Strikes, floods, turbulent house prices, historic closures - the list could go on and on as we chronicle another turbulent year on the Oxfordshire business scene. The biggest ongoing story was the postal dispute, as workers fought tooth and nail to resist a wind of change blowing through the industry which will cause hundreds of job losses locally and tens of thousands nationally.

All was well last March, when Oxfordshire postal deliveries in the county were revealed as being in the top 30 in the UK.

Three months later and 2,000 of the county's postal workers were on strike as part of a national dispute as the Communication Workers Union rejected a 2.5 per cent pay rise and a host of other proposed changes, including radical restructuring of the service.

Tensions grew locally, with a stand-off between the union and management until the tinderbox situation finally flared in July with the suspension of two workers at the Cowley sorting office. A wildcat strike ensued, with workers out for six days and a backlog of more than five million items of mail. More strike days followed, in line with the national dispute, but Oxford was never far from the headlines.

Matters came to a head in an extraordinary ten-day period in September. Firstly, there was a scuffle at the sorting office as Steven Gill, one of the men at the centre of the wildcat strike, was dismissed. Union leader Bob Cullen tangled with a manager and then ended up in hospital with a heart scare.

Five days later, the CWU upped the ante, accusing management of trying to smash the union nationally, using Oxford as a focal point.

Days later their accusation appeared to come true when, in an extraordinary move, the Royal Mail announced it was to shut the Cowley sorting office by 2009, with the loss of 430 jobs.

Strikes continued until the middle of October, when a deal was struck at a national level and calm was restored. But don't expect it to last in 2008.

Meanwhile, the year also saw another long-running dispute just down the road come to a head. In June, the troubled Morris Motors Social and Athletic Club faced a winding up order from Customs and Excise over over an unpaid £55,000 VAT bill, but it was thrown a lifeline by Eddie Costello, of Chesside Homes, who has developed 17 houses and 46 flats on the site.

The deal followed years of bitter infighting between the club's members. Mr Costello stepped in to pay the club's debts and the new clubhouse was opened this month with modern facilities and a bright future ahead of it. Long may it continue.

This year also saw the culmination of a long-running investigation into whether Oxford City Council received best value for the land it sold to former Oxford United owner Firoz Kassam, on which the football stadium now stands.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, we were able to obtain figures which showed the council received £1.1m for the land, even though it was valued at £3.8m.

The council maintains that it was lucky to receive any money at all for land with a half-built stadium on it, but bearing in mind the success of the Ozone Leisure Park, which now also sits on the land, many would argue otherwise.

Outside the city, there was good news for Chipping Norton as it finally looked to have cast off the loss of the Parker Knoll factory in 2003. About 100 jobs were created in the town by medical device company Owen Mumford after it doubled the size of its manufacturing site, while many more are promised with the redevelopment of the furniture maker's former site after it was bought by a developer.

Let's hope the same thing happens in Banbury following the closure of the Sapa aluminium works, announced in November, with the loss of 337 jobs.

It marks the end of an era for the town which stretches back to the 1930s, but the company openly admitted it simply could no longer compete with other producers in lower-cost economies.

Such sadness was also felt in Witney a few years ago when the Early's blanket factory closed for good, marking the end for another traditional Oxfordshire industry.

But a particularly bitter taste has been left in the mouth of former workers ever since, as they have received no pension, despite many of them paying into a company scheme for their entire careers.

However, this month saw a momentous victory for the pensioners as the Government backed down and finally agreed to meet 90 per cent of the cost of their scheme and others like it. Payments, including a £20,000 lump sum, are expected to start as soon as possible next year.

Homeowners have also been eyeing the bottom line this year as house price inflation continued to boom.

In September, South Oxfordshire was revealed as being one of the most expensive areas in the country in which to buy a home.

Demand was outstripping supply and plans are now in place to build 4,000 homes on Oxford's Green Belt, as it was revealed prices have soared by 84 per cent in the past seven years.

But has the bubble started to burst? With the effects of the credit crunch biting hard, prices are now tumbling faster in Oxford than anywhere else in the country.

Will more interest rate cuts allow a soft landing in 2008 or will debt-ridden homeowners find themselves slipping further and further into the red as they try to keep up with repayments on crippling mortgages?

Other issues to watch out for next year include the new Westgate development - will it finally get off the ground?

And will BMW's Mini plant - which this year saw the launch of the Clubman estate model - reach full capacity? Will managers look elsewhere, perhaps India, to build more of the cars?

Finally, we should congratulate all those businesses who fought back after the devatating floods last July.

This office was one of just a handful in Osney Mead to survive unscathed, so we are acutely aware of the often heroic efforts to rescue property and possessions by companies and organisations across the county. Such courage and tenacity in the face of disaster was inspiring.

One thing is for sure - business in Oxfordshire is never boring. To find out what happens next, keep watching this space. Happy New Year.