
Star struck at the British Athletics Awards
On Saturday night, in the midst of the DDOS attack crisis I took up the kind invite of my friend Mark, to escape for a few hours to the British Athletics Writers Awards dinner. If nothing else to provide my techie team with a welcome break from “is it up yet” phone calls. I’ve always been a...

MoneySavingExpert attacked. PPI Campaign Suffers. Weekend Horribilis.
It’s Sunday afternoon. MoneySavingExpert.com is down again at the moment; as we investigate a sadly expensive solution to the DDOS attack we’ve been under since Friday 4pm. I hadn’t seen this coming. It’s shocking and debilitating. I’m writing this in the hope we’ll find a way to improve it; we’re all ready looking at solutions, but sadly...

Delete as appropriate: Dodgy loan companies on the TV/in the papers.
I thought you’d find the duality I need to display in different media interesting. When being interviewed about how to get out of debt, if there’s a short space of time, I usually keep the answer to three short bullets. Cut the interest rate. As then more of your repayments go towards paying off the actual debts...

Icstis: The most stupid rebranding I’ve ever seen
The premium phone line regulator Icstis is rebranding itself PhonePayPlus. This is one of the most idiotic rebrandings I’ve seen. The new name sounds like it’s a telecom’s provider, one of the very companies it’s supposed to be regulating. Worse still, when you get to its new website… it doesn’t actually tell you what it does.

Dinner in the dark with two beautiful women…
I’ve been wanting to go to Dans le noir for ages; and this weekend finally did so. It’s a very different restaurant, you eat in a strictly enforced pitch black room; and have to leave anything that creates light (luminous watch, mobile phone) in a locker beforehand.

A Scooter, a MoneySaving Jacket and a Bank Manager in a Side Car.
What a strange morning; I’ve just been driving round central London on a moped wearing a Money Saving Expert banner next to another moped, this one complete with a sidecar and an actor dressed as a bank manager in a bowler hat. It’s all because while PPI reclaiming is a very sexy story, it’s not a very...

Are there any MoneySaving Sultanas out there?
I was checking out Citibank’s web-savings account to see if it merited inclusion in the Top Instant Access Savings article when I noticed something hilarious. Normally when you enter your title and it’s a drop-down list; the options are Mr., Mrs., Dr. and a few selected others. Yet Citibank obviously caters for a different clientele as it...

This is immigration, not a nightclub queue.
What a bizarre encounter at immigration. The MSG and I were returning from a quick weekend break and were queuing behind two girls. It was difficult not to listen to their conversation and phone calls as they were broadcast at megaphone volume to everyone. They were going out to party ’til three in the morning, confirmed by...

There’s something ugly about leaving a woman and baby at a bus stop.
It was foggy this morning, so rather than brave my bicycle, my usual mode of transport to get to money-saving towers, I decided I’d nip on the bus. In front of me in the queue was a young mother with a small baby. And it was so cold you could see the hot breath coming out of...

It’s terrible moving up an age category.
A horrible thing happened to me yesterday. I was having to fill out a form on the Internet, and I came to the age bracket; rather than simply entering my age it had categories, and for the first time, I found myself in the 35 to 44 category. Not fun. Discuss this blog
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