£27m Reprieve for the Debt Advice Agencies

In January, Mark Hoban, the financial secretary to the Treasury, announced that funding for debt advice agencies - including the Citizens Advice Bureau - would be cut at the end of March. The CAB issued 900 redundancy notices to its advisors as a result.

The Government has now, however, set aside £27m of funding to provide for free debt advice during 2011/12. The money will be distributed between the CAB and other independent advice agencies in England & Wales offering hundreds of consultants facing redundancy a reprieve, and ensuring that everyone will continue to have access to free and unbiased advice and assistance in sorting out their financial difficulties.

Despite the renewal of funding, however, the Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills has called on "other funding streams" such as local authorities to provide more financial support to the free debt advice sector, and has also asked the Consumer Financial Education Body - which is soon to be known as the Money Advice Service - to deliver a free national advice service online, over the telephone, and face-to-face. The CFEB's site is already an extremely useful resource. The new service should be available by the Spring.

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com/

Keys & Gray - Dinosaurs are Still Roaming the Earth Then...

Three weeks ago Richard Keys and Andy Gray, who were then employed by Sky Sports, made derogatory and objectionable remarks about Sian Massey, a perfectly ordinary and very well qualified young woman who works as a football referee or, more generally, as an assistant referee.

The remarks were supposed to be 'off-air' - but they weren't, and so the shit, as they say, hit the fan.

Sky Sports - no fool it - fired Gray immediately; Keys dug his own grave by way of an hour long interview with Talksport which left him with no real alternative but to resign.

The interview caused a bit of an uproar - The Sun called it 'Skin Crawling'; Ollie Irish (of 'Who Ate All The Pies?' in case you don't know) called Keys a 'deluded buffoon', and there were print media people around who, whilst being less forthright, were even less complimentary - but as a long-term parliamentary correspondent I'm afraid I only found it dishearteningly familiar.

Keys' insistent, repetitive, but never quite wholehearted, apologies, and his talk of 'dark forces' at Sky, and 'envy' everywhere else, reminded me of nearly every disgraced politician it's been my doubtful pleasure to deal with over the past thirty-five years. These people, you see, are never the authors of their own downfall. It's all brought about by other people, and it's all so unfair.

I had great hopes that after Keys resigned we would never hear either of him or of Gray again - but no such luck. The Gruesome Twosome began a new job yesterday, hosting a three hour radio show on Talksport, five days a week.

The papers thought the show 'dull' - and interestingly there doesn't seem to have been a single caller despite the fact that Talksport's number was plugged as often as ever.

Could it be that a lot of people find these two clowns as repugnant as I do?

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.co.uk/