This email was sent to Money Box subscribers on 13 June 2008

BBC Radio 4's Money Box on Saturday 14 June at 1204 BST – Paul Lewis writes...

Dear listener

Phew! It was close. But the Money Box team finally voted by a narrow majority for my newsletter to be 42 lines long rather than the usual 28. Sadly, the programme remains at 24 minutes. It will take a separate vote of the BBC Trust to get even one more minute out of Radio 4.

And talking of the Trust it rapped the BBC over the knuckles this week for not reflecting the differences on many issues in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England. Devolution means that many financial matters such as student grants, paying for care homes and prescription charges are all very different in the four home nations. Money Box has been at the forefront of making sure we do mention the different rules in the different countries.

The Trust did not consider in this report the Channel Islands and Isle of Man. People there pay the TV licence and there are local BBC services. But, let’s admit it, we seldom mention them on Money Box.

So for the rest of this season my newsletter will contain a snippet about different financial rules in these Crown Dependencies. For example, the free over 75s TV licence is very different there. In Man it is free to all over 75s but you get no short-term licence in the months leading up to that age. Guernsey makes it available at 65 (hooray) but only if you get state benefits (booo). In Jersey the age is 75 but it is means-tested so only low income families get it. And on Sark forget it. No free TV licence for anyone.

Money Box is always live on Saturday. But this week it’s liver – not to say livelier – than ever as our live guests make sense of falling house prices, negative equity, rising mortgage rates, an economy in difficulties, strikes over pay, and unemployment up for the fourth month in a row.

In the week when Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly admitted that the technology and privacy issues of road pricing had forced the project off the Government’s agenda, insurer Norwich Union, has told Money Box it has pulled its ‘pay as you drive’ insurance product. A black box in the boot recorded every journey made with discounts for not driving at night or the rush hour. Some people saved a lot. So why has it stopped?

The Revenue wants to restrict the tax we can claim back when it has taken too much off us. Currently we can go back for up to five years and ten months. But that will be cut to four years. It’s a tidying up exercise, apparently.

A minority of money transfers are using the new faster payments superhighway. Although more than a million transfers have now been made at lightning speed, not one of them is to pay off a credit card bill. Because credit card providers – even when they are High Street banks – have strangely been left out of Phase I. So they meander along the country roads taking three (banking) days for the journey before they arrive and clear your bill. When will credit card payments follow the signs to the motorway?

Answers to all those points in Money Box – very live on Saturday at noon, carefully recorded and repeated on Sunday at nine pm. And of course whenever, wherever, and indeed with whomever you like if download the podcast.

Best wishes

Paul Lewis

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


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