I must confess to being just a little baffled about the long-term direction of the government’s tax raising strategy, although it is clear that the tax take is going upwards.

In contrast to the damp squib of a Spring Statement earlier this week (what was the point?), there was better news this week about the rise of female investors.

I have never been the biggest fan of the House of Lords (an unelected second chamber doesn’t sound very twenty first century to me) but I cheered this week when their noble Lords took a closer look at the Pensions Bill and decided a £2,000 salary sacrifice cap, as the Government wants, was a pretty bad idea.

This is going to be a big year for pensions, particularly for pensions regulation which is at last showing some limited signs of moving forward.

I was mightily cheered this week by our story on the CII awarding Chartered Corporate Status to no less than eight Financial Planning firms.

I suspect many Financial Planners are still in two minds about the FCA’s targeted support plans which moved a step forward this week with a provisional go-live date of April.

It’s been very easy to get caught up in the economic doom and gloom recently, I’m certainly guilty of it myself, but sometimes you can’t always see the wood for trees.

A week or so after the Budget and I am still grappling with one of the most baffling and possibly vindictive moves I’ve ever seen in a Budget - the attack on pension savers using salary sacrifice.

The FCA’s latest Retail Mediation Activities Report - out this week - provides an interesting snapshot of the adviser sector. It shows a rather mixed picture but not necessarily a bad one.

This week I attended the Personal Finance Society’s 2025 National Conference in the cutting edge, and somewhat cavernous, new Maritime Halls at London’s Excel Centre in Docklands. I was impressed. It was a good conference demonstrating a great deal of confidence in the future.