The average price of petrol is now around £1.20 a litre for unleaded, and almost £1.35 for diesel.

A year ago they were both several pennies under a pound.

The government has just announced it's going to delay the introduction of a tuppence increase in fuel duty that was to have come into effect in October - to "help motorists and businesses get through what is a difficult time for everyone".

So now my tank and yours will cost a paltry £74 to fill up instead of an exhorbitant £75. Could someone explain to me how politics works, please? I just don't get it....

Further to the on-going saga of America's most ill-equipped former finance director, Erin Callan, who was humiliatingly demoted by Lehman Brothers after just six months in the job, has secured fresh employment at Credit Suisse - as head of its hedge funds business.
This is an ironic choice of career given that, when she was Lehman's CFO, she was embroiled in a public argument with a hedge fund over the true state of the bank's losses - which turned out to be much worse than anyone had thought.

A few months ago retired finance director Michael Goddard wrote a Briefing for us on the problems regarding share buybacks.

Though a popular way of trying to increase shareholder value, Michael wrote that often the motivation for buy-backs results in capital-reduction schemes that can destroy value.

He's just reminded us that the banks were big buy-back junkies not so long ago and yet now they're busily digesting the proceeds of their rights issues.

HBOS, for example, was a buyer of its own shares in 2006 when they were as high as £11 a share. The rights issue price was 275p.

Barclays bought its own stock last year at between £4.30 and £7.00, before offering shareholders the chance to buy it back again via a rights issue priced at 282p.

And RBS bought RBS shares at up to £6.60 (adjusted for a bonus issue). Its rights price was just £2.

"Selling £10 notes for £5," he calls it.

Should we need to remind the banks to "Buy low, sell high"?

The overwhelming majority of finance directors are concerned that their organisations aren't doing enough to tackle their environmental impact, according to a recent survey by document management company Version One.

It's interesting to find out exactly what FDs think the government should be doing to incentivise companies to go above and beyond the usual easy route of just recycling paper. 'Money' springs to mind, but apparently only just under a quarter felt that financial incentives would encourage greener behaviour.

Surprisingly, perhaps, more believed that a 'green education' programme would be the best way forward to entice companies to drop their harmful ways as some 28% preferred this option. Just 8% felt legislation could do the job alone while 15% felt a mixture of legislation, financial incentives and green education would get the green ball rolling.

It's refreshing to find that finance directors are starting to make headway with the environmental agenda but disheartening to hear that they don't think the government is giving the business community enough solid ground to work on.

The things we read so that you don't have to. Just recently we found ourselves browsing through the Finance Act 1997 (mustn't rush into these things, you know). We won't bore you with the reasons but our eyes fell on section 10, subsection (2), where it is made clear that gaming duty applies to

"any of the following games, that is to say, baccarat, punto banco, big six, blackjack, boule, casino stud poker, chemin de fer, chuck-a-luck, craps, crown and anchor, faro, faro bank, hazard, poker dice, pontoon, French roulette, American roulette, super pan 9, trente et quarante, vingt-et-un, and wheel of fortune."

Firstly, we're starting to get an inkling as to why UK tax laws are so voluminous. Secondly, what the hell is chuck-a-luck???

But on a slightly more serious note, we see that there's yet another new effort being made to drive complexity out of tax legislation. The latest was unveiled by former Tory Chancellor Lord Howe. Speaking at the headquarters of the ICAEW - an organisation whose members make quite a lot of money helping people to deal with our complex tax laws - he unveiled Conservative party proposals entitled "Making Taxes Simpler".

Good luck to him - but don't hold your breath. Lord Howe himself admitted that the simplication process is 'going to be a very long haul.'