£2.50 an hour for interns? Envision does even better.

The CIPD is recommending interns should be paid £2.50 an hour, the same as for apprenticeships. This is a good start, but can anyone really support themselves in London on this salary? I've already blogged about Envision, a young people's charity which pays its interns the minimum wage, currently £5.93 an hour. Pretty impressive for a charity.

Can anyone do even better and pay interns the London Living Wage at £7.85 an hour? We'd love to feature you on our campaign website.

YMCA

There is a 25 metre swimming pool, three badminton courts, a pilates studio, climbing wall, canoeing facilities and a resistance balcony (whatever that is) under Great Russell Street. Who knew?

I discovered this subterranean fitness emporium yesterday when I attended the launch of Central YMCA's Workplace Activator programme. 17 small businesses have signed up to take part - in theory they're at capacity but if you want to get your employees moving I'd take a chance and ring Robin Gargrave.

The axe falls?

Reading a list of projects axed or suspended by the coalition Government, I was struck by a) how many were related to employment, and b) how many were in Sheffield. I'll leave the Sheffield side of things for now (although I love this city almost more than I love London) and turn instead to the loss of the "Two year Jobseeker's Guarantee" worth £515m which aimed to give jobseekers a guaranteed offer of a job, internship, volunteering placement or work experience after two years of being out of work.

Thank goodness employers of all sizes can still offer internships anyway and benefit from the creativity, freshness and dynamism this brings to their business. Envision demonstrated this at a recent business breakfast they hosted for the Good Jobs campaign.

You can too - check out Internocracy's website.

Walking Works

Caught a bus each way to today's Walking Works meeting. Not their fault - their campaign is great: www.walkingworks.org.uk

Boris the Ebullient

Over 150 businesses came to this networking reception in London's Living Room to launch the London Health Commission's Good Jobs campaign.

My favourite piece of feedback: "Just a quick note to say that this was an excellent event and that Boris was his usual ebullient self. As a smoker I didn't even nip out onto the balcony for a quick one - was just too busy chatting".