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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.

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.

Here we go again. As if it's not hard enough, trying to stay in business when all around you is news of yet more redundancies, administrations and high street woes, firms will now have to be extra, extra careful when it comes to health and safety practice.

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

I know I'm a little behind the times on this issue as it really broke last week but I've been mulling it over in my head since and it doesn't become any clearer.

The city is a fickle creature isn't it.

Well, I suppose it could have been worse.

Where's it going to end? First Connaught and now Rok, the latest high-profile building services company to go to the wall. The repercussions of failures such as these stretch far beyond the hundreds of job losses - the administrator announced 755 to go at Rok just this morning. As our story on Monday shows, the…

So, cheers all round at yesterday at Wolseley, the world's biggest plumbers merchant. Having been the subject of some very mixed reviews over the past two or so years thanks to the collapse of the housebuilding markets here and in the States, the news for the group is very definitely better.

So the redoubtable Ed Balls has decided that it would be a good thing for the building and housing markets if the Coalition Government were to reduce VAT to 5% on housing repair, maintenance and improvement.