WE were sorry to see the demise of Curtis Fine Papers of Fife last week, with the loss of 180 jobs and staff staging a 24-7 sit-in to secure their wages. It is the latest in a long line of collapses in the struggling paper mills industry, and comes two years after a management buyout backed by US entrepreneur Robin Paul that was supposed to turn everything around.

Only six months ago, Paul was full of hyperbole in a daily newspaper that he would expand into the struggling US market and dispose of some of the company's supposedly lucrative excess land in the north of Fife.

"People realise we are going to be here in the long term. We also have a knowledge of the market, which allows realistic but somewhat ambitious sales growth of a predicted 10% a year," he said, claiming that a "wide breadth of customers" and the decision to go private would guarantee a prosperous future.

Fast-forward six months and the company of more than 100 years has folded amid years of losses after the banks called time on the debts. What Paul didn't mention was that the future of the company depended on the land sale and, when it fell through, the bank pulled the plug despite a profitable six months. A sad day for Fife.

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ALSO on the speech-making circuit (is he ever off it?) is first minister Alex Salmond, who is to give a talk to the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce at a business breakfast in the city's Sheraton Grand hotel on Wednesday, August 27. The ECC assures us that it will be full Scottish breakfasts all round, which should be right up Salmond's street following his recent week-long pledge to eat only Scottish produce.

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WHILE we are getting the bad news out of the way, spare a thought for Dominique Lallement, an international energy consultant to the World Bank, who was due to give a keynote speech at the World Renewable Energy Congress in Glasgow last week. She had to cancel after getting mugged en route to the airport in the US, when her speech and passport were stolen. Fortunately, Hunter Lovins, the president of Natural Capitalism Solutions and a leading thinker in renewables, was on hand to stand in.

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STUDENT freshers' festival Scotcampus is gearing up for its second year at Glasgow's George Square on October 3 and 4. The festival, which has moved after debuting at the SECC last year, aims to educate school leavers and students about all aspects of student life. Ernst & Young, Domino's Pizza and The Royal Air Force are among those who have stalls, presumably to ensure that tomorrow's leaders are accountants with pilots licences and high cholesterol. Now where did Agenda put that pizza delivery number?

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AGENDA can finally bring you news of the bionic men at Glasgow headhunter Fletcher Jones, who are aiming for a more muscular profile by sponsoring triathlons. This started with last Sunday's event at Lochore Meadows in Fife. We hear that associate director Alistair Crawford is keen on such madness, but felt that as the sponsor he should hand out medals rather than compete.