The National Theatre kindly invited Mrs MSE and me to see David Hare’s new play, The Power of Yes. It’s a first person narrative tale of his meeting with the big players in the financial collapse as they explain what went wrong. A meeting that ran on meant we arrived a few minutes late, but thanks to...

I’ve just spent a couple of days in France, where in many places there’s no service charge, the price you pay is what it says on the menu. This made me think about the pricing in UK restaurants. By and large it splits into two… Service included. Here 10% or 12.5% (up to 20%) in the extreme...

It’s not revelatory to say insurance renewal costs are a charge for apathy: if you don’t take the time and trouble to requote at renewal (see the car insurance and home insurance guides), you will almost always pay more. In fact as many often discover, get a quote as a new customer from the company that provides...

As we finished putting together the 50 word manifesto and saw the three party leaders looking up from the page I got goosebumps. The thought that we’d successfully pushed real issues, from real people, under the noses of Brown, Cameron and Clegg’s political elite is very rewarding. The ideas are stunning in their simplicity and practical application,...

Last Thursday night I did an ITV1 Tonight called ‘Can you save a grand in a day?’ (watch it here). Thanks to all those who sent great comments and feedback, though in the midst a few have commented that the family were wrong – and that we should’ve looked at a family with more severe debts. Here’s...

Quick update for stats nerds: we smashed the site’s visitor numbers in January and the figures (generated by Google Analytics) show a staggering 9.5 million different people came to visit the site in January. That means more than one in five UK adults came to the site at some point and not far from one in the...