Some of you will be in little doubt that after years of being told pensions is a dull backwater, those doing the telling were right.

Who’d have thought that we, so clever and advanced in our modern world could be put in our place by an act of god?

Although we knew the first generation of Nest savers would face higher charges to defray the set-up costs, I would have preferred to see the taxpayer footing the bill.

This month I was going to offer a jaundiced squint at Hector Sants stepping down as chief executive of the Finan­cial Services Authority. After all, he had the audacity to blame institutional investors for creating the environ­ment that led to the credit crunch when the country was asking questions of the regulator he represented.

Now, I may be in the minority here, but the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority’s (PADA’s) decision to rebrand personal accounts as ‘Nest’ – or the National Employment Savings Trust to give it is full monicker – is something of a joke. And it fell rather flat when I read the release.

Okay, so I’m a card-carrying member of the Ebeneezer Scrooge fan club, although I’m not so keen on his later work.

In 1919, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, or Lenin to you and me, wrote: “While the state exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no state.”

Now, although there has been a degree of backlash against capitalism in the last couple of years, I can tell you categorically that Vlad was completely out of whack on this one. Because as of last week, there was no freedom and it was the state what done it.

It’s always nice to be recognised for something, isn’t it? Even if we aren’t screaming out for attention, it’s nice when someone recognises something we’ve done as having some intrinsic value.

September is the start of the conference season and you can bet your bottom dollar that pensions is going to feature fairly high on the agenda.

They say it’s lonely at the top. No one knows that better than Gordon Brown at the moment. Not that he’s all that bothered I would imagine. After all, he’s someone who has never knowlingly demonstrated a propensity for camaraderie or bonhomie. Asceticism is not so much an ideal, as a way of life, for him; he probably gave himself a lift by putting Gloria Gaynor on repeat on his karaoke machine.

You know, it’s funny in this ever-changing world of ours just how much remains exactly the same. That’s not funny ha-ha, you understand, but funny in the understated, yet back-tighteningly awful way that things are sent to try us.

Unfortunately for us at PM – although I’m sure you’ll be sick of it by now – we went to press the day before the Budget, thus were unable to report what happened.

Some of you may have read an editorial I wrote for last September’s High Net Worth in which I complained (bitterly) of the ignominy of a system that allows individuals to assist in the creation of regulatory frameworks before moving into private sector with inside knowledge of all the potential pitfalls and loopholes.

I’ve got to tell you that I’m a bit disappointed. Well, really quite a lot disappointed, actually. Like many of you, I was looking forward to the Treasury select committee, where the former bank chiefs were going to get a roasting.

David Bowie has a lot to answer for.