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Alistair Darling is delivering .

This is not just any . This isn't even any old Budget day.

This is more of a battle plan as Britain moves onto an economic war footing.

The idea is that we are supposed to do our patriotic duty by going out and spending lots in the shops.

Let's gloss over the fact that we have been doing that rather too enthusiastically for rather too long.

Saving for your retirement, or even a rainy day? Forget it.

This IS a rainy day unlike any other. It's not just drizzle we're talking, but a major storm brewing off the British coast.

One of the risks of a big fiscal stimulus is that people take their tax cuts and extra spending power and spend that on sucking in imports.

That can as easily mean a foreign holiday as an imported laptop, car or a whole lot of Chinese-made toys for the kids' Christmas.

And money spent on imports is money lost to the British economy, so the multiplier effect of that cash swirling round the economy goes to help some other country.

That is why Gordon Brown was careful to give himself political cover for his fiscal stimulus, with the Washington summit agreement for other countries to do likewise.

As well as Alistair Darling's statement, we're finding out today about the possible scale of the American boost - 700 billion dollar seems the same nice, round figure used for the buy-out of toxic debt approved by Congress in early October.

The idea is to get everyone boosting their economies at roughly the same rate, so that leakage to imports is minimised, or at least so that we gain from others' spending programmes through our exports.

That's where Jim McColl comes in, as boss of Clyde Blowers.

Just before he headed off to the US and South Africa last week, to work on integrating new subsidiaries of his Scottish-based company, he was announcing a giant new order from China, to supply pumps for several new nuclear power stations.

The Beijing Government is going for a humungous fiscal stimulus of 4 trillian yuan, which converts at roughly £400 billion.

And by bringing forward its vast programme in building energy plants, that means good news for those with the technology at Weir Pumps' Cathcart works, in Glasgow.

Parent company Clyde Blowers, says Jim McColl, is now positioned as the world's biggest provider of pumps to the nuclear power industry.

McColl remains assertively upbeat about prospects, which puts him in a very small minority these days.

His advice to others in Scottish business: stop looking at your shoes, look up and for new opportunities.