Business Diary: The Beeb's sly dig at Osborne

Revenge for the miserly licence fee settlement awarded to it by the Government? BBC News 24's live coverage of George Osborne's spending review statement in the Commons yesterday was interrupted by an inadvertent switch ofpictures back to the studio. The feed from Parliament was restored in time for Mr Osborne to formally announce the details of the BBC settlement, but it was hardly a respectful response.

Never mind sober, it's dire

In Mervyn King's final speech before the CSR on Tuesday evening, the Governor of the Bank of England tried to coin a new phrase. Having said a few years back that we were going through a "nice" decade – a period of non-inflationary consistent expansion – Mr King reckons "sober" is more fitting these days: savings, orderly budgets and equitable rebalancing. In fact, suggests Howard Archer of Global Insight, "dire" might be more fitting – disappointing inflation,rotten expansion.

Channel 4 show enrages Cayman

Oh dear, someone is upset. An angry email from a man called Jack Irvine arrives complaining about a recent Dispatches show on Channel 4 about the Cayman Islands. "Channel 4's Dispatches documentary, How The Rich Beat The Taxman, plumbed new depths in cliché-ridden journalism and the recycling of hoary old myths," it begins. Those who make it all the way to the end of the rant will read the following: "Note to editors: Jack Irvine is media and political adviser toCayman Finance, the representative body of the financial services industry in theCayman Islands."

Buffett bashes Berkshire

Warren Buffett was on CNBC revealing his worst-ever trade: buying into a textiles firm known as, wait for it, Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett said he ended up buying the company after a fallout with its management (who he then fired) but then had to spend 20 years getting it out of the textiles business while all the time buying other more profitable concerns he never needed Berkshire for.

businessdiary@independent.co.uk