Adrian Garside

photo credit: dno1967

I was listening to Radio 5 yesterday on the way to a clients house. Simon Mayo was interviewing the guy who created the Teletubbies.

When my boys were watching this stuff there was something of a furore about retarding childrens  ability to speak and being generally a bad thing – the TV equivilent of a sugar drink – all bright colours and bad for you.

I was interested because he is a Speach Therapist. That seems to confound the above view of teletubbies to an extent and he explained how he worked. Broadly using the words that children use in a play setting, with a narrator using queens english and parent submitted video’s through the, er, tummies.

Yesterday he faced the same tumolt of texts and e-mails, some of them very angry and indignant, that were floating around when my children were being “damaged”  and was easily and calmly rebuffing each and every one of them and actually, when he answered it became apparent that most of the objections seemed to be from people who either hadn’t watched or were caught in a rose tinted timewarp from their own childhood.

Anyway, 2 things – Teletubbies never appear live – well, apparently they did once, but Lala is 8’6″ tall and it causes ‘issues’

2nd thing – he’s  (or rather Ragdoll productions) just spent £15m making 100 half hour programmes called Tales of the Night Garden. The reviews from people who had seen it, even non child bearing adults, were all bubbling over with praise, excitement and signs of addiction. £15m is more than the entire annual budget of cbeebies – wow! He was explaining that they used real cutting edge technology and in the later episodes they were doing things as routine that in early episodes were regarded as impossible, or certainly ‘breaking new ground’.

I may be offering to babysit my mates kids to see what the fuss is about!

…one of my old school friends, Mike, lives in Munich.

In Munich, they’ve been building a spanking new bus station (Check out the architecture here) with the aim to improve their fully integrated transport system.

During the building process Munich changed their emmissions rules.  Sadly most of the buses that arrive (from ‘ex communist’ places to the east of Germany) no longer pass the strict emmissions rules.

The bus station stands almost empty.

I thought it was only the UK that did that kind of thing!

Here

These really highlight how we can all have habits in our thoughts that can be non productive or illogical.

I’ve just had an e-mail from a  freelance paraplanner who is looking for business. Now his speciality is report writing – explaining to my customer why I have advised him to do the thing I advised.

He spoke about the FSA and their rules in a very professional clear way, from what he said I expect he’s competant.

But, he won’t get my business. Here’s why.

OK, one of the reasons is that I have them done at HO, but apart from that…

He only provided a mobile phone number.

He had no signature on his e-mail, no address etc.

His e-mail address was a yahoo webmail address.

He had no website.

I was surprised that someone would commit all 4 sins that we are told to watch out for in spam e-mails when he is touting for business in such a cautious world.

I encourage my 6 year old boy to ride his bike and his school have just built some bike racks.

He wants to ride his bike to school – supervised, you understand – his mum will ride with him.

But, the school, or maybe more correctly, Hampshire County Council have told us they won’t let him ride his bike to school because he hasn’t passed his Cycling Proficiency.   They won’t let him take Cycling Proficiency until he is 10, which is fair enough, that is why his mum has to supervise.

I’m amazed. A boy wants exercise and the school says no. Since the school is 3 miles from our house, the only realistic option is a couple of car journey’s a day. And, before you say – we can get from door to door on cycle paths and bridleways.

So, we will ignore them and I guess we’ll lock his bike to a fence so that he can still ride and get a bit of exercise.

Am I the only one to think the world is going mad?

It was put to me that turtles breathe through their butts!

This immediately required a tea break and some moments on google resulting in two discoveries. No, wait a minute, 3!

1. Some turtles, but not all,  do indeed breathe through their butts!

2. I found that in several places, but I was especially happy with www.straightdope.com

It has an amusing presentation style – for example – “…the most remarkable, which some turtles share with dragonfly nymphs, sea cucumbers, and certain televangelists, is the ability to breathe through one’s butt.”

3. On the straightdope.com website I was distracted by the answer to the question about putting stripes in toothpaste – I know how that happens now as well.

Right, back to work…

Yesterday I had the results of some tests and I don’t have cancer or diabetes, which is a relief of course, although curiously it does mean I either either have ‘something else’ or nothing, both options being quite unsettling.

Anyway, there is nothing like being tested for cancer to focus the mind and my initial thoughts were money based (actually, that’s a lie, but for the benefit of the blog lets pretend they were) and it occurs to me that there is plenty of support and help for people with serious illnesses, but the financial side of things needs to be looked at and probably in quite an unemotional kind of a way.

My objective here is to get into a position where you are feeling in control and making the most of what you have.

The first thing you need is 2 sheets of paper.

On the 1st put everything you have – savings, house,  etc. And everything you owe – credit cards, mortgage loans etc. Just as an idea put the credit limit by the balance of each credit card.

The second sheet is for income and expenditure – your bank statements will help here.

Next make a list of places you have worked and note which ones might have offered you a pension – possible if you worked there for over 2 years. Then make a list of insurance, savings or any other life policies you may have had.  If the insurance or pension company has changed its name or been taken over, the  Association of British Insurers http://www.abi.org.uk/Search/default.asp will tell you the latest name or new owner.

If you have shares, make a list. You can get the prices from a newspaper or the internet.

With pensions, ask who the Nominated Beneficiaries are – the people who will get that pension benefit if you die before taking them. This may need updating especially if you have married or now have children, for example.

Now the biggest questions.

How long have you been given or what are your chances?  Will you be able to continue working? Will you be able to travel or drive a car? Will you need care? Who might be able to help you?

If you have more than two years, then you might as well carry on as normal for as long as possible.   But if you have less than two years to live, it is time to think.  There is nothing sadder than dying thinking “If only”.  But strangely, a short life expectancy may enable you to achieve one or two of your goals, that you might not have bothered about otherwise.

Take another piece of paper, and write some headings: People, Things, Places. You might want to adapt this with headings like: Family, Colleagues, Hobbies, Sports. Now the fun part, and yes I mean you ought to be able to get some enjoyment out of this. What have you always wanted to do? Pretend you have won the Lottery and let your mind run free here and don’t bother about the practicalities. Keep the list handy and a notepad and pencil with you so you can write things down as they pop into your mind. It does not matter how long the list is or how many items are on it.

Once you have done the above exercises you will have:

A financial picture of you.

Your doctors have told how long you have got and what quality of life you can expect for that time.

A list of everything you wanted to achieve.

Achieving some of the goals will need money, but you may have more than you think, which is the real point behind this exercise.

The surprises here can be pensions & life policies. Critical Illness Benefit is where a lump-sum will be paid after the claim paperwork has been done and checked and covers many (but not all) cancers.   Most life insurance policies have Terminal Illness Benefit, This means that if your life expectancy is less than 12 months, they will pay out while you are alive. ( This will depend on what answers your GP gives to the insurance company)   I have a client who asked me to look through her paperwork and we found a policy with this benefit and it paid out this year for her.

Most policies I set up have a Waiver of Premium Benefit and will be kept in force by the insurance company if you are ill for over 6 months without you paying the monthly premiums. This will help your family more than you, but can give you peace of mind and save you the outgoing in the meantime.

Some pensions can be paid out in cash tax-free where life expectancy is a year or less which can seriously improve the quality of life for the short time left.

If it helps, get your adviser involved too.

The important point about the exercises above is that they can make you feel that you are back in control of your life again, and importantly give you the chance and focus to tick off some of those ambitions.

An inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) states that there is a huge pay gap between the bonuses recieved by men and women in City Financial jobs.

My experience of the City is zero, but my experience of the financial services sector is very long and varied, including working at the hiring and firing end. My experience is that this world is purely commercial – you get rewarded by making more money for your employer – if you are sucessful you get more and if you aren’t you get less.

I have seen exactly no examples of there being a pay gap between men and women.

I was interested to note that a female city economist on the Beeb has also just backed up my thoughts.

I wonder if they have asked the wrong question.

They have asked about the pay and bonuses recieved by men and women.

I think they should have asked about the pay and bonuses recieved by men and women who do the same jobs.

Here is my theory.

If you take 100 women and 100 men who work in the city you will find that annual bonuses are weighted heavily towards men.

That’s because the trading environment that rewards most heavily with bonuses is an 80 hours a week, animalistic world that more suits the instincts and (lack of) sensibilities of men than women, so while women are welcome, on equal pay and terms, they are less likely to thrive in the long term – some do,  just fewer than men.  I’m making no judgement on the rights and wrongs of a seriously aggressive working environment, that is not the question.

So, when you take your random sample of 100 women, there will be fewer in the more aggressive, more highly rewarded jobs.

So, we could have a debate about whether it is fair that a working environment should exist that is so agressive, but as it stands, I am sure that if you compare a clerk with a clerk, a manager with a manager, a trader with a trader or a salesperson with a salesperson, etc, I don’t feel there would be a difference.

But, just like there are more men bricklayers than women bricklayers, there are more men traders and as that is where the bonuses are, it’s natural that mens bonuses would be, on average, higher.