Proposed Economic Solution

David Cameron rang earlier and asked for my help. Again.

When you use a credit card to withdraw cash, you pay a higher rate of interest on the transaction as well as a cash handling fee. To milk you for all you're worth, companies then make these the final thing you pay off when you pay your bill. This means that you'll pay for the lower rate interest purchases first, allowing them to keep squeezing more pennies from you. It all adds up.

If credit companies were to reverse this policy, you'd pay off the more costly transactions first and reduce the interest and amount owed. This would help you to pay off your bill quicker than you usually would, even if it is only by a few payments.

With that extra cash in your pocket, rather than that of a credit lending company, you could go out and spend it; spend cash you've earned instead of cash you'll owe. You could perhaps even use it to keep yourself afloat despite the VAT increase.

Wherever you choose to spend this cash, you'd be putting something back into the economy, and keeping businesses trading. Something the government is currently aiming to do. Everybody happy, right?

However, if the problem of an economic crisis and/or government deficit could be so simply solved then why hasn't it already been done? This proposal isn't asking for a lot: it helps people in debt, would show the government is taking steps towards solutions, and even makes the businesses that sign up to it look like they actually care.

But that's where the trouble lies. The businesses don't care enough to see those extra pennies out of their own pockets and into yours or worse, into another businesses.

After all, it all adds up.