Britain's construction sector suffered a relapse during November, new data suggested yesterday, after posting a surprise gain in October.

Outlook Having spent Tuesday promoting an Autumn Statement full of schemes to promote lending to small and medium-sized businesses, George Osborne can't have been too pleased to read yesterday's Financial Stability Report from the Bank of England. It was full of reasons for the banks to lend less rather than more.

Outlook One cheer only for the CBI, which yesterday joined those calling for reforms that prevent all but the most outstanding executives pocketing whacking pay rises. Its backing of proposals that would allow companies to claw back pay from executives where performance does not endure is welcome, particularly in the context of Thomas Cook, a struggling business that saw its chief executive leave earlier this year having received enormous rewards for failure.

Outlook Remember the green economy? So do the 4,500 workers told yesterday by their employer, Carillion, that they are at risk of redundancy because the Government has slashed the subsidies on offer to people who install solar panels on their homes. The cuts take effect next week, even before a consultation exercise on the future of feed-in tariffs has finished, and they are drastic.

Outlook Yesterday's joint intervention by the world's central banks may have lit a rocket under world stock markets, but we should see it for what it really was: an admission from central bankers that another credit crunch is upon us. Moreover, this intervention addressed the symptoms of the sickness in Europe's funding markets rather than the cause.

Outlook Ten years ago tomorrow, Enron, which back then was the US's seventh largest company, filed for bankruptcy following a shocking accounting scandal that appeared to have completely passed its auditor by. The auditor in question, Arthur Andersen, subsequently disbanded.

Outlook Back in the good old days, when David Cameron was only leader of the opposition, there was a great deal of political mileage in making some ground-breaking policy shifts – like ruling out a third runway at Heathrow, for example. In Government, such pledges so often turn out to be more trouble than they are worth.

Outlook The problem with robbing Peter to pay Paul, which is what this Autumn Statement is all about, is that Peter isn't likely to take it lying down. So it may prove with the difficult balance the Chancellor continues to try to strike with Britain's banks.