A new survey by Worcester, Bosch Group has revealed statistics around the habits of homeowners and their heating systems.

Thursday September 15 saw 37 cars and 124 people set off for Dover to start the VADO Rally 2016 and raise money for the Rainy Day Trust.

Builders' merchant, Jewson, has joined up with On the Tools as the headline partner of its inaugural Awards.

The cliché goes that a week is a long time in politics, so it ought to follow that a year is a very long time in merchanting. Not so it seems. I've returned from 13 months on maternity leave to find that many, many things about the industry are exactly as I left them.

As I write this, delegates will be heading to the bar for a swift sundowner before getting on with the serious business of the Welcome Dinner at this year's The Conference in Tenerife.

The problem with this whole credit-crunch market deterioration thing is that how bad it is really depends on to whom you speak.

I'm starting to feel a little like Private Fraser from Dads' Army every time I write a story for the web at the moment - "We're doomed, Cap'n Mainwaring. Doomed'. I mean the journalist's old cliché is that bad news makes good copy but really, this is getting ridiculous.

So John Sheehan, an eminent analyst from Dublin stockbrokers NCB thinks that Grafton Group and Travis Perkins should merge.

So that nice Mr Darling has listened to, well everyone, really, and decided to postpone the planned 2p a litre hike in fuel duty.

So the bloodbath continues. Last Saturday's Guardian business pages featured a very interesting little series of graphs, showing just how far major shares had fallen in the past few months. They included some of our old favourites: Persimmon, Barratt, Kier, Taylor Wimpey and, of course, Wolseley. For all of these companies have seen upwards of…