While her sales have slowly begun to recover, she said they are not yet back to normal and that her website does not enable her to contact customers who have tried but failed to process orders. "Unless customers contacted me directly, I'd have no way of knowing whether they're having problems," she said.

Sellers trading through Amazon, another target for the hackers, have also reported serious disruption. Richard Stubbings, who runs Kulture Shock, an action-figure and film-memorabilia retailer trading mainly on Amazon, said he had also noticed sales drop off dramatically from Wednesday onwards.

"I get the stats from Amazon every day, and this week they went down from 157 sales a day to 44," he said. "There's no way I'd expect that level of decrease at this time of year."

Stubbings was also one of many retailers who experienced problems earlier in the week because of a loss of service by the credit card payments processor Sage Pay.

Simon Black, managing director of Sage Pay, which serves 32,000 online retailers in the UK, said its systems had gone down for four hours on Monday evening, but that was caused by a separate hardware flaw unrelated to the MasterCard attacks. "Our customers also experienced problems processing MasterCard transactions throughout most of Wednesday, and that was a direct result of the attacks," he said.

Black said Sage Pay was processing sales as normal again on Thursday, and that by yesterday it was handling "record volumes" of transactions.

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Gareth Mitchell said his ethical gifts business, Tree2mydoor, in Manchester had been badly hit by payment processing failures all week. "People have been unable to complete transactions since Monday," he said. "It should have been our biggest day of the year but sales were down massively when they should have been up. We just couldn't understand what was wrong."

Mitchell said he had been able to phone some customers back and ask them for alternative payment methods. "Perhaps because we're an ethical business, we've found our customers to be quite understanding about the situation, but you still have to be careful what you say," he admitted. "One of the biggest problems is the minute you mention the word 'hacker' or anything like that, it freaks people out. They often just decide not to use their credit cards at all and buy their presents at the shops instead."

A spokesman for Paypal UK said: "The action by protesters has had some effect, but the site has been up and running throughout. The service has been slower, but that is because it's a very busy time of year."