It's a jungle out there, I tell you. I have been sent an industry update by a big outfit that provides birds for people to shoot at. The shooting season is apparently almost on us - look, please don't correct me if it isn't. I know even less about this than I do about golf, and regular readers know that isn't much. But it seems life is not easy in the butts (I had to look the word up).

Some teams of guns are apparently not booking early but waiting for bargains to appear later and estates are having difficulty collecting deposits from potential clients. Some estates you normally can't get near for love, money or an old Etonian background are available this year.

Farmers supplying birds are reporting low orders, or attempts by estates to get discounts. A number of estates are thinking of “putting down” a smaller number of birds than usual - I don't think this means what it seems to. And the price per bird charged by estates to bloodthirsty clients is up, because of rising fuel and feed costs. Is nothing immune from the credit crunch?

There has been little movement of late on the proposed vacation of Somerset House on the Strand by HM Revenue & Customs. It has always been speculated that the building, or some of it, will become a hotel. I reported a price of £500,000 a room being asked a year ago, though perhaps this is less achievable now. The latest story is that GuestInvest, which produces buy-for-let hotels whereby investors put up money and get a share of subsequent rentals, might be interested. The company, which also owns Blakes Hotel and the Brewery on Chiswell Street, has never commented. But I note something called “GuestInvest [Somerset House] Limited” has just been registered at Companies House.

Business in the Community will hand out various awards to retailers on Monday according to how green/sustainable/po-faced/ sanctimonious (delete where appropriate) they are. This sort of thing is taken seriously by our big grocery chains - perhaps they dimly perceive that they are not seen as the most altruistic businesses on the planet. But I do note that Marks & Spencer, which has made a huge fuss of being green, charging for plastic bags, the ridiculous Plan A, etc, may not be terribly successful on the night, because its green credentials have been downgraded by BITC. No idea why. Can't say I particularly care, but I thought you might like to know.

As if things could not get any worse in Zimbabwe, the banking system is in danger of grinding to a halt because computers cannot cope with the number of zeros caused by rampant hyperinflation. The government paper reports that existing systems can cope with anything up to Z$9,99 trillion, but anything beyond this causes what is technically known as a “truncation”. Transactions between banks are not going through or are taking days. The governor of the central bank is promising action.

The best option, as happened a couple of years ago, would be to cut off a couple of zeros, but this might not be politically acceptable. Incidentally, younger readers may not be aware that the French were forced to do just this as recently as the 1960s.

On Monday I learnt that the Mirror's respected graduate trainee scheme was being shut down, so difficult were times at Trinity Mirror. This was denied, which was curious because I knew it to be true, but what can you do? Last night I learnt that the Mirror's respected scheme for two graduate trainees was, in fact, being shut down. Earlier denials had been a “misunderstanding”. One hardly expects much more these days. But what would Hugh Cudlipp have made of such inaccuracy?

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