Unfortunately, while 2008 may indeed be a profitable year for many of you, it will almost certainly be a tough one, too, for chief executives and Prime Ministers alike.

All the economic indicators, such as manufacturing orders, retailers' trading results, rising energy prices, spiralling food costs, house prices, mortgage costs and lending figures, suggest 2008 is, at the very least, going to be bumpy.

What odds on us witnessing two consecutive quarters of negative growth – the accepted definition of a recession?

It really didn't need the Government to add its own magic ingredients to an already unstable mixture in the form of tax changes, which as detailed in our story on page one, will penalise those developers that wish to construct industrial buildings and those firms that plan to invest in new plant and machinery.

These are just the latest in an ever expanding catalogue of Government measures that hinder the ability of business to function and which add to costs and therefore, reduces the ever important bottom line.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that he wants to be judged on his performance over the next 12 months.

In the eyes of some business leaders in Peterborough, this prudent PM may well have already run out of time.

He is already being judged on his decision to auction 400 tonnes of gold bullion between 1999 and 2001, after which the price of gold trebled, costing the Treasury an estimated £2 billion, the removal of tax credits on share dividends, which is thought to have cost pension funds £100 billion, the alterations to Capital Gains Tax and the run on Northern Rock and the mammoth sums of public funds that are still being used to prop up the ailing bank.

For sure, business is already counting the cost of Mr Brown's handling of the economy first as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister.