Where would this industry be without the grapevine? There's nothing that binds people together - and I mean blokes just as much as girls - like a good old gossip.

Good Lord, I thought to myself this morning, when a press release landed in my inbox this morning mentioning the Government's Behavioural Insights Team (apparently known as the 'nudge unit', whatever the hell that means).

Here and now I would like to categorically reassure the readers of this blog, of buildersmerchantsjournal.net and of BMJ that I have never published any stories that were acquired through the hacking of a mobile-phone.

Modesty forbids me from fully attributing the quote above, but it was written almost three years ago to the very day (the blog it comes from is here).

I was eating my breakfast when I read the Travis Perkins half-year results. So there I was, stopped in my tracks with a piece of toast half-way to my mouth, by an impressive 54% rise in turnover and an eye-watering 26% rise in profits.

Mick Williams, he of the boiler scrappage campaign, is on the warpath again.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man they say. Or, in this case, cometh the men, women and children, armed with brooms, dustpans and black plastic sacks.

So we have a housing crisis. Again. The National Housing Federation yesterday released the results of a report that showed owner-occupation is likely to fall to just over 60% - the levels it was back in the 1980s.

Oh dear. It's not looking very good out there is it? And I don't just mean the view from my window which suggests that the extra vest and woolly socks might be required sooner rather than later.

Economics is one of those subjects that few of us lay-people really understand. Instead we rely on commentators, journalists and actual economists to make sense of it all for us.