In an interview with the Financial Times today Ed Humpherson, assistant auditor general, says government pledges to cut the red tape burden imposed on business by £4bn, and increase productivity by up to £16bn, is based on numbers that are probably “overcooked” and cannot be relied on.

He adds that the nature of the model used to calculate the £20bn total meant 'you have to be much more wary, much more cautious, and give a haircut to the numbers'.

He doesn't dismiss the figure entirely, however, saying: 'It’s a little bit more [accurate] than simply plucked out of the air'. The praise could hardly be more faint - or more damning.

It was the first time someone had bothered to explain (within my earshot at least) and without hysteria why social networking matters and that - self-evidently - its technological application is not the be all and end all.

So forget Facebook, Twitter (ask your IT department) and even blogs (ouch), the three most prevelant social networking technologies of the next year or two will be email (it's the most entrenched means of electronic communication by a country mile), the photo-sharing website Flickr (as 'even your mum is using it', according to Shirky) and old-fashioned face-to-face contact (the link here really should be a prod to go away and talk to someone. In person).

To demonstrate this, Shirky used a real-world example of a business that was suffering from warring internal factions – two departments working on other sides of the world that needed to but were failing to cooperate.

Asked by the client what social networking technology could bring these two parties closer together, Shirky's answer was two-fold: 'Plane tickets and beer'. Hasn't it always been that way?

He admitted to subscribing to the view that technology could solve everything in the past and acknowledged that too many commentators had previously predicted the death of the traditional organisation and that it was no closer to being replaced.

However, they will evole, and alternative - complementary, not supplementary - structures will emerge.

I couldn't agree more.

Collaboration is already entrenched and both real and virtual – witness the ICAEW IT Faculty’s new IT Counts website.

Similarly we're already seeing organisations (slowly) changing their views on sites like Facebook.

I heard Richard Boggis-Rolfe, the head of headhunters Odgers, on Radio 4’s The Bottom Line at the weekend talking about how staff in a networking business like his own should develop networks. In person and online.

The (virtual) social networking orthodoxy will spread, though it will never replace the compulsion for face-to-face contact, the desire to look someone in the eye and the need to kick the tyres of a business.

And it was great to hear a technological evangalist say so.

Now that, of course, is not clear cut proof that accountancy firms fail to take the issue seriously. Most are, of course, much bigger organisations than their legal counterparts and most have well-resource HR operations. Or more simply they might just not have been impressed with what this particular consultant had to offer.

I hope those are the reasons and a reluctance to engage was not borne of an ivory tower belief that everything is alright when it comes to diversity.

Firms - at the top at least - are still too white and too male. They may be changing but the pace of change is slow.

Women account for 23% of the ICAEW's membership for instance. Yet less than 10% of partners at firms ranked in Accountancy Age's 2007 Top 50 are women. Four have no female partners at all.

At the firms that provided information on ethnicity (only 40% did so)  less than 6% were drawn from ethnic minorities.

Outside consultancy may not be the answer but I hope this year's Top 50 shows firms are heading in the right direction.

There were concessions, though only partial, on tax matters from CGT to non-doms. There were sops to business in terms of extra support for the small firms loans guarantee scheme and the enterprise investment scheme. Steps to encourage women entrepreneurs were announced. And while it's easy to sneer, I won't let that stop me. I can only laugh when I hear yet another minister pledge to slash government red tape on business. I have heard it too many times and seen it fail too many times over the last 15 years.

The chancellor was at his most convincing when it came to green matters. It may have been rhetoric (and a few hours with the Budget pack this afternoon should reveal more) but he did sound like a man who believed in what he was saying. A plastic bag tax was threatened (and backed up by a timetable), further cuts in carbon emissions were hinted at and the first carbon Budget was promised (and for next year to boot).

Full marks to  Darling for his performance too.

Following in Gordon Brown's considerable footsteps (he may have stumbled recently but he was always enviably sure-footed come Budget day) is a difficult task. And Darling acquitted himself reasonably well - despite the close attentions of the Tory frontbench.

George Osborne is too fresh-faced to appear threatening. But David Davis was leaning so far forward he looked as though he might nut the chancellor should he pass off any other Tory ideas as his own.

‘Internally, the campaign has created a great buzz amongst our people receiving positive feedback and a thirst for more, with 86% saying they would like to see Deloitte invest in further advertising,’ he says.

So expect to see more advertising this year – on taxis and in the national press.

And even a multinational behemoth like Deloitte is not immune to the charms of Google. It will, says Pyke, also be using the search firm’s advertising arm to further its charms.

These campaigns could also make use of the winners of an internal competition to write the headlines for the next round of branding. Apparently 2,403 votes were registered in just five days in an internal poll.

Suggestions as to what Deloitte’s new slogan might be are, of course, welcome. Feel free too to suggest how other firms might choose to market themselves.

Just keep them respectable, please.

OK, fairly respectable.