Not much excitement ahead of what is expected to be a fairly flat pre-Budget report next week. There have been leaks aplenty (stamp duty, ISAs etc) and logical specutlation (inheritance tax, green tax reforms)but not much of too much significance.

Spending should be more interesting though, which lest we forget was what the old-fashioned Autumn Statement was all about. After the famine of his early years in office, and the feasts of more recent times, most economists expect Brown to stick to a strict diet on the public spending front going forward.

Mind you, it could all be so different if last year is anything to go by. Brown delivered a dullish PBR after an incendiary speech to the CBI that saw him unilaterally scrap the OFR. This week he delivered a dullish speech to the CBI and may be in the mood to follow it up with an incendiary PBR...

I've been scanning some of the many blogs that have covered last week's Accountancy Age Awards. Seeing so many non-journalistic takes on the night is an interesting - and new - phenomenon.

Unsurprisingly quite a few cover the best use of internet awards - including Goodman Jones' win in the Practice category(try The Ponderings of Woodrow, Accmanpro, Tax Research UK and Business Two Zero).

Another good one is Jeremy Newman's. The head of BDO Stoy Hayward picked up both the Personality of the Year Award and, more significantly, the Global Firm Award. And, as you can tell from his blog, was beside himself with excitement.

Recess Monkey has an amusing take on a joke by our host, William Hague, which made it into The Times diary (which, apropros of nothing, is written by Hugo Rifkind, son of Sir Malcolm and a former Cabinet colleague of Hague).

My favourite, though, is by the son of one of the winners. In what seems to be  a mainlymusic-related blog Bengraham says the award picked up by his Dad on the night was a 'pretty big deal'. I couldn't agree more.

We've finally posted videos of the night. Click here for interviews with the winners.

Still at the European CFO Summit, I had dinner with a Russian finance director last night. Amid talk of how expensive Moscow had become, how hard it is to find a decent flat there these days and just how sustainable the country's staggering growth is, we talked about burgeoning crime levels.

It was a problem, he conceded, though more so for others. 'I don't,' he boasted, 'even have a bodyguard.' Most high-profile FDs and CFOs do it seems.

And with that I suggested we carried on our conversation a little further away from the window....

OK, the headline's slightly unkind. But I was surprised by the extent to which I agreed with Philippe Pelle, deputy head of the EC's company law  and corporate governance unit this morning. (You can find the full story here). Pelle was speaking at the European CFO Summit in Monaco (which I'm currently chairing) and made the sort of speech one yearns to hear from civil servants.

Question: Is the EC making representations to the SEC about the extra-terratorial burdens Sarbox is placing?

Pelle: Yes

Question: Can the EC give any assurances that there will be no corporate legislative surprises in the coming years.

Pelle: Yes

Question: Is the EC concerned about the impact of regulation on small businesses - shouldn't it think small first?

Pelle: Yes

You get the picture. And yes, fine words are not the same as effective action (he said that too) but it's not a bad place to start.

Unreliable economic indicators #43. There seem to be more 'administrators appointed' press releases landing in my inbox this autumn - the latest announcing Steve Parker and Trevor Binyon of Tenon Recovery as joint administrators of Three Cooks Limited, which owned and operated 160 3 Cooks bakeries nationwide.

So should we fear the worst about the future health of economy? Perhaps we should as the company, which employed 1,150 staff, blamed financial difficulties 'arising mainly from a downturn in high street trading conditions'.

More research is needed though. For a definitive economic assessment, I'll try and book a table at a decent restaurant and flag down a cab.

It's probably fair to say that Sir Digby Jones won't be looking back on his five years as a non-executive director of iSoft with much fondness.

The company is under fire for accounting breaches – more specifically booking revenues too early – and Sir Digby (who I should mention helped judge this year's Accountancy Age Awards) is attracting his fair share of personal bad publicity.

It's for two reasons.

The smaller is that he was a member of the company's audit committee during a crucial period at the embattled software supplier, compounded by the fact that he was senior non-executive director.

The other, and much more significant, is that, as the former DG of the CBI, he is a big fish in the non-exec pool.

Sir Digby's experience is bound to make him more cautious in taking on non-exec appointments in the future. And it will have a wider impact too, making more and more existing and prospective non-execs wary of taking on the role.

With the AIDB already investigating iSoft - and with Britain's most senior business spokesman dragged into the fray - as corporate scandals go, it's a story with legs.

I can't help thinking that in a few years' time, the iSoft sotry might mark a tipping point in the governance debate. That said, I can't tell yet which way it will tip.