After unpacking my life out of boxes in my move to Muswell Hill, I can think about work again

* A mortgage broker is fined £17,000 for cold calling. The fine would have been higher but the firm decided to settle early in the FSA investigation. Nearly all the Payment Protection Insurance sales were single premium rather than cheaper regular premium alternatives. I have previously written about this http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=65

* The latest estimate for the cost of Public Sector pensions is £960 billion according to the Daily Telegraph. This is £960,000 million or almost £1 trillion. When I was at school I had never heard of one. Hope today’s generation are being taught what these telephone numbers mean.

* The One Account finally issue a mortgage offer which could be just enough to hold a chain together. The case was basically quite straight forward as the client has good income, but it took a long time for the underwriting to be completed as odd little bits of information were missing. As a general principle, it is always worth keeping bank statements, salary slips and other evidence or correspondence relating to income, if you are going to need a mortgage – it surprising how many people throw these things away.
More time was lost as the private valuation that the client did was of no use as the surveyors concerned were not on the lender’s panel. To save time, I suggest that the mortgage offer is faxed to the client’s solictor’s office so he can sign it there.

N.B. I will be away on holiday from 17th December 2006 until 10th January 2007.

Some tips if you are considering swimming lessons for your children – or maybe yourself?:

* It is helpful if the children can touch the bottom, even if only with their toes.
* Arm bands can be very useful for getting the idea of kicking and paddling. Avoid swimming rings which go round a child’s waist – it is too easy for the child to slip through when you glance away for a second.
* Some children (and adults) are very sensitive to being splashed in the face by other swimmers. Get over this gradually when bathing or showering them by running the shower water over their face so it does not bother them.
* Some children will benefit from individual lessons but sometimes they will actually do better in a group – children can be very competitive and if one sees that another can do something then they will really try to do it too. You do not know which approach works best until you try.
For adults, I would suggest individual lessons.
* Taking them swimming yourself can be very helpful but it is best to try and withdraw a bit when they are in a lesson. If the parents are watching, I usually try to get them to wave to mum or dad when I am taking them up and down the pool.
* Being a parent and learning to swim is not about democracy.
If they play up at the side of the pool refusing to get in, hand them over to the teacher and get them into the water. Then back away and let the teacher get on with the lesson. Children who have practically been in tears at the side of the pool at the start of the lesson, usually change within seconds in the water and think it is a huge joke. Children can be very good actors. I particularly remember one little girl of 5 who gave an Oscar-winning performance like this every week through the term, but did her 10 metre badge by the end of it.
* Stating the obvious, if your children have a temperature (a real one – not a pretend one) do not send them swimming.
* There are no magic recipes for learning to swim – it is largely about practise. Children whose parents who swim with them, progress much faster than those who don’t. It is wonderful quality time with your children.
* Keeping a balance between giving my pupils a rest and keeping them warm is the most difficult balancing act I face every week. Not a problem if the water is warm, but sometimes it isn’t and I occasionally have to call the parents over when I feel they have had enough.
* Children generally learn faster than adults but adults’ motivation is usually stronger. I particularly admire adults who pluck up the courage to take lessons and deal with whatever nightmare put them off swimming – maybe decades ago.
* Try and keep a record of swimming competitions on a spare tape or disc and watch these regularly. The technical commentary with cameras showing the strokes under water, can be very useful for picking up the finer points of a particular stroke.
* If you want a closer look, come to the ULU Pool in Malet Street, WC1E 7HY – Saturdays and Sunday mornings – contact Peter Cooper (020) 8349 1844. N.B. Classes in term time only.

* Bank Rate moves to 5 per cent – just in time to spoil Christmas.

* My mortgage clients who were recommended by their accountant in late September, complete on Monday.

* Another mortgage client gets his offer two weeks before going on holiday – he is buying from his landlord at a small discount.

* An accountant has a client who wants to do a property purchase via a SIPPS which will be fee-based advice.

* A freelance web designer contacts me after two years and wants to do a Right-to-Buy mortgage.

* I almost get caught in a scam. As I am moving to a smaller property, I go to www.gumtree.com to sell a surplus bed and upload a couple of pictures of it. Soon I get e-mails from a “Dr Larry Spencer” who is apparently based in the USA, moving here and very keen. We agree on a price. It seems a bit strange that this American does not want the money via Pay Pal, for example. He has not seen the bed and the promised cheque arrives in the post for much more than the asking price. I am given an address in Nigeria to send the surplus money to.

I mention that I am not going to post any money before the cheque clears which my bank tells me will take 3 working days. The instructions are to draw the money out in cash and take it to a Western Union agent. Can’t I do it on-line, I ask again? Yes I can send it on-line he says, via Western Union but fortunately they do not do on-line transfers to Nigeria. They also have a low-limit on on-line transfers for the first 3 months.
Then I start to get a barrage of phone calls and e-mails asking when the money will be sent. To get them off my back, I finally decide to go down to my bank and draw out some of the money.

The maximum cash point limit at my bank is £300 and the one day over the counter limit is £500 so the maximum I can send is £800. The cashpoints give me a polite message “Unable to Comply with your Request” and the lady at the counter says my account “has a indicator” on it meaning it has been stopped. A clerk tells me that the cheque I paid in is counterfeit. I sign a disclaimer explaining the background to the case and fax and e-mail everything over to them.

Fortunately, I do not lose any goods or cash but people who do actually send money are fully liable. Surprisingly, my bank tells me that the Police are not really interested in pursuing criminals like this even though in this case, they forgot to hide their numbers on some of their calls!
This scam is very widespread and even has a name “419″. If you do a Google search with “419 fraud” you will get a lot of info. My account is finally “unstopped” after 3 days. Dr Spencer gets angry in his e-mails and his most recent one has the heading “I WILL CALL THE CORPS ON YOU………………” (sic)

* My next life insurance claim was many years later. I arranged a mortgage for a first-time buyer client who had a very interesting profession – he was a genealogist. His job was to trace beneficiaries of people who had died and not made a valid will.
I have previously written about wills http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=31

As well as the mortgage, I also arranged Critical Illness Cover – just enough to cover the loan.
The mortgage completed and he moved away to his new home. Follow up letters and phone messages met with no response.

Quite by chance, one of the admin girls in the office mentioned that the policy had been cancelled. I called the insurer and they confirmed that they had paid out the sum-assured sometime previously.
He is still working at his profession, but has never replied to any communications from me so I have closed the file.

My previous swimming blog http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=67 mentions that I learned to swim breast stroke first. Having been a member of a Masters’ (i.e. people over 25) swimming club for 17 years now, I hardly ever teach the stroke since I am invariably given complete beginners to teach and front crawl is much easier to start with. The age range is typically 4 – 8 years old and I am in the water with them.

It all starts with the front crawl kick - a simple up and down kick with straight legs which should create a lot of bubbles if done properly. This can be done holding on to the side of the pool or holding onto a swimming float. Sounds easy but can take months for some children and adults to get right.

Next comes the arm stroke which will start as doggy paddle and progress into front crawl where the arms are out of the water when reaching forward after the arm pull when the kick is strong enough.

Finally, comes the breathing which inevitably means starting from first principles again. It is possible to swim front crawl with the head out of the water but this is very hard work. Water polo swimmers do this when they dribble the ball, for example, but then to play water polo one has to be a very strong swimmer and very fit. One of Harry’s favourite excercises to get us to kick and pull hard was what he called “scooter”. This was a whole length of the pool with the head up out of the water looking forward and was really tiring. Sometimes if he thought we were being lazy, he would make us do it twice!

By far the most efficient way to swim front crawl is when you are flat in the water and turn your the head to the side to breathe. Easier said than done and it usually takes a lot of practise.