This is Money Blog

How I caught out Tesco on a two-for-one sham

Gotcha Tesco. I have caught Tesco plugging a two-for-one offer that is a sham.

Everyone knows supermarket pricing is a dark art, but it is notoriously difficult to prove. Two-for-one offers, bottles of wine reduced from a price rarely seen, comparison price wars – they always seem iffy but can you really be sure?

Well, I have caught Tesco in the act.

Here’s how it works. I always buy butter - as I cannot stand the spreadable plastic that is margarine - and it’s always Anchor butter.

In my local Tesco, they sold Anchor butter for 88p. I am not sure why this has permeated my brain so well, when I couldn’t tell you exactly how much most other things are, but it has.

Maybe, it’s because I always buy the same thing, same size, same place, a couple of times a week, or maybe it was the whacking great big price comparison sticker next to it for a few months.
Regardless, I know it costs 88p.

It came as a surprise therefore to see a sticker go up next to the Anchor butter the other day purporting to be offering customers a good deal:

'Anchor butter, £1.22, two for £1.80'

What a load of tosh. The normal price is 88p. Either Tesco is conning its customers, or it has just whacked up the price of butter by 48%, which I find highly unlikely.

I phoned Tesco’s press office to ask them about this and offer them the chance to put their side of the story. Almost a week later they haven’t responded. It’s a fairly trivial matter – and I am sure taking over America and then the world is more important.

But this little trick doesn’t say very good things about Tesco to me.

Oh, and it doesn’t really give me much faith in Tesco’s claim that inflation in its stores was running at just 0.8% when it called for a bank rate cut this week.

Not on Anchor butter, Tesco – that either has an inflation rate of 48%, or you are conning your customers.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

>> Supermarketwatch - an eye on the supermarkets
>> Tesco accused of sham 'half price' veg
>> Aldi beats supermarket giants on taste

This is Money's most popular: November 2007

Readers, understandably, had a one-track mind in November: the global credit crunch that has already savaged Northern Rock and is now setting its sights on the property market. The list below represents the most popular stories, columns, round-ups, blogs and polls over the month.

And thank you for visiting This is Money during November. It was another record month with around 889,000 readers looking at 8.33m pages, up slightly on October's record month and a 45% increase on a year ago.

1. Is there going to be a house price crash?
2. Guide: Ten steps to reclaim unfair bank charges
3. Get £20,000 a year tax free in retirement
4. Guide: Bank charge letter templates
5. Blog: The house price crash-ometer row
6. Benefit of buying a home tumbles by 75%
7. 'We've lost thousands with Inside Track'
8. Round-up: Interest rates news, advice and predictions
9. Bank signals rates to drop next year
10. Guide/round-up: How to pick the best Isa
11. Buy-to-let faces meltdown threat
12. Where next for Northern Rock shares?
13. Round-up: Are you owed an orphan assets windfall?
14. Property market to grind to a halt in 2008
15. Barclays shares suspended after plunge
16. The buy-to-let timebomb
17. 50 ways to save money
18. Poll: Will house prices fall in the next 12 months?
19. Exclusive: Pensions windfalls for thousands of mums
20. House prices fall fastest for 12 years
21. British banks to reveal credit crunch hit
22. Half the country to see house prices fall
23. Guide: Reclaim your PPI premiums
24. £500 mortgage shock as fixed rates expire
25. Logjam may force down property prices
26. 10m Britons falling into black hole of debt
27. Guide: How to make your child richer (child trust funds)
28. Buy-to-let has become a rich man's game
29. Time to buy Northern Rock shares?
30. Northern Rock dives on 10p-a-share offer
31. Our '£2.71' flight really cost £324
32. Fixed-rate bonds offer best rates for years
33. Inflation jump rules out Christmas rate cut
34. How you can profit from rising oil prices
35. Secret Post Office hit list revealed online
36. Britons in France have healthcare axed
37. Plans made to nationalise Northern Rock
38. Best paid jobs revealed
39. Round-up: What next for Northern Rock?
40. Are National Savings still a good bet
41. HSBC faces huge subprime crisis hit
42. Poll: What will happen to the FTSE 100 in 2008?
43. Market report: FTSE plunges 150 points
44. Land Registry helping crooks 'steal' homes
45. Make money from the internet
46. Credit crisis 'could cripple UK economy'
47. World economy heading for 'perfect storm'
48. Mortgage lenders in credit crisis panic
49. Oil: running out for good this time
50. Our story, by the Dragons' Den millionaires

As ever, I'm always delighted to get feedback, good or bad. So please email with your thoughts on what you want from This is Money - editor@thisismoney.co.uk

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Do estate agents really think Christmas is in October?

Unlike some I take no great pleasure in the rumblings going on in Britain's property market.

Yes, I think homes are overpriced, mortgage lenders have stoked the fires irresponsibly, and the government named inflation as its number one economic target then failed to do anything about spiralling prices in one of life's essentials - a roof over your head.

But I don't actively want a house price crash - it would devastate anyone who has bought over the past few years while leaving the asset rich older generation untouched.
I also don't feel any particular antipathy to buy-to-let and think that done properly it is a useful way to invest that gives people a degree of control they fail to get from the finance industry.
Furthermore, I think owning your own home is a good thing.

However, I do wish those with a vested interest in property would stop making the kind of foolish claims that even the lately departed England boss Steve McLaren would baulk at making while grinning through with his nice shiny teeth.

My favourite recent one comes from the National Association of Estate Agents and contains some interesting thinking.

The NAEA figures for October revealed that the number of potential buyers has dwindled rapidly and spun it thus:

'The number of house buyers on estate agents’ books was at its lowest for the past four years, with agents reporting an average of 282 buyers registered (in October) in comparison to the 326 recorded in September 2007.  Interestingly, the second lowest figure recorded was in December 2005 with an average of 302 buyers reported, indicating that the market is experiencing the type of slowdown often experienced in the festive period.'

Can you see what they did there? Slowdown, lowest number of buyers for four years, compare to second lowest number, must be a festive period slowdown.

Skips the crucial point - Christmas is in December, not October.

We are not stupid.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Analysis: Will there be a house price crash?

Mortgages and property news, tips and advice

You made your bed, now lie in it - credit crunch banks

Banks wanted it, the property industry wanted it, and some hard-pressed homeowners could have done with it, but the Bank of England opted not to cut interest rates this month.

And we should all say a very big thank you for that.

That anyone thinks the Bank of England should follow America’s lead and cut interest rates amazes me.

The reason cited for cutting rates is the ‘credit crunch’ – apparently this completely unheralded global phenomenon needs the Bank of England to save us from impending disaster.
Hmmm.

Isn’t the credit crunch a result of banks being reluctant to lend to each other, while refusing to divulge how much toxic waste they took on from the US subprime greedfest?

So, perhaps instead of urging the Bank of England to ditch inflation commitments and hack away at the Bank Rate, banks could just front up and start lending to each other.

It’s funny isn’t it how when banks are making a stinkload of money any suggestion of intervention is met with a curt response of ‘leave us professionals to run our business.’

But, the moment it turns out the professionals were mug punters and things start to go wrong, the pleas for help arrive.

I think the phrase is ‘You made your bed, now lie in it.’

Of course, the problem is the credit crunch is going to hit consumers when banks pass on their costs, but slashing rates at a point where the cost of basic necessities such as fuel, food and housing is far outstripping official CPI inflation would be foolish.

From some of the comments coming out from the financial industry you’d also think that either the worst of the credit crunch storm is blowing out, or a couple of rate cuts would help end the crisis.

Sadly, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Cheap money and uber complex financial instruments have delivered massive gains over the past five years, but those complex deals don’t look so clever now and that money looks like it was too cheap.

Perhaps rates of 5% or less are too low and lead to prices of everything from homes to businesses rising too high.

If the major world economies - especially the western ones - walk away from this with the mere collateral damage they are suffering at the moment they should count themselves lucky.

Unfortunately, I suspect US mortgage bank closures and the Northern Rock crash will be seen as a warning of the storm to come rather than the damage left in its wake.

People have used cheap money to pay too much for a lot of businesses and assets and when higher rates bite they may not be able to refinance those deals, or manage their repayments.

A sign some very astute people think prices are going to fall rather than rise came this week with Qatar ditching its £10.6bn Sainsbury’s takeover. The credit crisis was cited as the reason for this, and while the Qatari Investment Authority-backed Delta Two fund would have had to borrow heavily to fund the deal – reports suggest as much as £6bn – those pondering this should go deeper.

Qatar’s funding may be relatively small compared to other sovereign wealth funds, but if it really wanted Sainsbury’s it could have bought it. The realisation that with cash tight even an asset such as Sainsbury’s wasn’t going to have its inflated price sustained would make many much less clever men walk away. Draw your own conclusions from Qatar’s decision to step aside.

A year ago, the counter bidders would have hit immediately. Now, they are curiously absent. In a year’s time maybe Sainsbury’s would only cost you £8bn.

Doesn’t look promising for all those highly leveraged buyouts of recent years.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Will there be a house price crash?

British banks to reveal credit crunch hit

Global downturn fears over dollar slide

The house price crash-ometer that has lenders worried

I was more than a little surprised this week to receive a letter from the body that represents nearly every British mortgage lender.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders, I guess rattled by the delicate state of house prices following several years of bullish and sometimes irresponsible lending by some, wrote of its concerns about our house price calculator and its wish that we remove it from the site. 

We at This is Money pride ourselves in producing what we think is a balanced and informative site. Our news and features are backed up with tools and calculators to either help our readers make the right money choices or merely just for fun.

As I mentioned in our newsletter two weeks ago, we have a whole series of new house price calculators coming out. Here are two we released this week...

> Home valuation calculator
> Home equity calculator

Anyway, it's the view of the readers that's most important, so I thought you should make the call and have your say on our calculators. So here is the email from the CML and my response below. Have your say in the comments box below...

Dear Andrew

It’s very, very rare for us to complain about any of the tools and gizmos that appear on editorial sites, but the “house price crash calculator” currently appearing on thisismoney is a notable exception.

This tool seems specifically designed to cause maximum alarm, and in our view is an extremely ill-considered tool for your website that should be removed immediately.

Although we note that you list “house price optimists” among your personal dislikes, I can assure you our objection isn’t because we want to paint a falsely rosy view of market prospects, just a realistic one.  Encouraging people to consider that there is any prospect whatsoever of house prices reaching their 1992 levels is, frankly, irresponsible.  Your calculator takes no account of general inflation and is deeply, deeply misleading.  Even the most pessimistic house price forecasters are nowhere near this vicinity – and it does your readers no service at all to imply that this is any way a realistic scenario. I have alerted the Nationwide to the way in which their data is being used.

Please reconsider this unhelpful and misleading tool, which cannot possibly be regarded as reasonable.

Sue Anderson
Head of member and external relations
Council of Mortgage Lenders

And my response...

         Dear Sue,

Thanks for the email.
I was surprised by the content of it and some of the accusations it contained. Let me address some of the points you raise.

I can assure you that This is Money is not in the practice of desiging tools specifically to 'cause maximum alarm'.
This is Money targets themes of interest to its readers and users, and produces tools that put them in the picture.

The house price crash calculator is aimed at allowing readers to experiment with theoretical scenarios on property prices using information that Nationwide has put in the public domain. To suggest that readers will believe house prices will return to 1992 levels because it is an option on a calculator underestimates our readers.

And in terms of it being a realistic scenario, I'm sure you're aware of the various examples of prolonged slumps in property in developed countries in modern history - the sustained slumps in Japan (more than a decade) and Hong Kong (more than seven years) spring to mind.

The reason the calculator goes back to 1992 was that it was the nascent stage of the most recent UK house price boom to give them the maximum amount of information on this theme.

You should also know that the calculator is the latest in a long series of tools we are producing for the site - others include a house price boom calculator (a reverse of the existing calculator, that allows people to see how much their property value has risen). Others will be appearing on the site soon.

You mention the remark in the dislikes in my blog biog. As you can probably see, these likes and dislikes are a bit of light-hearted fun.
I can assure you that my No.1 prority is producing a balanced and respected website. The views I or any other member of the team holds in no way sways reporting or presentation of news and comment is always clearly ring-fenced.

That's maybe why This is Money has become a key destination online for property market news - readers seem to like the breadth and balance of our analysis. You may have missed the extremely incisive and well balanced commentary last week from our property correspondent, who, incidentally, predicts house prices will keep on rising (also - please note the reader comments praising Simon for such a 'balanced' article)...

Is there going to be a house price crash?

I'm surprised to see the CML so jittery about confidence in the market and very surprised by this attempt to bring the mortgage industry's influence to bear on an independent, editorial website.

Rather than censoring our output, our preferred approach is to publish as much information as possible and allow readers to make their own call - including their views on our approach to content production - via "Reader Comments" on the site and via the blogosphere. It's for those reasons the calculator will remain on the site.

Kind regards,

Andrew

Editor
www.thisismoney.co.uk

Amazon: 'We're not just for Christmas'

Amazon founder and chief Jeff Bezos is sending out a message to the company's customers, and indeed anyone who goes to its homepage today: like goodwill to men, driving sober and puppies, it's not just for Christmas.

His open letter trumpets the virtues of Amazon's new 'Prime' membership programme. The idea, he avers, is simple: 'for a flat annual membership fee, you get free unlimited One-Day delivery on millions of eligible items'. The fee? Fifty quid a year. Well, £49, but let's add on the interest.

'If you're inclined to do the maths [yes, Jeff, I am],' continues Mr Bezos, 'that's less than the cost of 6 Express Deliveries (£8.99 each), making it a great value [sic].' If you're daft enough to use Express delivery six times a year, it just might be Jeff.

Apart from the irony that the world's biggest online bookseller really should be able to afford a decent ad-copy proofreader, there's a few things that don't add up.

Express 'One-Day' delivery is emphatically not great value at £8.99 a pop. Not in a country where first-class post should arrive in one day. But then, the only reason Amazon ever got away with charging for its 'first-class delivery', having initially sold itself on free delivery, was that it made the latter so excruciatingly slow, by waiting days and days to dispatch orders, that everyone got fed up with it.

So who knows, perhaps now it will do the same to 'first-class delivery', which is already frequently delayed by slow dispatch, in order to encourage its loyal customers on to Express delivery.

But what would really irritate me if I was gullible or wealthy enough to sign up for Amazon Prime is what appears to be reduced stocking levels. I seem to remember a few years ago there were few items that were not in stock and available immediately (and I have some obscure musical and literary inclinations).

I just scrapped an order for a handful of not-that-obscure CDs, because two of them 'will not ship for 1 to 3 weeks' and one is not available at all. This is really poor, as it's the new album by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - a major release. I'd feel a bit cheated out of my fifty quid, personally speaking.

It appears to me that each of the virtues upon which Amazon promoted itself as a newcomer many years ago (low prices, free delivery and quick availability), has been gradually dispensed with. Then again, if the state of High Street CD retailing is anything to go by (RIP Fopp), the format is doomed - even if some people want to buy them, no one wants to sell them.

Downloads it is then!

- Adrian Lowery, News editor, This is Money

A water meter cut my bills by 35%

I felt ethically obliged to have a water meter installed just over a year ago. We had endured another dry summer, resevoirs were parched and the south-east's hosepipe ban looked permanent.

I also thought I might save a few quid... and I have.

I've had my first full-year bill. It was £220, a dramatic reduction on the approximate £330 a year I was previously paying with Sutton and East Surrey Water board.

Admittedly, it was a wet summer so my thirsty tomoatoes largely looked after themselves but it's still remarkable given it's a home with a family of three (and now four with a new addition in the past few months).

It's some anecdotal evidence to back my previous estimates that households of three people or fewer should be able to save with a water meter. If you're interested in more advice see these articles...

- Can a water meter cut costs?
- 10 ways to cut water bills (and try an official water meter calculator)

- Blog: The great water meter rush (September 2006)
- Blog: A £110 cheque for having a water meter fitted (December 2006)

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Most popular money news and advice: October 2007

Fears surrounding the credit crisis helped us to a record month in October with house price stories the clear winners in the top 50 reports. This is Money readers looked at 8.3 million pages in October, up 44% on a year ago.

The other big themes were the inheritance tax threshold increase to £600,000 (7) and the CGT change (6) in the Pre-Budget Report, while reclaiming bank charges - which is currently on hold - remains a big issue for many.

There were some notable risers - reclaiming PPI or payment protection insurance, an issue TiM has campaigned on for the past 18 months, and also the disaster in waiting surrounding sale-and-rent-back, another area in which This is Money led the way.

Here are the top 50 news stories, guides and features on This is Money in October 2007...

1. House prices set to fall by thousands
2. Ten steps to reclaim unfair bank charges
3. Shock report shows steep house price fall
4. Bank charge letter templates
5. UK house-price bubble about to burst - IMF
6. Second home and buy-to-let tax gift
7. IHT threshold doubled to £600,000
8. Britain on brink of credit crunch slump
9. Are house prices falling or rising?
10. Fixed-rate borrowers in for a big shock
11. The Postcode Breaker: Home insurance
12. Does anyone live in buy-to-let flats?
13. Interest rates: News, analysis, advice
14. Time to buy Northern Rock shares?
15. Northern Rock crisis: How it will affect you
16. Property vulnerable, warns Bank guru
17. Reclaim your PPI premiums
18. Pre-Budget Report: How it will affect you
19. 50 ways to save money...
20. How to pick the best Isa
21. Premium Bonds winning numbers
22. Flaw at heart of fraud-proof chip and Pin
23. Newspaper share tips: Northern Rock
24. Buy-to-let lending soars despite warnings
25. The buy-to-let timebomb
26. The most consistent savings accounts
27. House prices fall for first time in two years
28. What to do with savings after the storm
29. Fixed-rate bonds offer best rates for years
30. Top funds 20 years on from Black Monday
31. Ten steps to reclaim credit card charges
32. Sale-and-rent-back a disaster in waiting
33. UK house prices fall 0.6%
34. Best paid jobs revealed
35. Can the UK avoid a house price crash?
36. How to make your child richer
37. How to cut the taxman out of your will
38. Lenders pulling mortgages at last minute
39. Inheritance tax: Beware new trust trap
40. How thieves bypass bank card Pins
41. 1m using plastic to pay their mortgage
42. Pre-Budget 2007 - the winners and losers
43. Your pension at risk if you change jobs
44. Facebook users warned on ID fraud threat
45. Savers Q&A: Northern Rock
46. Cheapest foreign currency rates
47. Pre-Budget Report: Main points at a glance
48. The best investment I have ever made
49. What are the best broadband deals
50. Eight steps to fix all your finances

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS IS MONEY

>> Most popular news and features in September
>> Most popular news and features in July
>> Most popular news and features in June
>> Most popular news and features in May
>> Most popular news and features in April
>> Most popular news and features in March

>> Most popular news and features in 2006
>> Most popular blog posts in 2006

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

P.S. If there are other issues you would like us to investigate, please email me at editor@thisismoney.co.uk

Ski posters - alternative investing I can (almost) afford

Sadly, I’ve not been able to afford one, but in recent years one of the most affordable but quietly successful forms of stylish art has been vintage ski posters.

The distinctive prints produced during the golden days of travel have become hugely popular and some have delivered returns of 1000% over the past ten years.

For those hoping to buy, the big event of the year has traditionally been Christies’ annual ski poster sale, but now poster afficionado and London lawyer Russell Johnston has set up the first online gallery exclusively selling vintage ski posters online.

Russell contacted me about his East Street Gallery after reading one of my previous posts about the Christies’ sale. And his website www.originalskiposters.com is worth visiting for a look at the posters on offer.

The historic posters originally produced for the walls of travel agents and station platforms can now fetch thousands of pounds, although many can still be purchased for £500 or less.

Now if I was going to buy an alternative investment, I think this is where I’d start.

Alternative investing is one of those things that sounds great in theory but rarely delivers the goods in practice. Who wouldn’t want to indulge a passion for wine, art, classic cars or racing while seeing their wealth grow (hopefully)?

Unfortunately, for the common man alternative investing rarely means being able to enjoy your indulgence and taking the plunge is a bit daunting.

For a start there’s a reason why alternative investments are alternative – they’re expensive.

• Want to invest in art – what’s good and at that price do you dare put it on the wall?
• Fancy investing in wine – forget drinking it.
• Classic cars – no point owning one if you don’t drive it, but then come the maintenance costs.
• Racehorses – an investment that needs feeding and housing; are your kids not enough?

And this is where the problem lies. If you’re going to get involved in an alternative investment you need to be able to enjoy it, and that’s hard if you aren’t seriously wealthy.

If you aren’t going to enjoy it, but want to be a bit different, just put your money in a fund that invests in something like pork. (Pigs are a good tip, believe it or not China has a shortage.)

However, if you like the mountains then ski posters represent an affordable art investment that can be enjoyed and indulged as a hobby.

Russell’s collection was begun by his father Robert, who was a skier in the British Army during the Second World War and built up the bulk of it as he travelled Europe between 1944 and 1955. Russell himself was bitten by the bug in the 1990s and the first poster he bought in 1996 is now worth £1,600.

His favourites are those by Martin Peikert, who exclusively produced Swiss posters and Russell harbours an ambition to perhaps one day write the first biography of. Like me, he also likes the stylised industrial look of some of the French posters glorifying cable cars and railways.

Russell says: ‘On a ten-year view the kind of poster you could buy then for about £500 is now worth £5,000 to £8,000. Prices now, as with many things, are at an all time high so those rises may not continue, if you want a poster you should buy it because you love it and if it goes up in price that’s brilliant.’

And there’s the key. If you like the images you could just buy a reproduction for a fraction of the cost, but buy a real poster and it may go up in price.

However, don’t forget prices can go down as well as up, and what people call ‘alternative investing’ during the good times tends to just be labelled a hobby when the money disappears.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

www.originalskiposters.com

The latest investing news and advice

Special report: Alternative investing

Soaring food prices can be your cash crop

Reclaiming PPI: Another successful claim

The best bit of the job here at This is Money is when we're able to help individuals by wading in against banks or other companies on their behalf. Or when people have simply helped through our "How to..." guides.

So I was chuffed today to receive an email from a lovely lady in Battersea, London...

"Just to say thanks – I love your website. I’ve claimed back £3400 from your charges and PPI campaigns, and on a salary of £27000, that’s significant. I also use your calculators daily! Please keep up the good work."

We have compiled more of these so you can read how we helped This is Money readers.

And don't forget, you should also use consumer power to reclaim your money. We have been reminding people as part of our campaign for the past 18 months that there are 20m payment protection insurance policies in the UK and that many of these PPI policies, attached to credit cards and loans, may have been mis-sold.

You can reclaim the money right now: Reclaim PPI

And see the full campaign here: PPI - beat the protection racket

If you want to tell us your PPI story, email us at editor@thisismoney.co.uk

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Ken Livingstone - how to not ask what people want

Sadly, it seems even self-styled men of the people like Ken Livingstone fall someway short of actually asking the public what they want nowadays.

The public consultation on the emissions related congestion charging scheme that Mayor of London Ken Livingstone wants to use to impose a £25 daily congestion charge finishes on Friday October 19th.

However, despite Ken's alleged belief in delivering people's wishes, the actual process of asking if Londoners want this to happen is abysmal.

Visitors looking at either the Mayor of London's website, or the Transport for London website would not realise that they were about to lose the opportunity to comment on one of the biggest changes to life in the capital.

Nothing on the front page of either website tells you about this, and if you eventually dig out the public consultation, it falls a long way short of managing to ask the simple question - do you want this?

How the modern world works, part 297 - public consultation

Foolishly, you might imagine that a public consultation would involve a simple 'yes/no', what do you want question. But of course not.

No, instead you get a bizarre multiple choice questionnaire asking what you have done to help the environment over the past year, and then a pair of woolly questions about whether charging people with larger engine cars £25 a day to use them would be an incentive to use a lower C02 emitting car?

And that's it. A brief quiz about your bin and a, ‘Durr, of course ripping people off for driving a bigger car is an incentive not to drive one’ answer.

TFL and the Mayor of London will then use your answers to assess their own proposals - which they have already said they want to implement.

This is sadly what public consultation means nowadays. Don’t ask the public - they might say no. Instead, introduce a procedure that makes mock elections under tinpot regimes look a model of democracy.

It's unfortunate this, as hidden deep in Ken's plan is a germ of an idea. We do need to reduce emissions and as someone who cycles through London everyday I can see the benefit better air would bring.
But this plan will simply be one of the final steps in making Central London a rich man's playground.

The £25 per day charge - with no residents discount - for cars with engines over 3 litres, or that are in the highest emissions bracket, will hammer families who own people carriers, estate cars, or larger saloons and small businessmen.
Meanwhile, £6,000ish a year will only be a minor inconvenience to the Bentley brigade, that is slowly chasing the last ordinary families out of Central London.

Diversity is essential to a city's make-up, but those last remaining inhabitants of central London not on six figure salaries are being squeezed from their homes. If you're a wealthy Londoner paying the charge or buying a new less polluting car is no problem, for others - who often do only around 2,000 miles per year - this is deeply unfair.

There is also no exemption for classic cars, which are again rarely driven and also due to their extended lifespan much greener than buying a brand new Prius

It's a shame really. What we needed was a proper debate about how to deal with this, or even a genuine chance to answer yes or no. But as with the problems with bendy buses, Oyster cards, 'green' taxi filters that make them pollute more, and many other issues, it doesn't seem that the people get a say.

Don't worry you might think, I don't drive in London/live anywhere near it. But when something like this can be forced through without meaningful consultation in London, any other council anywhere can easily do the same.

And it's only a matter of time before they do.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

How to get elected London Mayor - 30 minutes free parking

Congestion charge expands - money saving for the rich

Cut taxes for the super-rich and give us all a break

Credit card crunch the Spitting Image of 1990s

If anyone needed reminding - and sadly an awful lot of people seem to - when you need to use your credit card to survive the month you're in trouble.

And when you need to use your credit card to meet the mortgage repayments you're in serious trouble.

But according to research from housing charity Shelter that is the reality for around 1m people in Britain.

Credit cards are Satan's panacea. And in the wrong hands they are the ultimate con.

Unfortunately, the idea that you can play the credit card system, even make money from it, entered the national consciousness about five years ago. And suddenly having a wallet full of plastic became acceptable.

From the comments on This is Money a lot of the blame is being laid at the doors (No. 10 and No. 11) of Gordon Brown. But lest we forget - and for those of us with short memories - here's a clip from Spitting Image from the last time we were in this mess, when easy credit came into its own and led to a near decade of recession and repossessions.

My credit card rules are quite simple

You should never need more than one credit card.

And you should pay off the entire balance every month.

Remember: credit card companies aren't stupid. They are, however, after your money and are extremely adept at getting hold of it. They are not your friend. And are not to be played with.

If you are in trouble or think you might be in trouble get in touch with your local Citizens Advice office now.

Richard Browning - This is Money

The credit crunch chronicles

Negative equity: it's back, it's instant and we're heading for a property

The Northern Rock loan for 80 year olds with a job

Northern Rock and the Picture of Modern Britain

Listen now: 'We're heading for a property slump'

Why people deserve an inheritance tax break

‘We’ve got it - inheritance tax.’ Were those the words uttered by a crack team of Conservative policy monkeys, after finally coming up with something to draw the battle lines over?

It’s incredible how long it took them to latch on to the ill-feeling that’s been building up over what many consider a deeply unfair tax.

It's even more incredible that the Chancellor Alistair Darling thinks shuffling some figures to make it look like he has raised the inheritance tax allowance when it just stops people having to become tenants in common solves any problems or will fool anyone.

The problem is any debate on the issue inevitably manages to get stuck straight back in the old political divisions - Tory vs Labour, Haves vs Have-nots, North vs South and so on.

But strangely when discussions take place there often appears to be a reversal of which side you would typically expect to have the notion that soaring house prices benefit people.

It’s the anti-raising inheritance tax lobby that seems to believe sky-high house prices are benefiting property owners.

The suggestion is owners of family homes that have become worth far more than the inheritance tax threshold should count themselves lucky, and not mind being heavily taxed if they try and pass it on.

‘But we have paid for our homes out of taxed income, so this is double taxation’, say the pro-inheritance tax reform posse.
‘Yes, but you didn’t earn that huge increase, you just sat back and watched the value of your home soar and now want to perpetuate injustice by handing that wealth to your offspring’, counters the eat the rich crew.

And this is where the false notion of high house prices benefiting people comes in.

The owners of an average family home in South East England bought in the early 1980s for £100,000 and now worth £800,000, didn’t directly work for that rise in value, but they are in many ways entitled to it.
Living in an area where house prices are absurdly inflated is not all fun and games:

• Your house may be worth lots but so is any other house in your home area, so there’s no benefit unless you up sticks and leave friends and family far behind.
• Your children and their friends find it almost impossible to purchase a property in their own home town.
• Your home area loses its diversity, as moving there becomes possible only for very high-earners, and pubs, shops and amenities shut as developers move in on every available spot.
• Your children will face an even bigger mountain of debt, if having managed to climb on to the property ladder they have children of their own and need to buy a family home.

This is not meant to be a 'woe of the wealthy' sob story - but these are legitimate concerns that need discussing rather than being brushed under the class war carpet.
It’s true that the Conservative proposals do play straight to the stereotypical Tory South, but then the current government has ignored those voters’ concerns over house prices for a decade.

In many South East areas a small family house now costs at least £300,000. According to Halifax’s historic house price calculator that would have cost £100,000 in 1997.

If a buyer had purchased that home in 1997 they would have needed to find £10,000 for a 10% deposit, and at an average interest rate of 7% over 25 years would pay £101,000 in interest to their mortgage lender.
A buyer purchasing it today would need to find £30,000 for a 10% deposit, owe a hell of a lot more, and at an average interest rate of 7% over 25 years would pay £302,500 in interest to their mortgage lender.

Clearly there is a problem here. But despite making controlling inflation a top economic target over the past decade, the Government has completely failed to tackle rampant price rises relating to the basic necessity of a roof over your head.

Meanwhile, it has sat back and seen its income from inheritance tax post healthy gains, as a tax originally designed for the very rich drags in more and more ordinary families. (And Stamp Duty revenues have been pretty healthy too.)

The real winners of sky-high house prices are mortgage lenders and the taxman. And those hoping to score political points on this should remember the Conservatives kicked off the whole problem a long time before the current government made it worse.

So yes, perhaps in the ‘day at the coalface’ sense the owners of homes being hit by inheritance tax didn’t ‘earn it’.

But they have paid their dues and earned more right to that money than a Government which has presided over the shambles the UK housing market is in today, or any future governments that don’t come up with any meaningful plans for sorting the mess out.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Help and advice for first-time buyers

Mortgages and property news, tips and advice

Could there be a 'fourth way'?

Tony Blair's 'Third Way' turned out to be suspiciously close to Margaret Thatcher's blend of expanding freedoms to business and markets while restricting those of the individual. In this, both hues of Government fixed their agendas with a lot of help from our so-called 'special relationship' with the United States. In my blog last week I argued that the Northern Rock episode exposes the fallibility of blind belief in free markets.

On the eve of Alistair Darling's Pre-Budget Report, I'd like to state my belief that we must stop looking across the Atlantic for our economic and social inspiration. We've been doing that for 30 years and we've got Kentucky Fried Chicken, 50 Cent and a transport system that's the laughing stock of the developed world. I think we've learned all we can from that direction.

It's about time we started to try and learn more from our social democratic neighbours on the Continent. OK, I admit it, I'm an unrepentant Europhile – not in the sense of a strong European Union. Au contraire, I'm all in favour of localism: I think more policy should be determined at a level closer to where people live. And while many of its inefficiencies and extravagances are doubtless exaggerated in certain sections of the media, the EU nevertheless tends to the opposite direction: where laws are made at a great distance from citizens and uniformities are imposed across nations.

This latter prospect is one that depresses me, although it is globalisation and tourism, not the EU, that are the major protagonists behind it. I returned last week from a massively enjoyable and fascinating 16-day rail trip around the continent, taking several sleeper trains between some of its greatest cities. This diverse collection of societies and cultures within such a small area on our doorstep: we take it for granted at our peril.

In the middle of the trip I read this news piece about fears for the survival of Paris neighbourhoods expressed by the deputy mayor Lyne Cohen-Solal: 'All the cities all over Europe are starting to look the same. London, Berlin, they're going to have the same streets with the same shops,' he said. 'If we don't intervene ... we are going to have only textile shops and fast food. We don't want this kind of future for our city. Culture is a very important thing to create integration [and] a higher quality of life.'

He's spot on. Soon, Europe's monuments and treasures will be reduced to totems of expired national identities, dotted around a homogenous morass of cultural and aesthetic mediocrity. (You might surmise from this that I don't rate shopping very highly in the pursuit of happiness. And you'd be right.)

Just as unfettering markets doesn't seem to stop them working inefficiently and heading in catastrophic directions, zealous lawmaking and regulation in the social arena rarely meets its objectives (take 'the war on drugs'). I believe there are arenas in which socio-economic intervention is justified and could be effective: supporting traditional local industries, proper town-planning and regeneration programmes, and transport policy, both local and national. But these are the very areas that have been abandoned by successive governments to the selfish vagaries of private enterprise and the market.

Which brings me to the trains. My experience of rail travel and urban transport across the continent was that it was superior to and cheaper than ours – by far. Even in those nations supposedly blighted so badly by decades of communism. Polish trains might be a bit shabbier and slower than Virgin's much-touted Pendolinos – but they are affordable to everyone, not overcrowded and their vestibules don't smell of excrement.

I don't pretend to know much about the transport policy of each nation on the continent or have detailed ideas on how we can learn from them. That is the job we pay politicians and civil servants for: to study complex problems and come up with solutions that are of most benefit to the widest possible section of society.

The free market is just one of the more effective means civilisation has found to organise business so that it provides for society's needs. That's all – it's a means, not an end in itself. That's why, when it has manifestly failed to provided a decent solution (as in the case of our rail network), it should be shown no clemency and no respect.

- Adrian Lowery, News editor, This is Money

Search engine shenanigans

Do you own your own name and reputation?

The new world of internet advertising has this week raised this question for me.

Our sharp-eyed development editor Richard Browning spotted on Google what appeared to be myself and several colleagues on Financial Mail posing as experts for the 'Property Network Club'.

Search 'Andrew Oxlade' on Google and you get the usual This is Money stuff in the centre, but on the sponsored links on the right, bought by anyone who wants them, you get this...(although it's been removed now)

You get the same if you search 'Lisa Buckingham' (Financial Mail Editor), 'Jeff Prestridge' (Financial Mail Personal Finance Editor) or 'Richard Browning' (This is Money).

I can assure you I have no connections with any property investment network, company or club. And I suggest you treat all offers of property riches with a healthy dose of cynicism. Read our property expert Simon Lambert's appraisal of property investment seminars (strangely they haven't 'bought' Simon's name yet).

I spoke to Vamish Patel who runs the Property Networking Club who insists he has stuck to the Google rules and merely 'bought a search term' that happens to be my name. 'There's been no attempt to make people misconstrue anything,' he says. He also says the 'financial phrases' are picked for him by a marketing company in India. 'It's just like buying a search term like Richard Branson.'

Now now, Mr Patel, flattering me with billionaire comparisons won't wash - and especially once he told me how little I'm worth...

Mr Patel said: 'Seventy people have searched "Andrew Oxlade" in the past year and six people have clicked through on the advert, and no-one has signed up. I pay 10p per click so that's cost me 60p.'

So with revenue generation of 60p a year, I won't give up the day job.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, thisismoney.co.uk

Useful link

> How to make money from the internet

Tax the dead and not the living

Am I the only man on the planet sick to death of the sanctimonious rubbish being talked about inheritance tax?

Shadow chancellor George Osborne promises that a future Conservative government would raise the threshold to £1m because families should 'not be punished for working hard and saving hard'.

Garbage. The vast majority of estates being drawn into the IHT net are there purely and simply because property prices have risen. Hard work and 'saving hard' have nothing to do with it.

In fact, these mythical hard-working families much loved by Labour and the Tories are saving less than they ever did. Debt has ballooned to beyond £1,000 billion. As a nation we are living on money we haven't yet earned and the closest thing to hard work in many people's daily lives is figuring out how to juggle their credit card bills.

The notion millions of us will invest an inheritance in a pension fund or to cover future long-term care bills is laughable. We want to sell off gran's old home so we can live like lottery winners for as long as it lasts.

The only thing that might stop us is having to help their kids buy a place of their own. These will cost far more than at present because if Mr Osborne gets his way the hidden price control created by the stamp duty threshold will have been removed for first-time buyers.

One way or another, governments have to raise taxes to give us the services we need. As far as I'm concerned I'd rather the dead paid taxes that would otherwise be imposed on the living.

- Simon Moon, This is Money

• Tory pledge to raise IHT limit to £1m
• How to cut the taxman out of your will
• New crackdown on inheritance tax

Northern Rock shows up the market ideologues

I find it rather churlish and hypocritical to blame either Mervyn King or the Government for what has occurred at Northern Rock. The fault lies squarely with Northern Rock, and more broadly with a free and liberalised international money market: it is an instance of what economists call market failure.

As Chancellor, Gordon Brown spent ten years bending over backwards to please business leaders and the money markets with assurances of non-intervention in their affairs.

Business, banks and investors can't have it both ways: they can't on the one hand argue for markets that are as unfettered as possible in order (notionally) to maximise efficiency, profits and shareholder returns. And then on the other complain that government or central banks or regulators do not jump in to rescue them when that market (or those firms) are shown to be not up to the job.

The job, in this case, of making sure constituent firms lend and borrow sensibly and look after people’s savings.

I sauntered off on a rail tour of continental Europe for a couple of weeks on 13 September and the next day it all went off. Which I only realised a week or so later when I picked up an English paper in Vienna.

In it I read this piece by Martin Kettle, which broadly argues that the intervention by the Government to guarantee savers' deposits presents an opportunity to create a consensus for firmer social-democratic style regulation of and intervention in markets.

I agree only in part. 'Intervention' and 'regulation' must not be confused. Surely, intervention is what you do when regulation doesn't work?

So far the intervention on behalf of Northern Rock gives the message – as Mervyn King argued - that banks (and their shareholders) can go on taking irresponsible risks and will be baled out with taxpayers' cash when things go wrong.

I am all for the Government stepping in to guarantee savings deposits: but only if the lesson is learned that the market is far from perfect and requires regulation to prevent crises – rather than ad hoc interventions once the horse has bolted.

- Adrian Lowery, News editor, This is Money

>> NORTHERN ROCK: Latest news and advice

Most popular money news and advice - September 2007

This is Money aims to bring you the best City, consumer and personal finance news and advice. We fight for your consumer rights and aim to fix your financial problems. We also show you how to make money and pay out less. It's news you can use - find out more at thisismoney.co.uk/makemoney

So don't miss the top stories from September. Unsurprisingly, Northern Rock and the impact on savings, mortgages and house prices was top of readers' concerns. Nearly 860,000 people came to the site, up 50% on a year ago, to take advantage of the latest info. Make sure you're one of them in October.

1. Time to buy Northern Rock shares?
2. Savers' Q&A: The Northern Rock fallout
3. My buy-to-let dream cost me everything
4. The banker predicting house prices to halve
5. Housing market 'is heading for a fall'
6. Ten steps to reclaim bank charges
7. Can the UK avoid a house price crash?
8. Northern Rock: How the crisis affects you
9. Where should I put my savings?
10. Reclaiming bank charges: Letter templates
11. The Postcode Breaker: Home insurance
12. More banks told to prove they are safe
13. Current account that pays 10%
14. How to get a windfall
15. Fixed-rate bonds offer best rates for years
16. House prices fall for first time in two years
17. Northern Rock crisis sparks banking panic
18. 50 ways to save money
19. Newspaper share tips: Northern Rock
20. How to pick an Isa
21. Financial Mail special report: Will property boom or slump?
22. Will Northern Rock chaos hit mortgages?
23. The savings accounts you can rely on
24. Northern Rock savers shut out of accounts
25. Warning of a 1990s-style property crash
26. New crackdown on inheritance tax
27. Mortgages hiked despite base rate freeze
28. Time to invest in bank shares?
29. Property price gap getting bigger than ever
30. Rock warning sparks fear of banking chaos
31. Northern's dilemma will rock markets
32. The buy-to-let millionaires
33. Investment Extra: Northern Rock shares
34. The cheapest way to buy shares
35. Mortgage rates soar as credit crunch bites
36. Interest rates: News, analysis, advice
37. £1m prize for 'first time' Premium Bond
38. Mortgage rates to fall after Bank U-turn
39. Northern Rock customers: Don't panic!
40. Eight steps to fix all your finances

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

British Gas joins the conmen in our hall of shame

The country's greatest financial sleuth, Tony Hetherington (right), writes for the Financial Mail on Sunday and This is Money. His weekly column is a hall of shame that should be on everyone's 'must-read' list.

>>Check the archive

This week he shines his spotlight on serial conman Simon Hill, aka Simon Johansson, whose decade of deception has finally led to justice - not for him but for one of the men he worked for, Richard Dompier, who has just been jailed for ten years in the USA. Britain is criminally behind-the-times when it comes to dealing with its white-collar crooks.

Simon Hill is not a household name. But it is a name worth remembering as are so many of the names in Hetherington's files.

One thing I find particularly alarming about the exposure of scams and rip-offs is just how often our supposedly trusted household names come under investigation.

After the near collapse of Northern Rock it is becoming increasingly difficult to know who to trust. For example, Marks & Spencer was recently in the spotlight over the wording of its advertising. Trivial by comparison, you may say? But I don't agree.

Big companies that spend fortunes on PR and advertising that don't live up to their claims are the scourge of our lives. Who can forget the empty promises from ING Direct? But which is the worst company in these stakes over the past year?

Talktalk is up there with the worst of them. But my money is on British Gas, which gets another mention from Hetherington this week over yet more billing errors and legal threats.

Personally I would not do business with this company. Here's a few more reasons why:

• Hounded for nine years by British Gas
• When will British Gas bungles end?
• Hetherington: British Gas bullying and travel insurance failures
• Has British Gas fixed me up?
• British Gas messes up 45,000 direct debits
• Wooden spoon for British Gas
• British Gas: awful on every level
• Is British Gas really cheapest?
• British Gas swamped by billing complaints
• Billing errors? British Gas again
• British Gas household share plummets
• British Gas fined £5,000

And from the blog (don't forget to read the comments)

BLOG: British Gas - institutionally moronic
BLOG: My British Gas nightmare: customer services hell
BLOG: Would British Gas make you leave the country?

And finally

Switch your gas bill supplier now

Richard Browning, This is Money

Negative equity: it's back, it's instant and we're heading for a property slump

What a fine bunch of money lenders they are at the Abbey. There I was trying to find evidence of negative equity for a blog on house price crashes and the former building society does the legwork for me - with the launch of its 125% mortgage.

OK, so it's not the only lender that is offering buyers the chance to ruin their lives with one phone call.

Our friends at Northern Rock have the romantically charged 'Together Mortgage' that seems to sell the idea of instant negative equity as though you've just won a prize you'll be able to boast about for years to come. Don't worry, you will.

If you are lured into this honey trap and borrow more than your home is worth, you are asking for trouble. The myth behind the loan is that house prices will keep rising when the opposite is fast becoming the case. The rational view is that they will fall.

Here's some maths. You buy a £200,000 house with a £250,000 (125%) mortgage at a mere 6%. That will cost you £1,610 a month every month for 25 years. If the rate went up to 8% - a modest estimate in the current climate - it would suddenly cost £1,930 a month. If you cannot afford that, then your only option is to sell.

Assuming you can get the same price you paid - probably unlikely - you will, with moving and legal costs, walk away with no 'mortgage' but still have a loan of £55,000-£60,000 to repay.

Maybe that's why the Alliance & Leicester calls its 125% mortgage the PlusMortgage.

The problem with Abbey's foray into this hateful, irresponsible world of providing crippling debt to the naive and vulnerable is the timing - bang in the middle of the biggest banking crisis for nearly 150 years, matched with an overheated property market that makes the heady days of Thatcher's boom and recession look like a squabble over small change at the greengrocer's.

If you're too young to remember the 1990s, which it seems the whole country has, the final throw of the dice before it all went wrong and the banks stopped lending altogether was the 125% mortgage.

If you're too young to remember the 1970s - as I am - listen to this chat between eminent City commentators Mickey Clarke and Anthony Hilton of the Evening Standard. Because that's where we're headed.

City briefing (6mins 19 seconds):

'After several years of easy money and a lot of speculation on property the botttom line is too much money invested in property with too high debts. The only way to repay the debt is by selling the property and prices will fall. There will be a property slump.' 
- Anthony Hilton, Monday 24 September 2007

• Listen now (streaming) >>
• MP3: listen / download
• Windows Media: listen / download

Thank you Abbey.

Richard Browning This is Money

Abbey under fire for 125% mortgage
Warning of 1990s-style property crash
Housing market is heading for a fall
Property asking prices take £6,000 tumble
Will Northern Rock chaos hit mortgages?

House prices fall for the first time in two years
The Northern Rock fallout - how this mess affects you
Can the UK avoid a house price crash?
Mortgage rates soar as credit crunch bites
My buy-to-let dream cost me everything

Don't panic over higher mortgage costs
Abbey fails relatives of deceased customer
Abbey tops list of rip-off bank charges
Investing: Abbey's habit is a poor one
A sting in the tail of Abbey's new account

And one from a year ago
House price storm is brewing

The credit crunch chronicles

Negative equity: it's back, it's instant and we're heading for a property

The Northern Rock loan for 80 year olds with a job

Northern Rock and the Picture of Modern Britain

Listen now: 'We're heading for a property slump'

The Northern Rock loan for 80 year olds with a job

OK, financial meltdown at the Northern Rock is no laughing matter. But I am forced to ask myself just how many 'not unemployed' 80 year olds have been lured into taking out this loan of theirs?

Of course, if there were takers I'm sure that the Rock staff would do all they could to ensure the sensitive handling of any fallout were their customers suddenly unable to make the repayments through death, ill health or economic redundancy caused by the, um, Northern Rock.

Just as soon as they get back from the freebie in the sun, that is...

...Northern Rock bosses hit the beach as savers panic

   

Northern Rock - news, tips and advice
Northern Rock share price
Northern Rock - advice for savers
Northern Rock - advice for investors

Northern Rock SOS came six weeks ago
Why are customers always the last to know?

Richard Browning - This is Money

The credit crunch chronicles

Negative equity: it's back, it's instant and we're heading for a property slump

The Northern Rock loan for 80 year olds with a job

Northern Rock and the Picture of Modern Britain

Listen now: 'We're heading for a property slump'

Northern Rock and the picture of modern Britain

I've found it!

The picture that sums up the state of Britain in 2007.

I'd always thought football was the universal metaphor, what with Leeds United trying to buy success with money they couldn't pay back before being found out and relegated, calling in the administrators and having points docked. But that's old news.

Here is the picture that says it all about the current mess we're in...

It's a pint.

Well, no it's not a pint. It's supposed to be a pint but it isn't. It's the kind of short-measure that we're being served these days in almost every walk of life.

There are vague guidelines in place for the acceptable amount of head on a pint and bar staff are urged to fill the glass with good nature if the customer asks for a top up.

It's not illegal but it's pretty unsavoury to short measure a pint and the publicans and brewers blithely line their pockets while the customers are left paying something for nothing.

In this case, we asked for a top up and were told in eastern European to 'zxyx off'.

Since the Government interfered with the pub trade with a smoking ban that ruled out even designated smoking pubs, if you lift the lid on the average pub around here now, there's nothing there. Everyone's outside on the street, smoking, while the insides are merely hollow versions of what they used to be.

Lift the lid on the events unfolding at Northern Rock and you'll see something very similar. Where's the substance Adam Applegarth (chief executive of Northern Rock)? The business model was flawed. The bank has been lending money it basically doesn't have to people who are increasingly likely to be unable to pay it back.

A 100% loan at up to five times salary is a pretty short measure by any standards if the housing market collapses and the 'homeowner' faces a decade of negative equity.

The customers are outside on the streets, fuming, emptying the bank before the seemingly inevitable happens. They don't trust it. 

The Government has stepped in with a promise of a bail out with taxpayers' money. It had to. But will it step in to ban the sharp practices of the greedy morons who pressure the gullible and ignorant to take loans they cannot afford? Like hell. Expect some urgent vague guidelines coming to a bank near you very soon.

If you can't trust your local pub, it's a pretty sorry state of affairs.

If you can't trust your bank, we're zxyz-ed.

Richard Browning, This is Money

The Northern Rock Crisis
Northern Rock share prices
Chancellor guarantees Northern Rock cash
Chancellor kicks City watchdog
Housing market 'is heading for a fall'
Savers' Q&A: The Northern Rock fallout
Best savings rates
Northern Rock reaped what it had sown
So who is Adam Applegarth? (pictured below)

The credit crunch chronicles

Negative equity: it's back, it's instant and we're heading for a property slump

The Northern Rock loan for 80 year olds with a job

Northern Rock and the Picture of Modern Britain

Listen now: 'We're heading for a property slump'

Save me from the Cauldron of Hate

I'd like to nominate my Sainsbury's Local as the worst shop in the country. OK, I can't really substantiate that …. the worst shop that I find myself often standing in even though I and everyone I know locally loathes it with a passion.

It has virtually no loose fruit or veg, and what there is is just shoddy. It stocks the most expensive line possible in whatever you might commonly want. And every day it runs out of a selection of essentials by about 5pm – just when its rush-hour begins and harried straight-out-of-work shoppers fill the claustrophobic aisles. Soon we're all barging moodily past each other, tutting and tersely muttering 'no ******* tinned tomatoes again!?'

My housemate and I have cheerfully christened it the Cauldron of Hate.

It's the one on Battersea Park Rd (south-west London) by the way, just in case the area manager is reading – although I doubt it: he or she is probably busy conducting experiments with monkeys to devise new ways of making grocery shopping more unpleasant.

And you think I'm joking ... well maybe a bit, and only because I suspect every other Sainsbury's Local and Tesco Express provides the same 'quality of shopping'.

I put it to you: when was the last time you bought a punnet of 'ripen-at-home' nectarines and actually had one ripen on you? Did you manage to catch the six-hour window of insipid squelchyness between the three days of 'woodlike' and the onset of mould?

Could it be that they are trying to tempt us towards their wonderful 'Taste the Difference' range of nectarines? – a steal at 70p each? (Or more like 'a steel' if the last one I shelled out for is anything to go by.)

Why would a store cease stocking 500g bags of pasta (the not-very-big ones) in order to stock 250g bags (the laughably small), other than to extract more money? They look like those dinky bags of exotic pulses you see in the world foods aisle. In the world of Milky Ways, they'd be called 'Fun-size'. What marvellous fun I was having, paying over the odds for rubbish.

The most delicious thing about it all (for it is not the food), is that they are no longer cheap. That's the one thing supermarkets were good for, economy, and they’re not even that anymore! Well, not the 'convenience' ones anyway.

You see, I enjoy cooking. And I enjoy going and finding good ingredients to cook with. This is not possible in my immediate locale because we just have Tesco and Sainsbury's. Oh, and Spar. But I live and work in centralish London, so if I have the time and inclination and I remember, then I can go around to a few different shops and pick up stuff that actually tastes like what it's meant to and isn't covered in three layers of foam and plastic.

I know it sounds like such a chattering-class thing to quack on about but the supermarkets really have sucked the enjoyment out of food-shopping for me – and also created the conditions whereby small retailers can't compete or even afford premises.

I can't help looking abroad for comparisons and whether it's France, Spain or Italy, they all seem to get a better deal than us in this, as in so much else. No wonder a thousand years after the Dark Ages we're still the binge-drinking barbarians of Europe: we're better at it than food; and it helps us forget the Cauldron of Hate.

- Adrian Lowery, News editor, This is Money

Bank charges: Giving something back

This is Money is lucky enough to have some very informed and helpful members in the message boards. These volunteer consumer champions have been great in dishing out advice on bank charges.

By way of thanks, This is Money offered to pay 50p to their chosen charity each time somebody signed up to our weekly newsletter, a round-up of the best news and advice on issues such as bank charges, investment, house prices, and much more.

I'm delighted to say we had 1098 people sign up - so a cheque for £549 is winging its way to the charity - http://www.childrensholidays.org.uk/donate.html#onlinedonation

> Find out more about why we did this: original message board thread

Don't miss our full bank charges coverage

And our guide to reclaiming bank charges

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, thisismoney.co.uk

How to get elected London Mayor - 30 minutes free parking

Becoming London’s mayor has come a long way since Dick Whittington heard the Bow Bells singing his name and turned around.

Whittington, as the story goes, was walking away from London - where he had arrived as a pauper with his trusty cat - when he heard the bells calling to him as he climbed Highgate Hill and made an abrupt about turn.

Of course, Whittington was not mayor in the same sense that Ken Livingstone currently is and Boris Johnson wants to be, he was Lord Mayor of London, a separate post that still remains as a figurehead role.

But I’m sure that Ken or Boris would dearly love to go down in history in the same way as Dick has - even if instead of a cat Ken would have a newt and Boris his bike.

So, here’s my suggestion of a sure-fire vote winner for whichever of the sabre-rattling duo want to make London their own:

30 minutes free parking.

It’s a simple plan – easy to implement, bound to be popular with a lot of ordinary Londoners and could blaze a trail for common sense throughout Britain.

Cars can be parked in any space, be it residents’ bay, public car park, or metered area for 30 minutes for free. After that parking wardens can give them a ticket.

Residents will still be able to find spaces to park, as people will not be able to park beyond half-an-hour, small businesses will benefit from shoppers enjoying the same privileges they get at the supermarket, and people can regain the right to nip into a shop and buy something without getting a £60 fine.

The only people who will be affected are parking wardens, who will now have to go back to the way things used to work before the current insanity took over. In those days, wardens tended to write down people’s number plates and give them a bit of leeway before slapping on a ticket.
The 30-minute rule will not apply to single or double yellows and any council seeking to extend a yellow line area will have to justify it and then put it to a local vote.

I can’t see a single reason why everyone can’t have the right to park for half an hour and it would be the biggest boost we could give to local shops. Any environmental concerns about increased car use would be offset by less people driving to out-of-town supermarkets with their free parking.

Parking restrictions are meant to be for the benefit of local residents and businesses – at the moment they penalise them - so how about it Boris or Ken?

After all nowadays if Dick Whittington was travelling up Highgate Hill, he’d probably get a parking ticket while he was pulled up, mulling over whether to turn back or not.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

PS. There’s a second part to this vote winner that could be implicated at a later date - make traffic wardens pick up litter while they are walking round too.

More:

Cost of parking rockets

Tycoon says £80,000 car in pound is good value compared to London parking

Councils banned from setting ticket targets

Beware the ducks - the problems of a place in the sun

I was recently lucky enough to spend a few days at the holiday home of friends in rural France.

They have pursued a path that many Brits feel will provide the lifestyle, and wealth, they want in retirement.

While by no means super-rich, my friends have benefited like many of their contemporaries from decent retirement packages, rising house prices in the UK and some inheritance. It is these that enabled them to buy the place in France three years ago, and that are now paying for renovations to it.

Over dinner one evening they explained to me some of the little, and not so little, obstacles they have had to overcome in carrying out their plans.

Now, this is no foreign home horror story. There have been no dodgy contracts, no conmen, no land repossessed from beneath them. But their story is, I think, a reflection of the problems Brits have to overcome if they want to follow the dream of living abroad in retirement, and of the perseverance it takes to make a success of it.

Renovating has meant both dealing with local tradesman and undertaking some of the work themselves. It seems French builders share the time keeping skills of British builders and my friends quickly learned that deadlines are regarded only as vague suggestions of when work should be completed.

But this is not a reflection on the skills, or application, of the builders. By all accounts the work has been to a very high standard and, when they do turn up, they work from sunrise to sunset. The delays are largely down to limited working hours permitted in France and the number of public holidays – there are five in May alone.

So, lesson one for aspiring foreign homeowners: don’t expect building work to be done on time. Factor in for weeks, or even months, of delays and be prepared to live in dust-covered mayhem in the meantime.

Carrying out renovation work for themselves has also brought problems unfamiliar to the average British DIYer. Not least of which was the discovery of the nest of a Fouine (a stone marten - like a large weasel) in the roof of an outbuilding. Clearing it involved the removal, by hand, of several chicken corpses in varying states of decomposition.

And the problems haven’t stopped with building work. Perhaps most worrying of all has been the emergence of a landowner and general bigwig referred to by locals only as ‘Le Comte’ - The Count.

Neighbours contacted my friends to explain that The Count, who owns the land surrounding their property, was looking to sell. Worst than that, he was looking to sell to a duck farmer.   

Ducks are the worst nextdoor neighbours you could think of. Noisy, smelly and housed in ugly warehouses, they threaten to spoil the peace and views that attracted my friends to the property in the first place.      

When it was communicated that my friends could, of course, make an offer for the land themselves, it became apparent that the duck farm was most likely a ruse to coerce them into buying the land from The Count at an inflated price.

Ruse or not, they faced having to make buy the land or risk thousand being wiped from the value of their property.

They have reluctantly decided to make an offer, reasoning that any change in the current planning permission could increase the value ten-fold. But working out a fair price for the land has meant boning up on everything from French land usage to farm irrigation. What they settled on was significantly below the price being quoted so, rather than give in, they have decided to stare The Count in the eye and offer the lower price.

As I left, they were awaiting his response. The Counter offer, if you will.

The problems, large and small, will no doubt continue as they take the incremental steps towards their dream of a foreign home retirement. Brits thinking of pursuing the same path should be prepared to take their own, tiring, steps.

Ed Monk, This is Money

Make airlines take responsibility for lost luggage

I've always found it amazing the way that airlines are able to get away with losing people's baggage yet not taking any responsibility. I spent a good portion of last Monday trying to sort out the mystery of the missing for suitcase for a friend of mine from Australia who is travelling through Europe for the summer. She flew with Easyjet from Gatwick to Nice on August 3, and, like so many other holidaymakers, her bag didn't arrive in France with her.

Four days later she received a call from someone at Gatwick Airport saying the bag had been located and was being passed over to the care of Easyjet to be forwarded onto Nice. By last Monday it still hadn't arrived, there was no record of where it had been sent or who had phoned her a week earlier and Easyjet were at a loss to explain where it was. Easyjet said their contact at the airport who usually deals with these things was on holiday, the deputy was at a conference in Edinburgh and they were 'at the mercy of the baggage handling company'. There was nothing to be done, they said, except sit back and 'wait for it to turn up'.

It's simply not good enough. While Easyjet was milling about making excuses about this being an 'isolated incident', their passenger was stuck in France, after 11 days of having none of her clothing or personal belongings, her holiday in tatters and out of pocket. She wasn't really in the mood for continuing to "sit around and wait for it to turn up". 

Finally, I phoned the Easyjet press office on her behalf and told them I was vastly unimpressed by their appalling display of customer service and their complete incompetence when it comes to reuniting lost bags with their desperate owners. When I said I would publish a blog on This is Money, Easyjet finally sprung into action. The bag was located at Gatwick on Monday afternoon and it was finally reunited with its owner last Wednesday - nearly two weeks later.

Is it a great surprise though? Her holiday dramas emerged amid news that insurance companies are seeing a vast increase in the number of claims for lost baggage. And it's ultimately up to travellers to ensure that have proper insurance too. Airlines are able to pass the buck on this one.

As an aside, it's extraordinary how the threat of adverse publicity spurs big business into action - a desperate person without luggage for nearly two weeks is not enough. In fairness to Easyjet, this is a common scenario when we try to sort out our readers' customer service problems. It's a generalisation, but whether we're dealing with banks, insurance providers, utility companies, or virtually anyone else... often the only thing that will get a situation resolved for the poor customer is a call to the press office.

Easyjet apologised and offered to refund all the extra expenses she has incurred as a result, as well as offering her a free return flight.

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

Useful links

• REPORT: Your rights if your bags go missing
• TODAY'S NEWS: Travel claims soar after BA baggage mess
• TRAVEL INSURANCE: Search for a policy that will compensate you if your bags going missing.

Would British Gas make you leave the country?

'That's it, I'm leaving this country.' No it's not me, although I can often think of the advantages of living somewhere with a pay-off for the daily grind.

A city near the mountains where I can snowboard at the weekends; a place near the sea where you leave work at 6.30pm and spend an hour on the beach; a spot where I could go surfing before work (although that's unlikely, as I barely manage to wake up before work.)

No, 'That's it, I'm leaving ' paraphrases the comments we get regularly at This is Money when we run a story that people feel means they are getting ripped off.

The latest 'I'm off' comments have arrived on Ed Monk's story about energy companies being given permission to lock people into long-term deals.

I sincerely doubt anyone annoyed by the hugely profitable, but highly annoying businesses that run our energy companies will actually leave the country because of this. But when I saw this news I had to ask myself, 'What are Ofgem doing?'

Essentially it is impossible to live in this country without electricity or gas. In fact, as some of the comments on a previous blog I wrote about British Gas and Tony Hetherington's column show, even if you try and live without it they will still charge you.

So, gas and electricity are a necessity and prices have been going up. Fair enough, energy is becoming an expensive commodity, but time after time the customer is getting stung for companies' ineptitude.

If there is one thing we get a lot of complaints about at This is Money, it is the sheer incompetence of energy firms, so what is the regulator Ofgem's response? It's going to let them force long-term contracts on people.

Currently energy firms cannot make someone stay beyond four weeks. From now on they will have mortgage lender/ broadband/mobile phone company powers to make you take a long-term contract and pay it up if you leave.
Now I have some experience of this with British Gas. I can say - using fair comment - that they are the most incompetent, moronic and staggeringly stupid company I have ever had to deal with.

This is a company which told me it is okay to send out letters to people threatening bailiffs, disconnection and court while trying to sort out problems because people should know to ignore them.

The only good thing about my relationship with British Gas was I had the power to tell them I was leaving with no penalty.
Now, thanks to a body meant to look after the consumer, that is gone.

Whatever way Ofgem dresses this up, I cannot see any advantage to the consumer - it has handed the balance of power to businesses the customer is already unhappy with. Well done Ofgem.

I won't be leaving the country. There hasn't been quite enough straws to break this camel's back yet, and I think I live in the best city in the world. But you can forgive people for making the threats, however idle. If you're going to get treated badly, a pay-off whether it be Mediterranean, Alpine or even sunshine would be nice.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Could you get cheaper energy bills?

My British Gas nightmare: Customer service hell

British Gas - institutionally moronic

Most popular news and features in July

A development on unfair bank charges - banks and the regulator are going to court for guidance on whether they should hand back fees - drove that issue up the agenda in the top stories for July. There also appeared to be heightened concern for the state of the property market.

Far more people are coming to This is Money for the news and information they can use to make more money and pay out less. Nearly 855,000 readers came to the site and looked at more than 8m pages, a readership increase of nearly 60% on a year ago and up 13% on the month before. 

This is a list of the top news stories, features and guides for July...

1. Ten steps to reclaim bank charges
2. Bank charges letter templates
3. Has your savings rate risen?
4. Reclaim bank charges letter
5. Top savings accounts now paying 6.3%
6. Housing market will 'grind to a halt'
7. The savings accounts you can rely on
8. 25 everyday rip-offs
9. Invest like billionaire Warren Buffett
10. A quick guide: reclaim bank charges
11. Expert views: Where next for rates?
12. Ten steps to reclaim credit card charges
13. The best (and worst) cash Isas
14. Economist warns of house price collapse
15. House prices 'poised for sudden slowdown'
16. Mum blows £135,000 after bank blunder
17. How to pick the best Isa
18. Interest rates: News, views and predictions
19. TV star Noel Edmonds loses a fortune
20. Crunch warning as oil nears $80
21. Tesco will sell your home for £199
22. What are the best broadband deals?
23. Inheritance tax guide
24. Should you get out of property?
25. ING Direct fails to pass on rate rise
26. Make money from the internet
27. Will your property pass the buy-to-let test?
28. Best paid jobs revealed
29. Top funds for 2007
30. Cheapest foreign currency rates

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS IS MONEY

>> Most popular news and features in June
>> Most popular news and features in May
>> Most popular news and features in April
>> Most popular news and features in March

>> Most popular news and features in 2006
>> Most popular blog posts in 2006

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

P.S. If there are other issues you would like us to investigate, please email me at editor@thisismoney.co.uk

How to build a business worth (nearly) £1bn: Moneysupermarket's accidental secret

Today, the City saw the biggest float open to small investors since lastminute.com. Back in 2000, lastminute shares raced from 380p to 488p before enduring once of the most high profile share slumps of recent years. By 2002, the stock had hit a low of just 17p.

In recent days, small investors have had the opportunity to apply for shares in another dotcom. Moneysupermarket.com is a company that compares prices for consumers on a range of financial services and travel products, such as car hire and flights. It floated today, valued at £840m, way short of earlier estimates, some as high as £1.3bn. The shares floated at 170p and quickly sank back to 156p.

So will Moneysupermarket shareholders suffer the same fate as those who backed lastminute? Views are mixed. See here:

Daily Telegraph: Avoid Moneysupermarket shares

Sunday Telegraph: Moneysupermarket is a buy

This is Money analysis: An expensive supermarket?

But let's put today's disappointment to one side for a moment.

It’s easy to forget, this is a business that didn’t exist before 1999 and even by 2002 was still earning a relativelty small income, comparing just mortgages, credit cards and loans. It now has revenues in excess of £100m and profits of £33m for last year and offers and has extended its offering to a whole range of insurance, travel and home-related services. So how has Moneysupermarket done it?

Well, there’s a whole range of issues. Senior figures within the financial services industry certainly rate the management as sharp and effective, and good timing means the company has benefited from Britain’s biggest ever credit boom, directing hundreds of thousands of people to credit cards, loans and mortgages. The UK’s addiction to debt has seen total borrowing swell from £700bn to more than £1.3 trillion since Moneysupermarket was created.

However, Moneysupermarket admits in its prospectus where the real big win has come: 'A significant number of consumers access the group’s websites by clicking on a link contained in search engines' 'natural' listings (i.e. listings not dependent on advertising or other payments). Transactions effected by these consumers result in higher gross margins to the group as there are minimal associated direct costs.'

Essentially, a large chunk of Moneysupmarket’s success is down to appearing high up on Google search results pages.

Google sets out clear rules on its site as to how websites can improve their rankings but beyond that, ‘search engine optimisation’ – tweaking your site to boost your position – is something of a black art.

Moneysupermarket will have spent a sizable amount of cash optimising its pages in recent years but its real search win came years before that – and was probably an accident. Moneysupermarket has commercial partnerships with a vast array of news websites – including this one – powering search tools for different products, such as credit cards or insurance.

Google awards ranking points for links into a site. So the more links into a particular website, the higher the Google ranking. And the type of websites linking in makes a difference – government or educational websites have a high ranking - and so do news websites. The idea is that the website must be useful to have so many links and from such reputable sources.

So Moneysupermarket has commercial agreements with many of the major UK news websites. But, unlike some of its rivals, the company has crucially used its own address or ‘URL’ rather than one created for that partnership. For example, all Moneysupermarket credit card partners have the URL address www.moneysupermarket.com/cardsp/default.asp whereas rivals use purpose-built addresses depending on the product.

So an imaginary rival, CheapLoansAndStuff,com would have partnered with the notional Daily Observer with this address - www.dailyobersver.cheaploansandstuff.com/credit-cards/

It should have used www.cheaploansandstuff.com/credit-cards

So Google reads all the Moneysupmarket partnerships as dozens of news websites (which are MS commercial partners) pointing to moneysupermarket.com/cardsp/default.asp. because it is so useful. It only sees one link into www.dailyobersver.cheaploans.com/credit-cards/

The result is that Moneysupermarket has historically come out top for search terms such as 'loans' or 'credit cards'.

It may be that Google has spotted this and changed its algorithms – the computer programme behind its search engine – to discount these links. Google certainly made some changes in May that dented Moneysupermarket’s ranking - Google hits Moneysupermarket float hopes It even warranted a mention in the float prospectus under 'risks'.

The mystery behind search engines makes it hard to judge the impact of this particular early-day decision at Moneysupermarket. Given search engine optimisation was virtually unheard of in 2002, the decision to create links that way was probably an accidentally. What we do know is that it was an accident that led to the biggest dotcom stock market float the UK has so far seen.

Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Noel Edmonds - genius, businessman, Austin Metro fan

So fate has yet again dealt Noel Edmonds a duff hand. Love him or hate him, Noel is an icon of the modern times. He is a man who has starred in more comebacks than a 70s rock group and he is always guaranteed to be not very far from some form of bonkers idea.

A brief round-up of Noelism includes:

• His Deal or No Deal return featured bizarre writing on his hands as some form of positive thinking cosmic ordering method.
• He had a business venture selling odd plastic off road vehicles to the police
• He appeared each week alongside a giant pink creature in a make believe town called Crinkley Bottom
• He told lads mag Loaded that he once drove a Ford GTO at 186mph round a bypass - naked

This time he appears to have been laid low by a failed business venture involving a helicopter that finance firm Lombard alledges he hasn't paid for.
In true Noel style he told the FT: 'I am going to go through severe financial pain, but it is a matter of principle for me,'

It is this oddness and point blank refusal to let life grind him down that explains the British public's fascination with him - the story about Noel was This is Money's most popular on the day it broke.

So in tribute, here is one of Noel's lesser seen moments, where he displays the optimism, refusal to bow to cold hard reality and slightly bonkers attitude we know and love - he advertises Austin Rovers in the 1980s.

In a stroke of genius the best things Noel and the ad men seem to have come up with about the Austin Metro is that it has a bonnet, five doors, heaters and indicators. And if you think that's scraping the barrel wait until we get to the Austin Maestro and Austin Montego.

Jeremy Clarkson it isn't, but Noel, I salute you

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Help and advice for small businesses

ING savings rates: how low can they go?

Another rise in the Bank Rate and another refusal by ING Direct to put up its savings rates by a corresponding amount.

Just how much more of this can customers take?

In my inaugural SCUM-watch I looked at ING's increasingly desperate attempts to justify the cuts in the rates it pays customers. It followed confident claims by ING that its initial headline-grabbing and suspiciously attractive rates were sustainable and not just a marketing ploy. Claims that have proved unfounded over and over again.

Read today's story for the latest explanation>>
ING fails to pass on rate rise

One can only assume that the spokespeople for ING Direct are paid an awful lot of money to go public with these, I think, risible excuses. How do they sleep at night?

Why not judge for yourselves. Here's the ING spokesman defending another recent faux pas from the bank on BBC's Money Box a couple of weeks ago.

Download ingdirect.wma

(Should start playing if you have Windows Media Player installed.)

Richard Browning, This is Money

And now, some more related stuff...

Top savings accounts now pay 6.3%
is it any wonder that... Angry ING savers pull £3bn
now see... The best (and worst) cash Isas
and enjoy Listening to the boss of First Direct trying to explain why pregnant women should pay more for their banking
and then ask yourself why... 20,000 leave First Direct
and if you missed SCUM-watch part one: ING Direct savings rates

or join one of the ING savings rates debates on This is Money

End this stamp duty madness

I would love to have a look inside the mind of our great and good leaders when the subject of stamp duty crops up.

Ask even the most hard-nosed Treasury minister why they are in politics and it is fairly likely a desire to make a difference, make life fairer etc. will be the response.
I can only presume that therefore there is an operation performed on ministers' brains that means that when the matter of stamp duty crops up, there is an automatic brain shutdown.

Question asked: 'What are you going to do about stamp duty catching 60% of first-time buyers and 86% of homemovers, who pay a level of tax set by the previous homeowner's profit?'
Automatic brain alert triggered: Shutters roll down over part of brain used for thinking, principle of fairness receptors blocked, inane stock response robot activated, justification of stamp duty that ignores question spewed out.

There must be something like this happening, because otherwise you'd have to consider the continued unfair nature of stamp duty to be malicious.

Stamp duty is charged slab-style - go above a threshold of 1% at £125,000, 3% at £250,000 or 4% at £500,000 and you pay that on the whole amount. This system is fine for VAT on a fridge, but not so good for property, which costs hundreds of thousands.

Once upon a time this wasn't so important. First-time buyers generally paid below the threshold, homemovers with a bit of equity paid up to £2,500 and not many people paid £7,500 or more.
Now, in many areas, you can't get a flat for less that £125,000, and a standard small family home costs £250,000. Meanwhile, a bog standard four-bedroom home in London, the South and some other areas now tips half a million.

So people have to borrow more and stretch to the limit just to get a home and then they get a whacking great tax bill based on how much the person they are paying for the home is making.

When my girlfriend and I bought our one-bedroom flat last year we paid almost £2,300 in stamp duty. The person who owned our flat before us saw its value increase by £73,000 in four years, so our stamp duty bill was £730 more than when he bought the same flat.
In my area Stroud Green, an improving but still slightly shabby area of North London between Finsbury Park and Crouch End, a family buying a standard Victorian terrace house would be facing an asking price of £650,000-plus.

If they buy off someone who has lived there for the past five years, the seller will have seen the value of their home rise by maybe £250,000. So the previous owner makes a quarter of a million, having paid stamp duty of £12,000, the new owner has to borrow much more and pays stamp duty of £26,000.
It goes on and on until you get to the top, where the richest have expensive accountants who help them get away with paying hardly any.

So what to do? Firstly, make sellers pay stamp duty not buyers.
Critics say this would just mean sellers adding the cost of the stamp duty bill to their home's price thus pushing it up, but this is an argument about unfair tax not market forces. And the criticism ignores the fact that by making the seller pay stamp duty it is actually an incentive to them not to push prices up as far as possible, as they will just get a bigger tax bill.

Secondly, make stamp duty a marginal tax like income tax. Pay £260,000 for a home, and the seller pays 1% up to £125,000 and 3% only on the bit above £250,000.

This new stamp duty will also not apply if you sell your home for the same price or less than you bought it for.

Reforming the tax like this would put a dent in the £4.5bn income derived from stamp duty but it will make a difference and be a lot fairer. Let the Government make the income up from somewhere else - taxing billionaire private equity bosses for example.
Now if only we could get round that automatic brain shutdown.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Help and advice for first-time buyers

Mortgages and property news, tips and advice

What's in a name? - Win 30GB video iPod

I’ve always thought a good name never does a business any harm, and in some cases can be its making.

For years I used to get my haircut in Maidstone in a shop called ‘The Bas***d Barber’. I believe it’s still going strong and I doubt its success has anything to do with the quality (or cleanliness) of the establishment.

You can forgive a lot of things if a business has shown some flair in the name or slogan it uses. Like building firm Patel & Sons that uses the slogan ‘You’ve tried the cowboys, now try the Indians’.

Or the camping shop who, in the depths of December, slashed prices with a sign proclaiming ‘Now is the winter of our discount tents.’

Or the south coast takeaway called ‘Brighton Wok’.

Or the hair salon called ‘Curl up & Dye’.

If you know of any similarly named businesses you can enter them into a new competition and win yourself a video iPod. The insurer MoreThan Business is hoping to find Britain’s most creative small business names and is inviting nominations at the website www.whatsinaname.uk.com.

It doesn’t have to be your business, you only have to know the name and location. There are ten prizes of a year’s free insurance and a 30GB video iPod. So why not enter and gain from someone else’s ingenuity.

Ed Monk, This is Money

Most popular news and features in June

Once again, concerns over the property market drove the news agenda last month but rising rates and a warning that the UK stock market is overpriced also caught the eye of readers. This is Money's popularity as continued to grow with 757,000 visitors, up 52% on a year ago.

Here are the most popular news stories, features and guides for June...

1. Ten steps to reclaim bank charges
2. Bank charge letter templates
3. ABN fears world housing crash
4. Thousand-point crash warning for Footsie
5. Buy-to-let bubble 'will burst'
6. A quick guide: reclaim bank charges
7. Ten steps to reclaim credit card charges
8. Newspaper and magazine share tips (Standard Life)
9. Bank chief: 'Rates must go up next week'
10. Five win £1m Bond prizes
11. From frugality to £34,000 debt (pictured)
12. 50 ways to save money
13. Costa catastrophe
14. Should you ditch BT for TalkTalk?
15. Negative equity stalks buyers
16. Will Standard Life shares keep performing?
17. Market report: Wednesday close (6 June - FTSE fall warning)
18. New blow to bank charge claims
19. Ten tips for buy-to-let
20. Midas: Standard enjoys hotspots growth
21. Top funds for 2007
22. Are property seminars a good bet?
23. Has your savings rate risen?
24. Should you sell then rent back your home?
25. What are the best broadband deals?

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Something fishy about that chicken?

Have you ever opened a pack of supermarket chicken breasts only to be assaulted by a smell from somewhere between High Heaven and the drains at the colostomy clinic?

I have.

Three days ago to be precise.

Which, if you look at the label from the pack, pictured, was three days before its use-by date (today).

Apparently this is not uncommon. You are, I'm told, supposed to freeze chicken on the day of purchase and not leave it in the fridge for two days as I did.

But if this is correct, why doesn't it say so on the label?

This isn't the first time that I've sent chicken to landfill because it's gone off before it says it should and it got me thinking. What exactly does it say on the label?

Well, with a little help from Google, I attempted to find out.

1. Asda.
Big supermarket, Britain's cheapest. Started in Yorkshire now owned by American giant Wal-Mart. Named after founding Asquith family and the word Dairy, according to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not always reliable. Wal-Mart's industrial relations record is often debated.

2. Fresh British Chicken
Blimey. There's a whole other world out there. A world of chicken marketing. 'Sporting legend Sally Gunnell, who still holds the 400m hurdles world record, is a big fan of British chicken.' Nice one Sal. Your chicken clearly doesn't whiff of sewage.

3. British chicken breast fillets
Although I'm reluctant to search for 'breasts' from my work computer (I like my job) it turns out the phrase returns Waitrose in the top slot. Waitrose chicken breasts cost £5.99.

4. £4.00
This pack of three big chicken breast seems very cheap to me. At the local butcher this would set me back three times more than that. Turns out you're allowed to inject chicken with water and beef so long as the ingredients list it. There are no ingredients listed and no mention of any beef. So we're OK. But how come it's so cheap?

5. UK 4633 EC
4633 is the name of 20cm pothole in York, a ray of sunshine watch, and the starting salary for a teaching assistant in Tameside. What it's got to do with meat is not immediately obvious.

6. L317107:09
317107 relates 'to the DPE deficit and unallocated resources of £9,707 from other Highways Revenue Budgets' in Cumbria. It's also the Barnes & Noble sales rank of The most critically acclaimed of all of Dr. Frank H. Netter's works, Musculoskeletal System: Developmental Disorders, Tumors, Rheumatic Diseases, and Joint Replacement. What this number is or has to do with dead poultry is not clear.

7. 5.88
This is the heading of a chapter in a document on the definition of dangerous weapons in Dublin and outdoor vending rules in Sacramento. It's also the price of an audio Sherlock Holmes book. Here, it is of course the price per kilo of my chicken breasts. £5.88/kg. This compares to waitrose, which sells at £11.98/kg. More than twice the price. Organic chicken breasts are more than £18 a kilo. How does Asda do it?

8. 680g
This is the weight of a jar of vegetarian tortoise food, a type of coaxial car speaker and the subject of a not-very-popular discussion in foreign on airbot.net. It is also the weight of my chicken breasts. That's heavy chicken, man. At Waitrose, the average weight of FOUR chicken breasts is 530g. At Asda you get THREE for 680g. Wow.

9. Use by HDY
HDY is the stock exchange code for Hyperdynamics Corporation, an offshore oil and gas exploration and exploitation company in Guinea and Louisiana. It's the official code for Hat Yai airport in Thailand. But I'm guessing in this context it's probably a shortform for Hadaway, a bit of Geordie slang for 'get away'.  I can find no other explanation.

10. Fresh Class A
Class A is 'ecstasy, LSD, heroin, cocaine, crack, magic mushrooms, amphetamines (if prepared for injection)'.

11. Packaged in a protective atmosphere
This means the air's been sucked out to prolong the shelf-life. There's some serious science going on here. Protective atmosphere means the packet's full of nitrogen. There's a website called Chicken Yoghurt.

12. 'Produced in the UK', and the red tractor logo
'The red tractor logo guarantees that the food you are buying has been produced to high standards from the farm right through to the supermarket shelf to ensure you are buying quality fresh food.' So that's OK.

Must be my fridge that's dodgy. 

Richard Browning This is Money

More...

Asda / Tesco telephone prank
Asda under fire over cheap roses
Asda guilty of anti-union bribes
Is Wal-Mart getting it wrong?
Asda showdown with unions
Asda milk ads banned from kids TV
Caring consumer

And finally...

A calculator to see when fruit is available in the UK

And so farewell dear pint and fag

The nearer we have come to the smoking ban, the more angry about it I've suddenly become. So I'm going to get it off my tarry chest.

Now, I accept the arguments about the health dangers of passive smoking and the inadequacy of current arrangements in most pubs and restaurants. A ban for all places in which food is served makes sense: I almost always duck out of restaurants anyway for my pernicious post-prandial puff, even if they permit smoking. As for most other public buildings: I can't really think of many which would currently allow you to smoke anyway.

Denying pubs and most particularly private social clubs the choice of designating themselves as venues that permit their customers to smoke is an interference in the free will of both business and individual - that is without doubt. The question is, is it justified?

Some forms of paternalism are both sensible and necessary: the seatbelt law for instance. It has an obvious and undeniable benefit to everyone who drives and it imposes only a negligible restriction on individuals' lives. I'm not swooping in from the wild-eyed fringe of libertarianism.

There is only one meaningful criterion in the smoking debate: no one who does not want to breath in cigarette smoke should be forced to, or even be put in a position where it's likely. Great, fine. This does not necessitate a blanket ban.

A pub or club should be allowed to designate itself a smoking venue. Non-smokers who apply for a job there, or enter the building, are fully aware it will be a smoky environment. They will do so of their own free will. They have made an adult decision that they don't mind the smoke - or at least that they they are prepared to take the negligible risk of impaired health from a few hours' passive smoking.

Those who don't like smoke will have a massive choice from the vast majority of venues that will become 'smoke-free' (god, I loathe the unutterable smugness of that phrase).

People choose to be firemen, people choose to work in zoos, people work on oil rigs and in mines - dangerous places. No, I take that back, they're not dangerous places. Iraq is a dangerous place, the Colombian border with Bolivia is I believe a dangerous place, copper mines in Brazil are probably a bit dicey.

But what we think of as 'dangerous' workplaces in Western societies actually pose negligible risks - getting into a car knocks them all into the shade. People make a rational adult choice that they think the benefits of working there outweigh the risk of harm.

No one thinks the state should ban zoos from having chimps because they might take a dislike to the bloke in the hat and give him a good mauling. I don't think the chances of suffering health problems from passive smoking are so much greater - so why all of a sudden do we think the state can interfere in the way millions of people enjoy themselves?

Our society appears to be succumbing to certain trends: a new intolerant puritanism, a sort of infantilisation, and a slightly miserable submissiveness to an ever-more overbearing and socially controlling state. And some people call that progress.

Adrian Lowery, News editor, This is Money

Buy-to-let - private equity for the common man

Bob Buy-to-Let lives in a three-bedroom semi, works a 45-hour week as an electrical contractor and dreams of retiring at 60 to play a bit of golf and travel.
Patrick Private Equity lives in a £5m Kensington home, works a 45-hour week putting together £1bn company buyouts and could retire tomorrow, but would soon tire of the easy jet-set lifestyle.

At first there doesn’t seem to be a great deal in common between the lives of Britain’s Bobs and Patricks.

With every £5m flat purchased, racehorse bought and Lamborghini let loose, the world of London’s super-rich appears to become increasingly detached from the rest of the country.

But if Bob ended up at a Kensington dinner party, or Patrick ended up in the saloon bar of the Cat and Fiddle, they might find they had something to chat about.

Both are feeling the wrath of a public backlash. Private equity bosses were hauled in front of MPs last week to justify the huge profits they have been making while paying very little tax thanks to a capital gains loophole. Meanwhile, buy-to-let investors are being blamed for pushing the price of homes out of reach of young buyers while enjoying the ability to offset their mortgage interest and costs against tax on rental income.

But it’s not just the tax breaks and backlash Bob and Patrick have in common, they are essentially playing the same game. Buy-to-let is private equity for the common man.

The basis of private equity is to find a company you reckon you can improve and profit from when you sell it on. This is done by borrowing heavily to fund the purchase, using income to service the debts, stripping out costs, making the company more efficient and more attractive, boosting profits and thus increasing its resale value.

A good buy-to-let landlord is doing the same. Mortgage debt buys the property, rent pays the mortgage bills, household costs are cut to a minimum and the property tarted up to boost the income and the resale value is increased.

Both rely on the same thing – cheap borrowing. Buy-to-let has given the common man the ability to use leverage in the same way the world’s international financiers do.
And for both the backlash has begun.

Some of it may be down to the fact that it’s easier to spot the negatives than the social benefits of buy-to-let or private equity. Some of it can be put down to the politics of envy. Bob and his pals have profited from their buy-to-lets while others who could have got involved but never did have missed out. Patrick and his City pals are enjoying huge wealth at a time when the rest of us are feeling a serious financial squeeze. Both have benefited from tax breaks that those who aren’t involved don’t get.

But, buy-to-let landlords and private equity bosses are just using the opportunities open to them to make a profit.

What is wrong is that an interventionist Government has allowed two bubbles to build up that must surely pop.

It cannot have escaped the Treasury’s notice that larger and larger sums were being punted on private equity with huge profits being made. It cannot have escaped the Treasury’s notice that the value of buy-to-let lending has increased from £9.1bn in 2000 to £95bn in 2006, according to the Council of Mortgage lenders.

Gordon Brown’s mantra in his time as Chancellor has been the move away from boom and bust, but to do that you have to pre-empt and prevent bubbles, or at least try to limit the damage they cause. It’s too late to do that now for buy-to-let and private equity – the bubbles are there and changing the tax regimes will be shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

The party is over anyway. The cost of borrowing is on the up – the cheap debt that has sent asset prices soaring is coming to an end. Those still piling into private equity or buy-to-let as if things haven’t changed may get their fingers burnt; those who have been in for a few years can probably take a hit and will still emerge with a nice profit.

Bob Buy-to-Let and Patrick Private Equity can walk away, thinking ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’, but the gap between the Haves and the Have-nots has got a whole lot bigger.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

The latest house prices news

Mortgages and property news, tips and advice

The property crash of 2007 and my new dismal house price predictor

Economics is the dismal science and predicting house prices is its most dubious branch. So here goes for a particularly dicey new measure of property market health....

There are a whole bunch of property websites that can tell you the selling prices of houses in your area. I'm signed up to several (mainly because I don't believe they have info on ALL property transactions - but that's for another blog post).

Anyway, every three months, I get sent an email telling me the prices of homes sold within 500m of my home, on the South London/Surrey borders. Each email, from ourproperty.co.uk, has carried transaction details of around 15 to 20 homes and never fewer than 10.

The last email I received, a few weeks ago, covered transactions between January 1 and the end of March - there was just one property sold.

So has the property market stalled? Have the buyers disappeared? Surveys from major lenders and even the government suggest not (see latest house price news), but then maybe my new dismal house price predicator is the earliest warning system of them all.

Let me know your thoughts.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

> Your views on whether house prices will crash (you can't make your minds up)

There's no such thing as a free pay-as-you-go upgrade

Technology is the scam artist's best friend nowadays.

While I am sure there are still a wealth of grifters out there working cons face-to-face, the automatic choice for the enterprising scammer nowadays must be the internet and mobile phone networks.

And while the advice is run a mile if anyone contacts you by email, text or phone call and claims to be offering you something too good to be true, there's a natural temptation to want that good deal to be true.

Two days ago I had one of those moments. A message arrived on my Orange pay-as-you-go mobile, promising me the holy grail for us pre-pay cheapskates - a phone upgrade.

It said: Orange customer. You may now claim your FREE CAMERA PHONE upgrade for your loyalty. Call now on 0207 153 9153. Offer ends 12th June.T&C's apply. Opt-out available.
Sender:UpgrdCentre

For a brief time I honestly thought Orange was genuinely rewarding me for being too lazy  to seek a better deal for the past however many years. And then the alarm bells rang. These were the tell tale signs:

1) Orange love to bombard customers with pointless messages, but they always begin Hi from Orange and the sender is always Orange.

2) Mobile phone companies are not in the business of rewarding pay-as-you-go customers for their loyalty - they might give you a free phone, but they want an 12/18-month contract in return.

3) In order to get this free upgrade you rang a normal 0207 phone number. Everyone knows big business dumped normal phone numbers years ago to milk customers dry with 0845 numbers.

Interested to see what the scam was, I gave the number a call. There was a telltale click, the fuzzy sound of a long distance line and the chirpy voice of an Indian worker (they tend to be a lot friendlier than anyone on the end of a UK phone). He asked me for my phone number. I asked him who he was and why I was texted? And while I couldn't get the full details of what whoever he worked for is trying to do I gleaned the following:

• The company is called CNT
• They bought the numbers for Orange customers from a source they won't divulge
• They are not in the UK, but won't say where they are based
• They pass on your details to a third party who then might offer you an upgrade

I don't know whether this is an outright scam to get people's personal details or one to coax people on to contracts through third party suppliers. It is however to be avoided at all costs. Remember there's no such thing as a free lunch/pay-as-you-go upgrade/lottery ticket/inheritance from a Nigerian prince.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Broadband, phones and TV news and advice

Whole Foods Market is here... and M&S is scared

The opening of Whole Foods Market has been keenly anticipated by us here at This is Money. The store is just below our building and we've been wondering what on earth they've been doing that meant it would take a year to refit. So when it opened on Wednesday several of us went down to the store in our lunch hour to check it out. We were very excited by the free cheese samples, gobsmacked by the enormous wine selection and terrified by the fact that a pork pie costs £6. 

But most interesting was the reaction by M&S, which is just on the next block. Suddenly there were green t-shirt'd employees frolicking up and down Kensington High Street offering free fruit salads (which we also sampled) and scratch cards and attempting to usher people into the store. The tills are fully staffed and there are signs up lauding M&S's green credentials. It's amazing how a bit of competition spurs business into action.

I've never been a big fan of M&S food stores. While it's true that these days I occasionally visit two of them - near home and near work - traditionally I've shunned them for being ridiculously overpriced and for their excessive packaging. Pieces of fruit are invidividually wrapped and vegetables packaged in their own special containers of three or four. It seems crazy for a store so keen to market its green credentials. As it happens, I also object to queuing for ten minutes to buy a sandwich, although this has improved in the past months.

It will be interesting to see what other changes M&S implement now that Whole Foods Market has finally arrived. But at least the queues might be a bit shorter.

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

Useful links

• Organic store is problem for supermarkets
• US food store to cause stir on UK High St
• TIPS AND ADVICE: Be a caring consumer

Plastic bags: Help me tackle the supermarkets

I'm a big fan of Ocado, which delivers Waitrose shopping to your door.

It's free for orders over £75 and if you shop, and then don't order for a few weeks, they will send you discount vouchers or codes entitling you to £10 or £15 off or 10% or 15% off.

This is exactly the sort of big business marketing ploy that shrewd consumers should take advantage of.

However, I have a gripe - every delivery seems to come with an annoying number of carrier bags (that come within reusable plastic boxes).

I complained to Ocado and this was the swift response (see below). You can help encourage Ocado to improve their polluting ways by also emailing your disapproval to them.

Dear Mr Oxlade,

Thank you for your email.

I am sorry to hear that we have used so many carrier bags in your order. We are keen to limit Ocado' impact on the environment as much as possible. Recently we have redesigned the container that the carrier bags sit into, dividing them into three sections so the bags sit upright and can be packed more easily in our warehouse. This in turn should also reduce the number of bags used in each container to a minimum.

I have also forwarded your comments to the warehouse manager. They are able to bring this to the attention of the supervisors in the warehouse so that we can monitor the amount of bags being used.

Our existing Ocado bags use approximately twenty-five percent less raw materials than the previous bags and are easier to store for future customer re-use.

There are currently no plans to remove carrier bags from the delivery process completely.

If we can be of any further help, or you have any further comments or suggestions, then please contact us by e-mailing ocado@ocado.com, or by calling us on 0845 3991122 or 0845 6561234 (8am-11pm Mon to Sat, 12-8pm Sun), seven days a week.

Yours sincerely.

Nathan xxxxxx
Ocado Customer Service Team

If you want your consumer power to improve the world, keep an eye on the advice and news in our Caring Consumer section.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Pink with embarrassment

Ten days holiday in Florida has left me pink. Mr Pink to be exact.

Remember that scene from Reservoir Dogs when Steve Buscemi – as Mr Pink - argues with his fellow gangsters about why he won’t tip the waitress? If you don't mind some colourful language, here it is.

It’s a conversation that has run through my head a lot in the past two weeks. At least every time we came to pay for a meal. Or a taxi journey. Or our car being parked for us. Or our room being cleaned.

You see, America has a tipping culture. It has come to be expected that the customer will tip the worker that serves them. In fact not doing so is seen as open rudeness. Tips are not an occasional perk, but are relied upon by employees in certain jobs to make up their wage. (Mr White’s argument in the movie.)

During our ten days in Florida we tipped waiters and waitresses, cab drivers, tour guides, valet parking assistants, hotel porters and cleaners. Each time I tried to decide if I agreed with Mr Pink or not.

My girlfriend and I both agreed that the levels of hospitality and helpfulness we received were far higher than we have come to expect in the UK and I have no doubt that this is down to staff hoping to bump-up their tip. On this point the tip as an incentive works well.

But each time I coughed up I couldn’t help feeling that I had been not-so-subtly pressured into it. However ‘discretionary’ a charge is described as there is no doubt that avoiding embarrassment plays a part.

The amount to tip, and which jobs are deemed worthy of one, is never defined. While some general rules exist – for example 15% of the cost of a meal in a restaurant – there are endless conventions that patrons are expected to bear in mind when it comes to paying up.

A hotel we stayed in left a helpful leaflet for 'out-of-towners' explaining that it is considered fair to tip the porter $2 for each bag they have carried for you and to leave $1 per person, per night, for the hotel chamber maids. Parking assistants should, we were told, be tipped $2 each time they collected your car and a barman should expect 20% of the value of the bill as a tip.

All this can prove difficult for the wide-eyed tourist. Even the method of handing over the cash was the subject of uncertainty. We tried everything from clumsily asking a porter how much we should tip him  - ‘That’s really up to you, sir’ - to conspiratorially palming a folded $10 bill into the hand of a bemused tour guide – ‘Oh my!’

Nothing we tried quite felt correct.

When we finally got back to our front door in London I was glad that I could take the change from the cab driver with no embarrassment whatsoever.

Ed Monk, This is Money

The Spitting Image house price crash anthem

The house price boom is over...well maybe. The latest round of house price and mortgage figures have been seized on this week as proof that the big slowdown has begun.

Whether this is the case or not, there is a hardcore of property bears actively pushing for a crash. A whole subculture of doom and gloom enthusiasts has grown up as property prices have soared. And, if you believe the house price crash prophets, the end is almost nigh.

The internet, blogs, reader comments and chat boards have helped give the house price crash crew a voice. Each to their own I say, but as someone who bought a home less than a year ago and knows how hard it is for young buyers I would suggest a slowdown rather than a crash would be the more altruistic desire.

But, one thing the crash brigade have brought back to life - thanks to the magic of YouTube - is an old Spitting Image sketch that has become their anthem. Whether you are a property bull or bear, there's no denying this is funny. (Although many of those who suffered in the 1990s will know that you wouldn't wish it on anyone.)
So for your entertainment:

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Will there be a house price crash

The latest house prices news

Mortgages and property news, tips and advice

Most popular money news - May 2007

Fears for buy-to-let prospects, following another bank rate rise, and concerns for property prices in Spain were high on the agenda for This is Money readers in May. Economists have warned the Spanish property market is looking overvalued. We also revealed the story of one couple's experience of buying a Spainsh villa following a property investment seminar.

More than 810,000 readers came to This is Money in May, up 44% on a year ago, to read the latest financial news and to gather money tips and advice - with many posting their own tips. We were also chuffed to be named Financial Website of the Year - you should be too. The judges were also reading your comments and contributions.

Here's the top news and features for May...

1. Has your savings rate risen?
2. House prices 'are 65% too high'
3. Blow for bank charge reclaiming
4. Costa catastrophe
5. Special report: Saving for retirement
6. Angry ING savers pull £3bn
7. Interest rates hiked to 5.5%
8. Top funds for 2007
9. Halifax wins the fixed rate race
10. 'Real' anti-ageing cream sold out
11. The property pain in Spain
12. Taxman to swoop on buy-to-let
13. Lloyds told to pay full costs
14. Buy-to-let on landlord's salary
15. You'll never be able to afford a home
16. Savings rate war breaks out
17. Get-rich slow - the wealth secret
18. Remortgage to beat the rate rise
19. Nationwide scraps 25-year fix
20. Lloyds forces charges rebates
21. Home packs launch postponed
22. Midas share tips: New dogs, old tricks
23. BP boss quits over gay claims
24. Mega-mortgages 'turning us into slaves'
25. Warning over 100% buy-to-let
26. Taxman wants to raid homes and offices
27. Buy an Ikea flat pack home
28. Two more rate rises on cards 'by August'
29. Spanish property crash feared
30. Barclaycard to charge £20 fee

Here's the most popular guides in May...

1. Reclaim bank charges letter
2. Ten steps to reclaim credit card charges
3. A quick guide: reclaim bank charges
4. Best savings rates
5. Mortgage fees: How much are you owed?
6. Ten steps to reclaim unfair bank charges
7. Ten tips for buy-to-let
8. Bank charges calculator
9. Isas and other tax-free investing
10. Reclaim your PPI premiums

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Child trust funds: An update on my selections

I have backed three different funds on my son's behalf via his child trust fund.

He's only two but I'm keen to plan ahead - he'll be keeping me in the lap of luxury in my dotage.

I was chuffed in the first year when the Witan Pacific fund delivered a 43% return and the F&C investment trust soared 38%.

This year's been less impressive. The F&C fund delivered a 9% profit in the year to April. A technical change on the Far East fund meant I was forced to sell and reinvest, so I opted for the Pacific Assets Trust, alas it only managed an 18% rise (compared with 43% the year before) and the F&C Global Smaller Companies fund which achieved a meagre 9% gain (51% the year before).

...Hang on, just listen to me. I'm moaning about an annual return of 18%. It's a pure reflection of how I, and many other investors, have become blase about the stock market's recent success. The UK's stock market's recent history ranks among its best years, with the FTSE 100 powering from 3250-ish points at the low in March 2003 (when US bombs began falling on Baghdad) to more than 6500 points today. Wise investors, including me, should stop taking that for granted.

To find out why I picked these funds, see my older posts...

> Child trust funds: where I invested mine
> A 40% return on a child trust fund

And don't miss this brilliant CTF guide - How to pick the best child trust fund

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Will there be a house price crash?

Is there going to be a house price crash? Can house prices keep rising?

Considering the national obsession with property - and the potential effects of any looming house price crash – it came as no surprise when more than 4,000 people voted in a This is Money poll on house prices.

What was a surprise was that almost 60% reckoned prices will either fall or remain static over the next year.
Of the 4,100 people who responded: 47% said prices would fall; 41% said they would rise; and 12% said they would stay the same.

House prices long ago stopped being a noteworthy topic of conversation - but recently the subject has gone from hot air to hot potato, with wild claims made for and against rising prices. But is a house price crash a possibility?

If you listen to the property industry experts, the answer is no. The commentators generally agree that current growth of more than 10% per year - according to Halifax, Nationwide, government and Land Registry figures – cannot continue. However, they have wheeled out the classic ‘soft landing’ phrase and talk of growth slowing to between 3% and 5% per year.

On the other hand, those who have developed an obsession, often unhealthy, with property pessimism claim a crash is just round the corner – pointing to the kind of bubble mentality that sees a dilapidated scout hut go on sale for £250,000.

The important thing though is that it doesn’t really matter what the experts or the doomongers think – house prices are dependent on what the public thinks.

It is the general public purchasing the majority of homes in this country and if they think property is on the up, they will stretch themselves and pay more with prices subsequently continuing to rise. And that’s why our poll result was so interesting.

Our April – May poll showed 41% thought prices would rise over the next year. When we asked a similar question in November – December 2006, 55% said prices would rise in the next year.

While the difference between 55% and 41% may not seem huge, that is a substantial drop in confidence of 14%, during a six-month period when house prices have continued to rise at a steady pace, and demand has failed to slow.
So what’s knocking confidence?

Two interest rate rises since January have not helped, but those responding to the question in December had also seen two rate rises in the previous six months. Meanwhile, even property bears question exactly how big an effect previous rate rises have on confidence when the cost of borrowing is still relatively cheap and 80% of new mortgages are on fixed rates.

It is future prospects that affect housebuying confidence and there are two black clouds on the horizon - warnings of more rate rises and an affordability crisis. Confidence is being dented by fears the Bank rate will hit the magic 6% barrier and the belief house prices can’t just keep going up - because people simply can’t afford them.

So will prices crash? It’s unlikely when there are still 41% of people out there who think they’ll rise. But if confidence takes the same hit in the next six months and another 14% lose their faith, then there would be only be 27% believing prices will rise and that could spell a serious problem.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

The latest house prices news

Mortgages and property news, tips and advice

Eurotunnel is dead. Long live Eurotunnel.

On the day that Eurotunnel shareholders must vote whether ...

• a. to give up their generous travel concessions and save the business
• b. to keep their generous travel concessions and watch the business sink into a black hole, albeit with a railway line running through it

... it seems that shareholders are going to lose their generous travel concessions.

And, says I, it's about time too - if that means an efficient and respectable railway company will be borne from the ashes.

Anyone investing £10,000 (or thereabouts) in the project in 1987 was 'guaranteed' an unlimited number of crossings at £1 a throw. And in 20 years, anyone with that kind of deal should have had their money's worth by now.

And whatever the ethics, investors must accept that an investment is a gamble on the state of the balance sheet and not the availability of perks. It was an attractive perk but the honeymoon is over. Now there's just the simple matter of a divorce.

Eurotunnel owes £6bn. To pay that off at say 6% annual interest by 2082, when the concessions are due to expire, requires a monthly payment of more than £30m. That's a lot of £1 trips.

By rights, Eurotunnel should be an integral part of the future of European infrastructure.

In reality, it's a company saddled with unmanageable debt and where corporate buffoonery takes precedence over customer service. Summed up very nicely by Frank Kane, then of the Observer business section.

And take the latest offering from the Eurotunnel commercial department, emailed to customers at the end of last month.

Illegal lottery

'To celebrate the 15th anniversary of Disneyland Resort Paris, Eurotunnel...' has launched an illegal lottery.

To enter, simply 'Book a Eurotunnel ticket online...'

No, no, no, no no.  Under the Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976 it is unlawful to run a competition  in which success does not depend to a substantial degree on the exercise of skill. (Hence, those dumb questions you get on GMTV every morning: 'What's the capital of Peru? a. Lima, b. Lama, c. Slough.)

And since Eurotunnel revamped its website not even making a booking requires the requisite level of skill it once did. It is, therefore, a lottery and lotteries - with a few minor exceptions - are illegal.

What is legal, however, is a prize draw - but only if no purchase is necessary to enter, which ruled out this one because you had to book and pay for a ticket to enter.

It took Eurotunnel more than a week before it realised its error and send out a withering apology with some hastily rewritten terms and conditions. 

It's typical of the company.

Hopefully today will mark the start of a new beginning.

- PS. You can enter the competition here. This is one occasion in which there's nothing to lose.

Richard Browning - This is Money

More corporate buffoonery...

SCUM-watch - ING Direct savings rates

Virgin Media's new mission statement?

First class squirming from the First Direct boss

PC World's adventure shopping experience

No Ryanair charges for NOT taking a bag

Bank charges: Should you pursue your claim?

No-one was more surprised than me when we heard that Kevin Berwick had lost his court case against Lloyds TSB. You can read more about it, and read the full judgement, here.

Loyal readers will know that This is Money has been encouraging and helping people to reclaim their bank charges since 2005, and we published our step by step guide to doing this in 2006. While this decision is likely to shake the nerves of people who are currently involved in court action, I'd like to reassure you that this particular verdict has no bearing on any other case and we think you should continue to pursue your claim.

The reason we say this is that cases which are decided in the County Court do not count as a 'precedent' for any other case. It's impossible to give an accurate figure for how many people have successfully reclaimed their charges, but we know that hundreds of thousands of people have won their charges back, and many of these have had to resort to court action. Mr Berwick is the first person in around two years to have a decision go against him.

Frankly, he appears to have been a victim of nothing more than bad luck. Lloyds TSB obviously didn't think this case was any different to any other bank charges claim - they didn't even bother to turn up to the court - and when we speak to them directly after the story broke, they sounded as bewildered as we were. Later, they said in a statement that they were pleased with the decision and would take some time to review the judgement in full.

Mr Berwick's claim was no different to any other. He was simply reclaiming excessive unauthorised overdraft charges like thousands of other people have. Lloyds TSB used their usual argument in court that their bank charges are a cost for providing a service. Why this case has gone against Mr Berwick is confusing. The OFT specifically warned banks in its report of 2006 that they were not to disguise penalty fees as service charges, which is what Lloyds try to do.

It's all a bit of a mystery, but I'd like to reassure people who are feeling unnerved that the chances of this happening to you are very slim indeed. It's true that we can no longer say that 'no person has ever pursued this through the courts and lost', but Mr Berwick is the first in two or so years. The odds are still very much in favour of the customer, rather than the bank.

I hope this judgement doesn't discourage any of you to keep going with your claim as these charges have been deemed to be unlawful. I also hope that, despite the financial risk, Mr Berwick decides to appeal - and wins.

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

SCUM-watch part one: ING Direct savings rates

'I think', blasts ING Direct on giant billboards across the capital's rail network, 'finance should be clear.'

And so do I, ING. So do I. That's why I'm proud to work for This is Money, where we keep constant tabs on the increasingly outrageous behaviour of the financial services industry.

And why today I launch my new acronym, Spectacular, Cynically Unrepresentative Messages - or SCUM for short - and my new sporadic blog category: SCUM-watch.

Part one: ING Direct

OK. Let's look at the evidence and see just how clear ING is about finance - in ING's own words.

12 May 2003 (Bank rate, formerly base rate: 3.75%)
ING promises high interest account
We said: 'Global banking group ING has launched in the UK with a direct savings account that pays interest of 4.22% whatever the size of your balance.'
ING (Lindsay Sinclair, chief executive of ING Direct UK) said: 'This is not an introductory rate. We have low overheads and no branches and this saves us money. We pass those savings directly to our customers in the form of high interest rates.'
I say: If it looks too good to be true it usually is.

15 July 2005 (Bank rate: 4.75%)
ING announces it is to cut its savings rate to 4.75%
We said: 'ING Direct is to cut the rate it pays to savers from 1 August. The annual equivalent rate is being clipped by 0.25% from its current 5% before tax to 4.75%.'
ING said: 'ING Direct remains totally committed to providing its customers with a permanently good rate.'
I say: Oh, really?

1 August 2005
ING's new lower rate of 4.75% is introduced
We said: 'Critics warned it was a ploy when ING bank launched its flagship savings account with a chart-topping interest rate. Customers would be lured, they said, then the rate would be cut... ING's rate, always higher than the Bank of England base rate and substantially higher than most rivals' offerings, attracted hundreds of thousands of customers within its first weeks... But the cut from 5% to 4.75% means the account will vanish from the best-buy charts. ING's rate will for the first time equal the Bank's base rate.'
ING said: It was responding to competition and was committed to offering competitive rates.
I say: yada yada yada.

13 December 2005 (Bank rate: 4.50%)
ING Direct cuts rate to 4.5%
We said: 'ING Direct is to cut its savings rate from 4.75% to 4.5%, despite the Bank of England keeping rates on hold last week. The cut also follows an advertising blitz featuring the 4.75% rate and urging customers to sign up. More than 1m savers have an ING Direct savings account.'
ING (Lindsay Sinclair) said: 'Decisions like these mean we can run our business in a way that will allow us to continue to offer all our customers a consistently good savings rate - while avoiding withdrawal penalties, or short-lived headline-grabbing rates for new customers, as some banks do.'
I say: Oh please.

27 November 2006 (Bank rate: 5.0%)
Blow to ING Direct savers
We said: 'More than a million customers of ING Direct have been told their savings rate will not be changing, despite the hike in rates from 4.75%; to 5.0%.'
ING said:  'While some people may be willing to follow headline-grabbing rates, we know from talking to our customers that the majority prefer their savings to be earning consistently and want to relax knowing they don't have to constantly check best-buy tables.'
I say: Yawn.

29 November 2006 (Bank rate: 5.0%)
Has ING Direct lost its edge?
We said: 'ING Direct has turned its back on its 'no hidden catches' policy by launching two savings accounts for existing customers that do not allow you to access your money without penalty'
ING said: Its philosophy is 'to offer consistently great value for everyone with no catches and no hassle. We aim to make our products as straightforward as possible so you can make the most from your money with the minimum of fuss'.
I say: Lah, lah lah, lah, lah.

1 February 2007 (Bank rate: 5.25%)
ING Direct keeps rate at 4.75%
We said: 'Millions of ING Direct savers suffered another blow today when the bank announced it would not raise the rate on its original savings account in response to last month's bank rate rise.'
And we added: 'This is a disappointing move by ING Direct. When the bank entered the online savings market it consistently topped the best-buy tables for its high rate and was praised for providing an account with no hidden catches. However, having built up a solid customer base, it appears to be relying on the apathy of savers to stick with it and not switch to a different bank where they will earn a higher rate.'
I say: There's really not a lot of point asking ING to comment.

20 April 2007 (Bank rate: 5.25%)
ING Direct slashes savings rate
We said: ING Direct is dropping the rate on its Websaver account [a new account created for existing customers to prevent an exodus] to 5.5% from 5.65%, just a fortnight before the Bank of England is expected to raise interest rates to their highest level for six years.
ING said: 'We need to price our rates at a level that we can sustain.'
I say: Oh stop it. That's enough.

16 May 2007 (Bank rate: 5.50%)
For a bit of balance I should mention that ING is now increasing the rate on its instant saver account from 1 June to a still-below-Bank Rate 5% and has in the meantime launched a 6% cash Isa and a fee-free no-nonsense flexible mortgage. But with a track record like theirs what can I say?
I say: Nothing.

But on the subject of acronyms - I wonder what ING really stands for? Anyone...

Richard Browning - This is Money

Related stuff
Find the genuine best savings rates - our unique service
Virgin Media's new mission statement?
Should you trust ICICI Bank?
First class squirming from the First Direct boss

ING update...

16 May 2007
Angry ING savers pull £3bn
We said: Customers at ING Direct removed £3bn from the savings giant after it failed to pass on base rate increases, figures showed today.
ING said: 'Are there better rates out there? Yes there are.'

What's the fairest way to pay for banking?

For a little over a year, we've been helping people reclaim their unlawful bank charges. At the same time, we've attempted to examine in more detail the wider implications of so many people doing this. In a nutshell, the UK is one of the few countries with so-called free banking. But there is an argument to say that banking isn't really free, it's just that some people - those who accrue lots of penalty charges - subsidise the rest of the population. 

Whether or not this is fair depends on your point of view. Current accounts are not free to provide, but then again the bank uses the money in our current accounts to invest and boost their profits. Most countries charge a monthly account fee (I pay $6 a month for my current account in Australia) but the default charges are substantially lower.

It's also hard to know exactly who are the victims of excessive bank charges, but I suspect they can be broadly categorised into two groups - irresponsible account holders who simply overspend, and low-income earners who find themselves stuck in a cycle of charges from which they can't escape and can't pay back.

I have little sympathy for the first type of account holder. But I do feel it's unfair if, for instance, a low income earner is charged £30 because a direct debit comes out of their account several days before their salary is paid and they're a few pounds short. So on top of their gas bill, they have to pay another £30 for being overdrawn. For someone who lives on a very tight budget, this can be the start of a cycle of debt. I'd feel uncomfortable knowing it was these people who were subsidising the cost of my account.

We decided to ask readers whether it would be fairer for everyone to pay a monthly fee rather than have excessive bank charges. Just over 1,200 people took part in our bank charges poll and 77% of you said you thought the current system of free banking was the fairest way to operate current account. Only 23% said a small monthly fee imposed on all account holders was the best option. So it seems This is Money readers are firmly in favour of the current free banking model.

That could all be about to change. The OFT is investigating all of these issues and will report back at the end of the year so we'll keep you posted with any developments. In the meantime remember these charges are unlawful and you can claim them back. You'll find more information here. And take part in our poll.

Let us know what you think by posting a comment below.

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

Links

• CAMPAIGNS: Fair play on bank charges
• LETTER TEMPLATES: Download them
• TEN STEP GUIDE: Reclaim your bank charges
• POLL: What's the fairest way to pay for banking?

The car insurance price trick - part 2

A year ago I switched car insurance to a new name in insurance - Swiftcover. I found the deal on our car insurance finder and, at £390, it undercut every other provider and our previous insurer Tesco, which wanted nearly £500 to cover our ageing Honda Civic.

But as predicted on this blog (The car insurance price trick), great insurance deals never last.

Companies suck in thousands of new customers with market-leading deals and then let the price drift down the best buy tables.

They then rely on inertia, for customers to blindly renew their policy the following year. The profits then come rolling in on the second and third years.

To be fair Swiftcover's quote fell to £360 (and was second on the best buy table), however, it was handsomely undercut by Bell at £262.

I guess Bell won't be making much profit on this year's premiums and then next year I'll be comparing and potentially moving on.

The internet has blessed consumers with incredible new power - make sure you use it.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

An offer they couldn't swallow

BBC TV's The Apprentice is one of the most watchable programmes on the box.

There is something delicious about seeing Sir Alan Sugar's arrogant business upstarts brought down to earth. Especially after trying to sell pork sausages to a muslim shop owner.

My late father, who ran a grocer's shop for many years, had an eye for a business opportunity, but I suspect he, too, would have failed to impress Sir Alan.

I can recall one occasion when my father allowed himself to be talked into buying a consignment of cheap paté de foie gras. He was convinced customers would seize the chance to enjoy a little French sophistication and he would be able to make a quick profit.

Sadly, this was not one of his better ideas.

Forty years ago many people believed that if it wasn't traditional 'meat and two veg' it would probably poison them, so you can image how the customers of a corner shop in a small northern town reacted when told just what was in the tins. And, worse still, how it was produced.

The conversation across the counter would start with something like this: 'Can I interest you in our latest special offer to go with the cabbage and three pounds of lard you've bought?' And end with: 'Well I'm sure you're entitled to your own opinion, but millions of French people eat it all the time and they're not dead yet.'

In the end he was forced to admit defeat and sold it off as cheap pet food.

It was a bargain, but only for dog lovers.

- Simon Moon

For more tales from the corner shop see:

Watch out for the crumbly Lancashire

Don't forget the scrubbing brush

PC World's adventure shopping experience

When you buy something in a shop what do you expect?

If I've picked it up from a normal full-price display, I expect a brand new item with everything included, priced as advertised.
Apparently this is not what you should expect at PC World.

Nope, according to PC World, in Kensington High Street, you can possibly expect items that have been returned to the shop and items with crucial parts missing, and it is up to the customer to discover these hidden amid normal full-price items and then ask for some money off.

This daredevil attempt to turn traditional shopping on its head came to light when I went into the nearby PC World to buy a wireless router for my broadband connection.

To be honest, I knew I shouldn't go into PC World. Mainly because it has a weird guard tower style arrangement, where a man sits up on a pedestal with his back to the doors watching each criminal...sorry customer...as they walk round the store.

But I've been meaning to sort out wireless internet for ages and it was convenient, so I went in.

I found the display, chose my router and took it to the till, where the cashier tried to scan the barcode. It didn't work, so he continued trying to scan it repeatedly for about three minutes.
Eventually, I said: 'Shall I go get another one from the shelf?'.
He nodded in agreement and at this point I noticed there was a new barcode label stuck over the original on the box. Helpfully, he said: 'Maybe this one doesn't work because it's been returned.'
I said: 'What do you mean returned?'
Pointing casually at the new label, he said: 'Maybe someone brought it back, they didn't want it or something.'

So, I went and picked up another box and then realised it also had a new label stuck on. Written on this one in tiny letters in biro was 'power cable missing'. I chose yet another and helpfully took the 'power cable missing' box back to the till, where I said it had probably been put on the shelf by mistake.

It was only now that PC World's brave new shopping world was revealed. It wasn't a mistake - it was meant to be there. A customer could find it and ask for some money off. Being a bit slow, I questioned this, saying surely you can't just put it on the shelf with all the other full-price items, hoping a customer notices? Wrong again. The cashier kindly explained this was a shop and they could do what they like.

At this point a supervisor ambled over and - still being a bit slow - I explained the problem. Luckily, he set me straight and explained the cashier was correct.
I left without buying anything.

So, if you're into adventure shopping with guard towers, lucky dip purchases and the possibility of discovering vital bits of kit missing, I can recommend PC World on Kensington High Street - and maybe elsewhere in the UK. Otherwise, perhaps it's best to give it a miss.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

News and advice on broadband, phones and TV

Help, tips and news in This is Money's consumer section

The new Virgin Media mission statement?

Virgin's takeover of NTL was always going to be a rough ride. You had a broadband/ mobile provider with a generally pretty decent reputation getting into bed with another one that, erm, didn't.

A £25m rebranding later and the newly named Virgin Media has so far managed to shed nearly 50,000 of its customers.

That's not bad going - about £500 of marketing money spent for each lost customer.

So how heartening it is to see slapped across the back of their installation vans what I can only assume is the new and painfully accurate mission statement.

'Virgin Media,' it blurts, 'Forward, back, back a bit more. Stop!'

Brilliant.

Richard Browning - This is Money

More virgin stories

Virgin's faltering challenge

Threaten to cancel Virgin and get a better deal

Ask an expert: Can I cancel Virgin?

Broadband & phones: News, tips and advice

Search for cheaper broadband

How prices have changed over 25 years

With inflation so low - but rising - it's easy to forget how damaging rising prices can be on our standard of living.

What's more, your lifestyle and shopping habits have a big impact on how you are affected. Basically, if you love buying new gadgets, new (reasonably priced) cars and you like eating out or taking flights then you're quids in compared with 25 years ago.

If you like to follow top-flight football, smoke, drink, or like going to the cinema, then you're out of pocket.

Our table shows the change in prices for a wide basket of goods and services over the past 25 years with perhaps the most unsurprising statistic that average wages have increased by 3.25 times while house prices have multiplied 8.5 times...

HOW PRICES HAVE CHANGED OVER THE PAST 25 YEARS

Don't miss these calculators...

>> The impact of inflation on your savings

>> Historic inflation calculator

It's also worth pointing out that the research arm of the Alliance Trust, an investment fund, has also been warning of a growing inflation gap in the past three years - inflation is racing away for pensioners and rising at a far slower pace for the under-30s. Read Alliance Trust's most recent report.

Tell us how inflation is affecting you in the comments box below.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Now Ryanair charges for NOT taking a bag

Just when you thought Ryanair had done pretty much all it could do to fleece its passengers, I've become victim to it's latest money-grabbing exercise. As we've previously reported, Ryanair will charge you £10 to take a bag onto the plane. Now it seems, unless you are prepared to scour the small print you will also be charged for NOT taking a bag onto the plane.

Against the sound advice of my colleague Michael Clarke, I've just booked flights with Ryanair for the bank holiday weekend at the end of May. Resisting the £10 rip-off for checking in a bag, I figured I'd make do with hand luggage, only to find that Ryanair is now charging £2 each way for customers who DON'T take any luggage. The reason is the privilege of 'online check in and priority boarding'.

I searched and searched for a way to take my hand luggage on for free. I asked my colleagues to help but they failed too so in frustration I had to go ahead and book and wear the cost. Then I discovered that I had been charged £3.50 for using a credit card, when in fact it had been Visa debit card. I decided to complain.

Ryanair doesn't provide a phone number for people like me to call so I chose the journalist's route of last resort and phoned the press office to see if they could give it to me. I was told that any grievances had to be put in writing (not email or over the phone), popped in the post and sent to the Ryanair head office in Dublin - despite the fact that my request for a refund comes to a grand total of £7.50 and could probably be easily resolved with a quick phone call if I was dealing with virtually any other company.

The Ryanair spokesman told me there was in fact an option to turn off the '£4 despite not taking a bag' charge. I didn't believe him but after spending another ten minutes searching the page it turns out he's right!

It's nicely hidden away, tucked down in the fine print, rather than in front of your face where every other (paying) option for checking in bags is listed. If you click on the image to the right, we've highlighted the option for you so you don't get caught out as well.

>> Click the image to enlarge >>

He also told me I must have selected Visa credit rather than Visa debit card. I think he's wrong but who knows? There's no proof and no way, it seems, of sorting it out. So if you're planning to book flights with Ryanair, here's some of the extra charges they will hit you with. Factor them all in before you book, or you budget flight could prove costly.

1) Baggage charges: You won't be given an option to take no bags for free without searching high and low. Otherwise a check in bag will cost you £10 and no bags will cost you £4 for a return flight.

2) Insurance: You will automatically be charged for travel insurance. Make sure select the option of 'No travel insurance' in the drop down menu. If you do need insurance you can find a cheaper policy here.

3) Payment method: Don't use your credit card, and ensure you specify that you are using a Visa debit rather than credit card. Then check your final print out to ensure you have been charged for it anyway. Or you'll be charged £3.50.

4) Check where you're flying to: If you fly with Ryanair to "Barcelona" you will actually find yourself in Girona, an hour and half away. That's an expensive taxi ride to add to your budget holiday. Unfortunately it's the norm rather than the exception so research your airport first.

5) Passenger duty: As my colleague Ed Monk revealed last month, Ryanair does not refund passenger if you cancel your flight. So make sure you don't pay it up front.

I've asked Ryanair to explain themselves (and to refund my money). I'll let you know how I get on.

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

Update - 3 May 2007. Response from Ryanair

I've just had a response to my query to the Ryanair press office which simply confirms what I asked the company to comment on. There's no explanation as to why the option to turn off the £4 charge is not listed with all the options, Ryanair will only says it's a 'discretionary charge'. They also say I must have selected the Visa credit option. The spokesperson said: 'Your claim that you spent an extra £7.50 for nothing is simply untrue. You selected these two services and you agreed to pay for them before confirming your booking or paying for it.'

Some other Ryanair coverage

• REPORT: Ryanair says no to tax refunds
• REPORT: Ryanair profits on baggage fee
• REPORT: Ryanair free seat ad rapped

And finally

• This site is still under construction but it looks like a good one...

Most popular money news in April

Millions of people are now demanding justice on unfair bank charges, rip-off credit card fees and unwarranted mortgage exit costs. That's reflected in a fresh surge of people to This is Money looking for help and guidance. Hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded our information on bank charges in the past year.

Fears for property prices at home and abroad, namely Spain, were also high on the agenda (don't miss our Homes Abroad channel). Nearly 810,000 visitors came to This is Money in April, up 42% on a year ago.

See below the top 25 most-read reports, including guides and other interactive pages. Below that list you'll find the most popular news stories and most-read City stories...

1. Ten steps to reclaim unfair bank charges
2. Bank charge letter templates
3. Reclaim bank charges letter
4. Ten steps to reclaim credit card charges
5. A quick guide: reclaim bank charges
6. Mortgage fees: How much are you owed?
7. Spanish property crash feared
8. Best cash Isas for 2007
9. Top funds for 2007
10. Property may slump next year
11. Interactive fuel bills map
12. Ten tips for buy-to-let
13. Experts say rates may hit 7.5%
14. Blow to inheritance tax loophole
15. Home seller pack chaos
16. Bank charges calculator
17. 'Real' anti-ageing cream sold out
18. Tax blow to younger pensioners
19. £7,000 car that cost £21,500
20. Rates to rise as inflation surges
21. Microsoft man to bid for Southampton FC
22. Mortgage that's 9 times salary
23. Six weeks until Hips are here
24. Fight the unfair bank charges
25. Home hunters snap up dollars


Top ten news stories

1. Spanish property crash feared
2. Property may slump next year
3. Experts say rates may hit 7.5%
4. Blow to inheritance tax loophole
5. Home seller pack chaos
6. 'Real' anti-ageing cream sold out
7. Tax blow to younger pensioners
8. £7,000 car that cost £21,500
9. Rates to rise as inflation surges
10. Microsoft man to bid for Southampton FC

Top ten City stories

1. Experts say rates may hit 7.5%
2. Rates to rise as inflation surges
3. Microsoft man to bid for Southampton FC
4. Ryanair's O'Leary touts £7 flights to US
5. Murphy's law on growth stocks
6. Peace at Easter for Virgin and Sky?
7. Branson in US air fare battle
8. Pound breaks $2 barrier
9. Pipex deal in jeopardy as BT pulls out
10. Barclays and ABN tie knot

Have your say on any of these stories on the Reader Comments on each one (more about Reader Comments) - or tell us which issues you want covered  by emailing me at  editor@thisismoney.co.uk

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

• About This is Money
• This is Money's independence
• Top stories in March
• Top stories in February
• Top stories in 2006

As long as it's in my back yard

I can't totally agree with defunct beat combo Blur's allegation that 'Modern life is rubbish'. It's just a bit plasticky and garish ... but nice and comfortable - like a pair of cheap trainers in fact. And there's really not a great deal you can do about it, so you may as well try and enjoy it.

For instance, how many millions of column (and web-page) inches have been filled with laments over the state of modern-day professional football in the last ten years?

The Premiership and national game in particular come in for all sorts of familiar flak: millionaire players behaving yobbishly on and off the pitch; ticket prices soaring while fans are milked for profit and taken for granted; lack of atmosphere at matches; fixture lists and kick-off times messed around by Sky; bloated European league devaluing domestic titles; foreign takeovers chipping away at clubs' local roots and turning clubs into 'entertainment organisations'.

It's an apocalyptic picture that appeals particularly to those of the flat-cap nostalgia tendency - and indeed although I was born after the era of outsized headwear (but during that of bare-handed goalies), I'm often guilty of this sentiment too. There is after all some substance in each of the allegations listed above.

But it's a complicated story. The busy Southampton supporters' internet forum has been especially lively this morning, after our sister paper the Evening Standard alleged that Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen is thinking of sticking in a bid for Southampton football club. The mood at least among those Saints fans is 85% positive: of course it is, it means money for players and the prospect of fresh success for a club with perhaps more glory in its recent history than in recent seasons.

Just as it was for me and Blackburn Rovers in the late 1980s and early 90s when Jack Walker began to pour money in. We weren't quite the Chelsea of our day - we had two things going for us: finding a local tycoon and lifelong Blackburn fan to bankroll us, and offering a hope of stopping Manchester Utd winning the league. For a season anyway - but what a season.

It seems strange to recall now though - when a club seems to be snapped up by a millionaire every other day - that Rovers' ascent to glory was far from popular: we were buying success, pushing up transfer fees to ridiculous levels ... but how many of those critics would have turned down their own Jack Walker?

This paradox is expressed on the Saints forum today: there's a feeling of 'I don't like foreign tycoons taking over English clubs in general but I'd love it if this did happen to us'. It's a case of if you can't beat 'em ...

And who knows, maybe the commercialisation and commodification and sanitisation of top-level football is simply the inevitable if unfortunate corollary of its emergence from the dark days of the 1970s and 80s? There's lots of things about football in the 1980s that I miss very much, but something obviously had to change. And what we have now is perhaps the only answer?

- Adrian Lowery, News Editor, This is Money

For sale: Scout hut £250,000-plus

For sale:

A bijoux property, with a wealth of period features retained by owners to create a leading example of shabby chic.

Situated in a prime location in leafy Brondesbury, this semi-detached home has an authentic brick, broken glass and timber board facade and an open-plan living space ideal for growing families.
The property has benefitted from the latest in de-landscaped gardening over recent years with the current owner including the distressed ornaments surrounding the building in the sale.

Ideal for imaginative owners looking to renovate or expand.
Priced to sell: £250,000-plus.

It's an easy joke right? You know the one: write a humourous mock estate agent's blurb for rundown building for sale; whack a crazy price on the end to make the gag obvious; Bob's your uncle.
The difference here is that the price isn't a joke.

This dilapidated former scout hut, just off the Kilburn High Road, really is for sale at auction with a guide price of £250,000-plus and, despite not even benefitting from a fancy estate agent's blurb, it is almost guaranteed to go for substantially more.

In the crazy world of property in London and the South East - which resembles less of a housing market and more of a housing feeding frenzy - a rundown scout hut in Kilburn will cost you more than a quarter of a million pounds.

It's true, this scout hut is probably not likely to be a scout hut for long after its sale. Its potential value is in the land it sits on, so there probably isn't too much bob-a-jobbing going on in Kilburn as local scouts try and raise the purchase price. The new owners will knock it down and build a house and the auctioneers McHugh & Co. highlight that option. They explain that a scheme has been prepared for a new four-bedroom house and feature a small illustrative drawing. A house on this road would set you back at least £600,000.

However, This is Money's resident property bear Richard Browning has pointed out planning permission hasn't even been applied for, let alone granted, and this drawing is less of a plan and more of an Etch-A-Sketch.

He was slightly suprised to discover that his suggestion of a price of around £90,000 - 'in this insane market' - was considerably below the auctioneers' suggested £250,000-plus.
But what does he know?

After all, he's just an observer to the madness. Surely, all those people buying houses in London and the South East only to knock them down and build another must know what they're doing. Well, they probably do, and with support from their healthy profits already banked from the property market over the past ten years, or their hundreds of thousands in City bonuses, they will probably turn another nice profit on their latest investments.

But a market in which rundown former scout huts in Kilburn are on sale for more than a quarter of a million is surely not sustainable.

Especially when the agents don't even need to gloss it up and the owners don't even bother to pick up the rubbish outside.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Join the Scouts - it's their centenary year

Draw your own home with online Etch A Sketch

Dan Atkinson: Don't join the househunt madness

Mortgages and property news, tips and advice

Make your own paper wallet

I'm not entirely sure why anyone would need one of these but it's a strangely appealing concept: make your own space-saving wallet with a piece of paper and some sticky tape. Cost: about 10p.

http://www.instructables.com/id/S9331VJF3DES9J73YS/

THIN END OF THE WEDGE: The wallet on the left is paper and contains notes and six credit cards. The other is leather and empty.

There are several other money-related DIY projects on the site, instructables, although it is rather slow to load.

Richard Browning, This is Money

You also may be interesting in...

MONEY-SAVING VIDEOS: This is Money has teamed up with VideoJug to produce a handful of How to... save money videos. See them here.

Top stories in March: the Budget, bank charges, stock market woes

It was a big month in the world of finance news - a Budget with a 2p income tax cut (albeit usual sleight-of-hand-with childless low earners left worse off) while a roller coaster stock market combined with the usual rush to invest in shares and savings accounts in tax-free Isas ahead of the 5 April tax deadline. The cherry on top was an announcement by the OFT on bank charges and growing interest in reclaiming mortgage fees (see a separate list of our top guides and tools below).

This is Money attraced 897,000 visitors in March, up 40% on a year ago. Here are our top news stories and features for the month...

• Best cash Isas for 2007
• Budget 2007: Shock income tax cut to 20p
• Property could slump, warns IMF
• Budget 2007: Main points at a glance
• Budget 2007: The complete tax tables
• Barclays bank scandal exposed
• Budget 2007: Our top ten tips (predictions)
• Budget 2007: Our coverage in full
• Call for 8% rates to cool housing
• Top funds for 2007
• Budget 2007: Tax and families
• Top ten tips for buy-to-let
• Investing in a falling market
• Budget 2007: Savings and Investment
• Budget 2007: Retirement and IHT
• Will buy-to-let still pay off?
• Get your mortgage fees back
• Budget 2007: The big losers revealed
• Stock market falls: Expert views
• New Isas for the new tax year

Our top guides and tools matched our most popular stories for traffic. Here they are...

1. Bank charge letter templates
2. A quick guide to reclaiming bank charges
3. Mortgage fees guide: How much are you owed?
4. Tables: Cash Mini Isa
5. Interactive fuel bills map

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, thisismoney.co.uk

• Top stories of 2006
• Top stories in February
• Most popular blogs of 2006

100 ways to save money

I'm concerned about the country's debt.

And at the weekend I heard yet another story of a young woman who has racked up a credit card debt of £2,000 in no time at all. And now she is terrified she cannot pay it back.

According to the money education charity, Credit Action, 3.4 million UK credit cardholders - and almost two in every ten 18-34 year olds - only ever make the minimum monthly payment. This is like paying protection money to your bank for the rest of your life.

There are, however, ways to change your spending habits to easily clear £2,000 in a year. To find out how, read these:

1. 50 ways to save money 

2. 50 more ways to save money

3. Money-saving overflow 

Remember, £10 a week is £520 a year. Imagine if each of these tips could save you £10 a week. That's £52,000 of savings. Worth a read?

Richard Browning - This is Money

Related items

Alternative guide to loans

Threaten to cancel Virgin TV and get a better deal

I don't watch a great deal of television and have never been one of those people who casually switches the idiot box on and uses it as the background sound to everyday life.

However, when I do settle down in front of the TV, I do watch certain things and when some of them suddenly disappear from my screen I am not pleased.

The loss of Sky One from my Virgin Media cable TV and the subsequent inability to watch new episodes of The Simpsons and continue watching the series of Lost that I was halfway through, didn't go down well.

I only have cable TV because we have no outside aerial and diabolical TV reception in our flat, but I had grown accustomed to the little bit of extra choice having Sky One offered - and, as I've written before, I don't care whether this was Virgin or Sky's fault, I'm angry that it's the viewer who has lost out.

But there is a way to get a little bit back if you act fast.

Virgin has said that customers can leave their contracts at no charge until the end of March. And if you call up and threaten to do so, it is offering improved TV, phone or broadband packages.

I gave Virgin a call this week and while it took a brutal 15 minutes or so on hold to get through, I then got a very helpful lady who asked what they could do to keep me. I emerged with a TV package bumped up from about 40 channels to more than 80.

True, it's just more rubbish I won't watch, but at least I got something back and there was no contract extension, extra cost etc.

So, if you have Virgin TV, call their bluff and get a better deal - but you only have until Saturday.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Ask an Expert: Can I cancel Virgin TV?

Broadband & phones: News and advice

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Gordon's Budget means grey skies ahead for Sunnie

ITV News were kind enough to invite me to be the money expert on their Budget bulletins yesterday. It was a very long day in around Birmingham, starting at Chancellor Court (get it?) at Birmingham University.

Watch the video

It was a real insight to be able to analyse the finances of dozens of people. The This is Money team and I were able to identify the losers in this Budget right away. Sunnie Sohal was a young woman working hard to buy her first flat. But Because she earns a relatively low wage, she will pay more income tax.

Before, nobody paid tax on around the first £5,000, then you paid 10% on the next £2,000ish. After that you paid 22% (and 40% above £38,000) Now, you still pay nothing on the first bit, but the 10% is gone. So you start paying a new slightly lower 22% but on more of your earnings.

Accountants Grant Thornton were kind enough to crunch the numbers. If you earn less £24,000 then you will now pay £56 a year more in tax. If you earn £15,000, it's £70. The lower the wage, the bigger the increase (down to the 0% threshold).

If you have a family, then you would have had a boost on tax credits. That doesn't help Sunnie who now has to wait even longer for her first home.

Andrew Oxlade, Editor
www.thisismoney.co.uk

PS - You can read all our Budget coverage by following these links.

>> Budget 2007 round up
>> Budget 2007: Key points at a glance

Worry about doctors not house prices

There are some things made for headline grabbing news. Customers fighting back against banks; Blue Peter joining the phone quiz rip-off; A call for 8% interest rates to stop the housing boom.

In the eyes of the reader and the media, one of the crucial elements of a big story is immediate impact - I can wallop my bank back; Blue Peter - what is the world coming too; aarghh there goes my house.

What both readers and the media aren't quite so good at is the long-term stuff. So, some of the most disturbing news around at the moment isn't grabbing the attention it should.

Due to the Government's bright idea to revamp doctors' training and introduce a new recruitment system, we currently have 30,000 junior doctors forced to apply at the same time for 22,000 training posts.

This has more long-term impact than short-term oomph. The careers of junior doctors are a bit niche for most of us to care about, but that won't always be the case.

In the future when these junior doctors should be consultants, we'll be looking to them in our time of most need to protect our health. The problem is 8,000 of them might not be there.

We should be very worried about this. It costs £250,000 to train a doctor – multiply that by 8,000 and it's up to £2bn wasted if these doctors change careers or go overseas.

These junior doctors are currently out there working 70 hours-plus per week and have spent about eight years training so far. Sure, they get paid well, but not as well as they could be if they had chosen the City or business. Instead they chose medicine and after being messed around badly already this is the final straw.

This is an email I had from an old friend of mine, Dr  Ed, who could have chosen any career he wanted but decided to be a doctor instead.

I (and lots of other people I know) did not get shortlisted for interview in  the first round. If the application system isn't changed (and it won't be) I  will not apply in the second round. Various consultants responsible for shortlisting etc. have stated how inappropriate and ridiculous the system is, but it seems to be proceeding anyway. That leaves me with two main options - continue training abroad or different career.

I don't understand the lack of mainstream media coverage/tv etc. If this goes ahead, not only will people end up doing jobs they don't want in places they don't want to be, but lots of hospitals will close. If you get admitted to  hospital at any time of day or night you are invariably first seen by an Senior House Officer - if 8,000 go overnight the current system will not be sustainable. Also, as a side point, all the jobs we have been applying for have no job description, indication of on calls or salary scale.

Lots of people up here are either leaving medicine or looking to go abroad. I have previously held no interest in politics nor voted. I now regret this. This country will be royally ****** if this goes ahead. I can't see any other outcome at present.

It's not headline grabbing - but it's more concerning than your bank, Blue Peter's antics and the value of your house.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

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Consumer advice: News and advice

The cost of keeping Nessie

Crufts, the world's greatest doggie extravaganza, has started at the NEC, Birmingham, and among the keenest viewers this year will be my dog Nessie.

She's a Scottish Terrier and she is transfixed by the TV pictures of the amazing variety of breeds on display.

Normally Nessie rushes furiously at the screen when she sees anything on four legs, but Crufts has left her gobsmacked, sitting quietly except for the occasional whine that suggests she'd love to be mingling with the kings and queens of the canine world.

At this time of year, pet insurers jump on the Crufts bandwagon to tell us that many pedigree breeds are more prone to inherited ailments than your everyday mongrel. For this reason, they say, insurance is essential. And for once, I have to agree.

Whatever your dog (or cat for that matter) pet insurance is a no-brainer when you consider the cost of treatment by a vet, as my wife and I found when we suspected Nessie had swallowed something she shouldn't have. Luckliy it turned out to be a false alarm, but we still walked away with a bill for £48. Fortunately, we had chosen pet insurance with Marks & Spencer, partly because the policy has no excess. This meant we were able to reclaim the whole amount.

Nessie recently celebrated her first birthday and for the past 12 months every penny spent on her has been carefully recorded - from her first collar to the latest bag of treats.

Here is where the money went:
Insurance: £127.60 (paid monthly)
Vet's fees including usual jabs and tagging: £187.68 (£48 refunded by insurers)
Puppy training classes: £60
Food: £132.86
Clipping: £112 (3 x £40)
Equipment (inc. lead, collar, car harness, bedding, etc): £113.65
Grand total: £733.79

The coming year should cost considerably less, because many of the first-year costs are one-offs. For example the embedded microchip and the puppy classes.

Sainsbury’s Bank says pedigree dogs will typically cost around £537 a year compared with £430 for cross-breeds. About a fifth of this is paid in vet's fees, yet only 12% of dogs and 80% of cats are insured.

- Simon Moon

PS: You can compare the cost of pet insurance using This is Money's price comparison service. Click here to go to it.

Tesco: a sorry state of affairs

So Tesco has apologised to drivers who bought contaminated petrol at its stores in the South East of England. 'We'd like to say how sorry we are,' it twitters in full-page ads in today's national newspapers.

This, less than a week after the Tesco PR machine (and Morrisons' for that matter) was quick to deny there was a problem.

It is a sorry state of affairs.

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[Read this :Sly tricks of the supermarkets ]

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Some years ago I used to drive from north to south London to work. It was cheaper to buy, maintain and fuel a car than pay for public transport. But the economics only added up if I was careful about where I bought my petrol. One slip and you could pay a tenner extra to fill the tank.

Thankfully, the route was littered with garages vying for my trade - the embodiment of  perfect competition.

Ply that route today, however, and just about all the garages are gone. Replaced by flats, the odd hand car wash franchise and - in the main - Tesco petrol stations. And if the forecourt isn't run by Tesco then the chances are that there is a Tesco Metro concession on site.

Tesco will argue, as it does with robotic indifference whenever I've phoned them for a quote, that customers want cheaper prices and that's what Tesco provides.

Of course customers want low prices but what they also deserve is decent, fair competition on a level playing field where a combination of quality and price creates a healthy relationship between the supplier, the retailer and the customer.

Tesco is a phenomenally successful business - to the point where it could claim to run the lives of a significant proportion of the country. It controls 30% of the grocery business alone. And that's fine if there is trust on both sides. Part of that trust has just run out.

Richard Browning, This is Money

More on Tesco from This is Money

Tesco 'cheat' on 50% pledge

Rogue petrol threat to 400,000 cars

People power defeats Tesco

Tesco's Trojan horse trick exposed in email

Tesco Direct embarrassment

Battle over Tesco towns begins

Tesco to create UK's biggest store

The story of Tesco

Tesco's direct threat to Argos

Guru Buffett builds 3% Tesco stake

Tesco criticised over school vouchers

Do supermarkets still stack up?

BLOG: Asda / Tesco telephone prank

BLOG: Tesco and the complete opposite of a sale

Sell Standard Life shares: Egg on Face?

Last summer, I told my dad he should sell his Standard Life shares.

Since then they have risen around 18%. They soared from around 240p up to a peak of 319.5p last week before the global stock market shake-out took them back down to 284p today.

There has inevitably been some rather gleeful squeals of delight in the comments on my original blog: Dad, sell your Standard Life shares...

"As Standard Life shares are performing better than the market and the average fund manager performs worse, it is indeed fortunate that parents never listen to their kids."

"It's very ironic if this blog is one of the top 20 for 2006, because following its advice would have proved very costly. (Hope you bought your Dad a very big & expensive Christmas present to say 'sorry')"

I'm the first to put my hand up when I've got it wrong. And yes, on the face of it, it doesn't look good. But bear with me while I restate my argument.

I never claimed to have some inside track on how Standard Life shares would perform. My point was that the majority of people receiving shares only take a passing interest in the stock market and individual shares - my dad included - and that they didn't have the interest/time to keep a close eye and make an informed decision.

Shares are volatile (as if you need reminding follow the roller coaster of recent weeks). So my advice to the majority of 1.5m not experienced in share trading was to sell the Standard Life shares and put the money into a fund. Unit trusts, Oeics and investment trusts will invest your money in anything from 30 to 400 shares, spreading (and reducing) the risk.

My original blog urged readers to check out fund tips that we'd gathered from independent financial advisers. One of the recommendations was the Jupiter Emerging European Opportunities, a fund in which I invest. It has powered ahead more than 20% since last summer. The other funds tipped have all had decent performance - and taking far lower risks than holding a single stock.

So the moral of the story involves eggs, but not on my face... when investing, don't put all your eggs in one basket.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

>> This is Money's share school - www.thisismoney.co.uk/shareschool

>> This is Money's latest fund tips - www.thisismoney.co.uk/fundtips

>> All This is Money's news and advice about Standard Life shares - www.thisismoney.co.uk/standardlife

I survived the Rorke's Drift of Euston

When I consider having a rant about rail travel in Britain, I feel like a hackneyed bore. I mean, it's a little like a beauty queen emphasising that she'd like to see world peace.

It's a case of, 'Yes well, you and me both mucker, but it's a bit too much of a mess for anyone to sort out isn't it really. So we may as well just plug on and hope that people are inconvenienced in the least horrendous fashion possible. Even if that is by death occasionally - or rather more frequently in the case of war.'

But it shouldn't be like that, should it really? We shouldn't tolerate something so inimical to a happy and peaceful life because 'that's just the way things are, and have been for some time'.

On Friday I got to Euston at 18.15 in order to board the 18.39 to Manchester Piccadilly. I should add at this point that I had wanted to travel on an earlier train. But 3pm to 6pm on a Friday Virgin counts as 'peak time', for which the standard pay-on-the-day saver return is not available and those wishing to indulge in this exotic privilege - turning up at a railway station to buy a ticket and board a train for a 200-mile mainline journey - must fork out about £250.

So I'm aiming to get the first Back In The Real World Train. The 'fast-service' ticket machines each have snaking queues of scores in front; and the queue at the ticket office is at least half an hour I'm told. It seems other people don't want to pay £250 too. Funny that.

I jog over to the Virgin chaps on the concourse: 'Can I buy a ticket on the train?' 'You can sir but not a saver return: it will have to be a [Name Plucked Out of Business Analyst's Backside] ticket which will cost [insert fantasyland multiple of £100 ( - I'd switched off at this point)]'

I jog back to the ticket office and the Virgin chap in there trying to keep the peace advises me with disarming frankness to plead with the front of the queue to jump in ('try and pick a girl, mate [*wink*]!'). This I now do and with a little dent in my dignity hand over nearly £60 (you are really spoiling us here Virgin Trains with your 'Saver'), and jog over to the platform with about 10 minutes to departure.

There's a queue extending from the top of the entry ramp down to the platfrom gate, where there's a platoon of red jackets under siege from waves of irate travellers waving pre-booked tickets - much like Michael Caine and friends at Rorke's Drift.

I'll spare you a blow-by-blow account. But: 1. The train was closed to any ticketholder without a seat reservation.

2. This included not only thoughtless types like me who had bought on the day, but also those who had booked onto that specific train .... but who hadn't been given a seat. Fancy that, eh? You make an advance booking online or over the phone for a specific train (which you cannot change or cancel without losing your money, and which is not valid for any other train) and you lazily assume you've actually been given a seat-number!? How foolish and complacent!?

2. People were a bit miffed.

3. We were told to wait for the next train which would be departing from the next platform in 30 mins.

4. New chaos ensued as the hundreds waiting had to either turn tail up the ramp and back down the next one, or, in the case of those who'd been at the front of the queue - and who feared suddenly being at the back of the queue and not getting aboard this train either -  an undignified playground scramble over the partion barrier.

5. The fittest, strongest, most determined and fearless of those on ramp 7 that day - us garlanded few - boarded the 19.30 to Manchester Piccadilly.

And before some bright spark peeps up that I should have booked a cheap ticket in advance: I went on the Virgin website almost every day for weeks. For this is what you must do in the lottery of advance ticket issuing. Have they come out and all been sold? Or have they not been issued yet? The few truly cheap tickets now get snapped up within hours of issue thanks to the average traveller's growing internet savvy.

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - that any Virgin executive can say to excuse this state of affairs. So why do we put up with it, why are increasing numbers travelling by train?

1. It's a monopoly.

2. The roads are so bad.

3. Flying from London to St Albans isn't possible. Yet.

4. We've been inured to this treatment: air travel is just as sordid and undignified and chaotic, and we do that so much now that we've forgotten that train travel used to be (and still should be) an easier, cheaper, more enjoyable and even romantic experience.

But that would be too much to ask wouldn't it.

- Adrian Lowery, News editor, This is Money

Top stories in February

With banks reporting bumper profits and thousands of people reclaiming charges, our readers were hungry for advice on the best way to do this (find out below). That, together with stock market wobbles, helped push This is Money's readership to an all-time high in February with 766,000 users visiting the site, up 55% on a year ago. Our bank charges advice was the biggest draw...

A quick guide to reclaiming bank charges www.thisismoney.co.uk/reclaimbankcharges www.thisismoney.co.uk/bankchargelettertemplates

...but a mish-mash of issues make up the top ten stories...

1. Britain's 10 worst scams
2. Where next for house prices?
3. Can the FTSE run continue?
4. Get your mortgage fees back
5. £35 for not using your plastic
6. ING Direct keeps rate at 4.75%
7. £36bn wiped off UK shares
8. Ten tips for buy-to-let
9. What can I do with buy-to-let?
10. My £23,000 bank fee victory

If there are issues you would like This is Money to follow - or you have a story for our sister titles Financial Mail on Sunday or Money Mail - then email me at editor@thisismoney.co.uk

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Asda / Tesco telephone prank

I'm not normally a fan of the kind of 'hilarious' telephone japes and practical jokes that launched the careers of Noel Edmonds and Jeremy Beadle, but if you haven't listened to this one doing the rounds of the viral circuits, it may make you titter.

In my experience Tesco isn't cheaper than Asda but when it is shouted out across the store's PA system, it makes a perfect mockery of the millions they spend on their tit-for-tat price wars.

Richard Browning - This is Money

Virgin and Sky - why does the customer lose out?

Why is it that when rival technology or media firms slug it out it's inevitably the customer that loses out?

The latest duo to go head-to-head at the expense of the paying punter are Sky and Virgin Media – the artist formerly known as NTL: Telewest.

In their wisdom these two have decided the nice cosy co-existing situation, where some people have satellite TV and some have cable and everyone gets along fairly well, is no longer reasonable.

This has descended into the business equivalent of playground name-calling in lengthy missives– with both Sky and Virgin attacking the other.

Essentially, these can be summarised as saying ‘we’re great, they’re not’, ‘I didn’t start it, he did’ and ‘it wasn’t me, it was him’.

The argument – rooted in the Virgin rebranding of NTL:Telewest being seen as a direct attack on Sky’s position of dominance – has delivered its first meaningful moment.

And how has this moment taken shape? More choice, cheaper programming and a revolutionising of the service, with each company fighting to give customers more? Nope, a row over charging for basic Sky channels seemingly destined to leave cable customers without popular programmes.

As of Thursday it looks very unlikely cable viewers will get Sky One, Sky Sports News or Sky News. None of which on paper are groundbreakingly brilliant, but in practice this means no Simpsons, no Lost, no 24, no Soccer Saturday and no more pointless debates such as 'are we overreacting about snow?'

At this point I should register a vested interest – I have cable. Now, as This is Money’s broadband, phones and technology man it fell to me to write the story when the news broke. That means I had to write a balanced article, putting both sides equally, explaining how it would impact customers and taking into account readers’ views we were presented with. And I think I did that.

However, what I actually wanted to say was:

‘What the hell are you doing you morons? What kind of stupid battle for supremacy leaves customers worse off? Do you honestly think that I, or any other customer, cares for one minute about your ridiculous finger-pointing in statements and whole page adverts in newspapers? Of course we don’t. We care about being able to watch certain TV series and being able to flop down in front of new Simpsons episodes or Soccer Saturday occasionally. Now sort it out, you clueless goons.’

Now that made me feel better, whether it gets my TV sorted is another matter?

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

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Broadband & phones: News and advice

Search for cheaper broadband

Flat screen vs plasma TVs

Our fuel bills map and The 30 Second Rule

Just a quick note about a new feature here at This is Money – our interactive fuel bills map.

We have always published the latest prices from the different gas and electricity suppliers and have written about the importance of switching your supplier to get the best price.

But it has always been difficult to report accurately what the savings will be because it depends on where you live and who already supplies your energy. The best advice has been to tell individuals to log onto switching sites, enter their details and compare the best prices available.

The process is by no means difficult but it does fall foul of The 30 Second Rule. This is the principle that says most people haven’t got the patience to stick with a website longer than half a minute if they don’t get the information they need.

No doubt there are many people that will happily punch in their details all day long if it means shaving a few quid off their bills, but those less savvy with the internet are less inclined to do so. It helps explain why half of the households in the UK still haven’t switched away from their original energy suppliers – despite the savings that can be made.

The new map is made with these people in mind. They don’t have to punch in all the details of where they live, how much gas and electricity they use or whether they want to pay by direct debit of a cheque.

They can simply click on the region they live in – it is divided up according to the old electricity regions that still influence the price of bills – and see how the amount they currently pay compares with the best deals on the market. A number of different prices are given so that they can see what effect paying by direct debit or getting an online tariff will have.

It takes just one click to get a decent idea of the best prices available and should give reluctant switchers the encouragement to go that step further and change their supplier.

We will update the map whenever suppliers change their prices.

Have a look for yourself. Try clicking on regions where you have friends or relatives that have not switched – those without the internet, the elderly in particular, won’t be able to check for themselves but they are often the ones that can benefit the most from switching.

Ed Monk, This is Money

Our gracious ambassadors

I'm finding it increasingly hard to take any pride in being English (which is sort of a silly notion anyway - we're all accidents of birth). I went to see Liverpool play Barcelona in the European Champions' League on Wednesday, and if I was the mayor of that city, I’d ban any English football team from bringing their fans to another match there.

No, you might not have seen any headlines reporting incidents of violence or trouble – and that’s probably because these were few or minor (relatively speaking – relative that is to the street warfare of the 1980s). What you could, and perhaps should, have read is 'ENGLISH VISITORS USE CITY AS TOILET' or 'ENGLISH DO BEST TO ELIMINATE BEAUTY FROM THE WORLD'.

I'd like to trot out the old cliché that it's a minority of our football fans that behave badly abroad – and literally, it might still be true, because 48% is after all a minority.

The Plaza Reial in the middle of Barcelona's old town was by 5pm on Wednesday a seething mass of urine-fragranced, beer-soaked ugliness. I've seen this every time I've had the misfortune to be in a foreign city at the same time as our nation's finest: 'take over' the main squares (like an occupying army), put your flags up (to signify your 'victory'), drink to oblivion (insulting and intimidating the local populace in the process, by for instance urinating openly against every available surface), and strike a variety of confrontational postures (with accompanying songs - in the loosest sense of the word).

Whether or not all this is aimed at provoking local police into a reaction, what is absolutely fantastic is that the 'fans' come over all surprised and hard-done-by when it does. The foreign police are singling out English fans for special treatment because of their reputation! When really all along they were just in 'high spirits' and indulging in 'friendly banter'! If it wasn’t tragic it would be hilarious.

And yet they might feel justified in believing that what they do has attained the status of acceptability. Because with massive patience and tolerance host cities' authorities and locals have learned not to react or provoke – like campers waiting in their tents while the hungry bear that's wandered into camp noses through the rubbish.

So the hordes are left to play out their pathetic rituals again in the hope that they’ll finally lumber off to the match without causing too much damage - except to their own country's reputation.

- Adrian Lowery, News editor, This is Money

Are we holding on 0870 numbers for longer?

Is it just my imagination, or are companies with 0870 numbers keeping us on hold for longer these days?

I phoned Mint on their 0870 number the other day and found it took me four minutes of pressing buttons before I found an option that would allow me to get through to a person. Calling Mint has always been a bit tedious but somehow it’s become even more frustrating. I was asked twice times to press 1 if I wanted my card balance, which is not what I wanted to do at all. If I wanted to check my balance I would have done it on internet banking or pressed 1 the first time you asked. I need to speak to someone.

It’s very possible I’ve just become too cynical for my own good. But I can’t help but feel that Mint’s interminable button-pressing system is simply designed for you to have to stay on their premium rate phone number for longer.

As an aside, the reason I needed to speak to a person is because I’d found they’d automatically increased my credit limit by another £500, which I don’t need or want. It's fairly standard practice but, in my opinion, irresponsible to give people more money without finding out whether it's something they need or want.

Banks started reporting their final results this week and Barclays alone wiped £2.1bn from its profits thanks to debts that can’t be repaid. Royal Bank of Scotland, the parent company of Mint, is due to announce their final results next week. If their bad debt figures are also up, maybe they want to rethink their policy of automatically increasing customer credit limits?

But back to 0870. Banks are being hit hard by the OFT crackdown on card charges, and it's very possible they'll be forced to decrease overdraft charges too. Could it be that the banks are keeping on hold on 0870 numbers for longer and propping up revenues that way? Or have I just become too cynical for my own good?

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

Useful links

• Could the number be up for 0870?
• Guide: How to beat call centre queues

Congestion charge expands - money saving for the rich

One side has been wailing and gnashing its teeth and the other is accusing anyone who dares disagree with them of being grossly irresponsible.

No, it’s not the nation’s footballers buffing up their reputations over the weekend, but two very vocal opposing sides of the argument about the extension of London’s Congestion Charge today.

(Readers outside the reach of the capital, please don’t click away now – this does concern you, I’ll explain how later.)

One faction that has been relatively quiet on the Congestion Charge front recently though are the wealthy residents of Chelsea, Kensington and Notting Hill, who now live within the zone.

In fact, ask a lot of these residents of London’s richest areas and you find that despite their initial distaste, the extended zone will actually do them a favour.

If you live in the zone you get a 90% discount on the £8 congestion charge. Buy a month’s worth of the charge and it’ll cost you just £16. That means the wealthy citizens of Chelsea, Kensington and Notting Hill can now drive around central London, at any time of any day of the week, for a bargain price.

Previously, despite the fact it made little difference to their deep pockets, most avoided driving into Central London, as they objected to paying £8 for the privilege. Now, many I have spoken to say there will now be no point not taking the car. Going to the hedge fund office in Mayfair - might as well drive; Bond Street for lunch and shopping – I’ll take the car; Meeting in the City – traffic might not be too bad at this time of day.

The people who it will really hurt though are small businesses. West London is one of the few places in the country still full of small shops and traders, as the rich residents’ cash helps support them. But these small traders – who don’t get the same discount as residents - find the Congestion Charge hits their delivery vans and their staff who have to drive for business reasons. And the pain is worse as big chain rivals can easier absorb similar issues.

This problem was raised when the original charge was introduced and nothing has really been done to help. And that's why the rest of the country should be concerned, because, despite any denials you hear, similar congestion charges are being plotted for the rest of Britain's cities.

Congestion will drop substantially at first as a result of the charge – it did in the original zone – but then it will rise again – in the original zone it is now estimated to be 8% lower than before. (As stated by the eco-friendly Guardian)

Unclogging our painfully congested streets is an admirable ambition, but freeing them up for the rich and hurting our already struggling small businesses doesn’t seem right.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Money saving for the not so rich (rich folk not excluded)

Investing tips to help you get rich

Welcome to Nationwide (but don't go online)

I said I would, and I have done – changed banks, that is.

When First Direct new boy Chris Pilling decided to dump customers who don't fit the bank's new wealth profile, I decided his was the unacceptable face of capitalism and it was time to switch.

Many This is Money readers threatened to do the same at the time of First Direct's announcement in November that it was having a clear out of people who didn't earn enough or buy enough of its products. I suspect many of those readers will have had second thoughts, worried that it might all go wrong. Once upon a time they would have been right. Banks did their damnedest to make life difficult for customers who wanted to take their business elsewhere. But that is no longer the case and they are now obliged by the Banking Code to make the process as smooth as possible.

Having decided the Big Four were pretty well as bad as each other, I opted early in January to move to Nationwide Building Society. Being a mutual, it does not have to put the interests of shareholders first and, as well as offering current account customers a good rate of interest, it promised to pay £50 if it made a mess of things. It didn't, and last week my salary was paid in and standing orders and direct debits began going out as they should.

So much for getting the basics right. Sadly, it would be less than truthful to say the switch has been painless. I was keen to resume running my finances online as soon as possible. But Nationwide screwed up the process time and time again.

I have aged years waiting for someone to pick up the phone at one of its call centres only to find the person I need to talk to is at Swindon rather than Northampton. I have been promised help that didn't materialise and I have been obliged to appear at my local branch to prove I actually live at the address they have been writing to for years (I already had a Nationwide savings account). Wrong information has been corrected only for it to be uncorrected and in the end I pressed on only to see how bad things could get.

A few days ago, I finally received the necessary information to begin internet banking. It has been a huge disappointment. What should be simple and straightforward is bafflingly complicated. Transactions that should take no more than a couple of easy steps require the dogged determination of Scott of the Antarctic.

Attempting to complete the simplest of tasks has pushed me close to destroying my own computer in a fit of uncontrollable rage. When trying to pay my credit card bill online, I make a mistake typing in a 16-digit number. Will the system let me go back? Of course not. Can I find that part of the site again to restart the process? Not when it is as badly designed as this one. Would I like to request a Pin number for my credit card? I would, but all I get is a message to ring the call centre.

I am starting to wonder if this really is Nationwide's online banking service or an experiment to see how quickly a man's spirit can be broken. But despite everything (and there is much more) I'm determined not to be defeated because I feel  confident that internet banking will make my life easier.

Right now, however, I can't face starting the whole deadful process again First, I'm going to need a long lie down in a darkened room.

- Simon Moon

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Let us take on your chip and Pin fraud case

As we approach the first anniversary of chip and Pin, a timely court case has exposed the myth that chip and Pin would be responsible for virtually eradicating card fraud. Two men were jailed for five years yesterday for tampering with a chip and Pin machine at a Shell garage, allowing them to copy the details from a customer's credit card and record their Pin number.

More than 200 customers were caught out by the scam. Authorities say 42 machines have been tampered with, and this is the only one whose location we know about. So potentially at 41 locations around the country, you will buy something at the point of sale, have your card cloned, your Pin stolen, and lose thousands of pounds when the fraudsters go on a spending rampage, armed with your card and its Pin number.

And the worst bit? Here's my guess at the bank's response: they won't compensate you because the Pin was entered, so either you told someone your Pin or it was written down in your wallet.

You can read the full story here. And here's another story: Gangs are using MP3 players to steal Pin numbers and then clone the cards.

We're fully aware that since the introduction of chip and Pin (and despite the protestations of the banks) the burden of proof is shifting to customers to prove that they are not victims of fraud. Our readers have told us stories of their cards and Pins being used to steal their money, and banks' outright refusal to investigate any cases where Pins have been entered.

I've just been chatting with Sandra Quinn from Apacs - they're the organisation that is responsible for chip and Pin transactions. I put to her these concerns and she told me that banks were obligated to provide PROOF when they decline a claim for fraud. It was not enough to say "you must have had your Pin written down" or "the Pin was entered therefore it must have been you" in their letter to you turning down their claim. They have to prove it, although Sandra couldn't tell me how they could do this. Which is, of course, the problem.

So, fraud victims, we invite you to send us copies of the letters your banks have sent you, outlining their reasons for declining your fraud claim, and we'll send them onto Apacs on your behalf and see whether they cut the mustard. Send me an email to banking@thisismoney.co.uk if you're unhappy about the way your bank has treated you, I'll give you our contact details and we'll see if we can't get some answers.

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

The Russian share boom - which country is next?

Nearly five years ago, one of the City's new fund management stars told me this: 'Russia will be the one of the stock market winners over the next five years', or words to that effect.

That was the summer of 2002. Here are annual returns from the Russian stock market (in dollar terms)...
2002 - 38%
2003 - 58%
2004 - 4%
2005 - 83%
2006 - 71%

Tables for the top performing funds for British investors also reflect the boom - two of the top five unit trusts/Oeics over five years are those that invest in Russia and Eastern Europe - JP Morgan New Europe (+275%) and Credit Suisse European Frontiers (+ 271%). The top performer last year was Neptune Russia, returning 51.6% and Jupiter's Emerging European Opportunities fund, of which I am an investor, has had a terrfic run returning 189% in three years.

It's the same for investment trusts: JP Morgan Russian Securities (+459%) and the Eastern European Trust (+378%).

So who was this star manager?

John Chatfield-Roberts (pictured), who runs a handful of funds of funds for Jupiter. He doesn't need to worry about picking winning shares, but has to guess markets correctly and pick the right funds, reducing risk (and potential returns) by spreading investors' money around the world. His Jupiter Merlin fund has returned 82% over five years compared with an average 44% for the sector.

So where is he investing now?

Well, I get the feeling JCR is lacking confidence to make such a definitive call on the market again but these are his key thoughts on emerging markets...

>> 'There's been extreme growth in China - the three or four months have been phenomenal for the Chinese stock market. I think economic growth will continue but if I were committing new money, I would wait for a better entry point.' (His funds hold: First State Asia Pacific Leaders; Jupiter China)
>> 'Brazil is interesting. Some companies are growing at 15/20% a year but are generally cheaper than Russian shares. Interest rates are high - if they fall then it could help the economy and the stock market. I have 6% invested in Latin America at the moment - that's going up.' (His funds invest in Findlay Park Latin American fund)
>> 'We looked at India and thought it looked too expensive.'

As ever, remember that achieving high returns means taking high risks. Note that JCR only invested a proportion of his funds in Eastern Europe despite his bullish stance. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

- Click on the graph right (from a report by Moscow's http://www.cefir.ru ) to see the ups and ups of Russian shares.

Useful links

>> Story reporting JCR's move into Eastern Europe (July 2002)

>> Special report: Risky Russia? (November 2006)

>> Neptune Russia is top fund of 2006 (December 2006)

>> Bank the emerging market gains (November 2006)

>> JCR's website and book - www.fundology.co.uk

Rawl plugs in a handbag - the TV quiz swindle

Recent years have seen a bad run for the nation’s politicians and credibility. That any think the public believe a word they say is amazing, considering the ‘do as I say, not as I do attitude’ adopted.

A brief trawl through recent memory delivers some gems. Green taxing air passengers while expanding the nation’s airports; telling long suffering passengers that actually trains are affordable and improving; cycling to work while your driver takes your stuff.

Stand up for your round of applause Chancellor Gordon Brown and environment minister Ian Pearson, transport secretary Douglas Alexander, and leader of the opposition David Cameron.

But hopefully we are finally about to see some MPs actually do something properly. A gaggle of politicians (is that the right collective noun?) are currently investigating the plague of quiz phone-in shows coining it in on late night TV.

These quiz phone-ins are such an obvious fiddle that it would be funny if two companies who have managed to get the ultra-rare privilege of a terrestrial broadcasting licence weren’t involved. And if you think the ITV and Five TV quiz swindles are bad, they’re nothing compared to the cable channels.

If you want a good laugh read the select committee report here featuring bearded dragons as household pets and balaclavas and rawl plugs as things found in a lady’s handbag.

Hopefully this report means something is going to be done about these shows and I will leave the last words on them to a politician, who I hope sticks by his convinctions and gets his fellow committee members to act.

Summing the fiddle up beautifully, Alan Keen, Labour MP for Feltham and Heston, said: ‘Suppose you decided to change the National Lottery so that when people buy their ticket on a Saturday afternoon not all the tickets are entered into the draw. You say: 'You can buy your ticket and pay your pound and we are just going to throw most of them in the bin behind the counter'.

‘Can you imagine what that would do to sales of Lottery tickets? Yet that is what's happening with these quiz shows.’

Mr Keen, you are in the running for my new favourite politician - don't let us down.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

This is Money's campaigns section

Make money from the internet

Who said the slave trade was dead?

A lasting memory from my early days as a journalist was showing up on the doorstep of a house at the centre of a four-hour armed stand-off with police.

The people of the town had a right to know what had happened. I had to ask the questions on their behalf.

It turned out the fellow had threatened to kill his family and now his family were threatening to do the same to me if I didn't, ahem, go away.

While being dead would have irreparably damaged my career - as would, incidentally, using adverbs in a news story - the experience was a valuable one and though not fantastically well paid it was fun. And I was learning.

Seems times have changed. Take this 'job' ad.

If you are a trained journalist with access to expensive computer equipment, have specialist industry knowledge, want no on-the-job training from experienced peers, oh and will work for nothing, then this is the job for you.

'We can accomodate work experience reporters on a full time or part time basis.'

I bet you can, mate. (It's accommodate, with 2 'm's, by the way.)

This isn't 'work experience'. It's exploitation.

Just maybe, talking to a family of junkies who have spent the afternoon under the watchful eye of the Met Police's armed unit goes some small way to preparing a journalist for today's hateful spin doctors and liars whose job it is to protect their paymasters be it in government or industry.

Flapping away alone at a keyboard at home for no money - or guidance - isn't.

"Work experience Journalist required to join a leading web based news service. This is an exciting role where you will be able to build your portfolio and work in a cutting edge news environment.FE News co.uk is a leading Further Education news service.

At FE News we provide ‘live’ news to our work experience reporters, you will be able to quickly build your portfolio (we always publish our reporters names on their articles and all of our articles are searchable in the major search engines).

As a work experience Reporter you will be initially be re-writing press releases (to gain a better understanding of the sector and to get used to our writing style), once you have proven your ability you will have the opportunity to interview Government ministers, College Principals, CEO’s of Training Companies and industry figure heads. This is no cup of tea making work experience role, but a place where you can really get stuck in and fine tune your journalistic style.

To be successful you must be a trained journalist. You must have easy access to the internet and a PC (at home). You must be able to consistently hit deadlines. As FE News is a web based news site, you can work from home. It would be advantageous if you have a good understanding of Further Education, otherwise we will equip you to quickly understand the sector.We can accomodate work experience reporters on a full time or part time basis (5 days per week through to 1 day per week - as long as we know which days you are available and you are able to quickly return articles)."

The tragedy is that this ad will probably attract hundreds of hopeful applicants. So if any wannabee journalists are reading this, don't get me wrong, the right work experience is a very valuable tool in your armoury. Just find somewhere that will at least let you use their computers. Your local newspaper or the trade press are fantastic places to start.

Richard Browning

Find a job>>

Make money from the internet>>

Rip-offs of the year>>

The council that doesn't put residents first

We received a notice from Hammersmith and Fulham Council the other day saying that we owe an extra £320 in unpaid council tax from two years ago. It was a bit of a mystery but several phone calls to the council later we've discovered that there was an error on our file that said we moved in in May 2003 not March 2003. The council have now given us around a week to foot the bill for the extra two months which I think is amazingly unreasonable, given that this was their mistake, not ours. In fact, when we moved in we spent a good six months trying to make them send us a council tax bill because for some reason we didn't exist on their database.

But backpaying from two years ago is all quite complicated given that the tenants from 2005 are now living in different places. I requested a few weeks' grace from the council to contact the others to sort it out, which they've flatly refused and have told me we'll receive a court summons unless they get the cash.

Realising I was getting nowhere with the woman reading the script on the other end of the phone, I gave up and asked how I could make a proper complaint. This morning I sent an email to the address that they gave me, and when I tracked it to ensure it was received, I was given notification that my email had been deleted without being read. How's that for customer service?

Suffice to say I'm wholly unimpressed with the entire process. I'm happy to pay money if I owe it, but for them to allow a week to find an extra £320. And then to delete the complaints emails without reading them is, frankly, unforgiveable.

It appears it's not just British Gas that's institutionally moronic. Hammersmith and Fulham Council (the council that's "Putting Residents First") has that dubious honour as well...

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

I bought a car for less than a train fare

I bought battered little Peugeot 205 off a friend of mine late last year for the bargain price of £100. It looks a bit like a beaten up version of the car to the right, which is much, much nicer than mine.

Disclaimers: It's not particularly pretty, with a few dents and scratches and failing paintwork. And I had to pay for insurance and get a few things fixed in order to pass the MOT. And of course there will be various ongoing running costs. I'm also painfully aware that it's not doing anything for my carbon footprint and I hope that I offset that somewhat by walking to work. And I also know that spending so little on a car is a potential financial nightmare.

But despite all of this, I've had a dream run with it, apart from one flat battery (my own fault). Mechanically it's very sound and it's doing a great job in driving me around London and its outskirts on weekends. The rest of the time it just sits outside my house.

We've decided to test her mettle and drive to Shropshire to visit the family of a friend of mine. I've just done a quick check on train fares and for two tickets to Shropshire early on a Saturday morning (when we would leave) and returning late Sunday night (when we would return) will cost us £103.40, and that includes having to change trains. We could take cheaper trains at less sociable hours and with more changeovers but that would be still be around £90.

OK, so not everyone who spends £100 on a car will have such a trouble-free tale of joy but it just goes to show the cost of public transport. I think I got myself a bargain.

- Sascha Hutchinson, This is Money

PS - I bought my insurance policy through Direct Line, which was the cheapest for me - unlike everyone else at This is Money who found Swiftcover were the best.

PPS - Is this really a country that is serious about the going green and encouraging people to use public transport? Decide for yourself:

• Rail fare to rise again to cut overcrowding
• Scale of rail rip-offs exposed

The gasman who was 8 years, 3 months late for an urgent appointment

There are few things more demeaning than sitting in waiting for a delivery or tradesman who doesn't show up.

I should know, I've been waiting more than eight years for the pondlife that runs our gas industry to replace my dangerously out-moded gas meter with a new model.

And once again they've let me down. With the usual breath-taking incompetence I've come to expect of this unaccountable private-sector bureaucracy, I've spent all morning waiting for an engineer who, I suspect, has gone home.

This mess began in 1998 when the Transco Area Emergency Bureau wrote saying that under the Gas Act they were obliged to change my gas meter.

I made an appointment but no one turned up.

This happened three times that year.

By 1999, I'd received an apology, three lots of compensation and a promise that the work had been rescheduled and that 'Transco will be in contact nearer the time.'

I never heard from Transco again.

In the intervening years, I have written and called Transco, which has since changed its name to Southern Gas Network, but I still have the old meter.

Three times I've had to call the gas emergency line because the meter has started leaking. But each time they refused to replace the meter - a 30-minute job.

Then in September 2006 I received a letter from Southern Gas Network. The same one I had had from Transco seven years previously. For safety and regulatory reasons they wanted to change my meter.

I made an appointment. And they didn't show up.

Richard Browning, This is Money

Putting your Pin in backwards to alert the police

There's a rumour going round that if you are mugged and marched to a cash machine you should put your Pin number in backwards, which will alert the police to the fact that you are in trouble.

I've heard this a number of times over the past fortnight - it's been mentioned by friends, forwarded in emails and talked about on the radio.

It's a nice thought this little trick the banks have given us - an emergency call that can be sounded when we are in distress. I like to imagine not only does it alert the police but it also beams out a Batman-style logo above the city skies - perhaps in the shape of a giant cashcard.

This is big business and the police teaming up to get one back over the cowardly criminals who march innocent folk off at knife, or even gun, point to hand over their savings.

Except, of course, it's complete rubbish.

Firstly, have you ever tried calling the police in this country? Somewhat overrun by crime, the need to raise revenue from motorists and detaining people for wearing offensive t-shirts, they generally take a while to arrive. So, they are unlikely to respond to what may be a cry for distress, or what may just be some numpty who can't remember their Pin. And if they do turn up, Johnny Cashpoint Mugger will be long gone by the time they get there.

Secondly, there's a lot of people out there whose Pin numbers are palindromes: 1221; 5445; 9229; the list goes on. And this would mean policemen spending most of their day running backwards and forwards to ATMs.

So, if you are unlucky enough to get marched to a cash machine by a mugger, sorry this trick won't work. Sadly, I'd just recommend handing over the cash and calling the police straight afterwards.

It's a nice story though.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful links:

Saving and banking news and features

Ten steps to reclaim unfair bank charges

Affordable art - the Christies ski poster sale

There are two schools of thought when it comes to buying art – you either display it with pride, or squirrel it away, protecting your investment behind closed doors.

The latter option always seems a shame, but for me, as with many people, it’s not really a problem – art is generally beyond my means.

But at auction house Christies, on Thursday, there is a sale of iconic images, which may prove to be a decent investment, at prices that would allow you to hang them on your wall.

At lunchtime today I cycled down to the South Kensington auctioneers, to have a look at the classic ski posters that go under the hammer this week, in the tenth annual Ski Sale, with prices ranging from a couple of hundred pounds to a few thousand.

Many of them date from the 1920s and 1930s – the golden era of the ski poster – when resorts, the railways and tourist boards across Europe commissioned artists to create adverts for the first wave of mass ski tourism. Posters of this style continued to be produced until the 1950s/60s.

Now I’m biased, because I love these vintage posters and the mountains, but if you fancy buying some art that might appreciate in value this auction seems great.

Unfortunately, the posters, printed from the original lithographs, are beyond my price range at the moment, but for people with a bit of cash to spend this is affordable art.

Nicolette Tomkinson, Christie’s vintage poster specialist and the head of sale, tells me buyers tend to be those with a passion for skiing, who are looking for art for their home, or a ski holiday chalet or apartment. It’s a specialised field but the auction is one of Christies’ most popular and the value of the posters has risen in recent years.

Nicolette says: ‘We would always recommend people buy something because they love the image or are passionate about the place advertised rather than as an investment, but hopefully they will also be a good investment.’

Her favourites are designed by Roger Broders, the grandmaster of the travel poster, (see picture on the left) and the biggest public demand is for those that feature iconic resorts such as Chamonix.

Sadly, I’ll have to skip the auction until my bank balance is a bit healthier. But here’s a moneysaving tip if, like me, you can’t stretch that far – reproductions are available and can be bought online at sites such as allposters.co.uk

Affordable art indeed

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Useful Links:

Is wine a corking investment?

Art draws the big money

Child trust funds: Where I invested mine

A quarter of parents have failed to invest child trust fund vouchers for their children in the past year. So the Government has this week launched a big push to remind them of the benefits.

Channel Five's Kate Gerbeau (pictured top) was kind enough to invite me on to her 11.30 news programme today to talk about child trust funds and how to pick the best one.

I was also alongside Sheree Murphy (pictured below with her children), she of Emmerdale and 'I'm a Celebrity...' fame and also married to footballer Harry Kewell, who is being paraded by Revenue & Customs (who run CTFs) in Child Trust Fund week.

Sheree grew up in an inner London council house and is keen to promote the benefit of CTFs to poorer families.

Here's the basics on child trust funds...

>> You have three choices:
- A savings account
- A 'stakeholder' account. Charges are limited to 1.5% a year and money is invested mainly in shares-based funds with a little bit in 'safer' investments such as bonds. More money is moved into the safer elements towards the end of the 18 years (it works similarly to a pension)
- A shares account. This is not a stakeholder so will probably have higher minimum investment levels but may have lower charges (especially on investment trusts). It's riskier than the other options as you may be able to pick more adventurous funds that deliver higher (or lower) returns.

>> What I did:
I have a son, aged two-and-a-half years old. Shares have beaten savings accounts over every 18-year period in the past four decades. In fact, you'd struggle to find any 18-year spell when deposit accounts came out on top. Past performance is only a guide (albeit a pretty good one) so I took the plunge and invested in two funds via F&C - the F&C Investment Trust and the Witan Pacfic trust.

The F&C Investemnt Trust spreads your money in shares around the world (but mainly in the UK) and has very low charges because it is so large. More on F&C Investment Trust.

I then wanted to spice up the portfolio. I believe stock markets of western economies may suffer in the next decade while tiger economies and the developing world step up the pace (read more on my view here and here).

The F&C trust has returned 52% over three years, with 21% of it coming in the past year (figures to November 2006). Witan Pacific has returned 52% over three years but only 4% last year (which was a mixed year for Far East markets).

Due to a change in management at Witan Pacific, it can no longer be held in a CTF so I was forced to sell and reinvest in other F&C funds. I opted for the Pacfic Assets trust and the F&C Global Smaller Companies trust, both of which have strong past performance.

>> What you should do:
I am happy to take on risk and monitor my CTFs every couple of months. For parents who are not interested in finance, the best bet is to probably pick a stakeholder that tracks a stock market index. Then you don't need to worry about changing managers affecting performance (it should mirror stock market performance). For parents who are uber-worried about risk then a savings account would be right for them. Either way, you should wade through all the info on this site at thisismoney.co.uk/ctf and check out this nice decision diagram from the Government...
http://www.childtrustfund.gov.uk/Documents/toolkit_leaflet/toolkit%20leaflet%20-%20low%20res.pdf

Happy investing.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

And a final anecdote, I met Jason Donovan who was also on the programme. It was interesting to hear the chit-chat between him and Sheree (both have appeared in 'I'm a Celebrity...' at different times) and their views on the latest 'celebrity' Big Brother series. My lips are sealed.

Previous blog: My 40% child trust fund return - year one

BA lost baggage - customer service goes missing too

British Airways has a load of bags it can’t reunite with their owners – that comes as no surprise to me.

Unfortunately, I had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of BA’s lost luggage system last summer and it was absolutely diabolical.

My girlfriend and I flew BA from London to Geneva on a Friday night in late July (before any inkling of the hand luggage terror scare had emerged). Ominously, when we arrived in Geneva my girlfriend’s bag failed to appear. When she told the man at the baggage desk her name and flight number, he looked on his computer and said there was a message from the airline.

He said: ‘I have an apology. There was a mistake and your bag was not flown. It is still in London. It will be flown out on the first flight in the morning and if you leave us the address where you will be staying it will be couriered there by lunch time.’

Despite that promise, what followed was three days of buck passing and complete indifference from BA’s customer service centre.

The problem was that if you lose your bag, BA customer services can’t help, even if a message has immediately been sent apologising and promising it will be delivered asap.

Apparently, they have no way of contacting their baggage department, which is only accessible by customers on one phone number that repeatedly says: ‘We are experiencing a high level of calls, please call later.’ And then cuts you off.

It took more than three days before we got through to that number, at which point a nice man went and found the bag within minutes.

Here are some quotes from BA customer services:

BA customer services: ‘What do you expect me to do. We’re in a call centre – we can’t phone the baggage department, it’s got nothing to do with us.’

BA customer services: ‘Phone the number you were given – if you can’t get through it’s busy, you’re not the only one in this position.’

BA customer services manager: ‘No, I can’t tell you how much a day you can claim in compensation. We don’t supply that information. Claim on your travel insurance.’

So, it came as no surprise that BA has cocked up. After all, if it was losing so many bags that it couldn’t cope during normal operations, it’s no wonder the fog chaos left it stumped.

Perhaps if BA wants to keep up its façade of being a quality airline perhaps it should stop cutting costs, put customer services and the baggage centre in touch, get some more baggage staff, and treat customers with a little more respect. Until then I don’t see any point in choosing them over easyJet or Ryanair.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

Get some travel insurance for when your airline lets you down

Online holidays smash brochure prices

False holiday prices attacked

Top 10 rip-offs from the past 12 months

Over the past 12 months I've been lucky enough to have travelled across Britain and the world and seen first-hand how things are done on the other side of the M25 and beyond. And I've learned a lot, particularly about Britain.

• From the USA, I've learned that Americans have discovered a powerful cynicism along with a fear that their domestic and global economic dominance is coming to an end. And what happens first in America ...
• From Africa, I've discovered that Brits abroad are these days viewed merely as a cultural curiosity - because we drink too much.
• From Europe, I see that the Norwegians are the richest people on the planet but are still wanting for more - (cheaper drink, probably).
• And from Britain, I found that those people who live in the deepest countryside don’t drive 4x4s at all - but tatty old Volvo estates.

Trivial stuff maybe, but the main thing I've learned from my travels is that Britain can confidently maintain its claim to being the World Centre of the Rip-off. Not the outright scams such as the 419 con or this boiler room nonsense but those hateful little tricks that turn apparently good value into a typically miserable, typically British rip-off experience.

Here are my top rip-offs from the past year with some links to help you avoid being caught out in 2007:

1. Every three days you pay your bank manager £1 – but only if you can't afford it

This was the genius idea from the marketing brain now in charge of the once-respected bank, First Direct.

New chief executive Chris Pilling, previously behind the curious decision to make rich rock chic Sharon Osbourne the face of Asda, has now decided that any First Direct customer who earns less than £25,000 a year must pay £120 a year, or £1 every three days, to keep their bank account with his exclusive establishment. [Wake up Chris, it's a bank!]

While there is a set of childishly complex get-out clauses to avoid this 'poor tax', pensioners, nurses, teachers and women on maternity leave are clearly an unecessary irritation for Pilling in 2007. Expect a celebrity ad campaign soon.

Tip for 2007: Watch this space. Surprisingly, Nationwide, whom I would have expected to mop up disgruntled First Direct customers in their thousands after such a debacle, hasn’t ruled out charging for accounts either.

Compare bank accounts here>>
Goodbye First Direct>>

2. Illegal bank charges - the official rip-off

It’s not often that Britain's ineffective watchdogs throw their weight around enough to justify their existence. But there was an exception last year. The OFT ruled that banks have been overcharging customers for years. So, if in the past six years your bank manager or credit card provider has charged you 'too much' for an overdraft or made you pay for sending out one of their automated letters - you have officially been ripped off and can claim back your money.

Here’s how>>

Tip for 2007: Just click on the link above and follow the instructions. Readers have been claiming back sometimes thousands of pounds each over the past few months.

3. The £35 haircut

Now, where banks take your money and use it to make money for themselves, which incidentally allows them to offer free current account banking with ease, hairdressers take your money so they can talk to you about Spain and make your head look like diseased topiary.

But one thing these industries have in common is the ability to charge you more than you would expect to reasonably pay for a product or service - in other words rip you off.

For example, I'd expect to pay a fiver for a haircut for a six year old. OK, maybe a tenner, even £15 if they bother to wash it.

Not at Headmasters. They splapped us for for a cool £35 and a ‘well, that’s how much it is’ after a few minutes in the highchair for our daughter.

Tip for 2007: Trust no one, always agree prices in advance, avoid Headmasters at all costs and consider cutting your children's hair yourself.

Discuss scams and rip-offs here>>

4. Do you want insurance with that?

This is Money has campaigned hard to expose the sharp practices of the finance houses flogging expensive and inappropriate payment protection insurance.

Never heard of it? Well, check your statements as you may have a policy without even realising. In my case, Egg, tried to add a policy to a loan application in spite of me repeatedly turning down the offer. Luckily I spotted the ‘mistake’. But how many others weren’t so lucky or vigilant?

Follow our campaign against this hateful rip-off>>

5. Do you want a store card, more pointless insurance or some chocolate with that?

Logically and deservedly, if nothing changes the High Street will die within a generation. So how are retailers fighting the growing threat from cyberspace?

By improving the customer experience, improving staff morale, pay and training of course...

... and then I woke up.

I popped into Staples office supply store the other day and spent 99p on some paper. As five members of staff peered with fish-like disdain at a till that refused to open no matter how many times it was moaned at, yawning Nobby was ordered by his boss to serve me. Gradually, he remembered his spiel and to his credit (from management at least) tried to make me take out the Staples store card - SIX times. As a result, it's inconceivable that I'll go back to buy that printer I 'd looked at.

Meanwhile, over at Argos they tried to get me to insure an £18 portable radio for three years. 'It's only £5.'

Now £5 doesn't sound a lot but that's roughly the equivalent of spending £80,000 on house insurance for an average home over three years. A rip-off, I think you'll find.

The best, however, was yet to come. Back across the road at the world's most messed up shop, Woolworths, I was asked quite seriously whether I wanted to buy some chocolate and sweets with my toy.

For Scooby-Doo's sake! You get less hassle than this in the African souks! And you get a free cup of tea.

Read what happened when Jeff Prestridge went to Marks & Spencer>>

Tip for 2007: Bookmark our Consumer advice channel. We report on retailers' tall tales all the time.

6. The restaurant wine scam

We all know that restaurants will happily sell a £4 bottle of wine for £15 and more. Is that a rip-off? With high rents, rates and other unseen costs I think that’s probably acceptable.

Not acceptable, however, is the increasingly virile - and vile - habit of waiters rushing round the table filling wine glasses for you.

It’s not fair to name names as they all seem to be at it. Oh, but I hate this trick so I will.

I was disappointed that a once regular haunt, Arcadia, in Kensington - a great little restaurant with decent food and reasonable prices - felt the need to rip us off in this way to the point of farce. The This is Money team has since found another place to spend our lunch money.

7. The internet

A surprising entry to the chart, maybe. After all, eBay and the price comparison websites and, of course, This is Money have made it possible for shoppers to buy what we want, when we want and at the prices we want. About now is probably the heyday of online shopping.

But it won't be long before the traditional retailers work out how to royally rip us off online as well as in-store.

With that in mind it will be interesting to see how Ikea introduces its go-on-fill-that-big-yellow-bag-with-rubbish-you-don't-want philosophy into the equation when it ventures online in 2007.

But that's the future. For now, the big irritation are the websites that pretend to offer help but are purely paid-for directories. Not illegal and nobody gets hurt. But you’re being misled. It’s a rip-off.

8. Gas - the invisible rip-off

The opening up of the gas supply business to competition has been a godsend for rip-off merchants.

At one end you've got 'institutionally moronic' British Gas still trying to act like a monopoly with the highest prices but the most pitiful service. At the other you’ve got doorstep salesmen getting people to sign up to competitors by forging signatures and telling lies.

Then you’ve got the supposed Good Samaritans accused of distorting the true cost of comparison.

What a mess.

But the real rip-off has been the rising costs of wholesale gas - the speed with which suppliers pass on the costs to domestic customers and reluctance to bring prices back down again now that prices are falling.

And worse, how on earth are you supposed to know whether you are paying the correct price for the gas you use if your bills are always estimated and the price of gas keeps changing? You don’t. It’s a rip-off. I'll let you know if I ever get a reply from my supplier on this.

9. The low-cost flights myth

The low-cost airlines have done a fantastic job in showing up the major airlines for exploiting their near-monopolies to rip-off customers.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Or free flight. Or cup of coffee, or check-in or use of a wheelchair – not even the fuel seems to be included in the price of your airline ticket this year. And that, is a rip-off.

10. TV quiz shows

ITV, Channel Four and Five should be ashamed of themselves. And so should the presenters. No I don’t mean Noel Edmonds and his peculiarly successful take on box opening. I’m talking about the late-night phone-in shows. The ones where you phone and phone and phone and never get through but are charged at least 60p for each call.

Follow our campaign here>>

- That'll do for now. There are scores more of these petty and serious rip-offs. These were my pet hates. Feel free to share yours.

Richard Browning - This is Money

Sort out all your finances in eight steps

Sorting out your finances really doesn't need to be difficult. In fact you can learn everything you need to know by the end of this blog post.

Scott Adams' famously (in the US) devised a nine-point plan for sorting out your money (he of the Dilbert cartoon fame pictured). In his 'Unified Theory of Everything Financial', a play on Einstein's Unified Theory of Everything, he uses just 129 words to say everything that needs to be said. It was originally published in 'Dilbert and the Way of the Weasels' in 2002 but you can read the nine-point plan on this Marketwatch blog.

For us Brits, it needs a tweak and it becomes an eight-point plan...

Step 1. Make a will (A guide to will writing - 10 tips for a perfect will)

Step 2. Pay off your credit cards (Guides and tips for clearing card debt)

Step 3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support (Calculate the life insurance you need - Get a quote)

Step 4. Fund your company pension to the maximum (A guide to company pensions)

Step 5. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it (Mortgage/house-buying guides - Compare mortgage deals)

Step 6. Put six months worth of outgoings in a tax-free Isa savings account. You can put up to £3,000 into an account each year. (See the web's best savings tables)

Step 7. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index tracking fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker/fund supermarket and never touch it until retirement

Step 8. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio

There you have it. I'm sure your family and friends who share a phobia of finance would be grateful to receive the Unified Theory of Everything Financial' so please pass it on.

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Farewell to First Direct

My New Year resolution for 2007? To switch my current account away from First Direct.

Though I was not affected by its insensitive and blundering decision to hit thousands of customers with new charges from next month, I decided at the time of the November announcement that First Direct was no longer my sort of bank. That is despite an association that goes back more than 30 years to the days of the Midland Bank.

First Direct chief executive Chris Pilling, right, makes me uncomfortable. He had no banking industry experience before being handed the top job and I don't trust him to put my interests, and those of other customers, above his desire to impress the rest of the banking fraternity. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not prepared to wait around to see if he does any more damage.

Instead, I have decided to switch to Nationwide Building Society. As a mutual that doesn't have to worry about shareholders, it can afford to be more generous than the major High Street banks. So instead of a paltry 0.1%, I'll be receiving an impressive 4.25% when my salary is paid in. I'll pay half as much interest on authorised overdrafts. And, as a FlexAccount customer, I won't pay additional charges if I use my bank card abroad.

Nationwide assures would-be customers that the whole process of switching is painless. In fact, it promises to pay compensation if anything goes wrong.

So it's out with the old and in with the new. I'll let you know how I go on.

- Simon Moon, This is Money

Most popular stories in 2006

It's been a great year for This is Money. The number of readers in 2006 was up 75% on 2005 and we now have 600,000 regular visitors.

We've compiled a list of the articles that were most in demand on the site, including news stories, features, guides and tip sheets.

Thanks for supporting This is Money this year. We hope to help even more people make money and save money next year, so help make a friend better off by telling them about the site and our top wealth-building links...

Best wishes and merry Christmas,

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

• 1. Ten steps to reclaim bank fees
  2. Reclaim bank charges letter
  3. Standard's 'free shares' myth
  4. Special round-up: Standard Life's float
  5. 50 ways to save money
  6. Isa special report
  7. Fight the unfair bank charges
  8. Has your savings rate risen
• 9. Guide: Inheritance tax
  10. Guide: Buying your first home
  11. Ten tips for buy-to-let
  12. Standard Life: sell or hold?
  13. How to get a building society windfall
  14. New Barclays account pays 10%
  15. You'll never beat poker robots
  16. Windfall for Standard Life savers
  17. Special report: Budget 2006
  18. Guide: Premium bonds
  19. Q&A: Norwich Union windfalls
• 20. Beat the second-home tax trap
  21. Guide: Fixed rate vs variable rate deals
  22. Best paid jobs revealed
  23. Guide: Improve your credit rating
  24. Nationwide's Portman merger
  25. The dwindling balance transfer trick
  26. Guide: Buy-to-let mortgages
  27. How This is Money can help you
  28. Guide: Types of savings account
  29. Loophole aids carpetbaggers comeback
  30. Cheapest foreign currency rates
• 31. House price crash warning
  32. Ten steps to your first home
  33. New on the market: Saving and banking
• 34. 50 ways to save on your holidays
  35. Credit card best buys
  36. Share tips - Best of the rest
  37. Guide: Isas and other tax-free investing
  38. Guide: Tax on buy-to-let
  39. Shake the tree for the next windfall
  40. Tenants in common: Q&A

>> And don't miss... Most popular blogs of 2006

If you can't stand the cold, get a sweater

In shops, in pubs, in offices, in houses, it seems thermostats are set at levels normally associated with Turkish steam rooms. Well I'm getting overheated about overheating.

I realise there are people who feel it necessary to heat their homes to fainting-point in the winter while wandering around in shorts and t-shirts, and they are probably quite happy with this thermal extravagance.

But they should grow up.

First, there is a basic ethical objection to waste: in a world of scarcity no one has any business using up unnecessary resources. It is selfish and ... well, wasteful. As well as stupid (everybody's wearing five layers for pity's sake, they don't need it to be 26 degrees indoors).

Second, you can add to that an environmental objection, which is pretty self-evident.

Third, there's the financial consideration: why waste money on blasting superfluous heat around buildings? But I suppose that's individuals' and companies' prerogative - to waste their money how they like. According to my moral compass it's out of line, but not necessarily to someone else's.

Fourth, it's unpleasant (subjective, I admit) and it's unhealthy (objective truth).

Fifth, if the experience of Christmas shopping becomes any more appalling someone will surely crack and end up in the newspaper headlines. Me perhaps.

And on that note, seasonal cheer to you all!

Adrian Lowery, This is Money

Most read posts from the Money Blog 2006

Reclaiming bank charges, getting the best savings rates, the Standard Life stock market float - all of these issues dominated the 2006 agenda for our readers. Check out the top 20 and don't forget to use the categories on the right to find the type of thing you're looking for, i.e. Money makers; Money savers; Credit card/loan tips; Consumer rage; etc.

1. Should you trust ICICI Bank?
2. Discounts on Christmas shopping >>
3. Why UK shares might slump
4. Dad, sell your Standard Life shares
5. How big is YOUR Standard Life windfall?
6. Revenge on 0870 numbers
7. Pay off your mortgage in two years
8. Bank charges fight goes on
9. This is Money's most popular blogs - one year on
10. The best money-saving tip in the world
11. Immigration and house prices
12. Six of the best... weekend money savers
13. Barclays 10% account - why don't we recommend it?
14. First-class squirming from the First Direct boss
15. Doom watch: house price storm is brewing
16. How to get a bank charge refund
17. Standard life's new era of spin
18. Existing customer? Sorry, no TalkTalk
19. My £1,200 credit card profit
20. An alternative guide to premium bonds