BBC Radio 4's Money Box on Saturday 21 June at 1204 BST – Paul Lewis writes...

Dear listener

If Money Box was on television you might notice this week that my ears have been bent.  Bent by the Association of Consulting Actuaries about what they say is no less than a plan to save private sector pension schemes (the Lords are debating that soon – we may look at it in a future programme). Bent by a credit card company about the public perception of its products (good in parts, Bishop). And bent by a finance insurance firm about the credit crunch. Enough ear bending to be almost visible on the radio!

Incidentally, there have been more than 11,000 uses of the term ‘credit crunch’ in the UK press this year alone. A year ago it was hardly known at all. I did this analysis for a speech I am giving next week. And also discovered – to my surprise – that its origins stretch back more than forty years. Two American economists Sidney Homer and Henry Kauffman coined the term to distinguish what was happening then from previous events called credit pinches and credit squeezes. And those go back to 1924 at least. Plus ça change.

But my week ends, as always, with a long - and usually good - Friday putting together our take on the top finance stories of the week.

Just how bad is inflation at 3.3%? For those of us who remember May 1980 (RPI up 21.9%) it may seem fairly anodyne – and no I’m not entering the ‘So why is everyone so bloody miserable?’ debate started by Labour MP Tom Harris! After all it is the worst spell of inflation for 16 years and we will be looking in detail at what that means for our finances.

One person’s problem is another’s opportunity of course and the credit crunch carries on being good news for savers – those millions of people who have nearly a trillion pounds of cash in banks and building societies (and £40 billion of it in their pockets and purses). We tease out the best deals.

A car hire company fails to come up to scratch. And puts a dent in one listener’s finances. What to do about post-hire damage.

Another blow to the cheque as even the Department for Work and Pensions admits plans to phase them out for the 150,000 people who still get their pensions paid that way.

And either on air or on the web a story about sleepy money that makes a dormouse seem hyperactive.

Money Box – live on Saturday at noon, repeated (but not of course live) on Sunday at nine pm. And with whomever, whatever, whyever, wherever, and whenever you like if you download the podcast – nearly a million already have!

But before I go, as promised…

Crown Dependency Money News
Winter Fuel Payment – which will be £250 this winter for people over 60 (and £400 for the over 80s) – is not paid in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. However it can be paid in the tropical island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean to a UK citizen who has claimed it once at home and then moves to the French island where December temperatures average 25-30C. The same rules allow it to be paid in the Canary Islands, the Azores and Madeira Islands, French Guiana on the equatorial African coast, and Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. But the chilly Isle of Man and the warmer but by no means tropical Channel Islands are not part of the UK (though they are in the British Isles) and people there are excluded.

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.

e-mail Paul Lewis