Doubts remain over George Osborne and his ability to step up to the job of Chancellor, should the Tories win the next election.

At a fringe meeting at the Conservative conference in Manchester, economist Irwin Stelzer said Osborne had given a “bookkeeper's speech not a chancellor's speech” yesterday. Stelzer said: “There has to be more than just the presumed savings from being efficient and eliminating a few MPs. There has to be a vision for Britain, a growth of attracting entrepreneurs, doing a lot more than finding this cut and that cut.”

To prolonged applause from the Tory faithful, Stelzer said shadow foreign secretary William Hague would make a better chancellor than Osborne. “I already have a job to do,” retorted Hague. Shame.

* GORDON Brown included the Disability Discrimination Act in his list of Labour achievements at last week's party conference in Brighton. Strange, given it was passed into law in 1995 when John Major was Prime Minister.

* CAN everyone, i.e. analysts and retail reporters, please stop acting as if Tesco's market dominance has ever been under threat? At the height of the recession, when it was supposedly under attack from all those “discount supermarkets”, its share of the UK grocery market slipped from — cue drum roll — 31.1% to 30.9%. The real question is whether Tesco's is too powerful, but every time there's a pretence the company might be fading, that important issue gets lost…

* KBC Peel Hunt should be applauded for reminding us in its latest investment bulletin of those words from Dick Fuld as Lehman Brothers was in its death throes: “When I find a short-seller, I want to tear his heart out and eat it before his eyes while he's still alive.”

Scotland gets cosy with Coutts

HOT on the heels of City Spy's story about how Labour is getting worked up about George Osborne's banking with C Hoare & Co comes news that Baroness Scotland of Asthal, Labour's Attorney General who saw fit to pay her cleaner £6 an hour, banks with Coutts.

It is said that prospective Coutts clients must have at least £500,000 in disposable income — excluding property interests — before they can be considered as customers.

This decree, as well as Coutts being the house with which the royal family banks, is why Coutts is known as the Queen's Bank.

The Labour Party is, of course, for the many and not the few...

* CNBC is launching what it trumpets is “a new season of the business of innovation” hosted by Maria Bartiromo, which it claims “breaks down the landscape of the future so business leaders can take advantage of this unique moment in history”. Eh? City Spy wonders if this is not TV-speak for “we are bust”.

Porsches just got a little bit poorer

THE Porsche family have fallen from the list of Germany's top 10 wealthiest people for the first time since the ranking began nine years ago.

Manager magazine has the family going from number three to number 13, calculating that the debacle to take over VW cost them a staggering 11 billion, or 71 % of their wealth.

Top of the charts are the Albrecht brothers — Karl and Theo who run the Aldi discount store. Karl is estimated to have 17.35 billion in the bank and Theo has slightly less with 16.75 billion.

In total, the fortune of the 100 wealthiest Germans declined 12 billion to 285.6 billion over the past year, said Manager.

Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, who owns ball-bearings maker Schaeffler Group, which is trying to take control of Continental AG, lost 92 % of her money and slipped to 260th from 15th.

Madeleine Schickedanz, once a billionaire and the main shareholder in insolvent German retailer Arcandor AG, dropped from the list altogether.

Susanne Klatten, the BMW heiress who parted company with 2 million to a conman Swiss gigolo who tricked her into his bed and out of her money, fell to number six with 7 billion.

* WOULD BT, with ambitions to expand its pay-TV offering, be interested in buying ailing ITV? There are countless reasons why a bid from BT looks like a very long shot — pension deficits and debts at both companies spring to mind. But if the former state-owned telecoms giant does contemplate a bid, it does have a new non-executive director on board who ought to know a good deal about the commercial broadcaster. Step forward Tony Ball, former BSkyB boss, who was dumped at the 11th hour as prospective new boss of ITV two weeks ago but is as ambitious as ever…

* TO Chatham House where Niall Ferguson gives a coruscating account of the world's financial collapse in the annual Dillon Lecture — The Descent of Finance: Geopolitical Implications of the Crisis — but the eminent economic historian oddly fails to mention climate change… Outside, after his talk, a car from Climate Cars is waiting to take him from St James's Square to Heathrow.

Placement's as old as Arfur

HOW new is product placement on UK television? Not very, according to this City Spy reader:

“Watching the infamous Winchester Club in the original Minder, I noticed that all the brands on the optic could be traced back to IDV/Gilbeys. I asked my chums in the drinks firm if this wasn't a bit downmarket for them? No, they said, any TV exposure in any setting was valuable and they were fully aware of the — totally deniable — way this unofficial product placement had been arranged.”