Whilst it's not quite as bad as no one having ever encountered a hors deuvre or blini before I was shocked that not a single person there seemed to have a clue what Margaret was going on about. Cassandra's curse isn't that obscure surely?

Then again my neighbours called their daughter Persephone and were amazed that I knew the Greek legend...so it may be just me

Well I've always considered it a common piece of knowledge. But saying that I had to have a long conversation with my wife explaining the story of Icarus. It's surprising the gaps in peoples learning.
Oh and I've never encountered a blini.

I have to admit I only knew who Cassandra was because Twelve Monkeys is a favourite film of mine.

Cassandra also appears in Scream 2 in a theatre sequence...

I can - he made the classic mistake

focusing on the person providing the idea, not the idea itself

You will never like everyone you have to work with in business, but if your reaction to someone you don't like is to either ignore them or tut and roll your eyes at everything they say then you won't get that far

And I don't think Lorraine is that negative - she's just measured but a bit insecure (unsurprisingly)

How have the other team leaders treated Lorraine and her suggestions? I remember Kimberly saying in one of her exit interviews that all the housemates, bar her, ahd taken a dislike to Lorraine and Phil had even warned her not to talk to Lorraine. He has clearly taken against her and wants everyone to do the same.

I agree with you. I do believe he feels threatened by her and therefore dismisses any ideas she may put forward. Lorraine did mention fairly early on during the show that she felt the rug and shoes were the most expensive items but Philip insisted the rug was just a bit of cheap nylon!!

I was so pleased when Margaret made the comparison between Lorraine and Cassandra when they were in the boardroom as it was so true. Cassandra was always ignored too yet her predictions were usually always right.

so is acting like a playground bully in the house as well as out of it - no wonder she's coming across as 'negative'

nice bloke!

There are a lot of people out there, with third level educations and everything, whose general knowledge is shockingly poor. You'd think one of them would have heard of Cassandra though. The funniest thing was that Sir Alan was no wiser than any of them.

We got a glimpse of the kind of rigorous, detailed and broad education that produced Margaret. Ah, they don't make them like that anymore

I expect he just forgot. I also suspect that some of this was an artefact of the editing. The producers like to tell simple stories with well-defined characters, and Lorraine has evidently been cast in the role of Cassandra. So the edit includes clips that enhance that role, and excludes clips that contradict it for fear of confusing us poor viewer.

Specifically, I expect the times we see her mention the rug to Philip are the only times she does so, over the course of the entire day. It only looks like she's going on about it non-stop because that's compressed into 20 minutes. Philip had 9 other items to think about, and several other team members to manage, and Lorraine herself must have been involved with more activities than we saw. So yes, she mentioned it early, but she didn't have anything to back up her instinct so Philip didn't pay her much attention, and then forgot what she'd said entirely.

It just didn't have the significance for him that it had for us, because he wasn't caught up in the narrative.

But to be fair to Lorraine what more can she do? All you can do is object strongly at the beginning, but then you have to follow the direction of your team leader. When she stands her ground she is accused of being negative. At teh end of the day, if your team leader disagrees with you you have no option but to do what they want.