Activist investors found an unlikely poster boy last month as Billy Bragg announced he was refusing to pay his taxes until chancellor Alistair Darling reined in bonus payments at state-backed lender Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Owen Walker looks back on a frantic PADA admin procurement process and sees it into the final furlong

Last week, Nigel Waterson – the pretender to the crown of minister for pensions reform – noted a change in dinner party conversations from property market anxieties to the daunting prospect of delaying retirement. And it is not difficult to imagine why.

Some months ago I used this column to outline the growing trend among many industry bodies to refocus their lobbying away from the sitting government and onto the party in waiting. With just six months until a general election, the pensions industry is in the advanced stages of deciding on which side its bread is buttered.

First it was Germany and France, then Japan got in on the act: it seems moving out of recession is currently at the height of vogue. But sadly for the UK, we still appear to be trotting around in last season’s downturn turn-ups.

It needed something big to knock the expenses debacle off the political debating stage, and we got it. David Cameron’s Conservatives actually began to come out with some vaguely concrete economic policies.