Budgets are inherently dull. Outside the Beltway do many Americans pay attention when the President sends his annual budget request to Congress?

But here in Britain, no mater how dull the details,  there are weeks of speculation about what the annual budget will contain in terms of taxes and measures to encourage this or that part of the economy. On the day itself, the 24 hour news stations go wall to wall with the story, statistics fly like a seminar in business school.

When a banker gives back a seven-figure bonus that's news. Of course, there is a story attached.

Stephen Hester, is head of RBS, Britain's largest bank and epicenter of the banking crisis in 2008. The British government bailed out the ultimate too big to fail institution and that means the British taxpayer owns 83 percent of the bank.

Hester was recruited by the government of Labour's Gordon Brown to run the bank after the previous management was forced out as the price of the rescue. He took a paycut to try and turn the bank around. He has by all accounts done a reasonable job.

But to wipe debt off the bank's books he has had to shed staff. I blogged about the latest cuts last week.

Angela Merkel has become the most important politician in Europe.  She rarely speaks candidly to the press so these comments given to a consortium of liberal newspapers including The Guardian are worth paying attention to:

Within the wider euro zone debt crisis she considers Greece, "a special case where, despite all the efforts that have been made, neither the Greeks themselves nor the international community have yet managed to stabilize the situation." 

There are now 2.5 million people counted as unemployed in Britain. Almost a quarter of the working age population (16 -64) were inactive between June and August, the period during which today's figures were compiled.

The sharp jump in the jobless rate is both the least surprising and most shocking economic news the UK has seen since Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government took office in May 2010.