God alone knows what happened to the unfortunate Neil Heywood, the British businessman who appears to have got on the wrong side of the rich and powerful in China. How he met his end is too horrible to contemplate. William Hague has now been forced to deny that the dead man was a spy. Heywood, who was found dead in a mountain resort hotel room in the city of Chongqing on Nov 15, was apparently “only an occasional contact” of the British embassy in Beijing, “attending some meetings in connection with his business”. It would be interesting to know what precisely was discussed in those meetings but the whole business has the ring of a Le Carre novel set not in Berlin but the less romantic Chinese equivalent of 19th century Bolton.

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My colleague’s 72 year old mum in response to yesterday’s budget said something along the lines of this. ‘I feel so sorry for kids these days. There are no jobs, they are loaded up with university debt because the government doesn’t give them anything any more. And what do I do? I sit here with all these free things being thrown at me – winter fuel allowance, free TV licence, free bus pass, subsidised computer courses.’

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So the latest holder of the white hot seat at Stamford Bridge has been ejected from his dug out, to emerge blinking into the cold light of day on the King’s Road clutching his P45. Chelsea’s owner Mister Abramovitch – everyone with more than two o-levels or ten million offshore in British football is “mister”, it’s all a bit weirdly Uriah Heep like that – has now got through eight managers in the same number of years.

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I spoke a couple of days ago to a senior executive in the United States from within Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. As I told him the tale of Rebekah Brooks and the police horse his eyes grew wider and wider. But when he thought about it he didn’t appear that surprised. Nothing coming out of the tabloid world of Wapping surprises anybody any more. The fun and games are well and truly over.

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Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing I love more of an evening, when the kids have finally collapsed and I’ve made it back downstairs to sit down, than kicking back with a glass of red to watch one of the titans of the Premiership get humiliated in Europe.

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So the Mob has got its way and is currently parading Stephen Hester’s head around the City on the end of a pikestaff. Metaphorically speaking. (To a banker his bonus is as vital as his head.) What this whole disturbing episode shows, yet again, is the disaster that often comes to pass when business and politics meet.  Hester is the one banker who has been beheaded because he was the one individual that government – urged on by the mob – could most easily humiliate and cut down to size. He is, after all, a government employee of sorts.

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So we come to the end of yet another desperate week of teeth-gnashing, snarling and outrage about money. People either receiving or not receiving their just desserts. A cap of £26, 000 on benefit-receiving families, Stephen Hester and his just-shy-of-a-million bonus. As we edge towards the gyre, the national mood gets uglier and uglier.

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This morning at 4.28 I was, as is frequently the case, woken by the first lumbering large Boeing or Airbus coming in from the Far East to land at Heathrow. The siting of an airport to the West of the City it serves when the prevailing wind is from the South West was a very dim idea indeed. But, as Heathrow dates back to the pre-jet era, nobody thought about this and the resulting sleep-disturbance it causes to millions is no laughing matter. Equally unamusing are the appalling levels of air pollution that exist at Heathrow.

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So we’ve made it to the Midwinter solstice. Let’s hope the darkest hour really is before the dawn. We always bend over backwards to put on a cheery face here at MT but however hard you try to shine the turd, this has been a fairly rum old year for UK PLC.

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There’s no denying these are tough old times. One is hard-pressed to find many good news stories on the businesses pages as the year closes. All the more reason to emit plenty of cheers and whoops for those companies who’ve done well in our annual Most Admired companies survey which we celebrated at Claridge’s last night. It is easy to forget, with all the sound and fury of an imploding Eurozone, that many British business do continue to do well. Our surprise overall winner this year Berkeley is one of them.

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