Place your bets for George Osborne Budget

Political traders will be betting on how long the Chancellor’s address will last - 57 minutes is favourite according to spread betting firm Sporting Index. The group predicts the word “tax” will be uttered 93 times. Punters may prefer to bet on how many sips of water Osborne will take. Last year the Chancellor reached for his glass eight times and clearly takes hydration much more seriously than his Labour predecessors. In 12 Budget speeches from 1997 to 2009, neither Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling took a single sip between them. Who knows how many times the house will be called to order during the speech. The only dead cert? Tory MP Ken Clarke will grab 40 winks. City workers will abandon pinstripes and braces in favour of choir robes for a concert at Sadler’s Wells theatre. The choirs of Allen & Overy, Freshfields, the Royal Bank of Canada and the Financial Times will be singing Handel’s Messiah on April 29. FT hacks are involved in industrial action for being in servitude. The “Slaves” chorus is on the concert programme - will it be a Pink Un’ solo I wonder? A press release invades my inbox - courtesy of James Caan’s spinners. The former BBC Dragon is ranting about entrepreneurs - or the UK’s “neglected sector” as he describes them. Sadly his PRs “neglected” to spot their not-so-deliberate mistake. It read: “The Government has launched a £20 loan guarantee scheme to try and boost bank lending to small and medium sized enterprises.” Oops. Worth the wait February 2012 came and went but one thing was missing - Brunswick’s annual media bash. The PR giant cancelled its press party for the first time in ten years. Worry not - this gaping hole from the City’s social calendar doesn’t imply financial difficulty for the communications firm. A party animal tells me Brunswick is secretly planning a monster bash in the summer to celebrate its 25th anniversary. I await my invitation with glee. Man overboard. Chip designer Arm has lost its boardroom director, Mike Inglis. Yesterday, the company announced Inglis was leaving to compete in a round the world sailing race in 2013. Does the sailor spy a storm ahead without him to steer the ship? He sold off more than half his stake in the FTSE 100 firm earlier this month.