Predictions from the start of a year are not a bad place to begin and thanks to my chums at Transact for their view here:

January 2008: the five biggest investment banks in the US are Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Three have disappeared (completely or have been subsumed into another organisation) and none exist solely as investment banks.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the world’s largest independent mortgage houses. Now, the US government is the world’s largest mortgage house.
AIG is the biggest insurance company in the world. Now it is basically an agency of the US government.
December, the National Bureau of Economic Research http://www.nber.org/cycles/recessions.html admits that the US has been in recession since December 2007.
In the UK, Northern Rock, RBS and Lloyds TSB (and HBOS) have effectively been nationalised.
October 2007, mortgage loans granted in the UK are £8 billion. October 2008, the comparable figure is £459 million - 5.7 per cent of the previous figure. Getting a mortage is painful as it is like dealing with lenders when they have the auditors in where the latter know very little about them. As the writer said, you could not make this stuff up.

Investment business is quiet and where some holdings are being liquidated, we are staying in cash for now. For budding entrepreneurs, my favourite networking group http://www.3cscommunity.com/ meets again 14th January.

As a portent of things to come http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/4046014/Adults-could-be-forced-to-take-out-private-insurance-to-cover-nursing-home-costs.html Again the UK seems to be following the example of Germany which introduced this pflegeversicherung a few years ago. Since the Germans invented the state pension in the first place, perhaps we should not be surprised http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/2006/05/a-little-more-reality-returns-to-pensions/

All of which makes me think of the happier things in July 2008 where (equal) top of the list was my daughter’s wedding in Italy. With a year’s notice there is plenty of time to plan but we being human, something always crops up. Obvious choice for me is to fly and hire a car but wanting to stop off and visit family around Germany, I find I cannot hire a car in Italy and leave it in say, Netherlands, so I am in for a marathon drive. Car serviced and luggage packed, I have no trouble waking up at 4.30 a.m. to drive to Dover to catch the 8.00 ferry. Nerves are slightly on edge as I am carrying my daughter’s wedding dress and a sister’s bridesmaid’s dress plus some goodies for the wedding breakfast. Praying that Sod’s law will happen to someone else and with the feeling like I am carrying the Crown Jewels I set off in the morning twilight. Half expectedly, I am quite early but panic when asked for a slip of paper that I am supposed to have been given when I present my ticket at the docks? Turns out it is on the floor and after a chat with a German glider pilot, we start to board. Glider trailers are easy to recognise, being long and thin and it seems he enjoyed the competition he came here to participate in.

Two hours on the ferry to Dunkirk and the hour time difference have us off the boat after 11.00 local time with 782 miles to go according to an RAC route planner. The route is south past Rheims, Dijon and while the long way round is simplest via Lyon and then turning east, signs for Geneva encourange me to cut off a long corner on my route. The Audi flies along in France but the mountain roads in Switzerland and Italy are naturally slower and the speed limit in the Mont Blanc tunnel is 75km/hr. There is little traffic here and guessing that there are CCTV monitors, the cost is a €32 toll, unlike one of the wedding guests who picked up an on the spot €150 speeding fine as well.

In Italy now, I am driving away from Monte Bianco in the direction of Torino. Signs for Milano are visible and I am approaching from the west and feeling quite pleased as after Milano, Lecco is to the NE. Thoughts that I might be there at midnight are dashed when we are diverted off the motorway at 10 pm. The Diverzionne all seem to say Milano and we are now being steered south around the city. A full moon is up and as we all drive through various suburbs, we are going east and then north and it is time to ask directions as I am lost. Finally, I get some useful directions from security guards on an industrial estate who can speak French but not English, and I am heading north in the direction of Como. A respectable 70 -80 mph feels like walking as several cars pass me at over 100 mph (160 kph) and I reach lake Como. The lake is like an inverted “Y” and I am at the SW bit. Lecco in general and Calolziocorte are on the SE bit and I head off east. At least there are signs for Lecco but none for the latter. Thinking of asking for directions, there is a smartly-dressed young lady, cigarrette in hand, waiting by a brightly lit roundabout but at one-o-clock in the morning, it occurs to me that her directions might impede my progress rather than help it.

Lecco is reached at 1.30 am. My mobile is not showing any signal so I cannot call my daughter - easily cured I found out later by switching the mobile off and then on again. A lorry driver with his Tom Tom shows me I am 15km away from my target and other directions find me back in Lecco. I have been driving since 11 am but the Red Bull and espresso can only do so much. If I do not get there soon, I will have to get some rest in the car. Few people are about at 2 am and asking ladies for directions is a bit difficult, as few want to talk to a stranger at that time. Spotting one lady in a mini who has stopped to open her apartment doors, I am at last given proper directions to Calolziocorte which is further along a road I had driven along 20 minutes before. Thirty minutes later, the carribinieri flag me down to my intense relief. One of them speaks English and when I explain that I am really glad to see them, they more than surprised. Calolziocorte is a few kms away (still no signposts) and after explaining why I am driving round at that ungodly hour, I am given a fast police escort to my hotel. This means getting the manager out of bed at 3.50 am and with well over 800 miles on the clock, I park the car at the bank next door. On reflection, it would have been nice to have had the sirens and blue lights as well, but perhaps one can’t have everything….

To be continued.

In the words of one of my former school masters, we are past the worst. We can look forward to longer days and shorter nights now as star gazers and people who read their daily horoscopes will know that at 12.04 GMT on Sunday 21st December 2008, the Sun reached its southernmost point in the sky or winter solstice (in the northern hemisphere) and is now on its slow journey back north. Days will be more or less equal at the Vernal equinox 11.43 GMT on 20th March 2009 when the Sun passes through the plane of the ecliptic and we are then on the run into Summer. More of this stuff here at the National Maritime Museum website http://www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/time-facts/equinoxes-and-solstices#solstice Just the sort of stuff for a pub quiz and a very interesting place to visit in the Christmas break.

Earlier winters with no central heating, street lighting, cars or supermarkets hardly bear thinking about as if you had not stored enough food for the winter, some of your family would not survive. Not much excuse would have been needed for a celebration and some of our Christmas festivals e.g. Yule date from a pre-Christian era.

Back in the present time and season of office parties, imagination has never been in short supply and the Christmas bash at in2 Consulting Christmas took us on the water in the form of a DUKW tour rather than under it when we went to Brussels via Eurostar last year http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/2007/12/mannekens-woodpeckers/

11. 00 prompt and the 66 year old DUKW turns up at our offices in Shoreditch. London DUKW tours have a fleet of 6 http://www.londonducktours.co.uk/ dating from WW2 and are considering getting another one. Our journey through the City and West End is enlivened by a few jokes and stuff we did not know like Green Park in the West End is so called because it has no flowers (only trees) and was once a mass burial ground for victims of the plague. The entrance ramp into the water itself is next to our SIS (MI6) service HQ from which we can see their “5″ cousins on the other side of the river at Thames House. The HQ of the latter used to be above Euston Square tube station and as my guide at the time told me, one of the worst kept secrets in London. The Thames House in the BBC series Spooks (available on BBC iPlayer) is actually the Freemasons’ Hall in Great Queen Street round the corner from Covent Garden. My April blog http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/2008/04/itchy-wings-sticky-susan/ mentioned that the feature film Green Zone set in Iraq was being filmed there, and more of it was being filmed three weeks ago when I went to a lodge meeting.

For borrowers there is some good news as rates ease slowly with fixed rates appearing at 3.89% and 3.69% for example. Nationwide has reintroduced a 95% mortgage but the rate is high. Lending criteria do not seem to get any easier with Abbey tightening their Affordability calculator parameters and withdrawing their Fast Track facility where no proof of income was needed below a certain LTV level. Doing mortgages at present is rather reminiscent of “work to rule” we used to hear about in the days before New Labour. All this will continue to depress house prices as most people pay for most of their property cost with borrowed money. The long term values can be guessed quite easily - multiply your earnings by say, 3 and that will give you a pretty good idea of how much you will be able to borrow and of course what price property you can afford. Even worse, a retired building society manager I met at the Bank of England last month informed me that the multiple with some lenders used to be 2 and half times earnings!

The higher Stamp Duty rates introduced by the Government still affect most property owners and of course, Home Informations Packs are basically a tax on property buyers. The effect is rather like pre-Keynesian economics where the perceived economic wisdom of the time was for Governments to increase taxes in a depression which made the 1930s one much worse. This was in the days of the Gold Standard and the UK was one of the first countries to leave saving itself a lot of economic pain as a result. The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer who increased taxes then was Winston Churchill who as my economics lecturer was fond of saying, was The Worst Chancellor we ever had!

History will judge if he continues to deserve this mantle as British forces in Afghanistan suffer 4 times the rate of casualties as American troops there, as our troops are not given enough resources to do the job  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/3884829/Afghanistan-British-suffer-four-times-as-many-casualties-as-Americans.html something the head of the SAS resigned over recently.

One money raising idea the Government has not tried might be to allow drivers to BUY off their penalty points on their licence say, for minor offences - such as a being few miles over the limit at 1-o-clock in the morning when no one was around and no one was in any danger?? This could be very popular and might allow some people who need their licences for their jobs to keep them?

Thanks to a Daily Telegraph reader for doing an Emperor’s Clothes job and pointing out the obvious regarding state pensions. The Bernard Madoff hedge fund scandal has been likened to a gigantic Ponzi scheme where today’s money going in pays for the return of the people in already. This is exactly the way public sector and the State Pensions are funded (sometimes called the Pay As You Go system) prompting the question, is the Government is running the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time?

Merry Christmas!

Five months and four consultants later have my blog back again. My last post seems so long ago that the feeling that I have been away on another planet is inescapable. There were plenty of mutterings about recession before but now it has finally sunk in and the November report on inflation from the Bank of England  http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/inflationreport/2008.htm said that the current economic crisis was the worst since 1914 and before. Next report due in February.

With the telephone numbers of cash being printed and thrown at banks & sundry, the Government is at least consistent in ignoring the cheapest and simplest alternatives. Banks now have plenty of capital but are too ignorant or timid to lend especially in simple cases it seems. A recent case involving a trust illustrates this. Trusts date back to the Crusades and are basically very simple. When you sell your property for example, there will be a clause in the contract saying that you sell as beneficial owner meaning that that you own it for your own benefit or in your own right. With a trust you are the registered legal owner but you own it for someone else’s benefit. Pension funds are owned in this way and pension law is actually based on trust law. They are often used by families where they wish to keep their wealth safe for future generations. While the basic concept is very simple, the tax side for example, can be a nightmare.

In this case a client set up a family trust for future generations using a long established City firm. The trust deed naturally allowed the trust to borrow. Weeks of dithering by the lenders who said they would offer the cheapest terms, turn out to be the most expensive and want an independent opinion that the trust deed is OK - rather like buying a new Audi and being asked to take it to a Mercedes garage for an MOT. The lender (or rather the Credit Committee) do not understand the concept at all and as they have not kept their word on rates and fees, will probably lose the business to a competitor serving them right for the waste of time. Amazing to think that a few years ago there was a bank that had the rather catchy slogan “The bank that likes to say, Yes!” For the sake of clarity if you can remember who this bank was, they are not the villains here.

Simple solutions for kick starting the economy have been around for ages. President Ronald Reagan gave us supply side economics and Free Trade Zones do just that for example. Docklands was a wasteland for years while the local councils bickered and did little. The Docklands Development Corporation with exemption from many controls plus Government help, turned the the City of London effectively in to a twin city that could almost be called New York on Thames generating lots of jobs, profits and of course taxes.

Small businesses are exempt from some regulation where they have less than 5 employees but this limit used to be 20. Smaller companies are capable of much quicker growth than larger ones and the above measure has not helped growth at all. Government borrowing will be paid for by printing more money (inflation - the pound in your pocket is worth less) or by making our grandchildren pay for it. The latter will have an ever harder job paying this off as the lower birthrate combined with a longer living generation of baby boomers, means that a proportionately smaller working population has to support an ever increasing elderly one.

What hardly makes the news is people succeeding, following the old dictum that Good news is No news. While some clients prefer to wait, others need money for investment as their businesses are expanding. Even with the thousands of job losses in the City and elsewhere, most people are still in work and as any manager or business owner will tell you, finding good people can be the most difficult part of running a business. Capital is always needed for investing in new plant and technology but amazingly, there are Government funds around which have invested only half their money. Unsurprisingly, this is an increasing part of my work.

Starting on a realistic note or in the You Couldn’t Make it Up Department - Mervyn King, Governor of The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, (Bank of England) has had to write to the Chancellor explaining why he has missed the Government’s Two per cent inflation target. The poor guy must have felt like he was back at school and told to do 100 lines: “I must control inflation, I must control inflation….”

My guess is that the Governor is too much of a gentleman to suggest look in the mirror to the Chancellor for part of the answer (N.B. taxes on spending increase the cost of living and 65 per cent of the cost of petrol, for example is tax) but anyway the real rate of inflation is over 9 per cent http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/13/cmian13.xml rather than the 3-4 per cent the Government tells us.

On a positive note, an interesting Pension Reform introduced in April 2006 allows in specie pension contributions. This means you can use an asset like shares themselves (in specie) as a pension contribution. Selling shares and having the SIPPS buy the shares from you is another option. Doing this means that the shares are inside a tax shelter (pension) where no Capital Gains Tax is payable. Unfortunately, some SIPPS providers will not accept these so the moral as usual is get advice, even when what you want to do is sensible - pension planning using in specie contributions has advantages as well as disadvantages. But in order to make a pension contribution one has to have earned income. Investment income such as from a trust, share portfolio or buy-to-let property is not pensionable.

One sure way for an IFA to get a clients attention is to show them how to take their pension funds ALL in cash. This is possible if the pension funds are less than £16,500 and has the quaint name of Pensions Triviality. Three cases have popped up in the last two weeks. In one case, a lady with a tiny pension that was made paid up in the 1980s will find the funds very useful, another with a tiny pension is not yet 60 so cannot do this for a while, and a client who has two tiny pensions also under the £16,500 limit cannot do it just yet as he is entitled to a pension from his current employment. The funds may be paid in cash but are taxed at Emergency Rate so the effective tax rate can be over 30 per cent. This is fee-based advice where clients want me to hold their hands through the paperwork.

Masters and Wardens of freemasons lodges are supposed to attend The Quarterly Communications meetings held at UGLE in Great Queen Street and the 1,500 seat grand temple is nearly full each time. After the formalities have been dispensed with, like changing this or that rule or maybe next year’s dues, it is common practice to have someone from one of the charities supported by Freemasons into the meeting explain their work. The Royal College of Surgeons is the guest this time and four young doctors who have received Research Fellowships, give us an insight into their work (if you are squeamish, you might like to skip most of this, especially the second one..)

First, is a young lady neurosurgeon who trained at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and is now based in Homerton in East London. Neurosurgery covers the brain, spine and nerves near those areas. Operations the previous week include a 14 hour one on a child with a congenital skull deformity creating a lot of pressure on the brain. Another one is a couple of hours fixing the spine of guy who had been in a motorcycle accident at the weekend. Much of their work involves treatment of people who have had strokes. Saving the best till last, all this is combined with being a mother of three and running a happy home with two dogs, three cats and quite a few other creatures.

Next is a lady who reads out a letter from a 30 year old patient suffering from Crohn’s disease where he had had a bad day. His condition means he goes to the loo 17 times a day but at least his employer is understanding here. Sometimes the equipment or attachments do not work properly and once a colleague asked What’s that funny smell? As the patient said to his doctor later, “Sometimes I wish I had cancer. At least I could tell people about it!” The unmentionable word here of course is incontinence and up to 4 per cent of the population suffer from this, resulting in many of them being a prisoner in their own homes.

Plastic surgery which in a medical context means to remould the body, is the speciality of the next speaker where life now imitates art after two face transplants in the UK. When calculating the risks (which sounds a bit like giving investment advice) the first issue is: What happens if the transplant does not work? Transplant a hand or an arm and a prosthesis can be used. If a face transplant doesn’t work……Another example here is a guy with no lower lip which had been surgically removed as part of his cancer treatment. He can only go out with his part of his face covered and not having a lower lip means he gets mouth ulcers all the time.

Urology which covers the obvious area but also the reproductive areas in men, is the speciality of the final speaker. As prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men this has some of us squirming in our seats, but as it is before lunch we are spared most of the detail. Suffice to say, lasers and freezing are two new treatments used these days as an alternative to surgery and the grants from the Anniversary Fund help with the ongoing research here.

As a postscript, we are reminded of an exhibition designed partly to dispel the myth: There are no women in Freemasonry http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Slideshow/slideshowContentFrameFragXL.jhtml?xml=/arts/slideshows/freemason/pixfreemason.xml&site=Arts

A 3 minute video/podcast guide to this site now is available under the heading Video on the right hand side of the blog under the Pages section, just a little way down. Thanks to Johnny Mindlin of Green-Shoot http://www.green-shoot.co.uk/ for his help and guidance here and to Julian Guppy of Zebtab http://www.zebtab.com/ for posting it.

On the mortgage front, a small welcome return of common sense. Alliance & Leicester will now allow brokers access to the underwriters saving us lots of time and avoiding having to deal with a call centre like many other lenders. Just to maintain the balance here though, C&G seem to be doing their best to ruin their good reputation. A client wanted to borrow over £200,000 and got a Decision in Principle (DIP) approved. His accountant confirmed the income figure and even gave a breakdown. Mortgage Offer is ready but C&G will not lend the client the Two-year Fixed 5.89 per cent product that he wants BUT he can have the more expensive 5 year products where the rates are 6.75 and 7.15 per cent! Interesting to see how this sort of shabby treatment fits in to the FSA’s Treating Customers Fairly initiative…. http://www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/Doing/Regulated/tcf/index.shtml

Finally, in my search stats I find: Do Northern Rock have obligation to release people from mortgages before tie-in period? An obligation?? Definitely not - read your mortgage offer. Has HBOS bought out TMB? No. TMB (The Mortgage Business) were always owned by BOS (Bank of Scotland) before it bought the Halifax and became HBOS - TMB quickly established itself as a leading self-cert lender. Steps to locate lost will - possible intestacy? All very well making a will but you need to leave instructions with someone you trust about where to find it. Common Law wife/husband? No such thing in law - it is just something people do, and for a nightmare true story combining both previous items http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=31 But prize for the most unusual search phrase: Feels like a lump in my wind pipe?? Please visit your doctor!

A 3 minute video/podcast guide to this site now is available under the heading Video on the right hand side of the blog under the Pages section, just a little way down. Thanks to Johnny Mindlin of Green-Shoot http://www.green-shoot.co.uk/ for his help and guidance here and to Julian Guppy of Zebtab http://www.zebtab.com/ for posting it.

It is perhaps no coincidence that as the baby boomer generation starts retiring, living standards are at their peak. In the US where you do not have to buy an annuity with your 401 (k) personal pension, people are raiding their pensions to make ends meet, even if it means paying a tax penalty http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/07/BUP1114D52.DTL On this side of the pond, Otto Thoresen, Chairman of AEGON UK who own Scottish Equitable has plans for free generic advice http://business.scotsman.com/personal-finance/The-next-wave-of-pension.4163282.jp which might be dubbed a National Wealth Service but at the risk of sounding like a tape recorder, nothing about the telephone number public sector pension bill - £1 trillion.

Rising early Friday morning, to go to my weekly networking group BRX Bond Street, two angry magpies chase off an urban fox with a lovely red coat, in the street below. This group which meets at the RAF Club in Piccadilly, has a real buzz about it now http://www.brxnet.co.uk/bondstreet/index.html and the 1:1 meetings afterwards are always interesting. Last week’s one was with Kirsty Joly http://www.perfectlytempered.com one of the UK’s 40 chocolatiers - Belgium has 2,600 of them. Perfectly Tempered was started 18 months ago after a successful City career and tempering here refers to getting the chocolate or rather blend of different kinds of chocolate to the right temperature. Customers tend to be corporate although weddings and promotional events are catered for as well. The flavours offered change according to season or what is available and company logos are quite popular - both on the packaging and chocolate itself.

At Shakespeare’s Globe in Southwark http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/ King Lear has given way to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and after spending Saturday afternoon having an almighty clearout at the office, I take a chance and see if I can get a seat or even be a groundling. With 30 minutes to spare, I take my place in the returns queue and have just been able to reading excellent reviews of King Lear when I get a middle-tier seat £24 from a party of 4 that turned out to be 3 - one guy didn’t turn up. Returns are sold for cash only by the way, but there is an HSBC cash point one minutes walk away.

As often with Shakespeare, love is the theme and this one is set in Athens although the costumes are classic Elizabethan. The starting point is a family argument where Hermia is in love with Lysander but she is engaged to Demetrius…. Invoking an old Athenian law, Hermia’s father insists she must marry him or face death. The lovers agree to meet in a wood the following evening and you have - A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There are 3 linked plots and all works out well in the end. The genius of Shakespeare here is balance - with the serious bits broken up by humour and song. Bottom & Puck are particularly amusing and the latter gives an example, of what you can do with some very crude stage effects. As I have said many times before, it doesn’t matter a bean if you have never read or studied Shakespeare - most of his Elizabethan audience wouldn’t have been able to read.

There is nothing like a hospital visit to make you count your blessings and my latest one is no exception. A lady with an adult-sized head on top of a tiny torso less than 60 cm long is chatting happily to the guy pushing her wheelchair out to her transport while she holds a cup of coffee in her hand.

At the Head & Neck unit itself in the old redbrick Rosenheim building, my fifth (I’m losing count) post-treatment session with the nasendoscope goes well. Just for a change, I am asked to breathe in through my nose, say Eeeeeeeeee then Heeeeee and puff out my cheeks, in that order. It’s all over in about a minute but I don’t feel able to watch it this time. The only current effects are less area to shave under my chin and an occasional dryness in the mouth, as some of the lower saliva glands were zapped by the radiation and will take years to recover. Beforehand in the waiting room, people with no voice box who talk to their partners in soft whispers go in to see their doctor before me and it is nice to see old friends who were having their RT last year, at the same time I was. The only reminder as I walk away is the lingering bitterness of the local anaesthetic sliding down the back of my throat.

The search statistics show the usual crop of interesting search phrases which have ended up on my site: Will MVR start being applied by insurance companies in 2008? Answer, Yes. Market Value Reductions are penalties applied by insurance companies when you take benefits before the contracted date in a with-profits fund. When stock markets are going up, these reduce or disappear and vice versa. Advising on with-profits can be a minefield for advisers and I pass my own queries onto a colleague where it is fee-based advice - see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=28 . Private on door money lenders edinburgh? Sounds like loan sharks - don’t go there. Thailand mortgages? Thai banks seem to be very conservative and will only lend up to about 60 per cent of the value. You will need to prove more than three years income sometimes - good luck. Is a nasendoscope uncomfortable or painful? see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=124 and above. As one of my clients told me in a mutual chat about cancers, “It’s amazing what you can get used to!” He had bladder cancer making me feel I got off lightly. Has a credit search been done before I get my mortgage Offer In Principle? Definitely Yes. Prize for the most unusual search phrase: Capital allowances on a hearse? Please ask your accountant.

Sunday is hot, so the thought of some nice cool German beer appeals and we pop into the Bavarian Beerhouse http://www.bavarian-beerhouse.co.uk/index.shtml?about_us near Moorfields Eye Hospital but it is fully booked for the European Championships for which England did not qualify. The decor has improved a bit since our last visit http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=130 and the Schnapps part of the menu now includes a 10 shot Journey through Life (£39.50) Porno meter and Porno half-meters? A more conventional curry wurst & chips, Bavarian Obazda salad and two beers do the job. The Obazda is delicious and is served with pretzels but being made largely from Camembert cheese, is the most calorific salad I have ever eaten - recipe here: http://www.letscookgerman.com/salads-and-snacks/mashed-cheese-obazda.html

Proving the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/05/22/sv_rahn125.xml this story might have made a better film than the fourth Indiana Jones one - a bit of fun but a bit short on ideas. The crystal skull looks awfully familiar if you have seen any of the Alien SF films. And if you want to believe something really outlandish - aliens probably exist.. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/02/scispace102.xml

But to finish on pithy note, I will leave it to cartoonist Matt http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/2091888/Matt-cartoon.html

Uberrimae fidei or utmost good faith is the guiding principle for insurance and requires the insured i.e. you, to declare all relevant information at the time the contract is started. Cynics will say this gives the insurer a way to wriggle out of the claim and unpaid insurance claims are probably the touchiest area for any Financial Adviser. Some of the cheapest contracts are actually underwritten later on at point of claim, which can perpetuate this view. It seems many do not read all the small print before signing a proposal form.

However, the principal of uberrimae fidei has become slightly outmoded with many disputes being settled by an Ombudsman so the ABI has issued new guidelines after the Law Commission published its consultation paper in 2007. If the error or non-disclosure is innocent - claim paid in full; if it is due to negligence where customer has not been careful - proportionate benefit is paid and if the error was deliberate or he was careless, the contract can be cancelled from inception - void ab initio.

The latter reminds me of my first life insurance claim. The contract was a twin endowment policy taken out by a brother and sister to cover a mortgage - the benefit was two amounts of half the mortgage rather than a joint-policy for the whole mortgage. The sister called me to handle the claim as the brother had died. Cause of death - motor neurone disease vide Dr Stephen Hawking. At the time I had never heard of this condition but it occurred to me this was probably not some lurgi that you might have caught on holiday.

One of the questions on the proposal form was: Have you visited the doctor in the last 12 months? Answer on the form, No. As usual, the insurer checked with his GP who confirmed that the brother had been to see him 8 months previously, complaining of headaches and slurred speech - classic early symptoms. The policy was made void ab initio and premiums returned. The sister’s request for interest on them was politely but firmly refused.

Back in the land of the living, the Olympics are coming and any former swimming students of mine might like to set up their video or Sky + so that they can record some of the swimming events - there are four strokes: freestyle where people do front crawl, breast stroke, back stroke or back crawl and butterfly. For anyone wanting to improve their swimming, the technical commentary, underwater cameras and stroke analysis can be quite helpful. I was going to suggest the 1500 metre butterfly as a example of supreme of human effort but checking the swimming events on the Beijing Olympic website http://en.beijing2008.cn/cptvenues/sports/swimming/ shows no such event although I do remember watching this at the Barcelona Olympics. There is a 1,500 metre freestyle where the UK’s David Davies is hoping to improve on the Bronze medal he won at Athens. And if you want a little swimming history see http://www.times-olympics.co.uk/communities/swimming/swimmingancient.html from the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Skiving swimming on Monday, there is a fascinating programme about Queen Victoria’s Men on Channel 4 which continues to lift the veil on this distant era. http://www.channel4.com/video/brandless-catchup.jsp?vodBrand=queen-victorias-men Surprisingly, some detail that I know is left out - for example, her strict German mother kept her away from other children and made her sleep in the same bedroom which she hated. When she became Queen, one of the very first things she did was to banish her mother to another room. Albert gets a good mention of course but not his popularisation of Christmas trees and the invention of Christmas cards in the 1840s. In the 1970s when my three girls were born, I imagined myself a frightfully trendy new man who knew how to change nappies, make baby milk, cheerfully carried his offspring in a sling and was present for all the births. Prince Albert did the latter for all eight births more than a century before and one wonders what else he could have achieved had he lived longer.

Still on the subject of children, I am not sure whether Bridal Boot Camp belongs in the You Couldn’t make it up or The World has gone mad department. The thought of me or any other Dad telling his daughter to get into shape before leading her down the aisle seems bizarre. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/06/02/hbridalcamp102.xml My couturier friend Baron Pachenari confirms that brides typically lose pounds as their big day approaches. Each dress has an average of 5 fittings but the main one is left as late as possible for this reason. No sign of the credit crunch as he is busier than ever with wedding and evening dresses at his studio at St John’s Wood Roundabout.

Otherwise, it is a sad start to the week, as a story of courage comes to an end with the death at age 30 of Lorenzo Odone, the subject of the film Lorenzo’s Oil. The Daily Telegraph obituary has some interesting detail not featured in the film http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2062622/Obituary-Lorenzo-Odone.html Even more sad news next day with an obituary for Bo Diddley http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2066171/Bo-Diddley.html who was a huge influence with The Rolling Stones and The Who for example, but never spent much time in the charts.

Finally, for those with cash to invest, you might like to compare the one-year fixed rates offered by two Government-owned institutions www.nsandi.com/interest-rates/index.jsp (say, 3.90% p.a. gross) and www.northernrock.co.uk (say, 6.00% p.a. gross)

One thing that never seems to be in short supply during any crisis or when you want to get something done, is advice. First, is a link to an article about George Soros who says http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml? the current oil price is a bubble but mentions later that the current financial situation is far worse than the first oil price shock in 1973 when the oil price more than tripled and the FT - 30 Index (the FT-SE 100 was only invented in the next decade) lost three quarters of its value over 18 months. This was not long after I started my (first) career in banking and working on a stock and share desk was a very valuable experience. After that, it did not take many brain cells to see the 1987 one coming or to see that the dot.com boom would end in tears. There will be another boom probably within 10 years but don’t ask me when. If all this is too serious, cartoonist Matt manages to hit the nail on the head www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/2021895/Matt-cartoon.html

Recent training involved writing a report for a lady who had a reasonable job and standard of living but part of my work was to recommend some sort of Long-term Care protection within her disposable income. There is only one provider now of pre-funded long-term care plans where you take out the policy while you are healthy and benefit is paid according to physical or mental disability. Rates are much higher than a few years ago when there were five or more players in this market. All the other players baled out for two reasons: firstly, reinsurance costs went up 200 per cent, secondly, people applied so late in the day that it was a case of when rather than if there would be claim, which made it a loss-leader for the insurance companies concerned. Silly figures pop up again on this awful subject as the so-called Protection Gap - the amount people are not saving to cover the cost of care in old age is £2.6 trillion.

Silly figures pop up again this week on this awful subject, as the so-called Protection Gap - the amount people are not saving to cover the cost of care in old age is £2.6 Trillion.

Life goes on, and my Inbox gets the best-written Inheritance scam e-mail yet, but is let down by the Barrister David spelling his family name Emmanuel in one part of the e-mail and Emmanual in another part. Just the sort of guy who would share his client’s inheritance of £7.5 million with you. Of the two e-mail domains quoted, one is the perfectly respectable btinternet.com and the other appears to be from Norway - can’t see the word Nigeria anywhere.

Thanks to the Guardian for a monster legal case involving Scottish Widows http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/may/26/pensions.insurance where pension investments were switched out of products which gave a guaranteed rate of 7 per cent a year and which was done near the height of the above-mentioned dot.com boom.

My site statistics always fascinate me and according to my plug-in, it is Good Morning Vietnam! As usual, the USA leads the way with 11,117 pages this month followed by 1,506 from Vietnam and a measly 566 from Great Britain in 7th place. The only Vietnam connection that comes to mind is via my daughter who had a wonderful time there a few years ago when she effectively self-financed her 2 and half year grand tour around the world by teaching English, but I don’t think she left her e-mail there or mine. One of the most memorable events is their Teachers’ Day holiday in November. If you are a teacher there, this is a day when you are treated like a queen for a day as the status of teachers in Asia is much different to Europe. Whoever my readers are in Vietnam, welcome aboard.

Another visitor asks, “my endowment insurance has been paid up how long should you have to wait for the insurance company to pay out?” Answer, on the maturity date but they might pay it out now if you ask them - check for penalties here.

Prize for the most unusual phrase to end up on my site must go to: worst time for root canal treatment full moon -Words fail me.

My monthly pension surgeries throw up an interesting situation. One member of staff is 65 next month and wants to continue working. He and HR department are under the impression that he would have to leave service and return on a casual basis after taking his pension benefits. This situation which used to exist with Occupational Pensions disappeared two years ago. Taking pension benefits and continuing employment are unrelated.

There will be work for the guy to do but the staff benefit polices do not cover anyone after the age of 65. Employees are entitled to Death-in-Service benefit for example, whereby if they die while working for their employer, their beneficiaries will receive a lump-sum of a multiple of their basic salary. After his 65th birthday, it appears that this employee will not have this benefit (or the other ones) and quite a few employees want to work after this age. There seems to be an age discrimination issue here and I suggest that the employer checks this out ASAP with their employment lawyers. The answer should be interesting.

Another view on pensions is given by pensions guru Stewart Ritchie, Director of Pensions Development at AEGON Scottish Equitable. Financial Advisers are going to be busy with PADA Personal Accounts Delivery Authority http://www.padeliveryauthority.org.uk/ being given a new increased budget of £20 million - most of which has been used on external consultants. Personal Accounts are the government’s version of compulsory pensions due for introduction in 2012 but the tremors will be felt before then. The burden of this is unsurprisingly dumped on employers with fines of up to £50,000 or even up to 2 years imprisonment for non-compliance.

As usual a couple of facts stick in one’s mind: half of the people under the age of 34 who are not saving expect to have the same income in retirement, self-invested personal pensions (SIPPS) are increasing steadily and LEVEL annuity rates are the highest for over 5 years and are 10 per cent higher than 2 years ago.

The constant stream of changes is nullifying the positive side of pension simplification introduced two years ago. For a government strapped for cash, there is complete myopia where the increased cost of pensions and regulation dumped on employers will inevitably lead to a reduction in profits and the taxes these would generate, not to mention those who will not be employed at all as each job gets more expensive. Last but not least, there is the usual deafening silence on the £1 Trillion public sector pensions bill. Two million people in the last 10 years have decided enough! and emigrated http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1990807/Two-million-Britons-emigrate-in-10-years.html

As a change or perhaps a reward for my media efforts last Friday, it is a double birthday at the very trendy Strawberry Moons bar in Heddon Street, just off London’s Regent Street http://www.strawberrymoonsbar.co.uk/events/calendar/ Noise levels make conversation practically impossible but the huge number of beautiful ladies there somehow make me forget this and after watching a Rod Stewart impersonator who comes on at 10.30 pm, we pick up our stuff for Glyndebourne the following day and take our leave.

Weather reports are not encouraging but an absence from the opera for more years than I care to remember, heighten the anticipation. Set in the South Downs 54 miles south of London, Glyndebourne is away from any large towns and we get a parking space without any bother 30 minutes beforehand. People are carrying picnic hampers into the main building and are being set up in the galleries behind the seating circles.

Eugene Onegin is one of only two operas by Tchaikovsky being much better known than his other one, The Queen of Spades. Writing it nearly gave him a nervous breakdown and is based on a poem by Pushkin. Love, jealousy and especially unattainable love are the themes here and this production is a revival of an earlier one from the 1990s. It is sung in Russian but with a translation screen above the stage. Our chance to get tickets arises from a previous dress rehearsal where the conductor insisted on an extra one as one of the leading ladies didn’t know her lines….

An announcement at the start of the performance reminds us of a couple of last minute changes through illness, that this is a rehearsal and therefore some artists might prefer not to sing their lines. But the production is complete, flawless and very enjoyable. Act I second scene in Tatyana’s bedroom when she is talking about marriage to her nanny brings a lump to my throat thinking of my daughter’s wedding later this year. But my favourite scene is Lensky’s lament just before his duel with Onegin. Many others agree here as the applause he receives at the end surpasses that for the singers playing Onegin and Tatyana.

Such is the reputation of Glyndebourne that productions are usually sold out in advance making it the only financially self-sufficient opera in the UK. At the time of writing, two tickets for Eugene Onegin are available on eBay at cost £175 each, but the route for many people who want to get tickets is to join the Returns Club http://www.glyndebourne.com/tickets/returns_club/

Total performance time is 4 and half hours with a 20 minute and 85 minute interval. The latter is when the picnic hampers are fully opened and our host is able get out of his costume and pop over to visit our own picnic in the car park, for a few minutes. Cold champagne, a lovely prawn salad, the sound of baby lambs calling for their mothers in the next field and the rolling green hills make the drizzle and occasional light rain irrelevant. As a result, there is an absence of the bunfights for the best picnic spots on the lawn when the stiff upper lips of the British melt in the heat and where occasionally, emotions surpass that of the opera being performed.

Other productions this year include Bizet’s Carmen and Hansel & Gretel by Englebert Humperdinck - not the crooner Arnold George Dorsey from the 1960s by the way. These will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/

Working from home on Wednesday and the phone rings - it is the BBC. Do I advise on mortgages and investments? Yes. They are doing a feature on the merits of renting versus buying and would I like to help? Two other professionals will be involved including an estate agent. They have a lady who has sold her property and wants to know if she should buy or rent. What are the pros and cons? It depends…

Starting at the beginning, to get a mortgage you need a deposit and a job in that order. Is it a good time to sell? Market is probably at or slightly past its peak so can see no point in delaying here. The researcher and I chat for about 15 minutes - am I available to record the item Thursday or Friday? The crew and I end up in Waterloo Place near The Mall and my thirty seconds of fame is all recorded in about 10 minutes. In spite of all the doom and gloom, there is no reason to put off buying a property if you can afford it. Lender’s interest rates are coming down, there is a lot of unsold property on developers’ books and if you rent for a long time, you are probably paying off the landlord’s mortgage. The difficulty here is that deposits now need to be around 10 per cent.

The feature goes out at about 6.30 p.m. Friday after the main news but a taster is shown at lunchtime and I get three phone calls - nice to be popular but haven’t reached my Andy Warhol 15 minute quotient yet.

The week started with a blitz on pension advice at a firm of management consultants where a lot of new guys have joined and in spite of a generous benefits package, no one has given them any advice. Eight people talk to me and all goes well except for one guy who wants to borrow against the value of his pension pot. This is not possible with the type of scheme involved and switching to a self-invested scheme (similar to a 401 (k) in the US) will involve much higher charges.

No point in reinventing the wheel, so here is a link from The Scotsman on the 10 Commandments of Pension Saving http://business.scotsman.com/personal-finance/10-commandments-for-pension-saving.4071211.jp

The Friday networking group BRX Bond Street http://www.brxnet.co.uk/bondstreet/index.html has a real buzz about it now with 3 new members in as many weeks. Visitors include a lady who makes chocolate, a jeweller who does bespoke jewellery and another lady looking for water- and energy-efficient products. Another lady visitor puts out request for the ladies only - can they help a journalist friend of hers who is doing a feature on gold-digging men!

My first podcast, a guide to the site, has been recorded and will be uploaded shortly - watch this space!

Out of the blue come two tickets for Tchaikovksy’s Eugene Onegin at Glyndeburne Opera http://www.glyndebourne.com/ courtesy of a lodge member who is a professional opera singer. As it is the final dress-rehearsal, smart casual rather than evening dress is OK.

Finally, a friend from Hollywood is in town and we end up putting the world to rights in Bayswater till past midnight. His film The Listening http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427461/ is doing very well and will available on DVD in the UK 28th May.

A good weekend to you all.

With the following week full again of pension surgeries, client and professional introducer meetings, the May Bank Holiday weekend is perfectly timed. Come Saturday evening and it is high time I visited Shakespeare’s Globe but it is Hobson’s Choice of King Lear in the afternoon, same in the evening, no other productions till Tuesday at Shakespeare’s Globe when yes, it is King Lear again. Having not done this play at school or seen it, I join the queue for returns 15 minutes before the evening production starts at 7.30. The 700 £5 groundling (standing) tickets having been long sold out, only two Lower Tier tickets (£33) are finally available which I gladly accept. The programme describes King Lear as Shakespeare’s most awesome tragedy and we take our places just in time.

In the only tragedy of Shakespeare set in Great Britain, Old King Lear is tired and wants to give away his kingdom to his three daughters. The largest share will go to the daughter who shows the most love to their father and when the youngest one Cordelia declines to go along with this, she is banished and disinherited. Her perceived ingratitude, plus the behaviour of her two sisters unhinges the old king. Later he is turned out into a terrible storm by the two daughters who had previously flattered him and received their inheritances. With plenty of drama with the occasional bit of humour, this works very well as a play but any parent who decided to settle their inheritance matters this way would be asking for trouble.

In the dialogue, come phrases one has heard before: take it or leave it, more sinned against than sinning. In one of Shakespeare’s small touches of genius, the most profound words to the king come from the jester or fool “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise“.

Nostlagia and a promise take us to Cambridge the next day reminding me of what a wonderful place it was to grow up in. Most memorable this time are two pubs. Firstly, the Eagle Tavern in Benet Street with its RAF bar and famous ceiling. This is covered with writing made by cigarette lighters, candles (and occasionally lipstick) of servicemen & sweethearts from the RAF and US 8th Airforce from 1943 to 1969. Notes on the wall identify the units and some of the people who might have smoked their name or unit on the ceiling one day and never came back. If this wasn’t enough, Crick and Watson also got their idea for the structure of DNA here, for which there is a blue plaque - must look for that next time.

Down by the river, Scudamore’s are doing a brisk trade is hiring punts but we do not stay long enough to see anyone fall in. Out in the country, another nostalgic visit takes me to The Tickell Arms in Whittlesford http://www.thetickellarms.co.uk/ formerly roost of landlord Kim Tickell. What was a pub at my last visit in my student days is now an up-market restaurant and if you like a place with atmosphere, this has it in spades. Blue candles, mahogany tables, soft lighting, a large pond with two black swans, a huge wine list with helpful comments finally lead me to choose an Australian rosé from Magpie Wines called The Thief. It is Sunday evening and sadly, no food is available - only wine. My enquiry if they perhaps have any olives or snacks to help soak up the lovely wine meet with the response that they do not keep that sort of thing behind the bar.

The dictionary defines Schadenfreude as enjoyment in the discomfort of others and is something within all of us, witness the popularity of shows like Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity get me out of here! In its previous life, The Tickell Arms attracted much custom in anticipation of this, courtesy of the landlord - you just hoped it wasn’t you at the wrong end of it. On my previous visit, a young guy who was giving his partner a gentle peck on the check while they were sitting at the bar was bawled out by the landlord in his trademark knee-breeches, white stockings and silver-buckled shoes “We don’t want that sort of thing in here! If you are hungry, there is food at the end of the bar!” The pub made the national press when a sign went up No CNDers and this list of undesirables got longer and longer. Reading his obituary in The Daily Telegraph a few years ago, it made me feel that the world was a duller place without him…..or so I thought.

Back to Sunday evening and our glasses are being refilled. The bottle is kept in a cooling bucket on the bar rather than at our table and we are one of only three couples. My enquiry to the manager asking if he was around when Kim was there is met by the surprising response that he still haunts the place! It seems that the afterlife has mellowed him a bit as his two or three appearances at the end of the bar near where we were sitting, have been quite benign. We finish our bottle of The Thief, but no visitations this evening.

In the real world or perhaps I should say cyberspace, my blog stats throw up an interesting array of enquiries that have ended up at George’s Blog:

What to wear at the Reform Club? Tie and Jacket for gentlemen and probably no trousers for ladies. Some kinder London clubs may keep a bag of neckties for gentlemen who have forgotten theirs.

My Agreement in Principle (AIP) mortgage application has been referred - what happens next? It is re-examined manually as the credit score obtained from the computerised application is not enough to get a clear positive decision. Just to twist the knife in the wound of harassed home buyers, lenders are now doing a second credit search between Exchange of Contracts (when you pay a 10 per cent deposit) and Completion. In the UK (not Scotland) an offer to buy or sell a property is only legally binding after Exchange of Contracts and the balance is paid on Completion. Where the lender refuses to lend the rest of the money perhaps because some new bad data has appeared on their credit history, people can (and have) lost their deposit.

Triviality in UK pensions is another regular enquiry. If your pension funds are less than 1 per cent of the Lifetime Allowance currently £1.65 million i.e. £16,500, you can take the whole fund in cash without having to buy an annuity. 25 per cent of the fund is tax-free with the balance taxed at Emergency Income Tax Rate. A lady client asked me to calculate this for her earlier this week and the overall tax rate was 35.6 per cent for a pension fund totalling just over £8,000.

Client review meetings are always enjoyable and allow me to sign off on a positive note. Previously I have mentioned one client whose bespoke suits are now one of the goodies that you get when you buy a new Bentley http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=129 Another review meeting informs me that his own music archive Future Sound of London http://www.fsoldigital.com/ is now up and running with a nice steady month on month increase. Whoever said, good news is no news?