Little noticed by those that lived away from a broken down scene that epitomised British industrial landscape forty years ago the Chinese were busy buying up anything useful that closed British manufacturing operations had cast aside.

Down and now possibly all but out for the count - can anything save Swedish automaker Saab?

When it comes to telling it how it is on pay Bank of England Governor Dr. Mervyn King might as well now be known formally as Dr. Doom.

Just four weeks ago it really did look as if Boeing would regain the now much heralded annual sales leadership race that it lost to Airbus back in 2008.

Are the good times really over for the big UK retailers? If you look at sales performances from the likes of J. Sainsbury, John Lewis Group that includes the mighty Waitrose food retailer, Fortnum & Masons and other specialist players published over the past few days you will easily conclude that the answer is no.

OK, so oil prices are rising along with other commodity prices and too many newspaper headlines appear reserved only to project bad news.

If all that Virgin Atlantic can do is to threaten to withhold payments to BAA after being badly caught out during the sudden and protracted shutdown of Heathrow airport last month then it is a pretty poor show.

Although what had back in November appeared as a fairly wide gap in the annual Boeing v Airbus race to lead the total number of commercial aircraft orders won during last year had narrowed during the final weeks of 2010 it still looks as if the US planemaker will after all regain the title that it lost to its European based arch rival Airbus several years ago.

Amid several days of media hype warning us that VAT was to be raised to a heady 20 per cent from today it is pleasing that markets should when the shutters were finally removed take the new situation in its stride. Indeed, during the first twenty minutes or so of trading this morning the veritable FTSE100 index leapt above 6,000 points for a quite remarkable rise of over one hundred points.

As the sun readies itself to set over the yardarm of yet another traumatic year, it is surely right to note that, despite a raft of unresolved economic woes now about to be shifted into 2011 and having come a very long way over the last year, there really is a lot to be thankful for.