ANDY MURRAY GETTING MARRIED?
During a question and answer session with fans Andy Murray
tweeted “We are getting married just after Wimbledon, should be a great day”. An
hour or so later Andy said that he was just joking. But in that hour his girlfriend
Kim bought a wedding dress, had her bridesmaids measured for bridesmaids
outfits, booked the church, reception and honeymoon, sent out the invitations and registered her
wedding gift list with John Lewis. And when Andy told her that he’d just been
joking I’ll bet that Kim found his joking hilarious.
Yes I’ll bet she did. It
was pretty dumb of Kim to believe Andy’s marriage tweet because it came from
Andy. Everyone knows that it’s not up to Andy when he gets married, it’s up to
his Mum, and there’s no way she’ll let Andy get married until she’s made enough
from his earnings for her retirement pot before allowing a wife into the
financial equation. Kim and Andy’s Mum Mrs Andy do have a lot in common, they
both have the same job. Which is following Andy about to watch him play tennis.
If Andy and Kim ever split up she’d have to go out and get a real job and good
luck with that because on her CV it’ll read:
2008 till 2014: Occupation: Following my boyfriend about.
That won’t qualify her for much so I’m guessing that she’d have to get used to
asking the question “Do want fries with that burger?”
BIEBER
Justin “Bad Boy” Bieber has been charged with assaulting a
limo driver and that’s really embarrassing for the limo driver. Could you
imagine telling anyone that Justin Bieber hit you. Bieber is trying far too
hard to be a tough guy. It was the same when Michael Jackson released his album
Bad with the tagline “Michael Jackson is Bad”. Every thought no, “Michael
Jackson is effeminate”.
After his trouble in Florida an online petition requesting
his expulsion from the States got 100,000 signatures. The petitions argument being
that he should be kept in Canada until he reaches puberty. Seems reasonable.
PACKAGED BANK ACCOUNTS.
An increased number of banking customers have complained about packaged
current accounts in the last year, according to official figures released
today.
Gripes about paid-for current accounts soared 155 per cent in the past
nine months, figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service showed today.
Packaged current accounts can cost up to £300 a year for ‘perks’ such
as travel insurance and breakdown cover which many customers never knew was
included, didn’t want or are not eligible to use.
Some have been misled into believing a fee-charging account was their
only option or were told they had to take it out to get the loan or mortgage
they wanted, the FOS found.
Others were lured into forking out for insurance policies only to later
discover they were ineligible to claim on the cover they were paying for.
A year ago the Ombudsman received barely 40 complaints a week about
packaged accounts. But in the past nine months it has dealt with 3,107 – 155
per cent more than the rate in the previous financial year.
And these are only those that have been rejected by the banks. This
could mean the true number of complaints and compensation payouts is much
higher.
The FOS says the majority of complaints are about the way accounts have
been sold. Many did not even realise they were paying for a packaged account as
they had been ‘upgraded’ without being told.
Complaints about packaged current accounts had the highest upheld rate
of any financial gripe to the FOS in the last nine months. Customers won in
eight out of ten cases.
In worst case scenarios, people claim they were unwittingly signed up
to these ‘rip-off’ deals with fees automatically docked from their account.
Many were sold the accounts by pushy staff at the high street banks who were
paid commissions for meeting sales targets.
This is Money has received numerous complaints about packaged current
accounts from readers.
We also exclusively revealed that Lloyds Bank
was to pull paid-for accounts from sale in branches from January 2013 while it
retrained staff. It has only re-launched them this month. A whistle blowing
member of staff said that accounts now come with fewer sales points attached
after pressure from the Financial Conduct Authority in a move to stop them
being ‘mis-sold’, something the bank wouldn’t confirm.
Meanwhile, rival Santander axed its packaged current accounts in
October citing that it wanted to focus on customer service instead.
Roughly one in five adults have a packaged account, such as Lloyds
Bank’s Premier, which costs £25 a month, the Barclays Additions Active account
at £15 a month and Halifax’s Ultimate Reward account at £12.50 a month.
But a report by the financial regulator estimated a third of these
account holders fail to use the benefits. It also found many were unable to claim
on insurance when they needed to.
The banks are now being forced to pay out thousands of pounds in
compensation in this latest ‘mis-selling’ scandal. They have already shelled
out £13.3billion in compensation for mis-sold payment protection insurance.
Rules brought in by the FCA last March mean all banks must ensure
bolt-on insurance policies are suitable for the customer – and are clear and
simple to understand.
On top of this banks must send out a letter to all customers every year
reminding them they have the account, and to check they are still eligible to
claim.
Richard Lloyd, executive director at Which?, said: ‘The FCA must
rigorously enforce the rules to prevent mis-selling and take action against any
bank that links staff bonuses to the sale of these products.’
A spokesman for the Ombudsman said: ‘The good news is banks are
reacting differently to how they did with PPI, when they fought us every step
of the way.’
£200K A YEAR
The Daily Mail reported that the BBC has offered Laura
Kuennsberg £200k a year as the Chief Correspondent for Newsnight. So the BBC
haven’t really listened to the Public Accounts Committees demands that the
corporation stop chucking the TV licence payers money about.
Newsnight gets 600.000 viewers which is effect means that
Laura will be getting paid 33p per viewer. That must be how the BBC work out
salaries. They count how many viewers a programme gets and pay whoever is
presenting it 33p for every viewer who tunes in.
On occasions I suppose this could be quite cost saving
because this means that the BBC pay the presenters of Springwatch about £2 a
week, and Kate Humble must be on a annual salary of about £6 a year.
As for Laura, she’s hardly a big ticket name so it is very
hard for the BBC to justify paying her £4000 a week, the equivalent of 300 or
so annual licence fees. It’s not great PR for Newsnight either and they could
do with good PR after the terrible PR of cancelling a programme exposing Jimmy
Savile and then falsely accusing Conservative Peer Lord McAlpine of child abuse.
Unless of course that Laura’s first piece for Newsnight is an expose on
Newsnight urinating the TV licence payer’s money up a wall.
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