I don't think I've ever known a run-up to the Budget like it. We've always had leaks and speculation about what will or won't be contained in the Chancellor's battered red briefcase, but this year, it seems there's more hanging on it than before.

Well at least it was short.

The job losses by the end of the year could be as high as half a million in two years according to estimates that CPA chairman Adrian Barden used in his Autumn Lunch speech yesterday.

So the stock market is looking slightly more favourably upon the somewhat beleaguered Wolseley now that they have finally found someone who's going to take Stock Building Supply off their hands. Or at least half of it, since 100% of the Stock shares have been transferred to a joint venture company, in which Wolseley will…

Wandering round the NMBS Exhibition the other week, I was struck by a rather curious idea. Maybe, just maybe, things aren't quite as bad as we had been thinking them.

I'm starting to wonder if there are any MPs left in the Palace of Westminster or whether Messrs Brown and Cameron are wandering around rather like people who've been invited to a party but got the address wrong.

So Ian Pearson has been promoted in the cabinet reshuffle to become economics minister to Treasury.

There's been a lot of publicity about a Financial Times poll of economists which suggests that the recession in the UK is over.

In the last recession, most of the headlines to do with housing were about people who couldn't afford to stay in their homes because the interest rates on their mortgages was taking payments far beyond their reach.

Well it was only a matter of time really. A CEO under whose tenure the share price lost 80% of its value was never going to really be around to see this thing through.