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One of the (rather unpleasant) clichés of life as a lawyer is that economic hardship can be good for business. During boom times, lawyers who specialise in running disputes supposedly twiddle their thumbs as deal after deal is drafted and negotiated. Everyone is too busy trying to do the next deal to worry about what might have gone wrong in the last one. When the deals dry up, or so the thinking goes, people start re-examining the bottom line and dispute work takes off.

The truth is rather more mundane, but it's against that background that I offer the cautionary tale of Mr and Mrs Western. In 2005, they bought a new house in Essex. It had problems - about £20,000 worth. Because it was a brand new house, the Westerns had the benefit of insurance from the National House Builders Council - the NHBC. This contains a dispute resolution procedure which Mr and Mrs Western followed. They won, which is how we know the cost of putting things right.

However, the Westerns had also employed a building surveyor to help them with their case. His fees came to £7,000 and the Westerns wanted to be compensated for that expense. The builder was more than happy to fix the dodgy work, it just didn't want to pay the £7k as well.

Here's where things started to go wrong for the Westerns. They tried what they thought was the proper next step and appointed an arbitrator to decide things. The builder disagreed - both sides in a dispute need to agree to arbitration and the builder denied ever reaching any agreement. The dispute revolved around the precise wording of the NHBC documents. Ultimately, it went all the way to the High Court for a judge to decide whether or not the arbitration should proceed.

The judge agreed with the builder. In his judgment last month he found against the Westerns and ordered them to pay just over half of the builder's costs of taking the case to court (these came to £4k).

To make matters worse, the judgment explains that the builder had not actually been back to the Westerns' house in the meantime. They had refused him entry until the question of the surveyor's fees was resolved.

So, over a period of about two years, Mrs and Mrs Western have lived in a duff house, been through three different dispute resolution processes and, despite their underlying case being strong (the house has faults which the builder has agreed to put right), are over £11,000 out of pocket (they will have their own solicitor's costs on top of the surveyor's fees and the £4k paid to the builder).

Litigation is a risky business. It's great when it works; and more often than not a nightmare when it doesn't. The Westerns must be wondering what they have let themselves in for.

Last Thursday, I was a guest at Drivers Jonas's annual crane survey for Birmingham. As its name suggests, this is a review of development in Brum's city core (measured by the number of cranes in the skyline) over the past 12 months. The survey results themselves were upbeat. This isn't a surprise (or shouldn't be) - there have been (and continue to be) lots of cranes in the sky.

And the survey wasn't all doom and gloom for the next 12 months. Although the residential market is going to slow significantly (just how many more studio apartments does the city centre need?), there is plenty of Grade A office space coming on stream.

However, the people I talked to over breakfast were uniformly downbeat about prospects for the next 12 to 24 months. Predictions ranged from the jokey - "I will be spending a lot of the next 12 months reducing my golf handicap" - to the downright suicidal - "It's 1929 all over again".

It's not just Brum's property and construction industries that are worried. A quick scan of the headlines suggests that people are concerned about at least some or all of the following: house prices are falling; interest rates are on the up; the price of fuel and food is increasing radically; you can't get a mortgage for love nor money; America's economy seems to be in an even worse state than ours; and the great and the good all seem to be predicting doom and gloom.

If you believe the pessimists, we are either in recession already or headed that way at a rate of knots. But, with all the authority I can muster from having got an A in an economics exam 21 years ago, I'm not so sure.

Hopefully more persuasively. I've also come across this very interesting article by Anotole Kaletsky in which he (with a lot more authority, knowledge and ability than I can) challenges the assumption that America is in recession. His basic argument is that a downturn in the housing and banking industries is just that: a downturn (albeit a painful one) but not a recession.

I can't help but wonder if the same argument doesn't apply to the UK. That's not to decry the difficulties people are facing, or that we live in challenging times, but are we really in recession? To pinch the definition used in Kaletsky's article - "A recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, visible in industrial production, employment, real income and wholesale-retail trade. A recession influences the economy broadly and is not confined to one sector." - the argument goes that we have not actually seen evidence of that.

Which brings me onto the question posed at the start. If we are not actually in recession, isn't there a danger that we will convince ourselves that things are worse than they really are? What do people think?

I'll begin with a confession - this is really a plug for my favourite telly programme masquerading as a business blog. So, first up, let's hear it for the best thing on TV by a country mile - Location, Location, Location hosted by Phil Spencer and Kirstie Allsopp. Brilliant presenters who are witty, authoritative and very good at what they do. They also combine a great personal chemistry with a passion for their work. And Mrs P gets to shout at the telly when the couples Phil and Kirstie are helping ignore their advice. What more can you want out of an hour of light entertainment?

But the latest series has adopted a more serious tone as Kirstie and Phil consider how to stop the bottom falling out of the housing market. Their solution - asking the government to take a serious look at stamp duty.

If you've bought a house, then there's a strong chance that you've come across stamp duty (or stamp duty land tax to give it its full name) and you may well think it's rather unfair. I certainly do.

In fact, I'd go further - in the 21st century, it's a real anachronism. That's because most taxes are based on something tangible - income, capital gain or value to think of three of the most obvious ones. Stamp duty isn't. No: it's the cost of getting a bit of paper that the government insists on before you can register your purchase at the Land Registry. The cost to you depends on the value of the house. Up to £125k, there's no charge. Then it's 1% of the purchase price up to £250k, 3% up to £500k and 4% for houses worth more than that. The average house price in England and Wales is £183,626. So, if you have bought an average house recently, there was nearly 2 grand extra on the bottom line in return for a bit of paper. It's perhaps no surprise that the total value to Alistair Darling is north of £7 billion.

Kirstie and Phil aren't advocating the abolition of the tax altogether, and it would be naïve to expect the government to find an extra £7 billion by magic from another source. Rather, their concern is to keep the property market buoyant - the volume of sales has fallen by roughly 30% between February 2007 and February 2008.

Their suggestion:

(i) First time buyers should not have to pay stamp duty when the value of the purchase property is under £250,000.

(ii) It should then be graduated for everyone else so that buyers generally pay 1% on the first £125,000 to £250,000. Above this threshold, the 3% would only be charged on the amount over £250,000 (rather than the full amount) and similarly the 4% only on the amount over £500,000.

Am I the only one who thinks that there's a lot of sense in this?

There's lots in today's Post on the merits or otherwise of tall buildings. There's the lead story, a supportive editorial and (although I don't think it's linked to the other two) a great blog from Jon Bounds on the magic of the Rotunda.

Maybe it's because I'm on the vertically-challenged side of things height wise, but I have long been fascinated by tall buildings. It's not just their size and scale that impress - although I have to admit that they do. Done well: they can be inspiring visitor attractions. Think of the Empire State and Rockefeller Centre in New York or the John Hancock Building and Sears Tower in Chicago. You have stunning buildings with great facilities that attract tourists like magnets. What's more, they have become symbols of their cities recognisable the world over. And having dragged (an admittedly somewhat windswept) Mrs P to the top of all of them bar Sears Tower, I can confirm that they have great views.

So, am I a fan of tall buildings? Unequivocally yes. Would I like to see more in Brum? Same answer. Do I think they would be good for business...dear reader, I think you can guess my response.

Which brings us to the (for me at least) more interesting question of why people might not want them. So far as the debate in Brum is concerned, there appear to be two points. One is the understandable concerns about tall buildings following the dreadful events of September 11th. However, I think that is a concern about the truly awful things that extremists can do and not a criticism of tall buildings per se. I agree with the approach being adopted by New York. The proposed Freedom Tower is a bold and brave response to the terrorists. I hope to visit it.

Which brings us onto the local objections from the Victorian Society, most recently regarding the proposed redevelopment of the NatWest Tower. Their allegation is that the redevelopment is nothing more than "political, economic and architectural opportunism" which blows "a destructive hole" in the "consistent fabric" of buildings along Colmore Row. I'm not an architect but I'm a bit surprised at the blowing-a-hole bit of the argument. Isn't that what the current tower has done? As for the opportunism, my understanding of the proposals is that British Land hope to turn an ugly concrete monstrosity into a 21st century office building. What's wrong with that?

Having said all that, I still don't like Beetham Tower. Too green.

Clare Short has suggested that Brum becomes a transition city.

The transition town movement has been set up to meet the challenges of climate change and the high cost of oil. One of the suggestions being considered by some towns - Totnes in Devon was the first with Lewes in Sussex recently deciding to follow suit - is that transition towns create their own currencies; there is now a Totnes pound. The idea is that the local currency will only be available to purchase locally-produced goods and services which will encourage local commerce and reduce Totnes's and Lewes's reliance on goods brought in from elsewhere, the amount of oil they consume and their carbon footprints.

If Brum were to accept Ms Short's recommendation, we too could see ourselves spending the Brum pound (although hopefully we might come up with a better name). And, with apologies for the legal-anorak nature of what follows, this raises a very interesting legal conundrum.

This is because the money we use now isn't actually worth anything. It's what lawyers call a bill of exchange, which is a posh way of describing an IOU. It's a promise to pay; if you think about it, that's what the words actually say on the notes produced by the Bank of England. The only way that money works is because it's backed up by assets at the Bank of England (or the lending banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland which can also issue their own currency). In practice, we never bother to call in on the asset held by the bank - we just treat the money as if it were as good as the asset. The system works fine unless we think that the bank doesn't have sufficient assets to support the money in circulation. When that happens, at the very least you get runaway inflation of the kind seen recently in Zimbabwe. The worst case scenario is a financial crisis of truly horrible proportions.

So here's the problem. What will the Brum (or indeed Totnes or Lewes) pound actually be? Well, they can only themselves be bills of exchange which will, I assume, have to be swapped at some stage in the future for other bills of exchange in the form of proper money. On the one hand, this makes me wonder whether the whole idea is going to be unnecessarily complicated. Why not just be an "informed" consumer and try to buy locally in any event if that's what you want to do? On the other hand, a little bit of me can't help but think that it might be fun trying. What do people think?

I have just completed two weeks' jury service at Birmingham Crown Court. At the end of a case, the judge thanked us for having done our job and made the point that lots of people think we should get rid of jury trials. The judge in my case thought that was a bad idea - he is a fan of the jury system - but he did get me thinking.

Currently there is a split between the judge's role and the jury's. Judges decide on what law is relevant - can that bit of evidence be introduced? The jury decides the facts - is the defendant guilty or innocent? The alternative would be to adopt the procedure used in a number of European countries where the judge decides everything - facts and law.

There are a couple of significant downsides to jury service. The most obvious is that it is incredibly disruptive to jurors' lives - both at work and at home. The normal length of service is two weeks but complicated (and more important) cases can last a lot longer. It used to be that there were lots of ways that you could avoid serving. This tended to mean that, instead of being tried by a jury of your peers drawn from a genuine cross-section of society, alleged criminals were tried by a jury made up of people who weren't working for whatever reason, students (out of term time) and people with sympathetic and publicly-spirited employers. Certain jobs - solicitors being one - were completely exempt.

That all changed a few years ago with the government keen to ensure that juries were more representative of the whole community. Jurors are selected at random from the electoral roll. If you are registered to vote, you can be a juror. The question is whether you can really spare 6 months out of the year to be involved in that serious fraud case.

The other main criticism of jury trials is whether, especially in the case of complex frauds and the like, juries are the best people to decide guilt or innocence. The problem is that some of the alleged scams are so complicated that you need a PhD in financial fraud to understand what's going on.

On the other hand, I understand where the judge was coming from. Trial by jury is a long-held tradition in the UK and I for one think that it just feels right. The concern is whether we as a society are prepared to support jury trials as an institution. What do people think?

Depending on whether or not you are involved in the construction industry, this story in last week's Post may have passed you by. But it has had significant ramifications throughout the construction industry. 112 firms (with three more named today) - including a number based in the West Midlands - have been named by the Office of Fair Trading as having been involved in illegal anti-competitive behaviour.

There are two main allegations:
(i) A firm is invited to bid for a contract. It doesn't want the job. Nor does it want to offend a client by refusing to bid - it wants to get offered work in the future. It therefore agrees with others to offer a bid that it knows is too high to be successful.
(ii) A small number of firms (assumed to be 9) have gone further. They agreed who would win between themselves. The successful firm then made compensation payments to the others.

The story comes with a significant word of caution. The OFT's report is actually confidential and has yet to be released. The 112 firms have until 30 June to respond and no-one has been found guilty of anything. All we have to go on is this press release from the OFT itself.

However, if true, the allegations are pretty serious. They relate to £3 billion worth of public contracts let over a four year period. To perhaps over-simplify things a bit, the named firms have been stealing from the public purse and face the prospect of significant fines - which could be up to 10% of the accused firms' global turnovers. If all of the accused get the maximum fine, the total payable to the government could exceed £2 billion.

So what should we make of it all? The first thing to stress is that construction is of fundamental importance to the UK economy - contributing roughly 10% of our GDP and employing between 1.5 and 2 million people. The second is that the industry has taken the story very seriously with a leading trade journal launching a campaign to reassure clients of the industry's ethics and a trade body, the Construction Confederation, issuing a robust defence of the industry.

I must admit to being confused and concerned as to the whole affair. Based on my own experience, the suggestion that the industry is crooked to the core is plain wrong. I am also keen to reserve judgment until all of the companies named have had the chance to respond - at the moment, all we have are the OFT's allegations. On the other hand, if people have been defrauding the public purse, then it is quite right that they should be held to account although Stephen Gruneberg, a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, has actually suggested that bid rigging is an inevitable consequence of an industry where firms have to incur significant costs up front when submitting bids which they only recoup if they win.

My overriding hope is that the whole mess gets sorted sooner rather than later.

There's a very noteworthy story hidden in the business section of today's Post. In a week of bad news about the Beijing Games, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has announced that the contracts for the main stadium and the swimming pool (we have to call it the aquatic centre, but a swimming pool's a swimming pool in my book) have been signed.

I am a huge fan of the Olympics coming to London and I really want them to be a success. It's not just that I want Team GB to win lots of medals (and I do) - I would also be delighted if the venues are all built on time (let's face it, they have to be) and on budget.

And what a budget! The ODA's press release proudly announces that the contracts are "within its baseline budget of £6.09 billion" with "no call on programme contingency at this stage". Of the £6 billion, the stadium is going to cost £496 million and the pool a further £242 million. They should be fantastic buildings - the pool is designed by the world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid and the team behind the main stadium are fresh from having procured the Emirates Stadium for Arsenal.

But what if something goes wrong? Take Wembley - it was finally finished 2 years late with the costs overrun currently being fought over in the courts. Can we avoid a repeat?

The problem (or potential problem) is that construction contracts are inherently risky. Lots of things can happen that will add to either the time it takes to complete the buildings or the cost (or both). If there is a finite budget that won't increase, the ODA and its builders have to sign up to contracts which ascribe responsibility for certain problems. Who bears the risk if the site is flooded and unworkable for one month? What if the design changes? Now the ODA aren't daft - and have expressly provided for a contingency to deal with unforeseen events.

But the entire project has been beset with cost increases. When we won the Games in July 2005, the cost was announced as £2.4 billion. Last March, Tessa Jowell announced that the construction costs would be £5.3 billion (more than twice the original estimate) with a further contingency of £2.7 billion.

A year on, and whilst it's great to be told that the contingency doesn't need to be touched, the base build cost appears to have increased by a further £800 million. My concern is that each increase detracts from public confidence in the project.

So the answer to the question posed by this blog is that I have no actual idea what the cost will be. And I wish that wasn't the case.

Regular readers of this blog (OK - I admit I am deluding myself here, but I've wanted to write a line like that for ages) will have noticed that my last piece (on the redevelopment of the Library) elicited a forthright response from Claude - for which, many thanks.

Claude is not a fan of what he sees as the massive disruption which redeveloping Paradise Circus will cause. He draws a comparison with the developments currently taking place at Five Ways and raises some strong (and strongly-put) arguments - some of the buildings being knocked down are architecturally excellent (and deserve to be maintained) whereas the replacements will be anodyne, unnecessary and expensive mixed-use schemes. To make matters worse in Claude's eyes, all of the redevelopments are motivated by the lure of filthy lucre.

Whilst I disagree about the architectural merits (or lack of them) of the 60s buildings which are up for demolition, it's that last point that got me thinking. The suggestion is that making money out of property development is somehow a bad thing. Why?

First, I must declare an interest. Doing my day job, I act for property developers. I act for lots of other people as well, but helping property developers achieve a successful (and profitable) outcome does help to pay the mortgage. I don't think that disqualifies me from commenting, but I thought I'd best be open about the issue.

Having got that out of the way, I must admit that I'm a bit flummoxed by where to start. Leaving aside perhaps the most obvious point - businesses have to make money otherwise they fail - I would go so far as to argue that you end up with better buildings if you allow there to be profit than if you don't.

Developers take on a lot of risk. To take the most extreme (but still common) example, they borrow money to acquire the land, which they then develop into the sort of project they hope will attract tenants or homeowners to occupy the buildings and (assuming the buildings and tenants are right) which might be sufficiently attractive to persuade someone like a pension fund to buy the investment. That's an incredibly difficult trick to pull off - and lots of people don't manage it.

But the key point is that the buildings have to be attractive to potential users and occupiers. If they're not, then the developer is going to take a serious bath. I'm not an architect - and what I'm about to say may go against the architectural grain - but I think that, in order to be successful, buildings don't just have to look great. The key for me is that they have to work as spaces which attract people to them (and I would suggest that the old Edgbaston Shopping Centre and Paradise Circus fail that test). The built environment is our built environment. It is the spaces in which we live, work and play. I want those spaces to be as attractive, fun and enjoyable as possible. Allowing property developers the opportunity to make some profit out of their developments is the best way I've come across of making that happen.

No, not the title of the next Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Graham Norton musical talent show for Saturday nights, but rather the question of the day in today's Post.

The problem of the future of the Central Library - shall we demolish the carbuncle or list the brutalist architectural marvel for future generations to enjoy? - takes up most of the front page and merits an editorial.

And the debate is pretty much along these extreme lines. There are two camps. One - which includes Mike Whitby, Clive Dutton, the Post and Prince Charles amongst others - thinks that the current building looks like a "place where books are incinerated, not kept". On the other, you have the original (and distinguished) architect, John Madin, the Twentieth Century Society and a campaign group, the Friends of the Central Library, who mount a spirited defence.