Those boots aren’t made for banking

It’s a good week for ... smart shoes

If you want to climb the career ladder in high finance, don’t do it in brown shoes. So says a Social Mobility Commission report, which found that bright young interviewees are being turned away by investment banks because of their lack of “polish”.

Candidates who wear brown shoes, “loud” ties or ill-fitting suits can be hindered by “opaque” codes of conduct used by firms which tend to recruit from a few elite universities, said the report. And according to commission chairman Alan Milburn, “arcane culture rules” are locking working-class candidates out of City jobs.

A British Bankers’ Association spokesman said “significant strides” had been made on improving social mobility. Clearly, however, those strides have not been made in brown shoes.

The report’s authors found that managers placed as much importance on speech, accent, dress and behaviour as skills and qualifications – and that “for men, the wearing of brown shoes with a business suit is generally ... considered unacceptable” in the finance industry.

One interview candidate was told that although “clearly quite sharp”, he was “not polished enough” and “not quite the fit for” the bank he hoped to work with. “See that tie you’re wearing?” he was told. “It’s too loud. You can’t wear that tie with the suit.”

In 2014, the Sutton Trust found that 34 per cent of new investment bankers were privately educated, despite the fact just seven per cent of UK children attend fee-paying schools. Apparently, banks believe dress codes “provide reassurance to clients about the quality of the service they will provide”.

Is it just me, or will it take more than a pair of shiny shoes to restore trust in bankers?

It’s been a bad week for ... dumb shoes

A Stratford-upon-Avon shopper with sore feet called an ambulance to give her a lift home. “I’ve been on my feet all day and now my feet are hurting so much that I can’t walk,” she told the 999 operator.

Paramedic Tim Cronin tweeted: “#WeAreNotATaxi! [Patient] had “been shopping all day, now sore feet and wants a lift home!” Unsurprisingly, the West Midlands Ambulance Service declined her request. Apt, then, that the word “ambulance” is derived from Latin verb ambulare, which means “to walk”.