Another week, another George Bush moment (deja vu all over again) when I wake up on Wednesday morning. My friends in Bangkok have sent a text message to my mobile asking if I am OK after the UK earthquake? Since I have been known to sleep through thunderstorms that have had other people quaking between the sheets, my natural reaction is What earthquake? In a beautiful example of illustrating a lot of technical information simply & clearly, the Daily Telegraph has a map from US Geological Survey http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ous/STORE/X2008nyae/ciim_display.html showing the widespread effects of this calamity. The deja vu bit comes from the 7/7 suicide bombings in London when after being stuck on a train for ages, the first I knew about it was after getting off the train at Farringdon and saw a text from Bangkok on my mobile. My Thai friends had heard about it via CNN.

Another surprise is to get a call from http://www.parliamentaryprojects.com/ who are making a new programme about recruitment in the IT and financial services industry and ask about our recruitment programme for graduates? Since we do not have this, I sadly have to decline and my wish to get back on radio or even better TV, will have to wait it seems.

Keeping up the surprise element, a friend calls and tells me he needs around £5 million to buy a development project off the receivers. In an interesting example, of What goes around, comes around, he had helped them with negotiations in the early part of the project which revolved around a listed building. The next stage would have been to get the finance which could have been arranged in days, but for some reason they decided to conduct this crucial part of the process themselves. Two years later, the project is in the hands of receivers and lending criteria are much stricter. A blizzard of information starts to arrive by e-mail and along with the stuff you would expect, like copies of documents of title and the memorandum appointing the receivers, is a report on Japanese knotweed.

After the earthquake excitement in the morning and tasty tapas at http://www.iguanas.co.uk/news.asp I join a large party of lady masons at the Olivier Theatre on the South Bank to see the excellent production of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/majorbarbara All this reminds me that Shakespeare’s Globe opens with King Lear on 23rd April, the day usually remembered as his birthday http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/ Stout-hearted Englishmen will also remember this as St George’s Day, but before that of course, there is St David’s Day 1st March and St Patrick’s Day 17th March.

For some reason, odd bits of my Ghosts of the City walk the previous week http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=124 stay in my mind or dare I say, haunt me – well done Shaughan. Across the road from what is now the Old Bailey, there is a small graveyard and Watch House just opposite Barts St Bartholomew’s Hospital. The idea of the Watch House was that you kept an eye on the grave for say, 3 days to make sure it stayed buried and not dug up again. Doctors were allowed 5 bodies a year legally for research & dissection, but many more than this were needed by the keen medical students and junior doctors. Our most notorious grave robbers Burke & Hare were eventually hung for their activities but the pub where many of the financial negotiations were conducted is still there. Grave robbing was very lucrative as a really good specimen could fetch a year’s earnings say, £20. Occasionally, the likes of Burke and Hare got outdone as it was not unknown for families to dig up their own dear departed and sell the cadaver directly to the hospital which of course, helped pay for the funeral and a pretty good wake afterwards.

The week finishes at my usual Friday morning networking meeting, with a vintage presentation by the architect Simon Dickens of architects www.youmeheshe.com whose current projects include lifting the 900 ton Cutty Sark 3 metres to create a visitor centre underneath – delayed unfortunately by the recent fire there. Their attractive design for the basketball pavillion for the 2012 Olypmics sadly did not make the final 3 but their project building 26 eco-houses in Norway is well under way.

My final meeting is with accountant Mark Lee at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales just off Moorgate in the City. After having been Chairman of the ICAEW Tax Faculty, these days he advises accountants on running their own businesses www.accountantsbusinesscoach.co.uk In an interesting insight into this profession, it seems that they can sometimes be looked at as four main groups: Finders who get the business, Minders who look after the client relationship, Binders who keep the team in the office together and Grinders who do the number crunching – categories which could perhaps apply to other groups as well.

One month after my previous visit, I am back at UCH in the old redbrick Rosenheim Building just behind the brand new building on Euston Road for my scheduled nasendoscopy. The reason for the shorter interval between my sessions with “the worm” is explained by the charming lady doctor as it seems strange to be asked back after a shorter interval when everything seems to be going well. Last time I was seen by a surgeon apparently, whereas most of the other doctors who have examined me were based in the radiological department. The former like to see people more frequently whereas the latter prefer a longer interval. A compromise interval of 6 weeks is chosen for my next one.

For the examination itself, we settle down to the established routine. George sits down. The previous worm is taken away and a sterilised one is brought in on an aluminium tray. A new nozzle is selected for the nasal anaesthetic and stuck onto the little aerosol can. A couple of squirts shows it is working and I am asked, which nostril? With plenty of excitement in other areas of my life, I decide to be cautious and select my well-poked left one. Perhaps the doctor is being more cautious than I am, as I get a squirt up each one for good measure. While I am sniffing to get the anaesthetic well into my nasal passages, the wrapper comes off the tray and the wonder of the nasendoscope is shown to me again. It looks rather like a black hand torch but with an 18 inch (50 cm) black tendril on the end of it hence my nickname for it, the worm. The worm bit is about 1/8 inch (3mm) thick and there is a tiny bulbous lens on the end.

The doctor lubricates the probe with a couple of pads and spends a couple of minutes checking the focus of the ‘scope and while I am waiting in the chair, the bitterness of the nasal aneasthetic hits the back of my throat. Adjustment done, she walks over and in we go for a guided journey inside George’s head but without any running commentary like a previous examination http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=96 With hardly any prompting, I am twice asked to say, Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee to allow the lens into the voice box and see how my vocal folds are performing and confirm that the tumour has not returned. Even with her gentle touch the end of the worm touches the bottom of my larynx making me want to retch. Fortunately, she has seen enough of the inside of me and it is pulled out smoothly with a comment that the mucous on the vocal folds looks a bit sticky – a reminder to drink more water.

For a different kind of tour, I visit a new prospective client at his business premises in Central London. The appointment is scheduled for 2 p.m. and a rep from one of his suppliers is still talking to him as I arrive ten minutes early. With one customer still wandering around the large shop, our talk at the counter is quiet and very general without mentioning any figures. Financing commercial property was the original item on the agenda and when I ask if this is for buying a new shop for another branch or as an investment, the answer is either. He has a large portfolio of both residential and commercial investment properties.

There are two ways we can proceed. One way is that he sends me a copy of any lending terms he gets from his bank and I get better terms. The other way is to set up a credit line of say, £5 million and when he finds a suitable property, he pays for a survey. This involves more underwriting but enables a property investor to move quickly when the right property comes up. It is much like getting an Agreement in Principle with a lender before seeking a property. While the circumstances are not ideal, we talk long enough to establish that the next meeting will be after shop hours.

Another blindingly obvious matter here is Inheritance Tax which neither he, nor the adviser who is supposed to look after him, seem to have addressed. A classic example of the old saw, if you don’t look after your customers, somebody else will.

Two days after Valentine’s Day, I find myself at a loose end on Saturday after swimming in the afternoon and a nap. My choices are dancing, couch potato evening or maybe another walk? The previous one http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=122 around Old Kensington was great fun, so I see if there are any guided walks on a Saturday evening http://www.walks.com/Homepage/Saturday/default.aspx Faced with a choice of the pubs of Hampstead or Ghosts of the City, I select the latter turning up at St Paul’s tube station at 7.30 p.m.

On the way there, I wonder how many people would want to wander around the deserted City of London on a cold Saturday evening? Would I be the only person, as has happened to me on previous walks? But over 50 warmly wrapped people are milling around when I arrive including a couple of families with children, and after 10 minutes we are off. As with the previous walk, detailing it all would make a long blog but as usual a couple of odd things stick in one’s mind.

At The Cockpit pub just near the St. Andrew’s-by-the-Wardrobe church, our guide points out: old pub, new building next door. During the Blitz, one of the perks of being a fireman was free beer and if you had a raging fire threatening say, a block of offices with a pub next door, you can guess where much of the fire-hose water went.

Near the Old Bailey or to give it its official name the Central Criminal Court, there is: a haunted pub with a poltergeist who seems to be a bit of a practical joker and dogs for example, do not like going in there. The Courts are built on the site of the infamous Newgate prison and public hangings took place there until 1860. If you wanted a window seat, the price including the Hangman’s Breakfast was 15 guineas. Among nice people who ended up in Newgate, we are told about Amelia Dyer the last woman hanged there in 1902 – who used to look after unwanted babies. Ladies would bring their children do this kind old dear who would be given some money for their keep. However her maternal instinct was at best lacking, as she strangled most of them throwing their little bodies in a weighted sack into the Thames. Before her trial, 22 of them were recovered as evidence.

The almost 2 hour tour is conducted by Shaughan who hams it up beautifully in his ghoulish make-up and voluminous hooded black cloak. At the only remaining part of Blackfriars for example, he sings a ghost song which has been heard there, in good tune and with no accompaniment. As the City is quiet and with his resonant voice, no amplification is needed unlike Angela shepherding us round Kensington the previous busy Saturday afternoon. Some parts of the tour are really spooky so sensitive types might wish to bring a friend.

Finally, I pop into The Woodman near Highgate tube http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/59/5992/Woodman/Highgate one evening and after excellent seared pork and fresh mash, ask the pretty blonde waitress about the Grilled Kangaroo I mentioned in another blog a couple of weeks ago. This dish is popular but only appears on their menu every month or two and while very lean meat, is a bit chewy. Just as I am about to walk away, she mentions they have crocodile on their menu sometimes which is really delicious! Something for my next visit, maybe.

For a change on Saturday, I book myself on the Old Kensington Walk http://www.walks.com/Homepage/Saturday/default.aspx meeting at High Street Kensington tube. Getting off the train and finding my group is made harder by a large noisy crowd of Kiwis in funny curly wigs and tee-shirts on their regular Saturday afternoon pub-crawl around the Circle Line http://drinkclubuk.blogspot.com Apparently they do one pub at each stop.

Having all arrived, we are shepherded out across the High Street to Church Walk which seems to be a rather romantic area. From here, we are guided by Angela across Millionaires’ Row (the only place where we cannot take photos) to Kensington Palace, Princess Diana’s former residence and later to the house where Winston Churchill spent the last 20 years of his life.

Detailing it all would make a very long blog but one story from the 1960s seems to stick in my mind. Hyde Park is popular with nannies and some of them are trained at the famous Norland College http://www.norland.co.uk/ where as the saying goes, students go to learn what every mother knows. We are told of one nanny who went to sit with a group of fellow Norland graduates on a park bench where there was space at the end. No one spoke for two minutes. Then one of the nannies turned round and politely asked the new girl if she was a nanny to a titled family? The answer being negative, she was told that she would have to sit elsewhere in future! Sadly, the smart Norland uniform is rarely seen these days – mainly for security reasons.

Back in a different world of work, regular readers will know that I enjoy my pension surgeries where I am a pension GP or pension nanny maybe and that the area of employee benefits takes up an increasing part of my time. Investment Bank Goldman Sachs seems to have gone the furthest yet in pampering their employees with offers to help their staff if they want (couldn’t really say need, could we?) realignment surgery http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/02/12/ccdiary112.xml – you could not make this stuff up. In my own experience, I have only come across one case of a guy who went through with this and now has a female birth certificate. It took several days to sink in when I heard about it.

In another example of the you couldn’t make it up category, we hear that our increasingly politicised civil service has paid £2.7 million to the wrong Newcastle and that the recipient local council in Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire refuses to give it back, so it can be passed to the intended beneficiary Newcastle-on-Tyne – home of the Geordies, Newcastle Brown Ale and where sensible people wouldn’t take coals to. http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/topstories/display.var.2042676.0.confused_civil_servants_pay_2m_to_wrong_newcastle.php

Over in the City where in2 Consulting’s offices are, the Bank of England governor states the obvious in pointing out that living standards are set to fall as inflation is the highest it has been for years with fuel inflation running at 19 per cent p.a. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/14/ninflation114.xml What is not said is how much standards of living have been eroded by the many Stealth taxes introduced by this government, of which there are now 150 http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/garbagegate/item2/stealth.htm

Thursday arrives and I get a George Bush moment with a sense of deju vu all over again. A newspaper billboard tells us of a big Olympic row between the USA and China. Stephen Speilberg apparently decides he wants no more to do with what some are starting to call the Genocide Olympics. Are the USA going to boycott the Olympics like in 1980 when Russia invaded Afghanistan? No prizes for guessing the probable answer. 173 days to go from the day after Valentine’s Day.

My home post arrives between 10 and 11 a.m. so I have to wait until arriving home to see how many Valentines I have received and someone loves me it seems, as a brown jiffy bag is on the doormat. Inside is a card signed xxx and a double Michael Bublé CD. Only one lady has ever mentioned this singer to me and I know she is really keen on his music, so trying to be a good egg I leave a gushy thank you message on her voicemail. Three hours later, I get a return message basically saying, Not me Sweetie followed by a soft thud as she falls off the sofa laughing.

Still feeling too embarrassed to call up any of my dance partners and ask if they might have sent it, I will have to close and leave my warm thanks here to this lady of mystery, and with the sound of Michael’s hit Everything ringing in my ears, bid you all a fine and enjoyable weekend.

The job of Financial Adviser can feel like being a: financial G P, financial dentist, father confessor and quite often a financial or life coach. Once a relationship has been established, finding out what clients really want in life is fascinating and helping them achieve it by sorting out some of the financial issues, is very satisfying.

One area where likes and dislikes come out, is when I ask if people have any views on how or where their money is invested. Views vary enormously, even in the same family and in one memorable case where I saw two brothers in the same day, one stated that he wouldn’t want to do any investment unless it was in an ethical fund whereas his younger brother stated that his money could be invested in poison gas for all he cared!

Ethical or SRI Socially Responsible Investment funds will have positive criteria like investing in companies which are: conscientious about saving energy, good to their staff, give lots to charity for example, and negative criteria like not investing in gambling, armaments, big polluters etc. After this, it gets complicated as one ethical fund manager explained at a lunch sometime ago. On one of her several hundred company visits she and her colleagues made each year, she visited the financial director of a nursing home. Investing in such a company ought to be fairly simple you might think, since there is no issue with either of the above criteria and with an ageing population, it ought to be a fairly solid investment too – no shortage of demand. But it turned out that one of his aims was to increase his profits by reducing granny’s food budget from the fairly modest figure it already was. So here you had a SRI-qualifying investment which met the above criteria on the face of it, but as a business was not being run very ethically and no, she did not invest in that chain of nursing homes.

It turns out that some so-called SRI funds are basically closet-Tracker funds with say, the mining and tobacco companies removed – two sectors which have done very well recently. Many companies at the cutting edge of environmental and technological research are too small, under-capitalised and financially weak for any fund manager to consider investing your money in. Getting the money for a brilliant invention and moving into profit can still be very difficult – see last week’s blog http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=119

If you really want to be “green” with your money and do it yourself, then you might want to look at http://www.eiris.org/ which lists stocks which they consider suitable. A final point on investment risk here – if you are going to limit your possible investments to the few hundred sticks vetted by EIRIS, then you are pursuing a higher risk strategy than if you had the whole market of several thousand stocks to choose from.

Later in the week, there is another “rush job” as it turns out that the trust arrangements for one of the large group pension schemes we look after are getting untidy and amendments need to be made to the Trust Deed. Generally preferring to engage specialists for tricky areas, I check the Law Society website and get a long list of pension law specialists. One is a name that has given us good referrals in the past but when I phone my contact, he is slightly embarrassed and mentions that they might do international pension law but not UK pension law.

Back to the list, and I send e-mails to two other firms at about 10 minutes to 5 p.m on a Friday. A senior partner of one firm phones me 10 minutes later while the other firm sends me an e-mail at 09.55 on Tuesday inviting me to look at their website – no prizes for guessing who got the business.

For a change from the area of trust law, I visit a lady author where her accountants had introduced me to her last year. Her day job is optometrist but her passion is writing and her two books: India British-Indian campaigns in Britain… (ISBN-0-9531630-908) and India in Britain (ISBN-0-947728-031) deal with the untold story of the tremendous contribution made by the Indian community in Britain. The former has a forward by Dr L M Singhvi, High Commissioner for India and the latter forwards by Prince Charles & Mrs Indira Gandhi. It was lovely to hear about her dream of an institute dedicated to the Indian diaspora – on the lines of one in Israel http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/ggcenter/

In a week when the Busby Babes are in the news again 50 years after the infamous planecrash which killed them, my pilot genes remember that the pilot Capt. James M Thain spent a fortune trying to clear his name after a German crash enquiry blamed the crash on pilot error. It seems political pressures made him the fall guy until he was cleared in 1969 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/manchester_united/article3279019.ece

My diary is slightly quieter now after a whirlwind of lodge meetings and my being installed Master of Neptune Lodge No.22 where our most famous member was Capt Matthew Webb, the first person to swim the English Channel in 1875. My old school chum Roger and an 11-strong delegation from Neptune Lodge No.5150 in Hampshire, make a very special evening, unforgettable. Their large cheque presented to me after being installed in the chair will go to my nominated charity Salvation Army Family Tracing Service – and this link http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=10 will show you a moving example of their good work. Event planning now falls to me and a social one in May where I hope some lady masons can attend, is on the agenda.

As another indication of my recovery from my throat cancer and the RT last year, Sunday finds me able to do 90 minutes of lessons followed by 2 and half hours of tango with Alan & Ros at Wessex House, St John’s Hill, Clapham Junction on Sunday afternoon (starts 2pm). As ever, Alan’s wonderful mixture of: traditional, pugliese, tango waltzes, piazzolla, milongas and tango nuevo keep us on our feet most of the time. The only casualty seems to be my knees. Walking up and down stairs is slightly uncomfortable afterwards, as they do not seem to like shoes with heels, even if they are specially made men’s tango shoes – looks like another item for eBay.

Wishing you all a good – and restful weekend…

The week kicks off to a serious start with care for the elderly on the agenda. The lack of consistency between different councils and even sometimes even within the same council is highlighted in the report of the Care watchdog http://www.csci.org.uk/about_us/news/state_of_social_care_2007_ne-1.aspx The Government’s response unsurprisingly is another review – 10 years after the Royal Commission into Long Term Care which recommended free care for just about everyone and which was unsurprisingly rejected as too expensive.

Anyone worried about this issue for themselves or a relative, could start with a Care Map ttp://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/careintheuk/map.shtml and a Care Calculator http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/careintheuk/calculator.shtml – thanks to Legal Support Services for highlighting these. If this wealth of information leads you to the conclusion that you might need a solicitor, for example, to argue with a council that you feel ought to be providing care, then someone with experience in the area would be a good start http://www.solicitorsfortheelderly.com/public/index.php

An often overlooked alternative to putting grandma or uncle in a nursing home is to have them cared for in their own home (domiciliary care) and alter the property so a carer can live in with them, for example. This avoids the trauma of selling their home where their family may well have grown up and which will have happy memories for them, not mention staying in an area they are familiar with and where they have neighbours and friends. If they have a reasonable size house, the cost of care and alterations might be fundable via equity release, which will also reduce the Inheritance Tax bill or perhaps eliminate it completely. My friend Andrew Cowan of Caring & Sharing whose agency specialises in this type of arrangement contacts me as he is conducting a survey of carers in North London http://www.caringandsharing.info/ for which he has obtained Government funding.

Wednesday finds me back at my favourite networking group 3Cs where four speakers including Tony Charles and Shane Lake of Hungryhouse a service for helping you to source take away food, spoke of their experiences after their November appearance on Dragons’ Den http://www.3cscommunity.com/Next_Meeting_41.asp Applications for this programme are now done on-line, so any budding entrepreneurs or inventors click here http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/dragonsden/apply/ifluploader

Coincidently, the previous week, I had spoken to James Burnham of Nova-Flo the man who famously turned them down and was the subject of a previous blog http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=59 After obtaining the funding and being ready to go, the whole product had to be completely redesigned so it could be used in the huge USA market. The otherwise perfectly suitable plastic would have gone brittle over time due to the higher chlorine levels there, with potentially disastrous consequences. The redesign took 18 months, needed extra funding and changed the company from an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) into a sales organisation where the price is much higher than originally envisaged. But it should still be a very worthwhile investment for hotels and property managers, the new target customers.

It also shows how high risk investing in business start-ups can be even where the idea is simple, scalable and funding is not a problem. Investing in start-ups is typically limited to people who can show they fall into the sophisticated investors category and this type of investment is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Staying on the subject of finance, Alastair Darling’s first Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer will delivered on Wednesday 12th March.

Jamie Denham of Sliced Bread Animation has an interesting announcement at my Friday morning networking group BRX Bond Street http://www.brxnet.co.uk/bondstreet/index.html where he announces that his game for mobile phones commissioned sometime ago by Ogilvy Interactive, has finally gone live. If you fancy a diversion on your journey home text WILDBEAN to 81707 – cost 25p.

Finally, any remaining doubts about my rather varied diet in Thailand evaporate, when I see Grilled Kangaroo written on the menu board at The Woodman pub near Highgate Underground http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/59/5992/Woodman/Highgate Hope it has more flavour than ostrich.

Bon Apetit!