To my surprise, when I enquired what the interest rate was now, I was told it was 3%!

Apparently the bank had got loads of investors with its new, wonderful ISA and had then sidelined the account and reduced the interest rate.

Last week I received a bundle of credit card cheques from a supermarket bank,inviting me to use them to pay for "home improvements, school fees, or send gifts to family and friends".

Reading on, it said the instant the cheque hit the account I would be charged 21.95% interest. Now isn't that great?

Here we are, hit by a credit crunch, with rising prices and less money in our pockets and the banks doing their damnest to squeeze even more life-blood from us.

We've seen a proliferation of different banks and accounts all sent to confuse and hoodwink us, and it's all come from this wonderful idea to give the great British public "more choice".

Let's look back to the past when life was simpler.

We had a Gas Board and an Electricity Board. We had our meters read regularly, we received bills and we paid them at local showrooms to "real" people.

If we had a problem we could talk it over with "real" people.

I can't remember then 30% hikes in charges, nor can I remember up to a fifth of the population living in "fuel poverty". Maybe they were and I missed something!

There could well have been plenty of junketing for the boards'directors in their ivory towers, but today, with numerous companies all fighting over us to give us "more choice" just think of the number of ivory towers and directors there are.

Now that's megga serious junketing.
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It's all so confusing we've even got uSwitch to tell us where to go.

But wait a minute, the moment you've switched, they've changed the tariff to get one over on you and you have to do it all over again.

We've got masses and masses of choice when it comes to car insurance.

It's all got so bewildering that we need Confused.com and Money Supermarket to give us the best deal.

Every TV advert tells us they can save money on your car insurance.

Come off it, they can't all do that (can they?), or perhaps there's one which pays us to be with them. Now that would be a first!

It's all come about on the altar of giving us more choice.

How much easier life would be if, when we paid our annual car excise licence, we paid car insurance as well – one bill covering both, and we displayed the disc on the windscreen, so everyone could see the vehicle was insured.

At a stroke we would ensure that all vehicles on the road were insured. We would also get rid of goodness knows how many insurance companies, all with ivory towers with junketing directors.

Home insurance? Yes, that's another confused.com minefield, giving us, supposedly, more choice – umpteen companies, ivory towers, junketing.

We've now got goodness knows how many TV and radio stations, most pumping out mindless piffle, and, because there are so many, very few people are ever listing or watching.

People are confused.com at the choice, and so are advertisers – so much so these stations can't generate the revenue to keep them all going.

So some fall by the wayside. Market forces – in my book its just plain stupid.

We used to have British Rail. In Victorian days British railways were the envy of the world.

Then politicians, who think they can run everything better than the experts, got hold if it and made a complete mess, axing much of it and privatising the rest.

Now we have umpteen companies, created on the altar of "more choice" and look what a mess we've got. A ticket from London to Manchester costing £160!

We've got umpteen companies providing us with TV, with telephones, on and on.

More and more choice, more and more entrapments to extract money from us, more and more confused.com! Oh for a far, far more simple life.

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