Dear listener,

As I travelled down the autostrada from Genoa to the Côte d’Azur on Wednesday I got a call from a slightly panicked editor. The last job before I began my short holiday was to send back the final proofs of an annual tax guide I write for the charity Age Concern. He told me that while I had been blissfully cut off from UK news on the Italian Riviera, the chancellor had taken the unprecedented step of changing tax allowances even though the tax year was already six weeks old. Every figure in the book would have to be checked and most of them changed. Hold the presses!

Two days later and back at Money Box I am unpicking this latest change of policy. It is intended to correct the “mistake” of the tax changes first announced by Gordon Brown in the 2007 Budget. As Money Box has said many times that would have left millions of low income households worse off while giving most to the better off. Will the latest attempt to reverse this effect work? A tax expert will take us through the winners and losers.

Not only is my nice week away over, but according to the Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King, it is also the end of the “nice decade” 1997-2007 when the economy was stable and the Bank managed to control price rises. To call his inflation report – out this week – gloomy is to make Winnie the Pooh’s friend Eeyore look positively cheerful. We’ve been worried about inflation on Money Box for some time. Now even the governor – whose job is to control it – believes inflation will stay high for at least a year or two. And if people start making wage demands to compensate for rising prices… then welcome to the world of stagflation, last seen stalking the economy in the 1970s (though the word was coined by Ian McLeod MP in 1965). An economist and an investment expert will talk to us about what it means.

As mortgages dry up some lenders are keeping the best deals for customers who go to them direct – not through a broker. So are we now on our own to find the cheapest loan? Is the day of the broker over?

And the Office of Fair Trading is casting its investigatory eye on another worry that Money Box has had for some months – sale and rent back. Homeowners in difficulties with their mortgage payments can be tempted by the offer of selling their home to a landlord and carrying on living there as a tenant. Trouble is they get no security of tenure and could be out on their ear six months later. So should the business be regulated? The OFT, Citizen’s Advice, and the National Landlord’s Association have their two penn’orth...

…in Money Box on Saturday at noon. It’s repeated Sunday at nine pm or you can listen online at any time. Or download the podcast for your MP3 player or subscribe to get it sent every week.

Best wishes, tan fading rapidly,

Paul Lewis

PS Don’t forget the live preview of Money Box on BBC1 Breakfast between 8.45 and 9 on Saturday morning.

e-mail Paul Lewis