Thanks Am.
My main rant was because of the shock factor - usually you can spot that there are cuts coming and start looking round before it's officially announced. And I'm not paid significantly more than the permanent employees because it was a long term contract covering for a permanent employee on secondment. I'm not sure what's going to happen now - she's not back until January and the work's not going to stop coming in! (Luckily that's not something I need to worry about now
)
As I said earlier this is one of the drawbacks of being a contractor - I must have been lucky in the past to have worked with people who have dropped hints when we needed to start finding alternatives!
Hopefully this means the next one will be better.