Hold the front page

MI reviews the most ‘important’ release of the week.

I love you but you’re paying for everything

As I’ve said previously there’s an art to a good (i.e. bad) press release and getting your release into this column takes a lot of misplaced effort. Ticking all the right boxes this week is ‘Hold the front page’ favourites, the Halifax, which has compiled some pointless research about the nation’s ‘Money Manners’.

Now, I was expecting questions about letting one rip when you hand your credit card over but I’m off the pace. Instead Halifax Unsecured Personal Loans asked questions about who should pay for a first date.

The answers will astound you – 40 per cent think men should pay, 40 per cent think you should go dutch and 1 per cent said women should pay. I’m assuming the other 19 per cent were too busy on internet chat rooms to answer. It’s an interesting quandry though and one I’ve always settled by saying: “Look I’ll pay for the Big Macs and fries, you can buy the drinks.” Potential difficult moment over and done with.

Next up was the tricky issue of receipts. Do you hide them from your partner or not? 23 per cent of people do and women are the worst culprits apparently. But I think this is a good thing.

My flat contains plenty of useless tat that the other ’alf has brought home and left to rot in the cupboards. Quite frankly I don’t want to know how much money has been wasted on our fifth smoothie maker.

Finally, men are more generous than women and I’m obviously not talking about in the bedroom. Lads would lend bigger amounts of money to their mates than women would. Proving once and for all that we’re definitely as

stupid as we look.