Don’t stop, never give up

Hold your hand high and reach the top, let the world see what you have got, bring it all back to you….. Sorry I was struggling for a headline and got my inspiration from an old S Club 7 song that was just playing on the radio. Anyway my point is that sometimes you have to resist the urge to give up and keep going, and that’s exactly what I have been doing with Pipex to get back the £11.72 they owed me from over charging me when I cancelled my service.

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Final eBay sale for 2008

Of the 12 re-listed items that recently finished only one sold for a profit of £2.51 which is slightly disappointing as I had hoped that a couple of them would sell this time, it must be a side effect of this recession!

Unfortunately one of the original auction winners failed to pay even after I had opened an unpaid item claim with eBay, and as they failed to respond to that I was credited the £1.45 I had already paid in eBay fees for that item.

£20bn gamble to save the economy

By cutting VAT today from 17.5% to 15% along with various other smaller measures Alistair Darling has effectively placed a £20bn bet to try and save the economy. Whether he had any choice might be debatable, but if he gets this right you can guarantee he will be handsomely rewarded with lucrative consultancy contracts upon retirement from his position as Chancellor.

However get it wrong and he’ll probably continue to serve out this term before retiring on his MP pension, i.e. he is placing this with no risk of actually losing out himself. So there is a huge reward on offer with little financial risk attached to failure for him, isn’t that exactly what Brown and Darling have been saying is wrong with the banking sector?

The cost of not renewing anti-virus protection early

Buying anti-virus protection for your computer is a bit like buying health insurance for yourself as statistically speaking you are unlikely to need it, but it helps you sleep at night. It’s fear, often fuelled by the makers of these products that drives you to buying them and it’s that fear that ensures I buy one of the premium products each year rather than one of the many free versions you can download.

Once you have one of these products towards the end of the annual license they’ll prompt you to renew directly with them, in fact they make it very easy to renew but in my particular case at a price of £39.99. Now that’s a ludicrously high price considering I can buy the 2009 version of the same software for just £27.97 on Amazon, so that’s exactly what I did a couple of weeks in advance of my current license expiring.

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Darling, 20% off everything will save the economy

It’s been years since we have anticipated a pre-budget report this much but given the current economic turmoil we can expect the current Chancellor Alistair Darling to possibly announce some interesting new measures.

However, Darling should be looking to the high street at times like this as they are said to be suffering more than most as the economy heads into a downturn. Their response was simple, slash up to 20% off everything with big names such as M&S and Debenhams leading the way.

Now if my visit to the local shrine of consumerism this evening is anything to go by, this financial stimulus action worked with shops full of buyers fighting over the retailers wares as if it was January 1st.