Have the Lib Dems thought through their plan to tax houses over £1 million? They “might find the definition of a house less than clear-cut”, says Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank. “A house with 20 acres of land bought for £1.1 million could easily be seen as two parcels of property — the house valued at under £ 1 million and the balance attributed to the land.” Still, he adds, there's no need to worry about the so-called mansion tax — “it is unlikely to ever be implemented”.

* Overheard in the ever-enlargening group outside Carluccio's Canary Wharf at fag n' coffee time (now 10 - 11.30am). “We agree with Darling that no bonus payments will be earned from selling or trading gilts or from any government advisory work,” says one shop steward-like banker from BarCap. “And just watch the pound slide through the floor, and then the basement floor, as not one iota of UK government debt is ever sold or traded again...”

Eyes peeled on KBC's plans

Not content with trying to offload its London mid-cap broking arm, Peel Hunt, is Belgian bank KBC retrenching in other areas? As well as Peel Hunt, KBC also owns the venerable City private bank, Brown Shipley. City Spy hears that Brown Shipley, which is almost 200 years old and based around the corner from the Bank of England, is asking clients to repay their loans by the end of October. Is it tidying itself up, ready for sale?

* PRINCE Andrew's pal Jeffrey Epstein is in hot water with the law once more. The billionaire financier walked free from jail in Florida in July after serving 13 months of an 18-month stretch for procuring a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution. Now, the former Bear Stearns hotshot, who holidayed with the prince and their mutual friend, Robert Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine, has been fined £600 for refusing to complete a legal deposition. He's fighting a dozen lawsuits brought by women who claim he sexually abused them when they were younger. When the lawyers' questions turned to the shape of his penis, he upped and left.

Why no pay-off for quitting?

AT ITV, the rumour doing the rounds is that Martin Stewart will land the job of finance director if Tony Ball succeeds in his bid to get the CEO's chair. Stewart is a longtime associate of Ball, having previously worked with him at BSkyB. Stewart left after James Murdoch became chief executive. He went to EMI and was finance director until the record company was sold to Guy Hands' Terra Firma two years ago.

One oddity is that Stewart quit EMI without a payoff — in sharp contrast to his boss Eric Nicoli who picked up £2.4 million when Hands showed him the door. Stewart ought to have been in line for just over £1 million — yet he was paid nothing. EMI's explanation was that Stewart had resigned and was therefore not entitled to anything.

All this did was add to the mystery, as a senior executive who knew he was about to lose his job was hardly likely to leave of his own accord — not with a seven-figure payment in the offing.

Presumably, under his contract, Stewart would have been due payment for his notice period, but he received nothing.

All most strange...

Compared to sports stars, bankers are... underpaid

BEST way to make an obscene salary look a bit more palatable? Compare it to the weekly wage of a big sports star. That's what veteran Rochdale Securities bank analyst Richard Bove has done, in a note titled “Financial Execs Underpaid?”

Noting that golf superstar Tiger Woods took home $128m last year, he compares that with Merrill Lynch's chief executive John Thain's salary of “only” $83 million in 2007, the last “normal” year for the industry.

Bove adds that the average NBA basketball player bags $5 million a year, while a Goldman Sachs staffer is expected to take home $800,000 this year. Hmmm...

Lonesome on Lonely Planet

MPs on the culture select committee have slated BBC Worldwide's operations and, in particular, its “egregious” purchase of the Lonely Planet travel guides. Tony Elliott, founder of rival Time Out, argues the BBC should sell it, claiming “Lonely Planet is losing money hand over fist. They are having to pump millions into it. It is a complete sprawling mess.” But would the BBC even be in a position to sell? The MPs say, in their newly published report, they're very unhappy that Worldwide was not exactly transparent about the terms of the Lonely Planet purchase. The Beeb paid £89.1 million for 75% but, a small footnote reveals, they have a put option to buy the other 25% stake at a fixed price “post-acquisition” of A$67.3 million (£31.9 million) by 31 October, bringing the full price to £118 million. MPs make clear they were particularly unimpressed that the price should be fixed and not subject to meeting performance criteria. All the more so given what Tony Elliott now alleges...

* THE MPs' report on BBC Worldwide revealed that Ofcom charged the BBC Trust an eye-popping £814,604 for its “market impact assessment test” of whether the BBC executive should go ahead with ultra-local TV expansion, the focus of much commercial media industry lobbying. The exercise was said to be very complicated to mount —but perhaps not surprisingly, the BBC hasn't rushed to ask for further studies from Ofcom. This, don't forget, saw one Government-funded organisation pay another — and not just any body but the industry regulator. Madness.

* A delve through US trade marks reveals ideas registered but not followed through by Donald Trump. There could have been Trump Power, an energy drink and a range of cocktails called Trumptini. There was also to be Trump Verdict, a courtroom-style TV show. What a shame we missed out.