Barfly: No love lost for Valentine's Day at work

PUT that box of chocolates down now. Valentine's day has inspired a stern warning from Peter Mooney at Employment Law Advisory Services who says employers should ban Valentine's cards or other tokens of affection in case they are construed as sexual harassment.

"A staff member making an amorous gesture to a colleague could mean a disciplinary offence for them and a potentially an unlimited award for the company," he says. That's us told.

Branch out with wooden headphones

NEWS that Edinburgh-based website Advanced MP3 Players was to begin selling wooden headphones prompted Barfly to start leafing through its record collection.

After barking up the wrong tree with one of Ronnie Wood's solo albums and a few records by The "Beech" Boys, Barfly finally twigged that the perfect disc would be something by Ash. But that still left Barfly pining for more, meaning it's time to spruce up the old music collection.

The Thinksound TS02 wooden headphones are made for the iPod, iPhone and other smartphones and feature "absolutely fantastic sound and natural resonance" - and even have a built-in microphone so you can accept trunk calls.

Rabbit gets the chop

EVER since it featured on Gordon Ramsay's The F Word, Chop Chop, the Chinese dumpling restaurant in Haymarket which has long been an Edinburgh institution, has gone from strength to strength. Having opened a second branch in Leith, the firm is expanding to Glasgow in May and has its sights set on several locations south of the Border.

But general manager Roy King, whose wife Jian Wang is Chop Chop's head chef, has not let fame go to his head. To celebrate the Chinese New Year, the chain humorously suggested it should change its name to mark the year of the rabbit. "We are unofficially renaming ourselves Hop Hop for the next 12 months."