And here's a question: 'If you knew...'

I've discovered that when I tell people about ambient hot dogs and other horrors from minimum wage hell they always - without exception - vow never to eat a cinema hot dog again.

That phrase: "If you knew..." is very powerful. If you knew what a cinema hot dog really was... If you knew that in a certain restaurant in Cardiff the prepped vegetarian meals are stored below the pork faggots... If you knew what a 'Coke Snake' was... and so on.

I have several friends who work for charitable organisations. Recently one of them told me that 'if he knew' what the organisation spent money on before he started working for them, he wouldn't have supported it. He still gives regularly, but he has told me that he won't increase his giving.

I know people who work handling sensitive information like credit card bills for the top people in charities who have told me they feel unable to question certain expenses even though they themselves would never claim for such things. And they seriously doubt the people who support the charities would be impressed, either 'if they knew'.

Two friends, who work as fundraisers for different charities, have told me that they would give 'allocated income' to achieve specific goals, but wouldn't raise general funds.

I think my big question is - is this unique? If you knew how any charity, or your church, spent money, would you still give to it?

Maybe that's something that should apply to all of us. I think a good general rule of thumb in life is 'If people knew what I spent on x, would I spend it?' I know before now I've decided not to buy some things because I would have to tell my lovely wife about it. How different would my personal finances be if I knew they were going to be scrutinised by other people too?

Could you open up organisations to make them more accountable too? A simple solution would be to set up a volunteer stakeholder panel and every six months give them copies of all invoices, expense claims, and bank statements and see what they say. I don't think this would be too hard to do - make it voluntary for charities and then award standards according to how 'well' money was spent. Getting the highest standards would encourage people to give knowing their money wouldn't be wasted. It could be helpful both ways, then.

Call it justice; call it karma

The weather was apalling for a bank holiday at the end of May, so we went round to our friends Bryan and Elaine, ordered in pizza and played The Big Taboo, which has extra 'taboo' categories, including one you have to act out with a furry puppet called Bob. (One of the actions you have to make Bob mime is breastfeeding a baby. Fun!)

Elaine is currently unemployed having been laid off by a struggling finance company, who are suddenly discovering that if you lend money to people who have managed to get themselves into debt, they might have trouble paying you back. Apparently, Elaine's former employers aren't the only ones.

Rumour has it one loan/mortagage provider tried to sell on their debts, but people wouldn't buy the whole company, so now they've got to get themselves out of the mess. And many of the companies who always said they'd never repossess a house (they'd just sell the debt on to some bastard who would!), are having to start taking property over in order to get their money back.

So, she's philosophical. Maybe it's better to be laid off and get paid for a further month while looking for a new job, than to stay in the job and get nothing if the company went under. Also, she'd be the first to say that nobody's really going to cry if loan companies start going to the wall.

For a long time these companies offering their 'lower monthly fees' and 'consolidation loans' have traded on people's anxieties to actually shove them further into debt. The 'easy credit' mentality has seen people rack up unprecedented levels of personal debt. I know several people who have simply ended up in an unmanageable situation and had to resort to IVAs or other desperate measures in order to get out of debt.

It's harsh, but the loan companies - and Carol Vorderman who promotes one of them on TV - have been complicit in offering vain hope of a way out of debt by adding to your debt, but not really explaining to people what 'combining all those debts into one easy payment' implied. Call it karma. Call it justice. Whatever you want to call it, it's coming back to bite people.

A few days ago I read a Proverb which said: "He who leads the upright along an evil path will fall into his own trap." Or, to put it another way: 'if you trick people into debt, you'll end up ensnared by debt yourself'.

The only problem is the people who will really get boned by this are the (almost) innocent people who work for the companies doing admin and other ordinary jobs.

Revenge of the kamikaze badger

A couple of weeks ago I had an incident where a badger leapt out of a hedge as I drove past, and ended up under my left front wheel with an almighty bang. Two days ago I noticed my front wheel tyre was down to the wire under the tread, so I stopped on the way into work to get it replaced.

The problem is the alloy wheel has buckled slightly, so it has one squared-off edge now. The tyre-guy asked if I'd hit anything recently. "Er... a badger," I said. "Yeah, that would do it," he said (although to be fair, he added the badger probably only dealt the "killing blow" to the wheel allignment).

So, even though I've now got new tyres on my front wheels, they're going to shred pretty quickly unless I replace the actual wheels. I could buy some more alloys, but what's the point if they're going to get bent by animals with a death wish? I'll probably swap them for steel wheels, which will a) be cheaper, and b) make my insurance cheaper too, because I'll look less like a boy racer chav.

But the problems doesn't stop with needing new wheels. While changing the tyres, said tyre-guy decided to have a poke around to see if there were any other causes of abnormal wear. He showed me how springy my front wishbones are, which probably means a more expensive MOT later this month than I had planned. In a few hours I changed from being a care-free motorist to a driver of a death-trap trying to scrape together the pennies to keep his motor road-legal.

Ah, the fun and games of car ownership.