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DEBT ADVICE, BANKERS BONUSES AND APPLE REFUNDS

DEBT?

Research carried out by the charity Shelter suggests that hundreds of thousands of people across Britain have taken out a payday loan to meet their housing costs. Of the 3,675 renters Shelter surveyed, 2% had taken out a high interest loan to pay rent or council tax and basing this on the number of renters there are in the UK 2% of that entire number suggest that hundreds of thousands of tenants are struggling to keep a roof over their heads.

Shelter dealt with 9,000 calls to its helpline last year which was a third up on the previous year and Campbell Robb the Chief Executive of Shelter explained “Sky high housing costs, stagnating wages and the high cost of living have taken their toll”.

This has left many people struggling to pay their debts.

Russell Hamblin –Boone the CEO of the Consumer Finance Association said “We advise anyone who is regularly struggling to pay their rent or mortgage not to try to borrow their way out of trouble. Responsible lenders will help you with a debt plan”

And Housing Minister Kris Hopkins also urged people with money worries to get early help and advice.

Should you require help and advice with you debts you can get in touch with Consumer Kings on Freephone 0800 8521222 or by email at claims@consumerkings.co.uk.

AN APP A DAY

Apple has agreed to refund $32m (£19m) to parents whose kids made in app purchases. Apple has agreed a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission claiming that it wanted to avoid a long term legal battle, but failing  to mention that they’d have lost a long term legal battle anyway as they were completely bang out of order letting any kid who got their hands on their parents tablet or mobile phone buy apps costing millions.

Apple also failed to inform parents that when they did buy an app and entered a password it stayed live for 15 minutes thereby allowing additional unlimited purchases their children could make without further consent. Pretty sneaky.

One woman said her daughter spent $2600 on apps which probably means that an Apple shouldn’t be one of your five a day.

But what is $32m to Apple?. Not much really considering that to maintain a constant 75 degree temperature in their underground HQ in a hollowed out volcano in the Caribbean costs them $100m a year. The cat food alone of their CEO’s huge number of white stroking cats runs in at $6m a year. Basically Apple are loaded and returning a few crumbs from their table to parents won’t have much effect on the bank balance. In bad PR terms however it’s run their finances into the red. Apple maintain that they are dealing with the terrible PR and sent 28 million emails to parent who have been affected. If any emails bounced back for various reasons, but mainly because most of the parents could no longer afford computers or tablets or mobile phones thanks to Apple now owning all their money, Apple sent the parents postcards, probably with Apple staff sitting on Caribbean beaches sipping cocktails funded by parents. And if the parents didn’t receive the postcards Apple followed that up by sending carrier pigeons to their last known addresses, and when that failed Apple simply gave up.

In all Apple received 37,000 claims and have promised that they will be reimbursing every one of those claims. Which is the least they can do.

If you listen closely you can hear a whirring noise. That’s Steve Jobs spinning in his grave at the thought of Apple returning money to customers.

BONUSES

The leader of the opposition Ed Miliband is due to say on Friday that the authorities should look into whether breaking up banks would benefit customers. No doubt he will be asked to explain what he means by this and he’ll reply “I have got absolutely no idea; I just say things and stuff”.

Miliband will address competition in banking during a speech he will be giving on business and economy. A speech that Ed Balls wrote for him so we know that it’ll be full of things that Ed Balls has cut and pasted from the BBC Business Editor Robert Peston's blog.

In the Commons on Tuesday Mr Miliband stepped up the pressure over bankers pay calling on the government to use its power as RBS’s biggest shareholder to limit bonuses at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

In response the PM brought up the fact that it was the previous Labour administration of which both Miliband and Balls were a large part of who stuck the government with 80% of RBS in the first place.

In reply to that Balls and Miliband cited that they couldn’t be blamed for anything they got up when Labour were in power because if they didn’t do exactly what Gordon Brown told them to do he sat on top of them and farted in their faces. In other words Brown told them “Ensure the Queens gives my best friend Fred Goodwin a knighthood because I’ve just had a vindaloo”

Under EU rules, from 2015 RBS can only pay bonuses up to 200% of an annual salary if shareholders approve. So this will probably be the last year ever that anyone at RBS gets any sort of bonus at all. Therefore RBS plan this year to make the most of it.

The argument from the banking industry has always been the need to pay high salaries and bonuses because if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.   

This is disputed by the entire Labour Shadow cabinet who claim “That is just not true, look at us, we’re monkeys and we don’t get paid in peanuts”. Perhaps a bit of a self defeating point for Labour there”.

So what are the RBS bonuses going to be? It’s still to be announced but whatever it is, even if it’s zero that’s a 100% more than they deserve.

In the new movie The Wold of Wall Street the F is used a record 506 times. Breaking the previous 505 record set by Eric Pickles when the Domino driver was a minute late in delivering his pizzas.