It’s freezing, the heating’s on full blast, yet the bitter irony is the energy companies price rises are happening THIS WEEK. While I know many feel spit inducing anger, hold on, are you really venting it at the right people?… The timing really couldn’t have been any worse, a month ago when Scottish & Southern Energy announced...

Sharing a cab yesterday with my Uncle ‘tax’ Tony, we got onto the rather sexy topic of ‘tax codes’. While the phrase itself is normally enough to bore drying paint, these codes are the knife behind the mammoth errors in tax affecting millions (see the Tax Code Checker for whether you can reclaim), and for me one...

In this week’s Viz magazine, there’s a new column called ‘Look After the Purple Pennies with Money Saving Sexpert Ingledew Botterill’, and it only gets ruder after that… I got it after a tip off from a fellow personal finance journalist who sent me this email: “Hi Martin, 1) Go to your nearest newsagent. 2) Buy issue...

One day, when I’m old and grey, I’ll read back this blog and think – was my life always like that? On paper it seems much more surreal than the reality – most of it took place in the Daybreak green room…   Ban Christmas Presents! I was on the show to discuss my ban Christmas presents campaign, which...

The fight to be King of the virtual high street gets tougher each year, with e-tailers bashing up against longstanding bricks and clicks players. So as a list junky, I must admit a frisson of excitement when the official top 50 contained in the email below popped into my inbox…. The following is a press release from...

Not an insult, just a usage fact. Recently we got new software which allows us to see how many people are on the site at different times in the day, and like a Bactrian there’s a very distinct double hump… I thought some of you stats nerds may be interested to see how it works (I’m obsessed...

Popped over to No.1 Parliament Street yesterday with MSE Guy for a meeting with Council Tax Minister Bob Neill MP, and was delighted to get a warm welcome from him and his advisors, who seemed genuinely interested in the idea. This all started on Radio 2 back in September. He was on explaining why the Govt. didn’t...

That’s what really crossed my mind last month ago when being cross examined by 10 Treasury Select Committee MPs at parliament.   Now the official minutes are out (see below), and reading back it’s interesting to read the rather strange prose that appears with an accurate transcript of words designed to be said not written… These minutes are...

Mental health problems can cause debts, debts can cause mental health issues and the two can feed each other. It’s been a passion of mine to produce a really strong guide to help individuals and their families/carers who suffer from these problems. We’re at the final stage now. The guide is written, we’re just waiting on the...

A rather horrible vision came to me last night as I watched the ten o’clock news, about a new policy from the coalition to provide masses of information to us, the political consumer, with the objective being that we hold them to account… On the surface this doesn’t sound too bad, and it’s certainly a laudable aim,...