Heathrow Terminal 5 opens to the public today: a triumph of modern engineering. With five levels, the size of 10 football pitches, it is the largest freestanding building in Britain.

This week’s return to Westminster after the long summer recess was always going to be eventful but few MP’s could have predicted they would return to arguably the most severe financial crisis since the 1930’s.

Just as in 1933, the current banking crisis began in America and like 75 years ago when the US Government had to step in and pass the “Glass –Steagall Act” to save Wall Street so President Bush proposed a similar measure.

Good riddance to a bad year was very much the feeling of revellers as 2008 departed and the new year was ushered in. With unprecedented levels of gloom over falling house prices, rising unemployment and a credit crunch that has left most financial commentators lost for words – surely things can only get better in 2009! Well let’s hope so – though the omens are hardly optimistic.

I suspect few were more pleased to see the start of the Christmas recess than the Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The winter of 'disc-content' that has seen half the nation's bank details lost became a whole lot worse when Ruth Kelly, the hapless Secretary of State for Transport, revealed that millions of learner driver details were lost. Not in Gateshead this time but Iowa in the USA!