We're told that the Office of Fair Trading has launched a pilot programme by which cash payments will be made to people who provide them with information about cartels. Sounds like an opportunity for an outing of the old joke about there being only one Competition Commission. We claim our crisp fiver, if you please!

Then we read further. According to law firm CMS Cameron McKenna, the OFT's "rewards will be calculated according to a set formula and non-negotiable." Well, THAT'S anti-competitive for a start!

You'll be reading a lot of stuff about the Budget this morning (my favourite in the evening papers: "Drinkers hammered". I mean, I'm not exactly in favour of the 14p on a bottle of wine or the 55p on a bottle of whisky - but compared to a fiver for the vino and the difficulty of finding a decent scotch for less than twenty quid, it's not exactly putting the British boozer into the same league as Norway or Iceland).

But one thing really jars - the repeated comments that this is Alistair Darling's first Budget. There was the pre-Budget report in November, the subsequent announcement that the capital gains tax proposals would be looked at again, the non-dom fiasco and, of course, the sudden increase in public spending to the tune of several tens of billions in order to buy a Geordie bank. So with all the major tax and spending announcements made in the last few months, was this really his first Budget?

Then again, given the 2p cut in the rate of income tax that was actually announced a year ago, was this Darling's first Budget - or Gordon Brown's last?

* One green note: nice to see that the Chancellor who is threatening to tax plastic carriers out of existence decided to reuse Gladstone's old bag to present the Budget rather than the flashier one that his predecessor used. Or maybe he just didn't want to be seen as Gordon Brown's bag carrier.

The good folks at Business Continuity Expo have chosen today to send out a press release listing what it calls “Top ten practical tips” for surviving the floods that are currently swamping coastal areas in the south, southwest and Wales. It includes things like “Ascertain the impact of both a potential loss of water and a loss of electricity on your business activities and respond accordingly” and “If key documents or IT servers are stored in the basement consider moving them to a higher floor”.

It’s not that the advice isn’t useful, it’s just that it’s a bit late, given that the storm started in the middle of last night. So here’s the FD top ten tips instead…

1 – Find out if your employees can swim. If not, give them the day off. Unless they work in credit control in which case give them a phone and make sure they get as much cash from customers as possible: you’re going to need it.

2 – Buy a boat. Preferably a small one that won’t get stranded as soon as the waters recede. Just big enough for you, your PA and - if you're feeling generous - your financial controller.

3 - Make sure there's a TV news crew around when you get flooded so there's lots of free publicity and public sympathy for your company.

4 – Make sure words such as “plucky”, “local heroes” and “Dunkirk spirit” are used in any media coverage.

5 – Attach a very large cork to your keys, mobile phone, etc. The kind of thing that yachtsmen use. A few champagne corks tied together ought to do the trick.

6 – Contact your local BMW dealer so that you’re first in the queue to get your flood-damaged company car replaced.

7 – Buy an OS map. Study it for possible relocation opportunities, either on higher ground or away from seas, oceans, rivers, lakes, etc.

8 – Consider outsourcing absolutely bloody everything to somewhere with a decent climate.

9 – Don’t make jokes about having plenty of liquid assets on the balance sheet. Nobody likes a smart-arse accountant when it’s peeing with rain.

10 - Learn the 10 top tips about surviving a flood before the flood hits, not in the morning right in the middle of the storm.

Andrew Macfarlane was such a successful, well-liked finance director at Land Securities that his colleagues successfully nominated him for the Accountancy Age Awards Blue Chip FD of the Year in 2005 – even though he had already left the company to go to Rentokil Initial.

Despite the huge impact Macfarlane had at the once-sleepy property giant, he decided that he “missed the challenge of working for an international business”. And so he upped sticks and joined the rat-catching and lavatory hand towels company instead.

He joined at a challenging time. The group had just lost its chairman, Sir Clive Thompson, and its chief exec when Macfarlane took up his post two-and-a-half years ago – and now it’s facing very similar problems again: chairman Brian McGowan has said he will retire in May but the City also wants the head of the chief exec, Doug Flynn. That’s the price they’re demanding as Rentokil Initial faces almost certain demotion from the FTSE-100 tomorrow (Tuesday).

Will this be Macfarlane’s chance to shine again? Or will he be forced to walk the plank, too? Either way, he’s surely got a much bigger challenge than the one he first contemplated when the headhunter’s call came through.

Staff at Acas, the advisory, conciliation and arbitration service, have voted overwhelmingly to go on strike in a dispute over pay, says the BBC. Couldn't they just get around a table and - oh, forget it...