Dave Thorp's Blog

Tonight is the final of Britain’s Got Talent, and despite my normal pledge to avoid any shows which are created purely to inflate Simon Cowell’s ego and ensure he had enough money to buy some really high trousers for life I was forced to watch it. So with 10 acts that are supposed to be the epitome of British talent I should be in for an entertaining evening right?? WRONG!

The final was dominated by gangsters that should be dealing crack on the streets, people who only got there due to sympathy from the judges and/or the viewers, a Bridget Jones wannabe who is way too ugly to stand any chance in the world of showbiz, fat blokes that aren’t British anyway, a girl with so few friends that she has to perform with her Grandad (who in fairness seems better than Stuart and Alex’s Grandad in many respects but hey) and a bloke blowing his own trumpet.

The first series actually discovered the talent that is Paul Potts who was languishing as a mobile phone salesman and making semi regular posts on a discussion forum I used to frequent. Pity that whoever wins this series I can’t see them doing much more than lining Simon Cowell’s pockets in his very tall pants!

ITV has a new game show in the 5pm slot called Divided. Like the show it took over from (Golden Balls) it seems to be a cost saving venture on the part of ITV as it is a game show that gives people silly amounts of money and then takes it away from them through their own greed or stupidity.

In golden balls players win money, then at the end have to decide whether to split the money in which case everyone wins or try and steal the money in which case only one person wins as long as the other splits. If they both steal the only winner is ITV as the money goes straight back to them. Consequently intelligence suggests that you should split as that way someone is bound to win some money and the day filming has actually been worthwhile as opposed to when you both steal and you may as well have stayed in bed all day!

Divided has a very similar ending where you win the money and then three people have to decide how to split it. In today’s show £30,000 was split into three pots. Pot A had £21,000, pot B had £6000 and pot C had £3000. So all the players had to do was decide who deserved which pot. Of course two greedy people decided they were entitled to the larger share (one of them greedier than the other because she was sadly misguided as she actually cost the team money through her dithering) and they then promptly went through an agonising 100 seconds watching all three pots drop to zero. Once again victory for ITV who saved themselves £30k that they would have had to payout if the contestants had simply not been greedy.

ITV seems to be doing a lot of shows like these two that depend on human greed in order to save them having to payout any cash at all. At times it does make painful viewing though to watch people throw away such huge amounts of cash and today in particular a poor 19 year old girl was in tears begging one of the other two to drop down to a lower pot.

It is such a shame that the human condition has got to the stage where they cant see that if they simply learn to share, they will be better off than if they follow their greed.

One of the new methods of making money from abusing your personal data the credit reference agencies have started to use is the wonderfully helpful and useful credit score based on the contents of your credit file. For this wonderful magic number the CRAs will charge you the princely sum of £6 (or in that region) and by obtaining it you are supposed to get an idea of how well lenders view you. There is one huge problem with this score….. it is absolute bollocks!

Lenders all have different methods of assessing you for credit. For example one lender might score poorly if you have defaults however another lender may not care. Another lender may score poorly if you don’t own your own home. Other lenders may not care.

Despite all this I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and undercut the credit reference agencies by £4. Yes for the princely sum of just £2 you can find out a score that is every bit as accurate and helpful as the scores generated by the CRAs. Even better I’m making payment optional. If you don’t want to pay then you don’t have to.

So here is my wonderful credit score calculator