Gordon Brown has the economy as his "sole focus," does he? Then he should just take over from Alastair Darling as Chancellor.

I fully support this cause, and encourage other pubs to follow the example of this Scottish pub:

The nationalised of Northern Rock is to be shrunk to half its size, with thousands of jobs being axed, due to EU competition rules.

I thought the idea of the nationalisation was to prevent thousands losing their jobs through the inevitable slimming down that any private purchaser would enact?

Why didn't Brown and Darling think of the EU rules before they decided on nationalisation? Or did they just not look through it properly - despite the length of time they took to come to a decision?

Seems like the next queue won't be outside Northern Rock, but ex-Northern Rock outside the Job Centre.

A Labour government planning to axe thousands of jobs in a nationalised bank primarily based in the north of England. You couldn't make it up.

The first Budget in a decade will be made today by a politician who is not Gordon Brown. Well, at least that's the plan. But we all know that, in reality, Alastair Darling is just a wooden puppet, controlled by strings. He may jump up and down and proclaim that he is "a real boy Chancellor", but we all know the truth.

What do you want to see from the Budget? The one thing we won't get is any tax cuts - heaven forbid we be allowed to keep any of our money! - or even a freeze on certain things, such as alcohol, which is inevitably to be a victim of this budget considering its current whipping-boy status in politics. Iain Dale has a list of the top ten lines the wooden puppet Alastair Darling definitely won't say. More's the pity.

Last year's budget was boring, and backfired. What will the result be this year? Probably more of the same. But I will be keeping an eye on accountancy firm KPMG's budget website for comprehensive analysis - especially since they think that the budget will "see the fiscal rules being bent, if not outright broken and/or rewritten".

Should be interesting.

PS: Does anyone else find it ironic that they call it a "budget" when all they're limited by is how much money they can take from us?

HMRC staff are said to want punchbags to take their frustrations out on because morale is so low.

I suggest two punchbags - one with the Alastair Darling's face on, and one with Gordon Brown's.

Or maybe they'd prefer dartboards...?

This week's Hot Issue at the Wardman Wire is the Child Benefit data loss, on which I have written a brief news roundup and analysis, and Matt has written a post focusing the organisational impact from a professional IT Project/Programme Manager viewpoint.

Matt has, however, banned any puns on the name "Darling", which does take some of the fun out of it! And kind of ironic considering the pun he inserted into the title of my post instead!

Gordon Brown has apologised for HMRC losing the personal data of every family in the UK with a child under 16, saying that he "profoundly regrets" the "inconvenience and worries" caused to those affected.

I bet he "profoundly regrets" the damage it has done to himself, Darling, and his entire government far more. After all, they waited more than a week before telling us!

This demonstrates that the government certainly cannot be trusted with out personal information. It should never have been possible for a minor official to download this information to a CD, let alone actually happen. Especially if the CD is not encrypted, and defended by only a password! This sort of sensitive information should never be posted anyway, as as soon as it is out of sight, who knows what has happened to it - even if it arrives on time.

What is needed is more than just an apology from Gordo, but a pledge to repay any and all money stolen as a result of this - from the pockets of those responsible, not the taxpayers. And a pledge that such a breach can never again be possible - and that he and the Chancellor would both resign if it did.

Gordo's done a runner. Unlike with every other big news item that has arisen since he became Prime Minister, he has yet to take the lead - or even comment on it. Really, you would have though that he would have, considering the the economy should be his forte, having spent the last decade attempting to micro-manage it.

When there was a security alert in London, he took centre stage in front of the cameras. When there was flooding, he did the same. When foot-and-mouth came back, he came back early from his holiday. But since Northern Rock hit the headlines, we've seen neither hide nor hair of him. And yet this is the area in which until just a couple of months ago had controlled for a decade before taking the step up to the premiership. This should be his chance to shine. But instead he's vanished.

He's the Prime Minister. His Macavity act is no longer a good thing - or, really, acceptable - for him to do. He should be out there reassuring the public, not leaving it to Alastair Darling to attempt to do so alone.

Wherefore art thou, Macavity?