This year has been the busiest yet for Money Central, the personal finance weblog at Times Online. The blog brings together original articles from Times Money and Sunday Times writers and allows readers to comment with no registration process. The best comments each week are published in print in the Money section’s Your Shout slot. Recent blogs have included lists of the “weirdest terms of financial jargon” and “most bizarre travel insurance claims”, plus a round-up of house price predictions for next year.

The most-read blog this year went online in October. The posting of “50 reasons not to buy an iPhone”, by Ali Hussain, of The Sunday Times, infuriated sensitive Apple fans. The writer branded the handset “expensive” and “slow” and described its camera as “pathetic”. Then he damned with faint praise: “You probably can’t fault the slick Apple handset in terms of design, but it is rather large and bulky.” He also said that Apple’s “free wifi” facility for wireless broadband is available to only 30 per cent of the population, adding: “If you live outside urban centres, this will not be any good.”

Scores of indignant Apple fans piled in to defend the handset. One, Gus, went as far as to post “50 reasons not to buy The Times”, listing faults such as “some people can’t read it without additional equipment – glasses”. In a more restrained contribution, Jon wrote: “I have an iPhone and it is the best phone I have owned or seen.”

Not all readers were on Apple’s side. Andy Barnes asked: “Who needs to carry around permanently a portable telephone that plays music and takes photographs, and is prepared to pay £1,300 for it?”

Melina Jackson was even more uncompromising, writing: “I hate Apple and Apple users in the same way I hate antiwar protesters and trendy lefties. I am grateful for and entertained by any article that targets these parasites.”

Like Ms Jackson, many readers see Money Central as a convenient place to post their misgivings about companies and institutions. This made it the perfect place to collect nominations for our Scrooge of the Year award. The most nominations – in 211 comments – went to Gordon Brown and Revenue & Customs.

Discussion on the weblog can be brisk. J. Lewis nominated Lloyds TSB for Scrooge of the Year after the bank billed him £75 when he accidentally became overdrawn by £13 in two withdrawals in one week. Days later, Matt laid in: “Why on earth blame the bank for your own mismanagement? Going overdrawn once is bad enough, but leaving it a week and then going overdrawn even more is ridiculous.”

Our viewing figures suggest that lists are the most “clickable” blogs. After Ali Hussain’s controversial iPhone effort, the most-read post was James Charles’s “25 most bizarre travel insurance claims ever”.

An advantage of the lists is that readers can post their own contributions. Caroline Hutchings told how one insurer refused to pay after an angry elephant picked up and dropped her friend on a safari trip, shattering her shoulder. Apparently, watching animals was not covered.

As well as a forum to interact with our writers and each other, blogs also offer a direct channel to executives at large institutions. This year’s examples included “Bend the ear of British Gas” and “Put your questions to the Revenue”. As their names suggest, these called on readers to post questions to Phil Bentley, managing director of British Gas, and Dave Hartnett, the Revenue’s acting chairman. A selection of these were answered in print, resolving readers’ complaints and resulting in one British Gas employee being sacked.

Other blogs offered simple advice. James Charles’s “Where to spread your eggs” suggested ways to safeguard savings after the Northern Rock crisis. Another example was one of my own entries, “Free flights to Tokyo, Bangkok”, which revealed that British Airways (BA) has a handful of free or cheap long-haul flights to these two destinations for “courier” passengers willing to wear smartish clothes and carry documents on behalf of a company. If you are interested, call BA on 0870 3200301.

The coming year will bring an even broader spread of content at Money Central, with more opportunites to communicate with us and big organisations. We hope that readers who are not yet frequent visitors to Times Online get involved. Watch out for “the 25 most outrageous parking fines” and “Ten antiques of the future” in the new year.

Bizarre claims

A spot of monkey business in Malaysia as a young couple leave a window open in their chalet and return to find that a playful primate has strewn their belongings across the resort and neighbouring rainforest. Their insurer paid the claim.

A pensioner loses false teeth while vomiting over the side of a cruise ship. The dentures were covered under “lost baggage”.

One traveller claimed to have lost £300 of Bombay mix, the spicy snack, while in Europe. At about 89p for a 250g bag, the misplaced mix would have weighed 84kg. His insurer rejected the claim.

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