Dear listener,

Aside from broadcasting, writing, and taking my mum’s dog to the vet (how much an hour do they charge!) I have had a dearth of original financial ideas (no change there then I hear you shout). Actually that’s not quite true. I did a serious bit of fence-sitting over the announcement by Housing Minister Margaret Becket that Home Information Packs in England and Wales would be expanded by adding a Q&A from the seller about their home – ahhhh ¬– and brought forward to the date the home goes on the market rather than an unspecified time after that (as long as the HIP was commissioned on the date of first marketing). But here’s the “mmm not really sure” moment. Have HIPs contributed to the fall in house prices and the slump in sales? Has a single buyer been helped to say “Yes”, “No”, or “Would you take £10,000 less?” Have HIPs speeded up – or delayed – the sale of a single home? I don’t know the answer to any of those questions and I don’t believe anyone else does either. So fence sitting it is.

*** ON MONEY BOX THIS SATURDAY ***

Credit cards – A major agreement between the credit card companies and the government? Or a damp squib? That is the question. And we will try to find an answer.

Pound plummets – sterling staggers – currency crashes. And so on. I would put in the exchange rate but by the time you read this it will be different – and probably lower. But parity (£1=1 euro) is certainly within sight and at tourist rates just about here. What does this tell us about the strength of our economy?

The Pension Protection Fund – the chief executive tells us that the Fund will be able to pay the pensions it promises to people into the distant future. Not everyone is so sure and one sceptic will be on the programme.

Heating oil – are you off the grid? It might be a question from the latest series of the BBC1 spy thriller Spooks but in fact it refers to the four million homes that are not connected to the gas network. About 1.5 million of those rely on heating oil and some claim they are paying excessive prices for it.

PPI – ten companies have been fined more than £10m this year alone for mis-selling Payment Protection Insurance. The latest guilty party is Egg now owned by the American bank Citigroup. It has been fined £721,000 by the Financial Services Authority and may face a compensation bill ten times that for misselling PPI to up to 106,000 people. Neither the FSA nor Egg will talk to us about this fine. But we will tell Egg customers how to ask for compensation if they bought PPI in 2005, 2006, or 2007.

All that – probably – in Money Box on BBC Radio 4 Saturday at noon, repeated Sunday at nine. You can listen to all the items on all our programmes through our website. Money Box is available as a podcast you can download or subscribe to. And if you want to read what was said we publish a transcript every week by late Monday or early Tuesday.

Best wishes,

Paul

PS Don’t forget the programme taster on BBC Breakfast between quarter to nine and nine o’clock. If you miss it, you can watch it on the web. And if you missed last week’s – about tenants facing repossession when their landlords cannot keep up with mortgage payments - you can see it here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7768921.stm

e-mail Paul Lewis