....but it didn't arrive thanks to the gremlins.

Dear listener

‘Well gosh I wonder what expenses that Paul Lewis claimed? He criticises MPs – and quite right to – but we don’t know what the BBC people get away with do we?’

It was overhearing the odd remark like this – not specifically about me but in general terms – that led me to dig out my expense claims for my Money Box work over the last few years and put them on my website. They come to about £400 a year and that includes three foreign trips and several around the UK. It would be good wouldn’t it if everyone put their claims in the public domain? And their salaries too. And their tax returns. Why not? I’ll show you mine if you’ll….  Meanwhile you can find my website through any search engine. I am not the pianist nor the rock singer and I do not work for the Guardian.

I have not just been immersed in spreadsheets of my own accounts. I have been given access by Coutts to the annual bank statements of the Victorian writer Wilkie Collins (a moment on my website will reveal my obsession with him). All accounts at Coutts were written up each year on parchment sheets and bound in leather volumes. They should have lasted forever. And most of the 5000 dusty tomes have. Sadly the very oldest were used by Coutts to absorb the bullets on the shooting range when all staff were trained to use firearms in World War II. The earliest twenty years – and Coutts began in 1692 – were shredded. But from the early 18^th century they are still all there and that includes the whole of the 19^th. So of course all of Wilkie’s accounts and his Dad’s and his Mum’s and his brother’s are there spanning nearly 50 years.

I mention it because by way of just one example on 4 September 1876 Wilkie Collins received a cheque for £26–5s (£26.25 for younger readers and worth about £2100 today) from the publisher George Bentley. He wrote to thank him and paid the cheque in. It appeared on his account a day later, September 5^th. The same had happened on May 31 – the cheque appeared in the account on 1 June. That was in the middle of the reign of Queen Victoria. So why, five monarchs and more than a century later, does it take three working days minimum – and often longer – to credit a payment to an account? We have been discussing this story for the whole nine years I have presented Money Box and one promise after another has been broken.

*** IN THE BEST RADIO PROGRAMME THIS SATURDAY ***

And talking of which…

…faster payments are still going slow. A year after we were promised virtually instant clearing of electronic payments the treacle has come out again with many banks still taking days to move money between one bank and another. Fewer payments and less money was passed through the new souped up system in April and in May than in March.

If the Isle of Man was big enough to have a tunnel, some light would be seen at the end of it this week for the 10,000 people who put their money into Kaupthing which then went bust. Having rejected a deal brokered by the Manx government they are now inline to get 50% of their money back asap and some of the balance later.

More than a year after welcoming the new revised improved and generally beefed up Financial Assistance Scheme to help people whose pension scheme went belly up after their former employer collapsed, the campaigners who won so many concessions are taking their clothes off outside Parliament again. What do they want now?

More people are complaining about banks, insurance companies, and other providers of financial services than ever. And more of those that do are having their complaints upheld. Why? And why? Chief financial ombudsman Walter Merricks – whose report gives these figures this week – goes head to head with Eric Leenders who answers for the banks. Nearly six out of ten complaints to the Ombudsman were about the banks – only two in a hundred were about building societies.

What is it about secret information and laptops? First, why is so much sensitive stuff put on them? Second, why oh why is it not always encrypted? Third, why oh why oh why are they carted about? And fourth why oh why oh why oh why are the people who cart them about so prone to losing them? Yes another one had gone missing with secret data on it – this time the details of more than 100,000 people in six pension schemes. And no it wasn’t encrypted. And yes it did contain bank account details, dates of birth, addresses, NI numbers, and salaries. The only good thing is that it was two years out of date.  Actually we may not squeeze this story in so I thought I’d give you the basics here! More on the BBC website.

Find out what’s in and what’s not by listening to Money Box, Saturday at noon (repeated Sunday at 9pm). Never miss a show again by subscribing to our podcast. Do that through our website bbc.co.uk/moneybox where you can also listen again, Have Your Say, watch videos, read why we are the Best Radio Programme and find out more about all the items covered this week. In April our web pages and stories hit a new high with viewings now well over half a million in the month.

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 our website.

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