Martin Vander Weyer

Last week’s public borrowing and tax-receipt figures, headlined ‘Chancellor hails biggest monthly surplus in seven years’, received considerably less attention than the employment and wage-growth numbers a week earlier, underlining my belief that voters care a lot less (or indeed not at all) about the intangible ‘fiscal deficit’ and its implications than they do about their own prospects and spending power. And rightly so. Failure to shrink the deficit at the rate he first promised is nevertheless the one major issue on which George Osborne is seriously open to criticism as Chancellor. But what matters in political terms at this stage is that borrowing this year is 7.

‘Will Greece exit the eurozone in 2015?’ Paddy Power was pricing ‘yes’ at 3-to-1 on Tuesday, with 5-to-2 on another Greek general election within the year and 6-to-4 on the more cautious ‘Greece to adopt an official currency other than the euro by the end of 2017.’ I’m no betting man — as I reminded myself after backing a parade of point-to-point losers on Sunday — and I defer to our in-house speculator Freddy Gray, who will offer a wider guide to political bets worth having in the forthcoming Spectator Money (7 March).

Stephen Green — the former trade minister Lord Green of Hurstpier-point, who became this week’s political punchbag— was always a rather Olympian, out-of-the-ordinary figure at HSBC. This was a bank that traditionally drew its top men from a corps of tough, non-intellectual, front-line overseas bankers typified by the chairmen before Green, Sir John Bond and Sir Willie Purves. As the dominant bank in Hong Kong and a market leader throughout Asia and the Middle East, it was habituated to dealing with customers who took big risks, hoarded cash when they had it, and did not necessarily regard paying tax as a civic duty.

Stephen Green — the former trade minister Lord Green of Hurstpier-point, who became this week’s political punchbag— was always a rather Olympian, out-of-the-ordinary figure at HSBC. This was a bank that traditionally drew its top men from a corps of tough, non-intellectual, front-line overseas bankers typified by the chairmen before Green, Sir John Bond and Sir Willie Purves. As the dominant bank in Hong Kong and a market leader throughout Asia and the Middle East, it was habituated to dealing with customers who took big risks, hoarded cash when they had it, and did not necessarily regard paying tax as a civic duty.

BP’s profits are down, and the oil giant is slashing up to $6 billion out of its investment plan for the year. At Shell, the cut could amount to $15 billion over the next three years. At troubled BG, still waiting for new chief executive Helge Lund to arrive, capital spending will be a third lower than last year. I wrote recently of ‘consequences we really don’t need’ as the oil price continues to plunge: cheering though it is for consumers (and good for short-term growth) to find pump prices at a five-year low, the full impact will not be felt until a decade hence, when projects cancelled now might have come on stream to ease supply in whatever cat’s-cradle of conflict afflicts the world by then.

The only question I remember from my Oxford moral philosophy paper was ‘What is integrity and is it a virtue?’ In the margins of all the politicking that follows the victory of Syriza in the Greek election, I hope someone asks: ‘What is austerity, is it a virtue, and why has it worked in the UK and Ireland but failed in Greece?’ My own definition of austerity in the context of financial crisis, when I debated it with former Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou, was ‘a synonym for frugal, uncorrupt government supported by willing taxpayers of the sort that has been largely absent in southern Europe’, at which George got very emotional and accused me of stereotyping.

Mixed results for the Brits at the Golden Globes, but I’m pleased to announce that my Golden Monkey Wrench for media manipulation goes to Mick Cash and his team at the Rail Maritime & Transport union, for securing wall-to-wall sympathetic coverage of the collapse of courier firm City Link — some 2,300 of whose workers learned on Christmas day that their jobs were doomed. It would be fair to say Mick had not made much impact as general secretary of RMT (give or take some pointless Tube strikes) since the death of his mighty predecessor Bob Crow last March, but he certainly grabbed the City Link story by the throat — and has been busy this week urging MPs to investigate ‘the whole murky business’.

To Brighton, to address a conference of property investors. Unusually, I find myself programmed alongside both Gerard Lyons, City economist turned Mayor Boris’s adviser, who is notably upbeat in his forecast, and Robert Peston, who is distinctly downbeat in an extended after-dinner lecture with graphs, but gets away with it because his voice mannerisms are so compelling and women in the audience are fascinated by his new haircut.

The first time I checked in to a French hotel with a golden retriever — his name was Gregory, predecessor of the incumbent Douglas — I left him, clearly unhappy, in the bedroom when I went to dinner. Then I realised that every other party already in the dining room included a dog, in some cases a lapdog enjoying morsels direct from its mistress’s plate. So I fetched Gregory, shoved him under the tablecloth and told him to keep quiet. But each time a tasty dish went past, his big hairy head emerged and sniffed the air. Eventually the maitre d’hotel approached. ‘You’re in trouble now,’ I whispered (to Gregory). ‘Ah, quel beau chien,’ said the maitre d’. ‘Would he like to order anything?

I didn’t realise that the Rialto Bridge has a moving walkway and muzak, that the gondolas beneath it float on a clear blue pool, and that the school of Tiepolo had so many apprentices available to paint hotel ceilings. ‘Still in Venice, Martin?’ you’re thinking. ‘Surely that was last month?’ Well no, your intrepid columnist has moved from the old world to the new, and reports this week from the desert frontier where unfettered capitalism meets the lowest human urges: Las Vegas. It’s an overwhelming experience, so forgive me if my grip on what’s happening at home — reactions to David Cameron’s CBI conference speech, for example, and the rejected Qatari bid for Canary Wharf — is a little hazy.