Christmas comes early for savers
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has said that people should not be disenchanted with schemes that make it possible to save for Christmas early simply because of the Farepak fiasco.A concern of the OFT is that people have been put off by the collapse of the Farepak Christmas hamper scheme in 2006, but says that as long as consumers are aware of the risks involved, it is not too late to start saving for the festive season.Colin Brown, director of advisory, policy and international at the OFT, told BBC One's Breakfast programme: "What we are doing is starting a campaign across the country with pensioners groups, housewives groups and mother and toddler groups and so on in the communities to tell people what the range of different saving schemes and ways of putting money aside for Christmas really are. "There is credit unions, there is supermarket savings schemes, milkmen run hamper schemes and of course there are special accounts at banks and building societies, so there is quite a wide range of different ways of doing it."Mr Brown added: "People have this range of options available and they need to think about the risks of the different options because after all banks and building societies are rock solid safe because they are covered by the financial services compensation scheme, same goes for credit unions. And there are different protections for the different methods."
Share this..
Related stories
Is this the end of the free market in the UK?
When the UK government talks about passing special acts of parliament to ensure an individual from a private company is not able to collect his pension, when the FSA suggests that fixed salary components should represent a larger percentage of a remuneration packages and time is spent attacking a small number of individuals who the government insists are to "blame" for the economic crisis, is this...
Read MoreIs the UK property sector really starting to recover?
The encouraging news from UK housebuilding giant Persimmon caught many in the market by surprise, with the confirmation that further land bank write-downs are not required perhaps the most positive note. However, while the group appears to have called the bottom of the market there was no indication as to when UK house prices will start to rise again and when hundreds of thousands of UK homeowners...
Read MoreWas the Robin Hood tax vote rigged?
Earlier this week we saw a number of prominent politicians and showbiz celebrities step forward in support of a so called "Robin Hood tax" which would see a levy introduced on every financial transaction in the world to create a fund of around £250 billion a year. Richard Curtis, perhaps best known as the creator of the movie Love Actually, launched an online campaign to see what the public thoug...
Read MoreIs Wind Power Just A Fad?
News that Danish Group Vestas is looking to close down its wind turbine factory in Scotland has brought the subject of wind power back into the public domain. The Scottish government have been very vocal in their support of the wind power industry but this blow together with news that the UK government will not give wind turbine owners reduced rates for using the National Grid has knocked them fo...
Read More