Bank of England dove David "Danny" Blanchflower will not go quietly. He says he clearly saw the recession coming well before the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September.

"People seem to want to rewrite history, to say that the world changed with Lehmans and it wasn't predictable before that, but I think that's crass nonsense," he tells Channel 4's Dispatches.

His less-wise monetary policy committee colleagues will have none of that. According to Andrew Sentance, who was more worried about inflation for much of last year, the fall of Lehmans was indeed "the trigger which pushed many economies - including the UK - into deep recession". Blanchflower leaves the Bank at the end of next month. Sentance has earned himself a second term. Oh dear.

* Fortune magazine's annual 500 list is out. Needless to say, it was a bad year. Indeed, the worst for the 500 since the mag was first published in 1955. Profits fell from $645 billion in 2007 to just $98.9 billion - an 84.7% decline, 11 of the top 25 largest corporate losses in the list's history took place last year, insurance giant AIG posted a $99.3 billion deficit - the biggest corporate loss of all time - and 38 companies disappeared from the list completely.

* Investors who drag themselves up to Durham for the annual general meeting of London bus company Arriva will hear a sob story. The remuneration committee believes its executive directors are underpaid compared with their industry peers.

It thinks chief executive David Martin, for instance, should be getting a pay rise of more than 11% to take his pay well in excess of £500,000. Instead, aware this could be embarrassing just now, the board has decided Martin will have to make do with a 3% rise, keeping him below the half-a-million-a-year mark.

Interesting then that on the same remuneration committee sits part-time non-executive chairman, Sir Richard Broadbent, sometime Schroders banker and ex-head of HM Revenue & Customs. Broadbent's pay at Arriva appears to have soared by 25% to £150,000 a year, for as much as, oh, a few days a month.

All you need is love, BG says

Hats off to the ubiquitous Robert Peston who (once again) won an award — for Business Journalist of the Year — at the London Press Club Awards.

But it could have been a close-run thing if Phil Bentley, managing director of British Gas, who sponsored yesterday's awards at Claridge's, had had his way.

“The Evening Standard had a headline a couple of months ago, Is it time once again to love British Gas?'” Bentley told guests in his speech, gesturing towards the Standard's table. “Unfortunately I didn't judge the Business Journalist of the Year Award.

“Had I done so, you'd have been up there with the best of them.”

City Spy readers can rest assured we never give British Gas an easy time. But for Bentley, the fact that anyone might even consider the idea of loving British Gas again was positive. He added ruefully: “I won't put it to a show of hands.”

* Fred the Shred's plush former domain at Royal Bank of Scotland's Edinburgh headquarters is finally being dismantled. The so-called Fred's Folly executive area of RBS's £350 million office is receiving a make-under.

But some things will stay. The bailout bank's employees will still enjoy a 40-hectare campus of landscaped woodland, with gym, swimming pool, football pitches, dance studios, aerobics centre, bars, restaurants and tree-lined avenue featuring a supermarket, hairdresser and florist. Still, at least the bank's executive wing, which staff dubbed Sir Fred's Pleasure Dome and was allegedly decorated with wallpaper costing £1000 a roll, is being replaced by an open-plan office for 400 workers.

Even more seriously, the bank's senior executives have seen their subsidised sandwiches scrapped...

Bell rings up a 20% pay rise

Who'd work in public relations, eh? Chime Communications chair, former Thatcher spin maestro Lord Bell, earned £1.15 million last year, up almost 20%.

His partner Piers Pottinger, who co-founded Bell Pottinger, collected a trifling £611,642 — up less than 10% from £569,906 a year earlier.

If an airport's for sale, can our buses be far behind?

How troubled are the investment funds of the Australian finance house Macquarie, which at one stage threatened to be so ubiquitous that it seemed to be taking over almost every facet of British life?

City Spy only asks as the word is the company is currently hawking Bristol Airport for sale. Which is a strange time to sell an airport — given the depressed prices in a sector riven by recession and exacerbated by the enforced sales by BAA of Gatwick, Stansted and either Edinburgh or Glasgow.

So what of Macquarie's other UK assets, many of which were bought at or near the top of the market?

Will it be passing Thames Water on again? Will it be alighting from its London buses — formerly owned by Stagecoach — or its Isle of Wight and Isle of Man ferry businesses? Will it be seeking a speedy exit from its Moto motorway stations?

Will it signal a sale from its Arquiva TV and radio masts, Airwave emergency services communications and ex-BBC digital media businesses? Will it be turning the light off on its Welsh and West Country energy networks? (That's enough Macquarie car-boot sale — Ed.)

* Attendance at the London Book Fair — one of the industry's biggest events, which last year attracted 1665 exhibitors — is estimated to be down on last year, but the Earls Court event seemed rather busy when City Spy visited yesterday.

The sound of book rights being bought and sold must have given some cheer to the recession-hit industry. And one book in particular was redolent of stiff-upper-lip determination to defy the gloom.

The two-volume Highgrove Florilegium — a huge, leather-bound tome featuring original watercolour prints celebrating Prince Charles's gardens, with each copy signed by the heir to the throne himself — was for sale for a whopping £10,950.

City Spy was promised that the book would “definitely” go up in value. Hmmm...