How much does Gordon Brown love the National Audit Office? Not very much, City Spy reckons. The NAO's stinging report on the Treasury's mishandling of Northern Rock is all the more damning as the auditors' view is that the problems date back to 2004 when a certain G Brown was Chancellor. It's not the first time in recent months that the NAO has clashed with the Government. The audit office has contradicted the Home Office's figures on knife crime; noted that only a quarter of the Government's Gershon savings had been made; revealed that official data on cutting carbon emissions was too rosy; and last summer pointed out that £1.54 billion of Gordon's beloved tax credits were wrongly paid.

Tim Burr is the current Comptroller General and head of the NAO. What chance of Brown giving a knighthood to Burr?

* Tim Burr won't be in charge of the NAO for much longer as a new boss, Amyas Morse, has been appointed. Burr has only had a short spell at the top after he took over in 2007 from Sir John Bourn, who resigned under a cloud after it was revealed he had been spending what many felt was far too much on hospitality, including claiming the cost of numerous first-class foreign trips with his wife.

* Amyas Morse's appointment, which is being ratified by MPs, follows a Gordon Brown-commissioned review into the NAO, which reported a year ago. Who carried out the review? Gordon's chum John Tiner, recently departed chief executive of that flawless City watchdog the Financial Services Authority. The good news is that no one expects Morse to be a pushover.

New man at MPC is on-message

No surprise that the Bank of England should choose a Gordon Brown crony for its monetary policy committee. Replacing David Blanchflower is David Miles, currently chief economist at Morgan Stanley, who is, heaven help us, very much another academic economist whose works have made him an expert in the housing market. In fact, he is such a fount of knowledge that Brown, when Chancellor, asked him in 2003 to review the housing market and the absence of long-term fixed-rate lending. Much good that did. Miles is reckoned to stand four square behind the notion of Treasury intervention to support the home-loans market...

* The MPC still has a vacancy on its nine-strong panel as Tim Besley is also quitting. Unlike arch-dove Blanchflower, Besley was a keen hawk. In his first 24 meetings, he seven times took a more hawkish stance than the majority of the committee, voting for rate rises instead of holds, and holds instead of cuts. All this changed belatedly in October last year when he was part of a unanimous vote to cut rates from 5% to 4.5%. Besley has voted with the consensus every month since, driving rates down to 0.5%.

A remarkable U-turn. In fact, only Blanchflower, has shown any dissent since October, voting for even faster rate cuts. Blanchflower will be missed. Besley will not.

* Tim Besley's departure puts the spotlight on Andrew Sentance, the other MPC hawk. Sentance joined the Bank just a month after Besley. Could he soon follow Besley out?

Forget Speedy, we're Urgent

Robert Thomson, editor of The Wall Street Journal, is cracking the whip. He has sent a memo encouraging reporters on the Journal to file to the Dow Jones newswires, a separate sister news information service. “Even a headstart of a few seconds is priceless for a commodities trader or a bond dealer — that same story can be repurposed for a range of different audiences, but its value diminishes with the passing of time,” says Thomson. Repurposed? Robert, please... He continues: “Given that revenue reality, henceforth all Journal reporters will be judged, in significant part, by whether they break news for the Newswires.” The old WSJ computer system, called the Speedy (“inaptly named” in the words of Thomson), is to be axed and replaced with a new successor, called, wait for it, “the URGENT”.

* Did Icelandic bank Straumur need to be taken under state control? Rumours from Viking-land suggest it was a politically motivated move, rather than a financial necessity. Straumur-Burdaras was the last of Reykjavik's banks left standing, surviving October's meltdown, which saw all its rivals nationalised. Straumur was busily selling off assets to boost its balance sheet, with a big deal thought to be going through over the weekend of 7 and 8 March. There was also talk the bank was planning to relocate abroad, with either Sweden or the UK becoming its new home. Instead, Straumur announced on Monday 9 March that it was coming under the control of regulators. The word is that Iceland's new socialist government was unhappy that money might be leaving the cash-struck country. It also didn't want it to seem that chairman Thor Bjorgolfsson, Iceland's first billionaire, was getting away unpunished. Bjorgolfsson, who is the son of West Ham chairman Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, has been heavily criticised for his role in the financial crisis.

Give Drax's Dorothy a proper pay rise

When the average emoluments of the FTSE 100 chief executive have soared way over the £1 million-a-year mark, is the boss of energy generator Drax, at just £894,000, the worst-paid boss in the blue-chip index? Is it either here or there that Drax chief Dorothy Thompson is one of only a couple of FTSE female chief executives?

* Is failed bank Merrill Lynch really offering staff £60,000 pay rises to compensate for lost bonuses?

* “If an activity looks like a bank and sounds like a bank, we regulate it like a bank.” Lord Turner cracks the banking crisis.

* US comedian Jon Stewart hit a nerve with his satirical pop at business TV channel CNBC for being far too cosy with Wall Street during the boom years. “You knew what the banks were doing, yet were touting it for months and months,” Stewart said. “The entire network was. Now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.” CNBC is caught in a tricky position as to respond to Stewart is to keep the story buzzing. But NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker has been so stung he has now hit back, complaining it is “unfair” and “absurd” of Stewart to criticise CNBC. “Everybody wants to find a scapegoat. That's human nature. But to suggest that the business media or CNBC was responsible for what is going on now is absurd.”

* City law firm CMS Cameron McKenna is asking its equity partners to volunteer for demotion. The firm has requested they offer themselves up to move to fixed share status — effectively taking a pay cut. But Camerons is trying to convince them it won't all be bad: they get to keep their voting rights. That'll easily make up for the lighter pockets then...