I’m no investment expert but Terry Smith’s Fundsmith looks appealing – could it be the investment equivalent of Direct Line which blew apart the cosy world of insurance?

Terry Smith wants to give Britain’s “fat and complacent” fund management industry a bloody nose. The boxing-mad son of an east London bus driver, Smith, 57, says small investors have been ripped off for years by excessive fees, and in return all they have had is poor performance. This week he unveiled his new firm, Fundsmith, with a tantalisingly simple proposition. It will, he says, be “the best fund ever”.

There are currently 2,400 mutual funds being marketed to British investors – not far short of the 2,700 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange – and most are dire, says Smith.

They buy too many stocks, trade in and out of stocks too often, while the “gullible analysts” and fund managers who run them simply aren’t up to the job of analysing companies properly.

“I’d love to know just how few fund managers actually read the report and accounts of companies in their funds,” says Smith in typically combative fashion.

The fund will have only 20 or so shares from around the world, in well-known companies; it won’t constantly trade (thereby avoiding paying fees to the investment banks) and will invest for the long term.

Investors will be able to buy with just three clicks on his new website, fundsmith.co.uk, and at 1% it will have the lowest charges of any actively-managed unit-trust style fund in the industry. Patrick Collinson, The Guardian.

Still a word of warning investment is full of sharks who’ve been taking us for a very expensive ride for years – you only need to look at your derisory pensions for confirmation of my view. And Fundsmith is not for the poor it requires a £1,000 lump sum or £100 a month not a trifling amount – so I won’t be putting any money where my mouth is.

Many of my friends have used JustGiving however it isn’t the best option.

People raising money for charity through sponsored events are concerned at the amount of money being retained by some charity donation websites.

They provide handy pages for fund-raisers to sign up sponsors.

Donations can easily be made online and the money is passed direct to the charities.

In particular, the focus is on JustGiving, the market-leader which handles 85% of online giving and works with 9,000 good causes.

It charges the charities £15 a month to be on its system.

But although JustGiving describes itself as a “social business”, it is a commercial venture and takes 5 pence in every pound out of all straight donations. BBC.

I’d give B My Charity, The Big Give, Charity Giving, Every Click or Virgin Money Giving a go, they mostly claim to not make a penny in profit from donations – but I’d check each one because as it isn’t as simple as that – also have a look at Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert.

Pension-selling companies are taking the equivalent of 80% of money paid into some pension plans out in fees and commissions, BBC Panorama has found.

In one HSBC pension plan, £120,000 paid in over 40 years would result in fees and commissions totalling £99,900.

The company said its pension product is competitive.

The pension providers’ trade body said customers need to look at overall investment growth of a pension plan, rather than just fees taken out. BBC.

Look at overall investment?!?! How much better it would look without exorbitant fees. Of course it’s not just HSBC they’re all at it.

To be honest the cynic that I am I’m not surprised – my personal experience is that after years of paying in to pensions it seems as a pensioner I’m doomed to a life of poverty. We put our trust in bankers and their cohorts and unsurprisingly they’ve ripped us off to line their own pockets. When are we all going to wake up to these facts and do something about it? If we don’t they’ll just keep on taking us fir a ride.

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) rates borrowers on a scale from AAA to D – anything less than BBB is referred to as junk – the trouble is why on earth does anyone trusts their ratings –they gave triple A ratings to residential mortgage securities backed by sub-prime loans which precipitated the current banking crisis.

So how is it that S&P’s word on the quality of Greek debt, Portuguese debt and Spanish debt carries any credibility at all?

It’s curious, isn’t it?

What is extraordinary is that almost nothing has been done by governments, or central banks or regulators to break the de facto monopoly of S&P, Moodys and Fitch in the business of rating bonds.

There has been a good deal of talk about reforming the way they are remunerated, to end the apparent conflict of interest arising from the convention that they are paid by borrowers (who obviously want the highest possible rating for their credit).

But isn’t the real issue that the ratings troika doesn’t face any proper competition, thanks to the official endorsement the firms receive from central banks and regulators?

Wouldn’t it make sense for the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the FSA, the SEC and so on to find other ways to judge the quality of the bonds that underpin their evaluations of banks’ financial robustness.

Perhaps I am being over-squeamish, but it doesn’t feel democratic or sustainable that the fiscal fate of nations and currency zones – and indeed the perceived strength of the financial system – rests on the analytical verdict of three private-sector research firms, the financial record of which has in recent years not been unblemished. Robert Peston, BBC.

So I ask again why do they still trust them?

The City’s top regulator has called for curbs on 100% mortgages and a return to mortgage rationing to prevent another boom and bust in the housing market.

Lord Turner, in a wide-ranging critique of financial markets, some of whose activity he has previously described as “socially useless”, said policymakers needed tough new tools to prevent the mortgage market getting out of hand in future. Jill Treanor, The Guardian.

Are financiers and economists in the pay of the rich? Stupid me of course they are – because with the current inflated house prices how are those on low-wages ever to afford a house – let alone save for one? We give tax-breaks to rich landlords

The UK housing market is stacked against First Time Buyers. The Government currently gives huge tax breaks in favour of BTL investors – allowing them to write off their mortgage interest payments against income tax. First Time Buyers can’t compete and are priced out of the UK housing market – with no hope of joining the housing ladder. Priced Out.

House prices are still extremely high.

In 1971, the average home cost £5,632. By 2008, that average had risen to £227,765. If food and other essential items had risen at the same rate a pint of milk would cost £2.43, a chicken £47.51 and a jar of coffee £20.22. It would mean the average family paying around three times as much for their weekly food shop as they do today. Shelter.

What else is an attack on 100% mortgages but an attack on those wanting a place to call their own who don’t earn enough to save – the price difference between renting and repayments on a 100% mortgage are negligible.

And that’s not the worst of it

In remarks that might be interpreted as a call for credit controls such as those seen in the decades after the war, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority spelt out the need for a wide range of policy options, but said that one should be to force borrowers to save for a deposit before they are granted a mortgage. Jill Treanor, The Guardian.

So it’ll be back to the days when my parents brought their house – going cap-in-hand to the bank manager like latter-day serfs begging to be allowed to buy a house.

The UK housing market is geared to rich investors. It’s ridiculous that one of the necessities of like, a roof over our heads has become nothing more than something to be brought, sold for profit – we’ve lost our way.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has announced losses for 2009 of £3.6bn ($5.5bn), after struggling with billions of pounds of bad loans.

Despite the losses, the bank is set to announce it will pay bonuses totalling £1.3bn to its staff. BBC.

It’s nice to see RBS can lose £3.6bn and still pay its poor bankers a £1.6bn bonus whilst the rest of us are left to struggle with swinging government cut backs. The head of the bank Stephen Hester seems to think it would have made more money as the bank had lost its best staff by not paying bonuses – quite honestly I’ve seen enough of their best staff to last a lifetime – goodbye and good riddance.

Lloyds has been accused of “determined vandalism” after the banking group announced that it will sever its links with a charitable foundation that refused to accept a new funding deal.

The bank has told the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland that it will terminate its legally binding covenant with the charity more than 25 years after it, and three other foundations, were set up around Britain when the TSB demutualised.

The decision follows a bitter dispute between the two organisations after Lloyds said it wanted to end the legal requirement to pay all four foundations 1% of its pre-tax profits, which has given them £370m since 1986. The foundations were set up instead of the TSB selling shares to its savers when it floated on the stock market. As a result, the Scottish foundation owns 15.7m limited voting shares that will become ordinary shares when the covenant ends. Severin Carrell, The Guardian.

So they can’t even give 1% of their profits to charity – what they want to give is half-a-percent – the others involved have capitulated – I guess they’ve to many bankers on their boards of trustees.

The foundations for England and Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands agreed the new deal, which will cut their long-term funding by half to 0.5% of pre-tax profits and will also see Lloyds take greater control of their spending and policies. Lloyds will direct the foundations on where they should spend a “proportion” of their funds, but has refused to say how much that will be. Severin Carrell, The Guardian.

And what’s their reason for doing this?

Lloyds said the economic climate made the 1% agreement difficult to afford, while the expanded size of the bank, which now includes HBOS, meant that in future the foundations would receive far more income than was intended. Severin Carrell, The Guardian.

So it’s acceptable for bankers to get paid vast amounts of money when their gambles pay off – come to that they get paid whether their gambles pay off or not – but when a charity benefits from a gamble then that’s not acceptable – as I said at the top greed knows no bounds.

Thousand of rich UK citizens living abroad as tax exiles may find they have to pay UK taxes after all.

The Court of Appeal has upheld the right of HM Revenue & Customs to tax a businessman, Robert Gaines-Cooper, who has lived in the Seychelles since 1976.

The judges said that he had never been exempt from UK taxes as a non-resident citizen.

Although he had abided by the rules not to spend more than 91 days here, he had still not cut his ties with the UK.

Mr Gaines-Cooper may now have to pay a tax bill of £30m, for the years from 1993 to 2004.

A key feature of the Revenue’s old guidance on whether someone was resident in the UK for tax purposes – known as IR20 – was whether they spent more than 91 days here.

“If you read the old guidance at face value, as most of us did, and you spent less than 91 days here, you would have been treated as a tax exile,” said Mike Warburton of accountants Grant Thornton, who was an expert witness in the case.

However, the three Appeal Court judges ruled that it had always been the case that any would-be tax exile, such as Mr Gaines-Cooper, first had to show they had really left the country. BBC.

Now let’s hope the Supreme Court upholds the decision – it’s about time these tax dodgers paid tax.

The governments offering us £400 towards a new boiler but the question is should we?

Homeowners considering signing up to the government’s £400 boiler scrappage grant have been warned it could prove “financial madness” by Britain’s best-known plumber, who also says many modern condensing boilers simply aren’t up to the job.

Charlie Mullins, managing director of Pimlico Plumbers, says most people would be far better off avoiding the scheme if it involves ripping out an inefficient, but functioning boiler. He warns that new models can be problematic, expensive to repair and often don’t last. Source: Miles Brignall, The Guardian.

Which confirms my suspicion that any savings in fuel costs will be more than offset by repair costs? I think I’ll stick to our boiler that’s required one repair in the 10-years we’ve lived here – goodness knows how old it is.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has decided not to take any further court action over the fairness of bank overdraft charges.

Last month the Supreme Court ruled that the OFT could not use a part of the unfair consumer contract regulations to decide if bank charges were unfair.

However, the OFT said it still had “significant concerns” about the way banks operate current accounts.

It said “fundamental change” was still needed in the interests of customers. BBC.

So banks can continue shafting us with their exorbitant charges which makes them around £2.6bn a year. What I like is the Supreme Court’s justification.

The judges said that overdraft charges were part of the price that customers agreed to pay for the package of services their banks provided, and as such were excluded from the scope of the regulations. BBC.

It’s not as if we’ve got a choice it’s almost impossible for the average person to survive in the UK without a bank account and every bank makes complex and expensive charges which we’ve little chance of understanding. Isn’t usury illegal? Not any more courtesy of the Supreme Court.