Government help seems to be like buses: you wait forever and then they all roll up at once.

Anyone working in heavyside manufacturing must feel that that the light at the end of the tunnel is, in fact, that of a train and it's is getting ever closer.

Not a phrase you hear a lot these days but I think this time the Yanks may be right.

The clear message coming through from last week's BMF events - the golf day, the centenary dinner and the Members' Day - is that now, more than ever, there's huge need for industry to come together and talk.

It seems as though in the last week, every time I start to write something about the current state of the markets - the financial ones - things change and I have to start again.

And so it begins. The news that a family-run independent merchant has gone into administration should come as no real surprise to most people.

So Wolseley are to do what commentators have said they should have done a long time ago and are restructuring their loss-making US building arm, Stock Building Supply. Of course there are others who felt that the whole business should have been off-loaded or closed and, indeed, their share price rose considerably on rumours a…

So we're in a recession. Well someone ought to tell the hotel industry. Especially those ones in close proximity to popular destinations. Like the NEC.

The saying goes that when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. And that's certainly been true of the financial crisis gripping the world which really got going in the US sub-prime housing market.

The word bonus: if you take it to its Latin root, it means something good. The OED will tell you it refers to an addition, usually to pay, in consequence of have done something good or exceptional.