Martin’s Blog…

I’m sitting at the airport, having finally managed to find a plug for my laptop. Our flight time was meant to be around 1pm; but like many it was delayed. Now I’m relatively sanguine about this, after all there is fog and it’s being done for our safety. Yet what I find truly annoying is we knew the flight was postponed until 4.50pm at 9 o’clock this morning, having checked on the web at home. Yet, after calling, we were forced to come to the airport for 11am and check in or were told ‘you may not get on the flight’.

Even with that, the fact we knew what the departure time was, meant we had lunch and planned the afternoon. I’ve been working, the MSG has been reading (and doing su doko) and all is fine, though she’s now sleeping on the floor next to me. The ‘delayed until 4.50pm’ has been a constant on the board the whole day - so no problem….. until that is… by 5pm we hadn’t been called; so I went to the information desk who had…. no information. Then at 5.10pm the sign changed to ‘delayed until 20.30′. What I fail to understand is that they only discovered it would be delayed a further 3 hours 40 minutes just now… can we honestly be expected to believe someone didn’t know there’d be some delay earlier. Why have they managed our expectations so poorly?

So I’m sitting here, typing this, and aggressively pondering the above. My day started with a relaxed attitude to the delays and an acceptance of the fog problem, yet the airline and the airport have now managed to turn that into a wrath about poor communication and mismanagement. Now I’m no stranger to consumer complaints, after all if I had a penny for every complaint e-mail I’ve been sent about companies….. I’d probably have about £200 (ok it’s not that much cash but you get the point).

So If I try and look at this dispassionately, it becomes a rather interesting case study. After all, the real problem here isn’t the fact we’re delayed by over 8 hours. I understand why that has happened and can accept it. The real customer complaint is the way the situation has been managed. Why weren’t we allowed to check-in later? Why do we see other flights that were due to take off after ours, already long gone… I don’t mind this, but would like to understand it? Why have we been kept so poorly informed and in fact kept in silence for four hours? Why doesn’t the information desk know everything? And why…. was every single laptop plug in the whole of BAA barring one (hidden in a side lounge) broken?

As this’ll be my last blog for a week while I take a break, Merry Christmas or seasons greetings to you all.

Martin

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A journalist recently asked me what I thought the UK’s most bizarre tax was. My answer, without any hesitation was stamp duty. Now I know inheritance tax haters may disagree, but for me, it’s not so much ‘what’s being taxed’, but ‘how we’re taxed’ that’s the real problem. My problem with stamp duty isn’t that it is taxing property; in fact with the vast rise in house prices, by taxing property we cream a little off the country’s landowners and give it to those generally with less assets, it’s not even the rate that’s charges; it’s the way it’s set up that is without doubt…. stupid, stupid, stupid.

How stamp duty works.

The buyer pays the stamp duty (tax) based on the price of the property being bought.

Property price less than £125,001 no stamp duty
Property price £125,001 to £250,000 and it’s 1% stamp duty
Property price £250,001 to £500,000 and it’s 3% stamp duty
Property price £500,001+ and it’s 4% stamp duty.

What’s the problem?

The ridiculous anomaly here is the stamp duty tax rate is set at an absolute rather than marginal level. In other words, rather than you paying 1% stamp duty on everything above £125,000 you pay 1% on the whole amount. If you’re still confused…. the following examples show the nonsense.

• Property price £125,000. Stamp duty = £0
• Property price £125,001. Stamp duty =£1,250
• Property price £250,000. Stamp duty = £2,500
• Property price £250,001. Stamp duty = £7,500

So by increasing the cost of the property by just £1, you increase the tax by £5,000 meaning no buyer in their right mind will go for it!

What should be done?

This really is absurd and irrational.

The only current practical solution available, is where you can (within the law) if you’re close to the boundaries; sell fixtures and fittings separately to get your round this (more info in the guides to cheap mortgages and cheap remortgages).

Yet the real solution is a reworking of the tax system. Frankly it’s shocking that a man as bright as Gordon Brown hasn’t thought to do this, and didn’t take the opportunity at various budgets when he’s changed stamp duty. It’s possible the reason he’s avoided doing this is he thinks the UK public aren’t bright enough to understand that to get it to work properly you’d need to set the marginal tax rate higher than the absolute rate, so it sounds like it’s a tax increase, even though most people would pay less.

Now I haven’t done the maths properly, but purely for the sake of example let’s say stamp duty were set at 2.5% of everything above £120,000; while it sounds like an increase, for many it would mean the opposite.

• Property price £100,000 Stamp Duty Now £0 Stamp duty if changed £0
• Property price £125,000 Stamp Duty Now £0 Stamp duty if changed £125
• Property price £125,001 Stamp Duty Now £1,250 Stamp duty if changed £125
• Property price £200,000 Stamp Duty Now £2,000 Stamp duty if changed £2000
• Property price £250,000 Stamp Duty Now £2,500 Stamp duty if changed £3,250
• Property price £250,001 Stamp Duty Now £7,500 Stamp duty if changed £3,250

Now of course do to this properly you’d need different tiers and tax matching. Yet even the above quick example shows there’s a much more fair way to do the whole thing. If I were writing an article now, I think with 30 minutes work I could’ve come up with some reasonable tiers to come close to matching the current system but without the unfair steps (ie like income tax, above certain tiers you pay a higher percentage). Surely it isn’t beyond Mr. Brown and his Treasury?

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The wonderful MSE Andrea is pregnant and soon to go off on maternity leave. Yet she’s become a trouble maker. You see, sadly our Andrea loves her job a wee bit too much (not surprising really, she was a regular site user before becoming the first non-techie to come and help me with the site). Amongst many things, one of my problems with this is her chat forum login. She used to be plain old Andrea, but now she’s MSE Andrea.

Yet during her maternity leave I’ve said to her she can’t post in the forums as MSE Andrea, as people will think I’m some slave driver making her work within (knowing her) 12 minutes of giving birth. So she has to revert back to Andrea. Then there’s the sad glum face every time we talk about things that will happen in early 2007 - with a longing look of missing out.

Still, once there’s a little ba-by I suspect that will all change. Having said all that, while Andrea will miss us all in MSE Towers, she won’t miss us nearly as much as we’ll miss her!

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Thrifty Ways for Modern Days has joined the Money Diet as a bestseller debuting at number 11 in the Bookseller non-fiction paperback charts. Sadly it could’ve gone in at number 4, but for technical reasons it didn’t. The only sales that were in the chart were the pre-order sales from Play, but as Amazon was selling the book cheaper (and especially with the Hellmans free delivery loophole) many also pre-ordered from Amazon, which doesn’t put the pre-order figures in until next week. Had the two pre-order figures coincided, we’ve worked out it would’ve gone in at number 4. Still, its a wonderful achievement, and I’d like to thank all MoneySavers who bought it (and are still buying it), especially because, as my take is going to charity, its nice to know it’ll do some good too.

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On Sat night, I was lucky enough to be invited to ITV1’s an ‘Audience with Lionel Richie”. More about that in a moment; the serious stuff first. While I was there, a well known TV face came up to me and said, “I want to shake you by the hand, your site is brilliant and thanks to it, I’ve successfully got my bank charges back.” He also indicated how other well-known people he’d introduced to this site are doing the same thing.

You’ll note I’m not naming him. He’s a passionate advocate of reclaiming bank charges, and I suggested that it’d be great for us to go public about his case, as I think the newspapers would be interested and it’d be a great way of highlighting the campaign to get people’s cashback. Hence I don’t want to ruin it by giving the game away here; I’m sorry, but I hope you’ll understand.

Now onto the party itself.

I always feel a little nervous going to these dos, as they’re swamped with well known faces off the TV and I sit there feeling a bit of a fraud. Rather than going with the MSG as my guest, I took my agent Sue, who’s a massive fan of Lionel Richie. We were seated right by the stage, next to Andy Abrahams and his wife Denise, and were surrounded by famous faces. Luckily I’ve met Andy before when we did the Wright Stuff together, so it was easy to say hi.

The show itself was fun, though you’re importantly told you must clap along, as the cameras are there and it’s part of building the atmosphere (not that it needed much - there was even the sight of Alistair Stewart swaying with the music next to Moira Stewart and then wolf whistling!) After the first song my hands were already stinging; but quick advice from Andy to just curve your hands and stop clapping before your two hands connect, meant I managed to keep going.

The highlight of the show for me actually happened off-sceen. The compare came off and on during the ad-breaks to keep the audience ‘warm’. In the third break he asked Lemarr to sing Happy Birthday to one of the people in the public section of the audience. While a little embarrassed at first, Lemarr sang the most powerful soulful version of Happy Birthday you can imagine; as soon as he started everyone went quiet, and a few jaws dropped. Even Lionel Richie walked back on stage to give him a round of applause with a “let’s change the format, you should be up hear singing with me!” I believe the two of them sang together as part of Fame Academy.

Then to the after show party with Sue, where we met my other agent, also called Sue (they’re business partners, it makes it easy, I just call their office and ask for Sue!) and Justin and Colin, the interior designers, who I know well.

It always surprises me that there are MoneySavers at these do’s, including Kim from ‘How Clean is your House’ and her husband (who’s recently done split ticketing of train fares), which is great to hear. My favourite quote was from someone who’d told me he’d been sitting next to Duncan Bannatyne from Dragon’s Den and had pointed me out and asked Duncan “what does business think of Martin’s site”, to which the reply was “we’ve got no problem, it’s the banks who need to watch out!”.

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As regular MoneySavers will know, my spelling and grammar is sadly appalling. So I was rather pleased today that I knew that it should be “an LA Fitness loophole” rather than “a LA Fitness loophole” (article coming very soon). This started debate here in MSE Towers as to why, after all LA starts with a consonant not a vowel.

I think I may’ve solved it using my Scrabble knowledge (the MSG and I love to play). As part of learning the two letter words in Scrabble, there are the spellings of all the letters. For example the letter N is spelt en, L is spelt el, F is spelt ef. Therefore if you are saying an acronym, and the first letter of it starts with a letter, who’s spelling starts with a vowel, it should be an ‘an’.

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I’ve been a huge supporter of the crackdown on 0870 numbers for a long time. I wrote one of the first main newspaper articles about it (in the Sunday Express) a number of years ago and my current article (Say No To 0870 ) is a stalwart of the site. So as I’ve been appearing on the Wright Stuff this week, which has an 0871 call in number, a few people have asked “how can you?”

My main issue with 0870 is the lack of transparency when it’s called a ‘National Rate’ number. It most certainly isn’t a national rate, it’s a much more expensive call that isn’t included in your free minutes. These numbers can often raise revenue for the call company. In fact I’ve always preferred premium rate numbers, because a. they have to tell you how much it costs and b. they can’t keep you on hold unnecessarily.

Yet while the Wright Stuff uses an 0871 number, it doesn’t call it a ‘National Rate’. The lovely Corinne who reads out the number always says “which costs 10p a minute from standard lines or more from a mobile.” This means people are aware of the true cost and can make the judgement about whether they’re willing to pay it themselves.

In the past some famous shows I’ve been on have used these numbers. Every time behind the scenes I have made a fuss. I once had a special meeting set up with a very well known show, that should’ve known better, which got rather heated as an Executive tried to justify it. He claimed “we make no money from using this number”, I retorted “yes but they give you a free call handling system that you’d otherwise need to pay for and are thus profiting”, which he admitted but said wasn’t the same thing at all. That programme thankfully no longer uses an 0870 number.

Yet I’ll be honest, I didn’t go public as it would’ve meant I could’ve lost a lot of air time, meaning less people would hear about MoneySaving (and less altruistically, I would personally have lost important work to me).

So the key rule for me is “is it transparent, are people aware they have to pay?” If so then calling TV programmes is like any other product, if you don’t want it, need it or can’t afford it, don’t do it. Yet when the numbers are disguised and people think its either cheap or in their free call package - that is out of order!

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The MSG and I have just booked a holiday over the Christmas break. I’ve flown less this year than any recent year, as I took a decision that when travelling for work I now request that they get me a train ticket rather than a plane (e.g. if I’m going to Manchester or Edinburgh). Yet don’t think I’m over righteous; the idea of foreign lands is as glorious to me as everyone else. It’s tough to give up flying.

For me the environmental issues are wider than just examining my own behaviour. I’m fully aware of how many people use this site to get cheap flights; the Flightchecker has had nearly 5 million searches done on it since its launch in Feb 2005. Yet MoneySaving is of course what it’s all about, my hope (as stated in the article) is that this site shows people how to fly and pay less for it rather than flying more.

It’s tough when ethical considerations are balanced with MoneySaving, how do you contrast the battle to enable people to have more, with the potential environmental issues? It’s not my aim to preach, this isn’t the GreenLivingExpert site. Yet personally, this time round as we’re flying, we’ve paid for carbon offsetting (how to do that is detailed in the Cheap Flights Article, so some trees will be planted because we’re flying. And while I realise that the carbon created by flying is immediate, and the carbon reduction of a tree will take a long time. It’s a small step start towards developing an environmental conscience.

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One of my best friends, Barbara, is currently covering the Pope’s trip to Istanbul for Al Jazeera International (she used to be the news reader at Five news, now she’s European correspondent and weekend anchor for AJ… but anyway I digress). She tells me she was in the specially set up Vatican newsroom, which is jammed with journalists on their laptops from all over the road, and while walking through passed someone using this site. Sadly she didn’t have time to stop and see who it was…. but it’s nice to know MoneySavers are everywhere.

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I’ve just (stupidly) returned to the office after doing the Wright Stuff (on Five TV). Last night at about 11 I started to feel a little queasy, by 1am I was in bed shivering with cold, even though the house was warm; by 3am I was having to camp out with my duvet on the floor of the bathroom (I shall leave why to your imagination). At 6 I finally got some sleep until the alarm at 7.15.

Then it was into the TV studio. One of the problems with telly is you just can’t be sick; you can’t leave an empty chair. I realised later the right course of action would’ve been to call in at 5am, when the first of the production team arrive to see if they could find a replacement for the day’s panel; by 7 it’s too late.

So off I set to the studio. Thankfully the make-up artist (and she truly deserved that title today) was able to, in her words, ’slap full foundation on today, as you’re so green normal powder just won’t do’. And off I trotted to the studio.

After part one I again had the shivers, and in the ad break asked them to bring me any hot drink to hold. Ann Diamond was lovely and having felt how cold my hands were rubbed them to keep going; until we started the next part and it’s back to the smiles and debates….

Now, stupidly I’m in the office and going to do some work; though my grandma and the MSG have both told me I should be at home. My plan is to stay for a couple of hours and get some urgent stuff done before going back to bed. I just hope my resolve holds…. it’s tough being a workaholic!

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