大象传媒

News and views from the business world with Steph McGovern and Jeremy Naylor.

At midnight, the door unexpectedly slammed shut to thousands of highly skilled migrants from outside the UK because of a flood of new visa applications following the Government's announcement of a new immigration cap.

We ask Owen Jones, a solicitor at Doyle Clayton - a specialist employment law firm in the City, what a tier one visa is and whether the Government had any choice in its decision, given the flood of applications it received.

The card company Visa says today will be the busiest all year and expects to process over 25 million transactions worth more than 拢1 billion. Greg Hodge, a research director at Planet Retail, explains why today is expected to be such a big day.

Should tourists planning to come to the UK make the trip next year for the Royal Wedding in April, or save themselves for the Olympics in 2012? We are joined by Sandie Dawe, chief executive of VisitBritain, who is responsible for marketing those events abroad as pictures are beamed around the world of travel chaos across the UK.

And the theft of farm machinery cost the rural economy over 拢42 million in 2009 - an increase of more than a third, according to the UK's leading rural insurance company, NFU Mutual. The programme hears from Tony Bone of Farmwatch UK who explains why rural crime is such a big problem.