I’m currently sitting in the midst of a giant shopping centre, laptop on knee writing my News of the World column (or I was until I interrupted it now to write this).

The place is packed with shoppers, lunchers and browsers – babies are crying, multi-lingual conversation springs from every corner – yet bizarrely I find it a great place to write, far easier than at my desk in MSE Towers (even though I’ve my own glassed off section).

It’s tough to work out why. Of course part of the reason is I’m isolated from the other elements of my work – the MSE team, the internet, questions and discussions – and when writing, that solid chunk of focused time is really important.

Yet I think I’ve always bizarrely found it better to work in unspecific noise rather than silence. Way back, when doing my A levels, I was always able to concentrate better when I had the TV on.

And maybe the same applies now – a subconscious feeling of isolation in a crowd seems to be my perfect writing environment.

Am I alone on this? And does anyone know why?

Comment and Discuss

Occasionally in the GMTV green room, when someone I want to meet is on air, I sit on the outside chair, so that when they come from the studio I ‘bump into them’.

I was planning to do just this with Jamie Archer, one of this year’s X-factor contestants, and a major favourite of Mrs MSE and I.

When we were lucky enough to go to see the show live, his performance was awesome. While the other acts walked out with focus and frowns, until the camera clicked, he beamed at the studio audience and had unmatched stage presence.

Yet before I had a chance he walked out of the studio and says “Martin! Wow, you’re the man – you got me £1,200 of bank charges back.” (see Reclaim Bank Charges for the latest).

He then started to say how he loves the site, and how he and his family constantly use it. A fair bit of mutual back-slapping went on, which I won’t bore you with, then we both of us got our camera phones out to take a picture.

He was in a good mood even though he’d come out of the programme last Saturday. And as befits a chap who’s been working hard on his trade for a long time to finally get his break, he has his feet planted firmly on the ground – a real gent.

Comment and Discuss

P.S. Just in case you’re wondering I did ask if he’d mind me blogging about his bank charges win – rather than just blurt out his personal scenario willy nilly. He was happy and hoped it’d inspire others to take on the big boys.

I was doing a check of Google Trends today, which I do every once in a while. It’s a great free tool as you can plot search terms or web traffic and compare different terms and sites (see my past Kate Nash v Amy Winehouse blog for how to use it).

Yet when I looked at the web traffic for MSE – selecting UK only users – I was a little surprised…

As you can see this shows it dropping, but as described in my recent blog our traffics been at record levels with over 1,000,000 visits in a day last week according to our internal Google Analytics tool – which is much more accurate as it’s based on actual visitors not sample data.

So I thought I would try and investigate the cause… one of the problems is google trends has no scale, so unless you plot it against something else it’s meaningless

MSE v Other Big Money Sites

First I plotted MSE’s traffic against the other big money sites…

Below you’ve got MSE in blue, Moneysupermarket in red, the Fool in green, Thisismoney in yellow and iii.co.uk in purple..

The position of the traffic is all pretty similar, MSE and Moneysupermarket are still substantially bigger – but all roughly look to reflect a similar traffic falling trend.

Mapping the big UK sites against each other

So next I decided to see if this same pattern was reflected in some of the really big UK websites.

Here’s the BBC is blue, eBay in red and Amazon in yellow.

This is even more bizarre; it seems the whole of the UK webspace is dropping in traffic, that can’t be true.

Facebook vs. MSN vs. BBC

So I tried to think of what may have caused it and I thought “Facebook” (twitter while it gets much attention is only marginally bigger than MSE and neither really register on the scale when you look at Facebook)

So here’s another graph with Facebook in blue, bbc in red, and msn.com in yellow

Certainly Facebook has stemmed the decline, and at this enormous level of traffic that could have the impact of skewing figures (it wouldn’t surprise me if it was more than 10% of all web visits, so that’d certainly make a difference).

Yet if it was the cause, surely its upward curve would be much steeper – leaving me at a loss to what’s causing this.

My only other thought is that even though for all of these graphs I was selecting only UK users, the scale is not of actual traffic but of the proportion of worldwide users (or more specifically worldwide users who have the google toolbar installed). That is likely to be growing much faster than UK traffic as web use is more mature in this country than elsewhere.

Any thoughts?

Comment and Discuss

Mrs MSE and I were walking down central London’s Lower Regents Street today and walked past the Marmite store. Yes you read it right – a Marmite shop.

Now who can resist popping in to see it? Certainly not me, so I thought I’d take some snaps for the blog.

Apparently it launched a week ago and will be in residence until the year’s end. It’s a pure promotional stunt.

Downstairs there’s a host of Marmite merchandise, tea towels, mats, and bath towels, as well as food such as:

• Marmite Crisps
• Marmite Flatbreads
• Marmite Rice Crackers
• Marmite Biscuits
• Oh and Marmite itself of course

Upstairs is the Marmite cafe, which sells only a coffee or tea and two slices of toast and Marmite (£2). The entire place is decorated with a host of Marmite imagery.

Love it or hate it – you decide…

Comment and Discuss

My blog earlier this week posited that it’s time to radically rein(deer) back on Christmas gifts (see Is it time to ban Christmas presents?), as it’s become a retail festival. It seems to have struck a cord with many, angered a few and caused one man to compose a poem (see below).

Certainly there’s been a rash of press calls about it on top of doing my regular slots on GMTV and Radio 2 on it today. That caused a lively debate – where I may’ve got a touch overly passionate.

While many calls and emails were favourable, one irate caller from Cirencester told me how this attitude of stopping people shopping would hurt her small retail business – perhaps next time I talk about debt reduction, credit card companies will call saying, “you’re outrageous, what about our profits?!”

Of course, as is necessary in these things I was accused of being a Scrooge – luckily that’s not so bad for a Money Saving Expert so it’s not too big a deal. However I thought you’d like this e-mail I was sent from Bob Smith…

“ Hi,

Could not agree more with your comments on Radio 2 today.

Since I retired I have started writing poetry. Nothing in the realms of Wordsworth or Betjeman I’m afraid but I thought you might enjoy my latest effort based on your comments.

Regards,

Bob Smith”

Comment and Discuss

I wrote a story last week about how Wednesday had beaten the site’s record with 906,000 visits in a day.

Well, that was smashed again yesterday; for the first time ever the site was clicked onto a million times in a day (according to our google analytics, quite a phenomenal number. For nerds, the exact stats are as follows (record then last week’s stats in brackets):

• 1,003,476 visits (906,727 )– ie different trips to the site
• 811,122 unique visitors (731,856) – ie different people in the day
• 3,339,547 page views (3,112,288) page views – the number of different pages people look at

Now I suspect the record was smashed for a couple of reasons, the first being that we redesigned the weekly email to make it easier to read, and on all metrics it seems to work. The amount of people who read it seems to have increased substantially , which of course means more people coming to the site to follow through.

Secondly, it was always quite a ridiculously packed email – with loads of very powerful “one liners” (though this week they have become three liners!) – which is what we call the deals type stuff. But it was even more noticeable this week.

The top ten were as follows…

1. High St. Sales Diary – primarily the details of M&S’s 1p sale this Friday
2. Tesco Clubcard Loophole – buy £7 CD get £20 of rewards
3. Weekly e-mail – the main email text itself
4. Discount vouchers – including £30 off Coast no min spend
5. Restaurant vouchers – usual rundown of deals
6. Grant Grabbing – how to get grants for energy efficiency
7. Shopping – the shopping section link
8. Beauty Deals – how to get free lipstick
9. Top Savings – new 3.6% easy access savings
10. Winter fuel payments – ensure over 60s get the extra cash

It also seems bizarre to add only as a footnote to this that we’ve now hit 4,000,000 emails on the weekly email list.

Comment and Discuss

This blog will also appear in the Time’s T2 magazine on 11 Nov. 2009

It’s time for warm feelings, cotton socks and boundless joy – the festive season is approaching. Great swathes of shoppers will hit the nation’s high streets and e-tailers, gathering nick-nacks to gift to loved ones, friends and colleagues.

Yet I think it’s time to launch a manifesto to ban many Christmas presents. While it may seem curmudgeonly to prick this surface-level joy, this year, in the midst of the financial crisis, too many perceive the season of goodwill’s main purpose is a retail festival.

While I suspect the church isn’t boogeying in the vestries about Christmas commerciality either, my argument isn’t a religious one: it’s about the money moral dilemma Christmas, or Hannukah and Eid for that matter, raise.

My targets aren’t the parcels from parents or grandparents that sit under the spruces, it’s more the ever-widening circle of present buying people feel a need to fulfil. Let me set out my stall …

• We’ve disconnected from why we give gifts.

  The expectation of presents isn’t culturally exclusive to the West, anthropologists refer to it as ‘ceremonial gift exchange’.

  Most common are gifts upon marriage or coming-of-age ceremonies and indeed, to my logic, this makes social and financial sense, as in effect it’s a form of prudent banking.

  For example, when someone is young and starting out in married life, others give cash or gifts to them as a start up fund, which is a net inflow of goods.

  As people age and tend to get more financially stable, they then give gifts to newlyweds, effectively paying the system back.

  It’s actually an efficient method for society to focus cash where it’s needed.

  Yet Christmas gift-giving outside the immediate family doesn’t work that way; rather than focusing cash where it’s used, we simply swap presents, so there’s no net movement of funds or goods.

• It creates an unfair obligation on others.

  At this point, many fervent gift givers will be spluttering over their wrapping paper. Their counter-argument, of course, is the pure joy of giving gifts; many thrive on this, and it can be hugely pleasurable.

  Yet it’s important to think about the people getting the goodies. Generosity could actually be hurting the recipients, not helping.

  By giving a gift to someone, or their children, you create an obligation on them to do the same, whether they can afford to do so or not. If that obligation is something they will struggle to fulfil, then you’re actually letting them down.

• It mis-prioritises our finances.

  

  Christmas gifts are often a ‘zero-sum’ game, where often people just give gifts of similar values to each other. It’s worth examining what this means in a dispassionate practical sense:

  Sharon gives a £20 necklace to Violet
  Violet gives £20 earrings to Sharon.

  If we examine the net result then, in fact….

  Sharon has spent £20 to get earrings
  Violet has spent £20 to get a necklace.

  Yet the problem here is Sharon’s loaded and Violet’s skint. Without the gift-giving obligation, would Violet have really chosen to spend her hard-earned £20 for a necklace?

  Instead, perhaps she’d have bought food for her children, paid some bills, or put the money towards replacing worn out shoes.

  In other words, Violet’s financial priorities have been skewed because of gift-swapping. She would’ve been better off if they had agreed not to give in the first place.

• We give gifts that aren’t ever used.

  Whether it’s a naff pair of socks from Aunty Joan or novelty mechanical breasts from your workmates, unused gifts are sent all the time to fulfil seasonal obligations.

  We’re spending money on unneeded, unwanted and unused goods; that’s not good for our finances, and doesn’t help the environment, as it just clogs up landfills.

  Yet there’s a stigma to suggesting not giving, and it’s not an easy subject to broach. To try to help, we built the ‘No Unnecessary Present Pact’ tool, which generates a nice email saying “I won’t buy a gift if you won’t”, or alternatively suggests a spending limit.

  Using an automated tool is deliberate, the recipient feels this is part of a wide spread philosophy, and not just you being tight.

• Children aren’t born retail snobs .

  

  While my concern isn’t really about parents giving their kids gifts, it’s still worth examining the message that can send out.

  Aren’t we teaching them to overly assign happiness to material acquisition, and adding weight to advertisers campaign that it’s all about getting the latest toys.

  Children aren’t born with the retail snobbery gene. While filming for GMTV recently about Christmas MoneySaving, we had two super cute wee children help by pretending to be overjoyed about getting gifts.

  They knew the boxes were empty, but were still desperate to open them once the camera stopped. Surprisingly, when they did, their bright eyes were undimmed as they spent ages playing trains in the cardboard boxes… they don’t judge the quality of the gifts by the price paid, so why do we judge our genorisity to them by it?

• ‘Inflationary giving’ – a bad message for our children.

  Unfortunately, school-age children do quickly become competitive, comparing who got what. By buying big gifts, you create pressure on other parents who, especially in these times, mightn’t be able to afford to compete.

  This has created an explosion of gift-inflation, especially for older kids’ birthday or Bar Mitzvah parties, with parents competing to throw the best bash, leaving children of even well-off families struggling.

  Sitting at a coffee shop recently, I overheard a 16-year-old trying to persuade her aunt to intercede with her parents so she could have a birthday limo trip around London, then out for dinner and an expensive nightclub with all of her friends.

  When asked why, she named the other girls who’d done it, and that she’d look “stupid” if she didn’t do the same.

Add it all together – and I know there’s one word for this logic – Scrooge. Yet my aim isn’t to stop festive fun, but to challenge the blithe and habitual nature of gift giving. Many see it as a chore, a thing on the list to tick off. Is that really the point, does that help our pockets or our souls?

Spending time, physically making things others appreciate, or even just being more considerate is perhaps more in keeping with the real spirit of the winter festivals.

Done right, gifts can create real warmth, but it’s time to realise that, done wrong, it can hurt more than it helps. Perhaps the real gift is to release someone from the obligation of buying you a present?

Comment and Discuss

I’ve just been sent a link to video of the evidence session at parliament where I was called alongside one of the MD’s at Moneysupermarket to talk about the Credit Application Trap.

Now I must admit, having had to check through the transcript the other day (they ask you to do it for accuracy) and realising that I do go on a bit, I haven’t actually been able to bring myself to watch the video, especially as I may just have kicked off a wee bit at one of the MPs.

However, as it’s an important issue I wanted to post the link here in case any one wants to see it (Click the image for the video, or you can see our report of the session here: MPs told credit application system is flawed).

Also giving evidence after us are the banks, credit reference agencies and the OFT (it’s a full morning’s worth).

Comment and Discuss

Yesterday the site beat its all time record number of visits in day with 906,000, beating the previous record of 878,000.

Of course it was on a Wednesday, the day we send out the weekly MoneySaving email, which is always by far the biggest traffic day of the week.

I thought stats nerds would like to see the exact details (by our internal google analytics set up):

• 906,727 visits – ie different trips to the site
• 731,856 unique visitors – ie different people in the day
• 3,112,288 page views – the number of different pages people look at

On the day the top 10 articles viewed were all more consumery (as happens as we head toward Christmas):

1. Discount Voucher Deals
2. X-factor vote result MSE news
3. Restaurant Vouchers
4. Free Wills Guide
5. The Latest Email
6. Supermarket Shopping Guide
7. Shopping Section Page
8. Top Savings Accounts
9. Coach and Train Deals
10. Cheap Champagne Deals

Comment and Discuss

The system of policing the internet can actually work. A couple of months ago some forum users sent us a note that they’d spotted a site in the US that had lock-stock and smoking barrel stolen the content of the forum.

I don’t just mean similar categories I mean they were grabbing people’s user names and entire threads, and copying them directly to make it look as if their forum was huge and had a great deal of content.

The aim of course is to make them look big and popular, build credence, attract search and undoubtedly then try to flog as many products as possible on the side.

We tried to get in touch with the site owners, who as usual in these things ignore all contact – so we went to the ISP and asked for the site to be taken down.

And thankfully received this from it today:

“Hello, we received no response from the downstream user and have disabled the site”

Now click it and the copycat has been terminated.

Comment and Discuss

PS I’ve deliberately omitted the site name so it doesn’t get any search relevance from a link here.

Having blogged yesterday about RBS, NatWest new mini banks and my worries about which bank customer’s will belong to when banks are split, I found myself in the lift with Alastair Darling at GMTV this morning. So, much to the consternation of his press officer, I said “excuse me” and put these worries to him.

The main concern is that when these new banks are split out of the existing ones, who will go with the new banks? Provisional expectations are TSB and Cheltenham & Gloucester to be split out of the Lloyds group, part of Northern Rock to be sold off, and Williams & Glyn to come from RBS.

Take the example of once-prominent North West-based bank chain Williams & Glynn, which merged with RBS over 20 years ago – will its old customers be automatically demarked to go to the new bank?

His answer was simple:

“You can’t compel a customer to move bank. We’ll be doing this first with the new bit of Northern Rock; we’ll be writing to customers and giving them a choice about what happens.”

The same principle also applies to the potential splits from the other banks.

When I asked whether for a customer with a portfolio of products with a bank, let’s say they have a mortgage, a credit card and a bank account – would it apply by product or customer, his answer thankfully was:

“it’s by product, so if someone had savings and borrowings they would get two letters giving them a choice of what to do with each.”

I pointed out that there had been little message out there on this, and perhaps understandably he said:

“that’s because the announcement’s only just been made”

Which of course is true – it was only thirty minutes old at the time. However it’s been widely flagged in the media, and the crucial issue of what’ll happen to customers was quiet.

Sadly the lift journey ended before I got full clarification of exactly which customers would be written to; would it be all customers, or just those who were former incumbents of the bank (more intergral to the Lloyds & RBS situation than Northern Rock)? Still, I’ll get on the phone to the treasury for that info later (update note tue pm – it has now confirmed to us that it is customers in affected branches who will get the choice)

Having said that, the answer so far is broadly as good as we can expect; giving customers choice. In these mammoth banking machinations we need be very careful not to play with customers as if they were just pawns in a giant game – sold off to satisfy the whims of EU regulation and recoup spent funds.

Comment and Discuss

The government has announced it is planning to spin off sections of the megabanks created during the deep debt rescue needed in the midst of the financial crisis.

We hear that Williams & Glynn, a mainly North West-based bank that NatWest took over decades ago will be resurrected by RBS, TSB and others are likely to be demerged from Lloyds, and the good bits of Northern Rock will be sold or floated.

Ok so all this sounds great, but what I’m not yet clear on is what it means for customers?

Will my grandmother who used to bank with Williams and Glynn for example be moved back there automatically, or will she stay with NatWest/RBS? If she is moved and its products are better or worse than her current bank will she be given a choice?

What about someone with multiple products who perhaps had a TSB bank account but a Lloyds mortgage – will they both be moved – or will they be separated?

While it’s all very well to hear about these new banks, someone seems to have forgotten to mention what’ll happen to customers.

So let’s put our thinking caps on now. The only fair way to do this for me seems to be to offer EVERY customer of the banks the chance to move with NO CREDIT CHECK to whichever of the products they want. Yet the bureaucracy this causes will be huge.

Comment and Discuss

Walking through the gates of Downing Street is a bizarre experience. Before you get there it’s all hustle and bustle, but then once through it’s an old-fashioned London street that seems bizarre as there’s no traffic or people.

Yesterday afternoon, MSE Wendy and I went to meet two of the PM’s special advisors to chat about the state of play on bank charges and credit issues (see No. 10 to stop banks dipping into account & Gordon Brown on Bank Charges MSE News stories).

Yet I’ll leave those issues for elsewhere on the site; as it was my first trip, and I suspect many are intrigued by how it works, I thought I’d put down some notes to try and paint the picture as best I can while I still remember.

How do you get in?

We reached the Downing Street gates, went up to the policeman & told him we were on the list. He checked, looked at our ID and then we were in. Next step was the police security booths and metal detector to check our bags.

Once through, it’s a walk across the empty street to the doors of Number 10. The ubiquitous policeman is waiting outside and you’re not quite sure what to do.

He said ‘knock the knocker’ and Wendy – looking a bit like a kid who’d just been given sweeties – took hold of the big brass handle and rapped it.

Before she was done knocking the door swung open; it seems there’s a man stationed right behind it ready to let you in.

Walking into Number 10.

There’s a small reception room at the front. Immediately we were asked if we had mobiles or Blackberrys on us, and as we did, we we were asked to leave them – turned off – in a stack of pigeon hole type boxes on the left.

Each small box has a numbered ticket which you take with you so you can grab it when you come back – though no one’s checking.

Then it was onto a large red sofa, until someone came to show us to the meeting room.

As we were being shown through, I think I looked up and counted five stories above. We walked for a minute or so, including up the famous staircase flanked with pictures of former Prime Ministers.

Most of the recent ones are done in vertical columns of two – the only single one is Tony Blair’s at the end. So it seems the occupant after Gordon Brown will need to have the photos rearranged in columns of three to accommodate them all in future.

What a meeting room!

Being shown into the meeting room was a bit of a surprise. I was expecting a small room with a desk to sit across – absolutely not!

It was a huge ornate room, with two antique-looking green, possibly satin covered (not my forte) sofas in the centre, a coffee table between them, and vast empty space all around.

On the coffee table was a pot of tea, a pot of coffee and a mixed plate of biscuits (I took a Bourbon and one of the ones with the red jam showing in the centre that isn’t a Jammie Dodger).

As soon as the meeting got going both Wendy and I soon forgot about the location and got on with it; quite strangely the auspicious surroundings make you want to focus on the job in hand.

On the way out.

On the way out we were shown through the neighbouring room, which had large windows letting in the light, and a series of four or five tables with more antique type chairs around them.

It was then explained this is the main meeting room where the cabinet meets – though the long table was missing.

If you’ve ever taken the summer tourist tour of Buckingham Palace you’ll have a good idea of what these rooms are like. They’re very similar in feel to the rooms that face the gardens there – though quite a bit less ornate and no gold leaf.

After that it was downstairs to pick up our mobiles and out the door.

When I was there the man at the door said, “I hope you’re on a good tariff” then the comment of the day “if you’re here to save us cash we really must be in trouble!”

Now I had wanted to pretend to be all cool and walk out, but Wendy rightly suggested we should each have our pics taken outside the door – after all everyone else does it – so dutifully I’ve plopped mine below.

Comment and Discuss

I’m a loser. I’ve a history of losing mobile phones. This isn’t the first time I’ve admitted it though, in fact there’s a whole chapter dedicated to it in the Money Diet.

Last Thursday night was another classic example. I’d been kindly invited by GMTV to the London Press Ball, which is in aid of the journalists’ charity. Coming back in the early hours I’d jumped into a black cab; thankfully the cabbie’s missus was a MoneySaver and we had a brief chat about that.

Next morning I suddenly realised there was no mobile phone in my pocket, and that sinking ‘loser’ feeling I’ve had all too many times before grabbed me in the pit of my stomach – I’d left it in the cab.

Having tried all the sadly too well-honed methods of recovery, I’d given up by the time I went to do my slot on Radio 2’s Vine at lunchtime.

Yet as I left the radio studio the producer said to me “a cab driver’s just rung in, he’s got your mobile phone and wants to know how you want to get it back”.

Now it’s back in my pocket I just wanted to say a huge thanks to him for going way beyond the call of duty to get it back to me. It’s really appreciated.

I’m going to try not to be such a loser in future.

Comment and Discuss

Whenever I look at the premiership or any other football table mid-season it occurs to me that the display is mismatched according to the amount of games teams have played. This is more prevalent later in the season when there’s a bigger discrepancy between games

Now of course you can simply look at the “games played” and “points column” but for a bit of fun, I thought I’d apply some of the nerd-dom I usually look at MoneySaving with to see if I could make football league tables a little easier to view relative positions. After all one of the joys of a Sunday morning is looking through the tables’ minutiae.

The Current Premiership Football Table

I grabbed the figures below from BBC sport on on the evening of 18 October 2009.

I opted for the basic one without goals as for the purposes of the redesign that’s irrelevant, though the goals scored could be included too.

The current table
	Team	Played	Goal Difference	Points
1.	Man Utd	9	12	22
2.	Chelsea	9	11	21
3.	Tottenham	9	8	19
4.	Arsenal	8	16	18
5.	Man City	8	7	17
6.	Aston Villa	8	5	16
7.	Sunderland	9	4	16
8.	Liverpool	9	9	15
9.	Stoke	9	-3	12
10.	Burnley	9	-10	12
11.	Everton	8	-2	11
12.	Blackburn	8	-6	10
13.	Wigan	9	-7	10
14.	Bolton	8	-2	8
15.	Wolverhampton	9	-7	8
16.	Fulham	7	-4	7
17.	Birmingham	9	-5	7
18.	Hull	8	-12	7
19.	West Ham	8	-4	5
20.	Portsmouth	9	-10	3

New Premiership Table with added stats.

Here is the same table but with three new columns added. As it’s early in the season the impact is still small, but it makes a difference.

The new columns are

A. Pts dropped.

Displaying points won is accurate for teams lower in the table, as there it’s all about scraping as many points as you can. Yet for teams near the top you expect them to win most matches, so teams who’ve played less will be disproportionately disadvantaged in the table.

By displaying the points dropped and comparing that, you get to see their relative performance; it’s a bit like the “par” score in golf.

B. Avg points per game.

This stat isn’t in itself so intuitive, but I’ve added it as the next column is worked out based on it – it does however average out a team’s performance so far.

C. Relative points.

This is the number of points the teams would be on if they’d all played the same number of games based on their average. It’s worked out by multiplying the avg no. points per game by the number of games played by the team in first position.

Table with added stats
	Team	Played	Goal Difference	Points	Points dropped	Avg points per game	Relative points
1.	Man Utd	9	12	22	5	2.44	22
2.	Chelsea	9	11	21	6	2.33	21
3.	Tottenham	9	8	19	8	2.11	19
4.	Arsenal	8	16	18	6	2.25	20.3
5.	Man City	8	7	17	7	2.13	19.1
6.	Aston Villa	8	5	16	8	2	18
7.	Sunderland	9	4	16	11	1.78	16
8.	Liverpool	9	9	15	12	1.67	15
9.	Stoke	9	-3	12	15	1.33	12
10.	Burnley	9	-10	12	15	1.33	12
11.	Everton	8	-2	11	13	1.38	12.4
12.	Blackburn	8	-6	10	14	1.25	11.3
13.	Wigan	9	-7	10	17	1.11	10
14.	Bolton	8	-2	8	16	1	9
15.	Wolverhampton	9	-7	8	19	0.89	8
16.	Fulham	7	-4	7	14	1	9
17.	Birmingham	9	-5	7	20	0.78	7
18.	Hull	8	-12	7	17	0.88	7.9
19.	West Ham	8	-4	5	19	0.63	5.6
20.	Portsmouth	9	-10	3	24	0.33r	3

Table Reordered by points dropped.

Doing this substantially reorders the table. While I think it probably has significance for the upper part of the league, with both Arsenal and Man City (hoorah) moving ahead of Tottenham, I suspect it’s less appropriate lower in the table, where teams tend to drop points with every game, so the order simply reflects how many games are played.

Table reordered by points dropped
	Team	Played	Goal Difference	Points	Points dropped	Avg points per game	Relative points
1.	Man Utd	9	12	22	5	2.44	22
2.	Chelsea	9	11	21	6	2.33	21
3.	Arsenal	8	16	18	6	2.25	20.3
4.	Man City	8	7	17	7	2.13	19.1
5.	Tottenham	9	8	19	8	2.11	19
6.	Aston Villa	8	5	16	8	2	18
7.	Sunderland	9	4	16	11	1.78	16
8.	Liverpool	9	9	15	12	1.67	15
9.	Everton	8	-2	11	13	1.38	12.4
10.	Blackburn	8	-6	10	14	1.25	11.3
11.	Fulham	7	-4	7	14	1	9
12.	Stoke	9	-3	12	15	1.33	12
13.	Burnley	9	-10	12	15	1.33	12
14.	Bolton	8	-2	8	16	1	9
15.	Wigan	9	-7	10	17	1.11	10
16.	Hull	8	-12	7	17	0.88	7.9
17.	West Ham	8	-4	5	19	0.63	5.6
18.	Wolverhampton	9	-7	8	19	0.89	8
19.	Birmingham	9	-5	7	20	0.78	7
20.	Portsmouth	9	-10	3	24	0.33r	3

Table reordered by Relative points.

I think this is perhaps the fairer overall way to demonstrate the table. The order is much closer to the standard table, but as the season goes on where one team mid-table has played three or four less than the next, it will correct those anomalies. For example Everton has moved up an appropriate couple of places here.

Table reordered by relative points
	Team	Played	Goal Difference	Points	Points dropped	Avg points per game	Relative points
1.	Man Utd	9	12	22	5	2.44	22
2.	Chelsea	9	11	21	6	2.33	21
3.	Arsenal	8	16	18	6	2.25	20.3
4.	Man City	8	7	17	7	2.13	19.1
5.	Tottenham	9	8	19	8	2.11	19
6.	Aston Villa	8	5	16	8	2	18
7.	Sunderland	9	4	16	11	1.78	16
8.	Liverpool	9	9	15	12	1.67	15
9.	Everton	8	-2	11	13	1.38	12.4
10.	Stoke	9	-3	12	15	1.33	12
11.	Burnley	9	-10	12	15	1.33	12
12.	Blackburn	8	-6	10	14	1.25	11.3
13.	Wigan	9	-7	10	17	1.11	10
14.	Bolton	8	-2	8	16	1	9
15.	Fulham	7	-4	7	14	1	9
16.	Wolverhampton	9	-7	8	19	0.89	8
17.	Hull	8	-12	7	17	0.88	7.9
18.	Birmingham	9	-5	7	20	0.78	7
19.	West Ham	8	-4	5	19	0.63	5.6
20.	Portsmouth	9	-10	3	24	0.33r	3

Of course this is just a bit of fun, though as someone who enjoys the tables perhaps even more than the football, I’d love to see some of these adopted.

 

Comment and Discuss

The Post Office has decided to pump serious money into advertising its savings products – using former James Bond Roger Moore – he of the effervescent eyebrows.

And international espionage is exactly the right theme, for unlike the vast majority of savings accounts, Post Office savings are NOT protected with the usual £50,000 per person UK guarantee (see the Safe Savings guide).

In fact, Post Office branded savings accounts are part of the Bank of Ireland, and it operates the ‘passport exemption’ when it comes to savings safety, which means your money is protected by Ireland’s government, not the UK’s.

The good news is until 2010 it offers to guarantee an unlimited amount, but the bad news is questions over the strength of the Irish Government’s finances have been raised. As equal or better rates are available elsewhere (see top savings) it’s worth questioning whether it’s worth it.

Frankly I think it irresponsible of the Post Office to advertise its savings without making this clear to customers. The Post Office is a uniquely British brand, and many assume its savings are part of the UK government owned NS&I – yet that’s totally separate. I wonder how many know this?

Comment and Discuss

I’m quite excited about the programme on tonight. I’ve always wanted to do a Thrifty Ways programme, and it’s on ITV1 at 8pm. Often when doing a Tonight I do the voice-over without seeing the programme, as it’s done by the team in Manchester. This however was a London production, so I’ve seen it.

I think it’s a really nice watch; a good Friday night mix of info and entertainment. Most of the tips aren’t actually mine, they come from Old Stylers on the forum boards, many of whom have done a great job – I hope they like it. Of course, hardcore thriftsters will know these tips, but I think many across the country will get a new lease of life looking at what can be done.

Do let me know what you think.

Comment and Discuss

Forgive me slipping straight into a football analogy for the economy, yet as a Man City fan we’re quite used to tragedy so it lends itself nicely.

This season, even though City has new owners and a strong new team, I’m still focused on us hitting 40 points. Once that’s done it means we’re safe from relegation, and we can concentrate on aiming for the Champions League or at least UEFA.

Part of me wonders whether the economy too has just this “no relegation” mark. Signs point to economic decline slowing; this week’s unemployment figures, while bad, show a slower fall than previously.

A year ago, if someone told us the real economy would’ve escaped as lightly as it has, with a short and severe fall in growth and unemployment rather than a prolonged fall, many people would’ve doubted it.

While there’s always a chance of a double-dip recession and things getting worse again, maybe it’s possible to hope the risk of cataclysm is now over?

I’d love your thoughts.

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Unlike many, I’m sympathetic towards MPs this morning. Many are in the following awful position:

• They made an expenses claim.
• They told the official body what they were doing and had it approved
• Now retrospectively they are being told they got too much money and need to find the cash to pay it back.

To me there’s an argument this is against natural justice. If they acted within the rules, even if some now consider those rules to be flawed, to demand money back doesn’t seem to flow.

Yet before there’s too much sympathy, lets look at what happens with tax credit overpayments to a MILLION people a year every year (see the tax credit overpayment help guide).

• They are given £100s or £1,000s in tax credits.
• The amount is calculated by the state and approved.
• Then retrospectively they’re told they got too much money and need to find the cash to pay it back.

Another awful scenario, except here the people involved are likely to struggle to pay the cash back, or will have their current credits taken off them instead, leaving them struggling on the breadline.

Worse still, we’re discovering many of them are still facing overpayments even though they followed the golden rule and “told them of every change”

I hope MPs will see the similarity – it may make them change this appalling system.

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