Solicitors in England and Wales have been issued with a new Practice Note (a non-binding guidance) relating to the use of social media including sites such as Twitter and Facebook. It reveals a fascinating insight into the ways in which supposedly transient media can trip up the unwary, and not just lawyers.

A simplified insolvency scheme designed for those who are too poor to be bankrupt is most used by those between 25-34 years of age, says a UK government report.

World Money Laundering Report and The Financial Crime Forum are sponsoring a free two-day download of "How Not To Be A Money Launderer" by Nigel Morris-Cotterill, Head, The Anti Money Laundering Network. They want to give away 100,000 copies on 5 and 6 January 2011. .

Insolvency: the state where liabilities exceed assets and/or there is an inability to pay debts as they fall due.

That'll be the USA, then. Again.

International Airliens Group (IAG), the group holding company for British Airways and Iberia is to buy bmi (sic) from Lufthansa. But it's not all plane sailing.

No doubt something will happen while we are away between today and 3 January,

But it won't be as important as this message:

We wish all our readers, customers and clients a very Merry Christmas and send our hopes for a 2012 that far surpasses 2011.

Neil James Duckworth was Director and Secretary of Ocean Key Holdings Ltd. It is alleged that the company borrowed more than AUD830,000 which Duckworth then took from the company for his personal use.

Mr John Spence

"We woz robbed," the cry erupts from football terraces when a team loses. That's how many Britons feel now the full extent of first the accession, in the 1970s, to the EC (as it then was) and then the loss of slugs of sovereignty under the Maastricht Treaty in the 1990s. Famously, (and, to a degree, probably apocryphally), General de Gaul's response to British requests during the 1970s negotiations was a resounding "non." Now, a British Prime Minister, the sometimes criticised for being "young" and "inexperienced" David Cameron, has had the courage to respond in like terms. Bravo.