This is Money Blog

They can't grit, but they can speed bump

Bravo Islington Council: it can’t grit and clear the roads and pavement but it can install a speed bump.

Should Lloyds shareholders claim compensation?

Talk about the mother of all revelations. And the timing is a beauty too.

Late in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, the Bank of England secretly gave the Halifax Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland a whooping £61.6bn cash injection.

The beleaguered banking duo were given the cash as a part of the Old Lady’s Emergency Liquidity Assistance program, which was detailed in a submission to the Treasury Select Committee on Tuesday, November 24.

Are you prepared to pay to watch ITV?

You already pay £12 a month for your TV licence and you may well spend anything between £5.50 and £47.50 a month for a Virgin Media or Sky Package. So would you be prepared to shell out yet more cash just to catch up with X Factor, I'm a Celebrity... and Coronation Street?

Well soon you might have to as ITV's new boss Archie Norman makes plans to charge viewers to watch all but the main terrestrial channel – ITV1.

This means the millions of viewers who watch ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 via Freeview will have to fork out to catch up with ITV1 repeats and digital-only programmes like Coleen's Real Women, Gossip Girl and American Idol.

Has the Jimmy Choo for H&M collection lost its shine?

It was the moment die-hard fashion followers had waited for, slipping their toes into a pair of Jimmy Choo’s but only having paid High Street prices.

Reportedly bargain hunters queued for 14 hours, undeterred by gale force winds, to be first in line to buy the Jimmy Choo collection at H&M when it launched last Saturday.

Less than 24 hours later, hundreds of pairs of shoes were for sale on eBay, where bidders paid double for the sold-out styles.

Watch out for shops with shifty refund policies

A total lack of consistency is undermining High Street shops: stores should ALWAYS offer full refunds.

It all started a couple of weeks ago. Deciding that I could do with some new shoes to replace the somewhat tattered old pair I've been soldiering on with these last few months, I took to the High Street (of all places to go in a recession!) in search of a bargain.

OK so I didn't exactly find a bargain. But I did end up with some new shoes. I was delighted. They seemed just the thing I'd been looking for.

Unfortunately for me, the delight lasted little more than two hours.

Is Halifax deliberately trying to lose customers?

Are Halifax’s new overdraft charges a ruse to get rid of customers?

The thought that there may be a cunning mastermind rather than an accident prone goon, somewhere behind Halifax’s decision to court public fury by whacking up overdraft fees, occurred to me the other day.

Lloyds Banking Group, the parent of Halifax, needs to trim back its share of the UK current account market from 30% to 25% to please the EU.

This is just one of the moves the hastily created banking giant – conjured up by an inept merger of Lloyds and HBOS – may have to make in return for state aid.

The price is NOT right

Some things just don't cost what they should.

For whatever reason - whether it's because the price bears no relation to the cost of production or because it just doesn't feel right - certain purchases always jar with me, prompting an internal whinge of 'are they having a laugh?'.

Ryanair vs The BBC - The emails

Last night the BBC broadcast a Panorama programme that asked the question ‘Why hate Ryanair?’

On hearing the name, I suspected the title they really wanted to go with was ‘Why we hate Ryanair’, only to be reined in by the beeb compliance unit.

But Panorama has insisted that the intention of the programme was not to put the boot into Ryanair, but to explore how the airline has become so successful, despite the evident ill-will towards it.

Whatever the intention, it seems Ryanair themselves expected nothing other than a ‘hatchet job’ from the programme – as illustrated by the email correspondence it chose to publish between Ryanair press officers, with additions by Michael O'Leary, and BBC journalists.

Train fares 2: The messy aftermath and a £30 slap in the face

We’re all shamefully guilty. Even before we’ve stepped on a train, every one of us is clearly intent on conning our way from station to station without a valid ticket.

It’s the world according to train companies. And their stance does an incredibly rude disservice to millions of honest citizens (and visitors) throughout Britain.

That was about as far as I reached when blogging about train mishaps and penalty fares last week.

I briefly mentioned a recent (mis)adventure in the Woking area of Surrey and how, despite wholeheartedly honest intentions, I was burdened with an entirely undeserved penalty fare.

Well here is a brief epilogue – and a late twist in the tale to go with it.

Train fares: guilty even when proven innocent

Got a reasonable excuse for not having exactly the right train ticket? Don’t even bother – you are guilty even when proven innocent.

‘That’ll be a £20 please.

‘Errm, may I ask why?’

‘Penalty fare – you don’t have a valid ticket, sir.’

‘But I just, I mean, I didn’t even know – this here is a valid ticket, in a way - and, well you can see I didn’t try to… look here, this just isn’t fair!’

Excuse the pun, but it really isn’t. Train companies have double standards when raking in penalty fares – and they’re getting far more than they deserve.