We've taken two calls in the office from people who have been paid their 2006 single farm payment and I couldn't be more pleased for them.
Yet we can't escape from the fact that there are still plenty of people who haven't had their 2005 payments finalised.
There aren't that many who haven't had anything (and even with the old IACS scheme there were always some people the Rural Payments Agency couldn't pay for months and months). But there are 620 waiting for a top-up payment and another 20,000 with an error.
Admittedly, some of the 20,000 will be people who were overpaid rather than underpaid but it is still pretty depressing.
My prediction is that the partial payments for 2006 will go out pretty much as promised by government (that's starting in mid-Feb for those who have forgotten!). But I reckon the number of errors will be huge and the whole mess will take just as long to sort out as for the 2005 claim year.