The one thing this bankrupt Government desperately needs is money - in other words, the inflow of our taxes. However the chances of even that drying up are increasing.

After wholesale office closures, crashing staff morale and 15,000 job cuts in the last year alone, we are within days of Treasury minister Stephen Timms slapping a pay freeze on HM Revenue & Customs. Around a quarter of HMRC's staff are already paid less than £17,000 a year. If industrial action is called, this winter's self-assessment deadline could be carnage.

* INSOLVENCY practitioners have never been the most popular of people. And now we have some statistical evidence to prove it. The Government Insolvency Service has for the first time published figures about the profession which show that a staggering 78% of all members of the Insolvency Practitioners Association had complaints made against them last year.

* Ping! An email lands with important news from the world of public relations. Bishopsgate Communications, a "growth focused PR agency", it says here, is now on Twitter. Why?

* Unhappy tidings at Marks & Spencer HQ. Retail Week reports that, for the first time in its 105-year history, Waitrose's market share has surpassed M&S's. In the first half of the year, Waitrose's share of the market reached 4.2% while Stuart Rose's firm lingered at 3.7%. But
Marks & Spencer wasn't very gracious in defeat. A spokeswoman insisted: “When it comes to food market share, it's never a true like-for-like comparison.”

Doing right after Madoff fraud

Here's a new twist in the tale of Bernie Madoff. One of his victims is covering his employees' losses with his own cash. Robert Lappin, an American philanthropist and property magnate, has paid out $5 million to cover the Bernie-related $401,000 losses for his 60 employees. “I wanted to do the right thing,'' Lappin said. “And, I feel, I've done the right thing and that to me is my reward."

* Now Madoff is all settled into his new home in a North Carolina jail, a website is offering victims the chance to get in touch with their man. Says MadoffMail.com: “Whether you were one of his victims or not, now's your chance to tell him how you feel. Send in your letters, drawings, poems, photographs, posters, collages, doodles and other Madoff correspondence... On every three-month anniversary of Madoff's prison term, we'll send your submissions to [his] prison cell in a Care Package.” That's something for Bernie to look forward to...

* He's not exactly short of a bob or two, but the fact that Michael Bloomberg, the tycoon who made his money through his eponymous financial data firm, has so far spent $37 million on his New York mayoral campaign is raising a few eyebrows across the Pond. The breakdown shows $20 million spent on TV ads, $1 million or so to campaign staff and $50,000 on phone expenses, but there's also $72,000 on office snacks and $7000 on, er, pizza.

What is £100 million between friends, Willie?

Willie Walsh won no new friends in the media after dissing newspaper stories last week that British Airways was set to raise £500 million. Admittedly most papers wrongly guessed it would be through a rights issue. However, the airline subsequently raised a tad more, £600 million, through a convertible bonds issue and a deal with its pension trustees. Which makes Walsh's comments on the speculation in a press conference all the more strange. Speaking before the fundraising was announced, he harangued reporters, saying: “£500 million is not a number we recognise. It's nonsense. I don't know where you get it from.”

* So Borders bookstores are changing ownership in a management buyout as Luke Johnson cuts his links. There were signs that multi-talented Johnson had had enough of juggling so many enterprises. In his newspaper column last week, he moaned how: “I sat, increasingly miserable, in an establishment I own, as a catalogue of incompetence saw a series of customers treated poorly. I could bear it no longer and intervened... our employees remember that without customers, there is nothing.”

* Arnaud de Puyfontaine, the new French chief executive of Soho-based glossy magazine firm Nat Mags, publisher of Harpers Bazaar and Esquire, is asked what alternative career he would consider: “I have the best career anyone could ever dream of.” And Puyfontaine's business motto? “Lead, follow or get out of the way.” Good old Gallic charm...

* Desperate times call for desperate measures at Fortune magazine. Owner Time Inc is sending in what is described as an internal “SWAT” team to revamp the financial glossy. Fortune is bidding to avoid the same fate as Portfolio, closed by Condé Nast, and BusinessWeek, which is up for sale reportedly for $1.

* Not all is well at Foster + Partners, which has been shedding 300 staff since the spring. And its fêted principal Lord Foster is none too popular either. One chap now plying his trade at someone else's drawing boards tells City Spy: “I was there 15 years and never once, not even on my last day, did Norman speak to me.”

* Thorntons is blaming melting sales on the sun. “Chocolate sales and hot weather don't mix very well,” said chief executive Mike Davies. “In very hot weather, people don't tend to eat much chocolate. I'm one of those who hope the summer won't be too hot.” It's a nice excuse — except Thorntons forgot to mention its ice cream division. Says its website: “We can't think of a better way to cool down in the summer sun than with a delicious Thorntons ice cream.” So the ices are less lucrative than the chocs?