Take it away is an Arts Council initiative designed to help more people get involved in learning and playing music. The scheme allows individuals to apply for a loan of up to £2,000 for the purchase of any kind of musical instrument, and pay it back in 10 monthly instalments, completely interest free.

The scheme has helped thousands of people so far and has been successful because it makes obvious sense. Rather than, in my case, paying £1,300 up front for a really quite lovely American Standard Fender Stratocaster guitar (white like Jimi Hendrix’s), which would have required some creative and possibly perilous explanations to my wife, I was able to put down £100 and pay the rest off over the next ten months at £120 a month, which though not to be sniffed at, was a much more acceptable proposition. And likewise with my daughter’s Roland keyboard at £50 a month.

The scheme is great mainly because it doesn’t cost anything to prolong the payments, which reduces the financial pain of the purchase by making it bugetable. And this logic applies to businesses just as much as households. With VAT so high and borrowing undesirable and difficult, schemes like this would make it possible for businesses to keep going with their plans much more easily.

Plans cost money and when times are hard it’s important that essential expenses can be budgeted for affordably. If your business has a comfortable operating budget that’s great but most don’t and for the majority it would make a difference knowing that they didn’t have to stretch in unfeasable directions just to be able to keep their marketing and website programs on course. This is why we have devised our own version of the Take it away scheme.

Our scheme runs over twelve months rather than ten, which makes the monthly payments slightly lower than the Arts Council’s scheme. It is 0% interest free like Take it away and it covers any expenses whatsoever, whether it’s a brand new website, a web marketing or Google advertising campaign, a new brochure, it doesn’t matter: if it’s a service we provide then it’s covered.

Business people I talk to are inured to the fact that they have to always pay high interest rates for credit but for the most part, in the current climate, that simply stops them functioning the way they need to, which isn’t in anybody’s interest. so why not call us today and find out how you can Take it Away?

Specialising in French and Italian red wine, and champagne, marc1wines has a growing reputation for quality wine from rare and small (sometimes boutique) producers. This is an excellent site for anyone who buys wine online, and features some lovely photos of wine.

The owner Marc Medland runs a successful wine merchants in Aldeburgh. The marc1wines.co.uk website is a new venture for him and he has been keen to do it well from the start, getting in designer Chris Keeble (of Keeble and Hall) to produce some photography and a conceptual design. Marc chose to base the website on the Actinic ecommerce system, which is a good choice as it boasts class-leading features, security and power. We’re very pleased with this site and think it’s a great base for marc1wines to grow from.