Gordon Brown at his monthly press conference: “There can be no argument about where we've been over the last few years on debt. Debt was reduced from 44% of national income to 37% at the latest count. And that is a fact.”

Not according to the Office for National Statistics, which says net national debt is, at the latest count, 43.4% of GDP. The Prime Minister didn't like the ONS ruling that Northern Rock should be included in the figures. So he has ignored the ruling.

And that is a fact.

* THE new regime at City Hall has brought in a drive to rationalise Transport for London assets. Among the discoveries is that the public body is big in the residential property market. TfL owns hundreds of houses along the North Circular Road — 83% of them empty. They were bought up to be demolished for a road-widening scheme that was then scaled back, and were just left empty.

WH Ireland gets its Oar in

TEE HEE. The broking world is all
a-snigger at Blue Oar's expense. The stockbroker spent a fair length of time trying unsuccessfully to buy
WH Ireland earlier this year before its target was bought into by a consortium including Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross. Now WH Ireland has snapped back, hiring one of Blue Oar's big-hitting executives. John Wakefield was head of corporate finance for Blue Oar in Bristol, and had been with the firm's Rowan Dartington division since 1992. One up for WH Ireland's new chief, Hammers-loving Richard Ford.

Burnt yet again by Lehman

BELGIAN First Minister Yves Leterme has confessed to an official inquiry that he had €20,000 (£16,200) of his own money in Lehman. How?
“I had an account with Citibank with €20,000 in it, and now it turns out that the money was deployed in some Lehman products, and they have now gone to zero”.

It makes City Spy wonder what sort of accounts Leterme thought he had with Citibank, who are
now the object of complaints by other investors.
Will Leterme sue Citibank? “I need time to think before deciding.”

* More Lehman fallout. City Spy overheard this intriguing tale in a St James's wine bar. A cross-looking property developer recounts the tale of how he put £250,000 into a product marketed by Coutts some time ago, having been told it was a safe way of getting a slightly better interest rate than your bog standard account. “No risk,” he was told. Earlier this month, he went to check on the money and was told it had all been invested in “jiggery pokery” Lehman toxic debt products.

“£250,000 isn't much money to me, but just imagine how many people around the world are in the same boat? And the worst thing?” He says, “This is bloody Coutts, not some here-today-gone-tomorrow investment bank.” Hmm. Coutts is, of course, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland.

Cutting the festive joy at Citi

ROYAL Bank of Scotland may be forking out £1 million on its staff bashes this Christmas,
but elsewhere merrymaking is cancelled.

Citi, led by Sir Win Bischoff, has joined Merrill Lynch and Morgan in informing staff that bank-sponsored parties are off limits this year, with directors told to donate to charity instead.

* ALL change at BAe Systems. With Ian King now at the helm and promising to clear out the Augean stables left by Mike Turner, Dick Evans et al, there comes a switch in City support and advice. For many years, especially when Margaret Thatcher's Al-Yamamah deal with the Saudis was meandering along, BAe was aided and abetted by that top Thatcher spinner Lord Bell and his Bell Pottinger firm. Then, during the crisis of Turner's lack of succession last year, no less than two sets of PRs were on the payroll, one spinning for him and the other for reforming chairman Dick Olver. Now, BAe has appointed a new City public relations agency: Financial Dynamics.

Scots hit back at Burt and Mathewson

GUYS, stop now. Sir Peter Burt and Sir George Mathewson, the supposedly star veteran bankers who want to spoil the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB, awoke yesterday to a barrage of abuse on the letters page of their very own Scotsman.
The paper's correspondents take the reputation of the two man to task in no uncertain terms, with one, Alan Hinnrichs of Dundee, concluding his missive: “The policies Sir Peter Burt and Sir George Mathewson implemented when they were in charge of the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland respectively are the reason they are in the current mess. To have this pair gaining control of HBOS would be the least suitable appointment since Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize.”

* SALUTARY lesson for compliance officers in hedge funds —don't grass, or you could get fired. At least that's the message Joseph Sullivan, a compliance man, reckons he got when he voiced concerns about his boss's trading habits. Sullivan has just launched a court case against his former boss at New York's Peconic Partners. Sullivan claims Peconic head William Harnisch sacked him because he raised concerns about the way Harnisch sold 600,000 shares in a company a few days before selling clients' shares in the same business. This practice, known as “front-running”, is dodgy in the extreme, as it means fund managers are putting their own profits ahead of those of clients. Sullivan claims Harnisch sold his stock in Potash Corp for $130 a share, and then a few days later sold $1 million of clients' stock for about $90 a share. Harnisch denies the claims but and their monitors on both sides of the Atlantic will be watching the case with interest...

* ALBERT Edwards, the global strategist at Société Générale, writes: “This time it is the great unwind' on a global scale with leverage spaghetti everywhere.” Leverage spaghetti. Wonderful.

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