BACK TO THE BLACK 2

In my last post I said I had decided to write a book about my debt experience and what I had learned from it; and that I had decided to self-publish, first as an e-book.

I’ll be blogging about the topic too. One of the obvious advantages of this form of publishing is its immediacy and flexibility and the way one can link to other sources of information. Thus I’ll certainly aim to signpost people who want advice on debt problems, to helpful websites and blogs. Here are two absolute “musts”.

1. Martin Lewis’s massive site is always worth looking at, especially his “Debt-free wannabe” section: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?f=76

2. The Motley Fool website is another well-known resource for financial advice of all kinds and they have a “Dealing with Debt” stream among their discussion boards: http://boards.fool.co.uk/Messages.asp?bid=50079

BACK TO THE BLACK

A few years ago I hit a financial crisis. I had a business which, after five very promising years, had begun to stagnate. I had turned a blind eye to the problem and came very close to bankruptcy. With the help and support of friends and of a few professionals (one of whom happened also to be a friend) I was able to avoid that, and eventually came through the experience without permanent scars to my spirit or credit rating.

Later, I decided to write a book about the experience and what I had learned from it. My book would be written from the perspective of someone who had been there, had the problem and found a way out of it.

After spending a lot of time over the past two years trying to get a deal with mainstream publishing houses, I have now decided to self-publish the book. It will be available first as an e-book; later, depending on demand, as a paperback and an audiobook.

The e-book will be available early in the New Year. Its working title is “Back to the black: how to become debt-free and stay that way.” If you’d like to be advised by e-mail when it’s available, please post a response on this blog.

RIP JONATHAN DELL

A friend died at the weekend. His name was Jonathan Dell and he had been in the restaurant business for many years, notably as a director of Pizza Express and then in his own businesses. He also reinvented himself several times in recent years by developing his creative talents, including photography and copywriting.

If you’ve never heard of this man you may wonder why I’m blogging about him. The reason is this. Jonathan died of a brain tumour at the age of 51. Before that he had been living with multiple sclerosis, ever since I first met him; first the relapsing-remitting type, then the secondary progressive type. He went from being the restless entrepreneur - driving all over the country to manage his restaurants and look for new business opportunities – to being a train or taxi passenger, but still striving. Then he could walk with the aid of a stick but preferred to avoid it. Then he needed two sticks, then eventually a wheelchair. I remember he invited me for tea at Brown’s Hotel a year or two back; at that time he could walk with the aid of two sticks but wanted to get from our table to his taxi without them. I was impressed with how the staff was solicitous and caring but did not try to interfere, even though the 10-yard journey took us about 10 minutes.

He tried all kinds of new treatments, of course; volunteering for trials of new drugs and technologies, including a drug based on serum from goats’ blood and later an electrical impulse system called FES, (functional electrical stimulation) to boost the failing nerves in his legs. Never giving up, always striving.

Earlier this year Jonathan went downhill; it was first thought it was the MS getting even worse but then a brain tumour was diagnosed; the ultimate obscenity on top of what he had already been through. By the time he died at the weekend, he had had enough, in the words of his partner Sarah who has cared for him these past few difficult years.

Now here’s the point; if you didn’t know Jonathan you might have wondered when I was getting to it. Jonathan Dell had more health issues (to use the modern euphemism) than any 10 or 20 or 50 average people, but he made light of them. Yes, he would complain if he thought that health professionals had let him down, but that was simply because he had been in business all his life and liked to get things right; he would complain just as effectively and articulately if he got bad service in a restaurant or shop and he didn’t believe in the usual British way of pretending that everything is acceptable, as in: “How’s the food?” “Lovely, thanks!” However, he never – at least never in my hearing – complained about his condition. I never heard him say or imply “why me?” Strangely enough, when I worked for The Stroke Association and met many stroke survivors, I found the same thing: the people with the real problems complain the least.

I’ll try to remember that, next time I have a cold. Rest in peace, Jonathan.

THEATRE RACONTEURS, BRISTOL

I've been lucky enough to be cast in a production of Richard III by Theatre Raconteurs. I'm the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely as well as Lord Herbert (but all at different times in the play, I was relieved to hear). We open on 24 November at the Alma Tavern Theatre, Alma Vale, Clifton, Bristol and close 5 December.

If you want to find out about Theatre Raconteurs ("new professional theatre company based in Bristol," it says here) and our production of Richard III, check out the company's Facebook page: enter "Theatreraconteurs" in the search box, then check "events".

ROTARY CLUB OF BRISTOL (UK) - RETIREMENT PLANNING

I spoke at the Rotary Club of Bristol on Monday, where my intended topic was “Retirement planning: it’s not about the money.” I already knew that many Rotarians are already retired but, when I arrived, the affable Speaker’s Friend, John Bedford, told me that retirees were in fact in the vast majority in this particular Club, so the intended topic was a little too late for most of them.

I thus immediately dropped the word “planning” from my topic; moreover I asked the assembled members (a healthy turnout) to indulge me by being guinea-pigs, i.e. a test audience for my plans to write a series of articles, and maybe a book, on the topic. They seemed happy to do that; however my “memo to self”, à la Bridget Jones, is to note that lunchtime Rotary clubs tend to attract retired members, whereas Rotarians still working tend to favour breakfast and evening clubs, provided there is a choice. In Bristol there is indeed such a choice, as there are nine clubs already, with another one about to start.

I prefaced my remarks by quoting the Canadian retirement coach who told me: “in my experience, the people who are happiest in retirement are not the ones with the most money. They are the ones with a plan.”

What kind of plan? A plan that deals with how to spend all that time.

I had had a plan of sorts since my forties – that plan started from the viewpoint of never wanting to retire totally. Noel Coward said “Work is more fun than fun”; at the very least, a balance between work and fun seemed to me a desirable element of a happy life and one that should not be discarded at age 65. I also knew that going from 100% employment to zero overnight can, and does, kill many people. Of course the work / fun balance can shift as one gets older but it should still be there, I decided. As for what is meant by “work” in this context, that’s the interesting question.

In 2002 women then aged 65 could expect to live to the age of 84: for men it was 81. (ONS) Naturally this was a UK average; the figures increase markedly for those who are well educated and / or live in a good environment. So retirement lasts about 20 years on average but most people spend more time planning for a summer holiday than they do for these 20 years.

In the normal course of events, 250,000 people retire in the UK every year. To this figure should be added the increasing numbers who, in today’s economic climate, face involuntary retirement either through being persuaded to take early retirement or facing redundancy and then finding it impossible to get another job.

What should the plan entail? In a research project called “Retire 200”, 100 men and 100 women, all retired or soon-to-retire, were interviewed at length about their experiences and expectations. Here’s their consensus as to the elements of a happy retirement.

1. Being able to choose when to retire. (not a given these days)

2. To retire early enough: they recommended not above 55.

3. Financial independence – whatever that means for you.

4. “Purposeful” (sic) activities for at least 5 hours per week. Most retired Rotarians would probably laugh at such a small number.

5. Someone to rely on for emotional support.

6. Proactive health management.

7. Having a plan covering both the financial and lifestyle aspects.

8. Having received pre-retirement advice and education.

The armoury of many life coaches contains a set of questions called “Five Minutes that could Change your Life”, coined by US author Brian Tracy. The first question is “if you won a million on the lottery (or 10 million or whatever figure represents total financial independence for you) how would it change your life? Where would you live, what would you do, with whom, etc?” The power of this question is that it reveals the things that are important to you, or would be if financial constraints were removed, even mentally. However, many of those things that are important do not depend on millions to get started.

An accompanying question is “if you discovered that you would live only 6 months more – in perfect health – how would you spend that time?” Both questions are effective ways to challenge what are our priorities; or values, if you like.

According to Charles Handy, the tendency for jobs in organisations to go to younger people – ageism cannot be rooted out by legislation – should not be a source of complaint; where else are they to get their experience? Our response as we grow older should be to develop a “portfolio” of skills and talents that we can provide to a variety of “clients”. Some of those activities may be rewarded financially, some just by satisfaction, but we should not distinguish between paid and unpaid activities. It’s all work, says Handy.

Considering this concept, (“it’s all work”) a friend of mine says she would never call gardening “work”. Why not? Because she loves it. But who says you have to hate your work? Or because it’s not paid? The distinction is unnecessary, as Handy might say. After all, an unpaid labour of love might be developed into a paid activity, if so desired. “It’s all work”.

I concluded by saying that I had traded a business card describing myself in my former role as a managing director in the chemical industry for one that now reads “actor & voice-over; author; radio presenter; speaker” and considered myself a most fortunate person.

John Bedford discharged his duties as Speaker’s Friend by proposing a most charming vote of thanks. Even if it’s his custom to compliment all speakers as a matter of course, it was encouraging to hear him conclude, “You should write the book.”

Feedback on this post would be welcomed. If you are a retiree or are in the process of planning your retirement, do you have any commnets on any of the above?

A CARING HERO

The lead news item on my radio (BBC Radio 4) this morning was the fact that there has been a significant rise in the number of Down's Syndrome pregnancies in the UK. Some experts were attributing the rise to the fact that many women are starting families later, when the risk increases.

Coincidentally - at least I assume so, because it must have been planned some time ago - the news was followed by an edition of "The Choice" - a series where Michael Buerk interviews people who have faced difficult choices in the lives. The subject today was Alex Bell, who has adopted large numbers of young people with severe disabilities, many of them Down's Syndrome sufferers.

I describe Alex Bell as a hero (years ago I would have said heroine, actress, etc, but that would be showing my age) because she faced horrendous difficulties with all these children, and showed remarkable fortitude and cheerfulness in coping with it all. Moreover she started down her chosen road from a very early age, in her teens in fact.

Normally I admire Buerk's persistent but gentle interviewing style but this time I found it irritating. For much of the time his questions seemed to indicate that he thought Alex was misguided or, at the very least, an obsessive. To her credit she answered all the questions, even those that verged on the patronising, with the same good humour she must have shown a million times with her severely disabled charges.

Don't take my word for it: listen to the programme at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nf1bv/The_Choice_27_10_2009/

A CARING HERO

MORE REAL ALE!

Well, more on the subject, anyway.

Further to my last posting, I read a story in yesterday's Independent, entitled "We'll drink to that: pubs hail the return of real ale." I had written that real ale sales were reported as holding up better than "cheap lagers". The latter will apparently suffer further in the long-predicted event of a Tory victory, because of today's announcement of plans to appply minumum pricing.

The Indy's real ale story was simply that 2.3 million more pints were sunk in the first half of this year than the same period; the last time that full-year consumption rose was in 1982, so if the rise is maintained that's going to be good news for the traditional brewers, the number of which is growing.

That volume increase, by the way, is 1%:in the current climate that's a healthy rise.

One oddity: the last line of the report states that Britain's beer market is worth £18.3 bn; of that real ale represents very much the minority, at £2bn. However, elsewhere in the piece a large graphic shows the the number of pints of real ale sunk last year as 237 million. Unless I'm missing something, that values the wonderful stuff at £8.44 / pint. If I were a brewer, I'd say it's worth that much, but round here I pay an average of £3 a pint. I'm surprised that nobody at the Indy noticed the discrepancy.

BEER SALES "SLUMP"?

Beer sales in the UK are experiencing a “slump”, according to a piece I saw in the media. The drop was 8% year-on-year. Is this really a slump? Considering how much other business sectors have been affected in this recession, I’d say that only an 8% fall means that beer is still a pretty important part of the British way of life.

The story claimed that the "slump" was partly due to an excise duty increase earlier this year, which put an extra 1p on a pint of beer. Shock, horror! When most pubs round here charge an average of £3 a pint, an extra penny is 0.3%. Who would seriously say that they gave up or reduced beer drinking based on a 0.3% increase? Does the brewers’ trade association or the media think we are stupid? There are many other factors; the extra penny can’t be that important.

Since reading that story I heard from a friend, whose work involves scouring the various business pages, a fact that this media story didn’t include, i.e. that the “slump” has mostly been in cheap lagers rather than ales. I seem to recall that we were told, not long ago, that it’s lager that is responsible for the majority of binge-drinking, with its concomitant effect on casual violence. Isn't one of our leading brands of lager widely referred to as "the wife-beater"? Maybe this “slump” could be good news from a health and a public order viewpoint. Not good news, I realise, if you own or run a pub and your business's viability depends on the volume of lager sold. You don't have to go far to see pubs that have closed down due to changes in drinking habits and the smoking ban.

I should, finally, declare an interest. I like beer as much as the next man or woman. Although I have spent enough time in Scandinavia and Germany to appreciate lagers of various kinds, to my taste real ale is the real thing. So if this latest piece of news could be described as good (or at least less bad) news for brewers of traditional ales, and bad news for binge-drinking, with its effects on health and on the depressing incidence of domestic and other violence every Friday and Saturday night, then I’ll drink to that. Or, to quote Benjamin Franklin: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy". Happy, please, not in prison or hospital.

BBC's "PM" news magazine under fire

Listening to “Points of View” on BBC Radio 4 today, I was interested to hear that the BBC had received complaints that its “PM” programme is “dumbing down”. Admittedly the complainants, being good Radio 4 listeners, (a club of which I count myself a member) didn’t stoop to the over-used dumbing-down cliché. They were more specific. The programme, they said, seemed to be straying from its mission statement; sorry, from its purpose. The programme was "becoming light entertainment".

“Coverage and analysis of the day's news” is the one-line definition of “PM”; this on the BBC’s website, no less. But these correspondents / complainants were objecting to recent trivialising and unnecessarily jokey initiatives: for example sexing up the programme’s weather bulletins by adding sound-effects; and, crucially, asking listeners for ideas on how to make those same weather bulletins more memorable. In general, the charge was that the BBC was becoming more interested in what “PM’s” listeners and bloggers had to say about stories than the views of their own journalists. Didn’t the BBC have enough expert journalists to cover the stories?

I was pleased to hear this: I had noticed these trends myself and found them irritating at best, so it was good to know I was not alone. But insult was added to injury when “Points of View” wheeled out the producer of “PM” to answer the charges. Her defence, IMHO, did not really take the complaints seriously; in fact I detected a whiff of complacency. She insisted that by canvassing and broadcasting listeners’ opinions, they were expanding the range of expertise they could call on. My view on that is that yes, some of the listeners may well be expert on some topics, but by no means all of them. Who should moderate the inputs to decide which are grounded in sufficient competence to be broadcast? A BBC journalist specialising in the topic, perhaps? Then let’s hear the journalist’s views instead.

As for the memorability of weather bulletins: leaving aside the question of whether the weather (sorry!) needs to be given such prominence in a news programme (when the BBC already has plenty of dedicated weather bulletins elsewhere) the producer’s defence of the puerile stunts that had been tried, was centred on the fact that this topic had promoted lots of e-mails. My own view anyway is that the necessarily brief weather bulletins in this kind of programme are so general as to be useless in a country that's famous for local variations. They can't even tell us what the weather is doing now, never mind what will happen in the future: it's bizarre to hear a presenter say, "today, it will be dry everywhere" while outside my window the rain is pouring down.

The final complaint levelled was that incidental music was creeping into what was previously an all-speech programme in a virtually all-speech channel. The offender was the introductory music to the stock exchange report “Up-shares down-shares”. A listener who was unemployed thought that the introduction of music and in fact the overall style of the piece was inappropriately jokey when talking of such serious matters as the state of the economy, especially when most of such news is uniformly bad these days. This criticism was quickly brushed off by the producer on the grounds, as far as I could tell, that they had had an e-mail (maybe more than one but I didn’t hear it) from a listener who loved the music. Why should that apparently random listener’s views matter more than those of the listener who’d lost his job and was offended by the trivialisation?

Written in sorrow more than anger, by a devotee of Radio 4.

BREAKING NEWS: RAIL TRAVELLERS PREFER TRAINS TO BUSES!

Earlier this year, train operating companies (TOCs) in the UK were asked by Network Rail, who own the track and signalling systems, to sign an undertaking that they will use “rail replacement services” only as a last resort. That’s because their research has shown that rail passengers (sorry, customers; we are all customers now), having paid for a rail ticket, prefer to travel on a train and not on a rail replacement service. Did they need to commission research to come to that conclusion?

For those of you who have never had the doubtful pleasure of using them, “rail replacement service” is another way of saying "bus". This euphemism is widely used by train operating companies in the UK.

The issue is not new. A report said that Network Rail “recognises the need for a 7-day railway”. That was in August 2007. What progress have we made since then? See http://www.firstclasspartnerships.com/opinion.php?id=6

My impression is that many other European rail systems handle this problem far better, by doing more of the necessary maintenance work overnight. That’s referred to in the link above.

Going back to the original report, a question that occurs to me is: how do you define “last resort”? If a TOC wants to use a bus – sorry, rail replacement service – they could, of course, find a reason, or excuse, and call it a “last resort.” The BBC report said that Virgin Trains, for example, can sometimes run replacement trains over the parallel Chiltern Railways track between London and Birmingham when their normal route is blocked by engineering work, but they don’t like to do it because (a) their drivers are not familiar with the route, and (b) the cost is higher than using buses. Would either of those reasons qualify as a "last resort"?

I avoid travelling by train on Sundays and will continue to do so until we really do have a "7-day railway".

BRITISH RAIL FARES: SKY-HIGH OR COSTING THE EARTH?

We all seem to agree that improving public transport has benefits for the environment, as well as for quality of life. Well, public transport in the UK is improving, slightly, and not before time. However, the costs are still ridiculously high by international standards, despite what we are told by politicians and the train companies. Earlier this year a damning report by the Passenger Focus group – the first-ever of its kind – compared rail fares in the UK with the rest of Europe. For average commuter journeys (11 – 25 miles) into the respective capital cities, UK fares are (a) the highest in Europe, (b) twice as high as the second highest, France, and (c) four times as high as Italy. Inter-city fares compared equally badly; 87% higher than in Germany; three times those in the Netherlands.
Transport commentator Christian Wolmar says that despite these high fares (and despite having privatised our rail system so as to hand regional monopolies to a small number of operating companies) we are still subsidising rail to a large extent. To what extent, I’d love to know. I’ve heard it said that subsidies are higher than when the rail system was nationally owned in the UK. That can’t be true, can it? If you want to see the BBC’s report on the report, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7897903.stm

When representatives of train operating companies are interviewed about high fares, they always say that if you book early, you can get really good deals. Well, “a chance would be a fine thing”, as the saying goes. Next week I’m heading from Bristol, where I live, to Harrogate in Yorkshire; to visit old friends and also to see my daughter singing in cabaret (had to get that in!) at a hotel in the Dales. Despite checking online several times, well in advance, I have found none of these elusive so-called advance tickets available. Thus I’ll have to pay the “turn up and go” fare. That’s £58 return, based on (a) my senior card, (b) off-peak travel, and (c) avoiding London. If I’d needed to travel before 9 a.m., go via London and been a couple of years younger, it would have been £167. The distance is 224 miles each way … “do the math!” as they say in America.

My fare information source, by the way, was the well-known website branded: “The Train Line: buy cheap tickets ….” Cheap tickets, huh? What would qualify as expensive? I wonder if there is another website that offers “expensive tickets ... because you’re worth it.” Those fares would be truly eye-watering.

This was not an isolated case: in the past few months I have made also made longish journeys to Manchester and to Haverfordwest in West Wales. In neither case was an advance ticket available, despite trying to book at least a week in advance; the ads tell us that advance tickets are available until the day before travel.

By the way, my senior railcard costs £26 a year. That’s a good investment, because I save much more than that. However, in France and (see below) Canada, seniors get discounted travel without paying for the privilege. As I saw on a T-shirt: “I’m a senior: give me my damn discount!”

Re Canada: last week I was there for my nephew’s wedding. Coming back, I discovered that I could get to the airport by Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) subway – or underground as we’d say on this side of the pond – with a connecting shuttle bus for the last couple of miles. The service was frequent, quick, civilised. The one-way fare (one ticket, valid on subway, tram and bus, as always in Toronto) costs just $1.85 Canadian, (that’s about £1.20) for seniors, $2.85 for you youngsters. The distance is 17 miles, (27 km) which is similar to the Heathrow / London distance. Yes, I know that one can do the whole journey to Heathrow by tube, whereas in Toronto it’s tube plus shuttle-bus; but if you live in or near London, you don’t need me to tell you how the costs compare.

I also saw two safety ideas of especial interest to women passengers. Every subway platform has a Designated Waiting Area with an emergency call system, where anyone who might feel vulnerable is invited to stand. Also their buses have a “Request Stop Program,” whereby women travelling alone on a bus between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. can ask the driver to stop at any intermediate point between bus-stops.

So, on both value for money and on passenger (sorry, customer) care: Toronto Transit Commission, take a bow!

VINCE CABLE SPEAKS IN BRISTOL

One of the many advantages of living in Bristol (UK), which has been my pleasure and privilege for the last five years, is the annual Bristol Festival of Ideas. I say the “Bristol” Festival of Ideas but how many other such events are there in the UK? The only big one I’m aware of is in Cambridge, with all due respect to Sedbergh in Yorkshire. There’s also one with the same title in the north-west but that is rather different, focusing on ideas related to social issues. Where my (new) home city leads, others will surely follow, as the late great Isambard Brunel might have said two centuries ago and Bristol’s Merchant Venturers’ Society, still active after eight centuries, would surely also say.

What I do know is that if you type “Festival of Ideas” into Google, the Bristol event always heads the list. Is this because it’s the best event of its kind or because Bristol is more competent at IT, or more specifically how to appeal to search engines?

That’s enough boasting about Bristol, except to say that the last event of the main Festival of Ideas this year was a lecture by Vince Cable. This is probably the most trusted politician in Britain today and a man that even his political opponent Alan Duncan called “the Holy Grail of economic comment these days”.

In the unlikely event that you had forgotten, 'Cable's the star of Newsnight's credit-crunch discussions, the go-to guy for a sagacious economics quote for broadsheet front-page leads … ' (Guardian). He’s also 'everything a politician should be and everything most politicians are not' (Mail on Sunday) and 'a heavyweight in anybody's cabinet' (The Times)

And in the middle of the recession, we had him in Bristol! I don’t know why the venue was only 80% full, but those who stayed at home missed a lot. Economics is supposed to be “the dismal science” but dismal Vince Cable is not. Even while describing events that were, and remain, apocalyptic to the trained economist that he is, his intelligence and wit shine through, as did his insistence that “I’m not here as a party politician,” a claim he backed up by a reluctance to score blame-giving points and a tendency to give credit where it was due. Who knew politicians could do that??

But what I liked best of all was his tendency to put all the figures he mentioned in perspective; in context. Comparisons create a picture of the significance of the data in a way which can’t be done by just throwing out an impressively large number on its own, as most politicians like to do. The examples of this exemplary trait were too numerous to mention and the habit shines through Dr Cable’s new book “The Storm”. This analysis of the world financial crisis has been so comprehensively (and favourably) reviewed that I don’t have to repeat the process. Suffice it to say that my gang were unanimously of the view they had been at a memorable event.

Jonathan Ross, health campaigner?

At the weekend I saw a new side of the ubiquitous Jonathan Ross. Witty? Rude? Intelligent? Overpaid? These are frequently remarked-on aspects of Mr Ross, although some say that nowadays he shows a little more humility after his recent problems. The qualities I saw, or rather heard on 25 April, you could call humanity, empathy, genuine interest in and knowledge of larger issues than the showbiz stuff that we can all ingest and enjoy on his radio and TV shows.

What prompted this, at 11.50 on a Saturday morning on his BBC Radio 2 show, (yes, I was so impressed I even made a note of the time) was a phone call from a woman with a record request. Jonathan asked the caller what her job was; she replied that she worked in a rehabilitation hospital. He asked what kinds of patients were treated there and it turned out that many of them were stroke survivors.

Rather than wrapping the conversation up with a few banalities, as many radio presenters would have, Ross followed up with intelligent and interested questions about stroke: the work; the patients; the effects of this devastating condition; the importance of speedy diagnosis and treatment. He was clearly well aware of the recent Department of Health advertising campaign and, with his customary verbal creativity, managed to work that campaign’s “FAST” slogan into his closing comments. Full marks Jonathan Ross, for whom I have a new-found respect.

SINGING IMPROVES CHILD BEHAVIOUR

I’ve been reading a report on Arts and Health (http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_073590 ) about the health benefits of a variety of artistic activities: both for therapy and disease prevention. One of the sections talked about the benefits of singing. Stuff you already know anecdotally, if you ever sing, whether in the shower (alone or with a partner), in a choir, or even on a stage. Singing, especially with other people, makes you feel good; and this report demonstrated it can also do you good. Physical as well as psychological benefits.

Yesterday, another endorsement of this most enjoyable pastime, from a totally different source and angle. The “Thought For The Day” in BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme, started by enthusing about Venezuela’s system of youth orchestras – the best-known is the Simon Bolivar – improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan kids by teaching them to play classical music.

There are similar initiatives in the UK. Many of them are about singing rather than instrumental music; that avoids the cost of instruments. (Of course we are not such a rich country as Venezuela, are we?). The payback seems to have been fantastic. Check out the link; (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00jr4qm and go to 1 hr 49 mins)

I liked the comment of a Yorkshire primary school head teacher who reported greatly improved behaviour since class singing was prioritised. Her explanation:

“You can pay a fortune for sports equipment and coaches; one of the by-products is that the children learn to be competitive. Hire a part-time singing teacher and they learn to be cooperative.”

Toxic assets, a definition

Imagine that you are about to host a barbecue and you have lots of pork fillets to cook. However you suspect that one of them might be off. What do you do?

Throw it away? Or cook it and eat it yourself, to ensure none of your guests gets sick?

No, you throw them all in a sausage machine and make loads of sausages, so as to dilute the risk. But guess what? All your guests get sick!

How about that for a great metaphor for toxic assets? I heard it last Friday on a wonderful BBC Radio 4 programme called "More Or Less", (repeated Sunday nights) which looks at the numbers behind the news stories. In particular it tries to add some perspective and - dare I say it? - accuracy to the statistics we hear thrown around liberally but often misleadingly. The programme's presenter Tim Harford has asked listeners to send in more metaphors to describe any aspect of the current financial situation. So, all you creative folks out there, get e-mailing, via the programme's website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jnlmn.

BTW, the pork fillet metaphor was in turn quoted as being from the Today programme and was coined by the Editor of "Money Week". Apologies to all concerned if I have misquoted it.

Sisters rather than brothers make life happy?

My title is lifted word for word from a headline in today's "Independent". Only one change; I added a question mark, because I don't believe it, based solely on my own experience.

"A study has found ... " - you know it's a slow news day when that kind of first line makes it onto page 1. In the case of the Indy that's not very often, partly because their front page is in general remarkably text-free. This story only made it onto page 14, so we can thank the G20 summit for something.

The aforementioned study says that sisters spread happiness while brothers breed distress. "People who grow up with at least one sister generally turn out more balanced and happy. In contrast, having only brothers tends to have a negative effect."

Researchers tested the psychological well being of 571 people aged 17 to 25. They apparently found having a sister was associated with higher scores on a range of measures important for good mental health, .... e.g. better social support and more optimism.

Well, my researchers questioned only one person; yours truly. I have four brothers and no sisters. That isn't to say I wouldn't have liked to have a sister. In fact my sainted late mother would have loved to have had a girl, which is probably why she ended up with four boys.

However, against all the evidence of this news story, I consider myself pretty happy. In fact I'd give myself a 9, on a scale of 1 to 10. My question is this: what went wrong in my case? I think we should be told.

"The pub as musical hub" - BBC Radio Bristol at the Coronation Tap, Clifton

“Pub is the Hub” was an initiative set up in 2001 by The Prince of Wales. It encourages breweries, pub owners, licensees and local communities to work together to help retain and enhance rural pubs. The idea was that providing new services from the pub, such as a post office or a shop, either keeps an essential service in the village or brings a new one in.

My local, the Coronation Tap, could never be called a rural pub, as it is only about a mile and a half from the centre of the city of Bristol. However it could be called a village pub, as it is in the area generally called Clifton Village. “Whatever”, as they say: the principle of “pub is the hub” is fulfilled superbly by the Coronation Tap, except that it’s a musical hub.

When I first came to Bristol five years ago, I was fortunate that in my first week here a friendly local told me about the CoriTap, as it is often called. I soon discovered that Jan and Mick Gale, the licensees, had built up an enviable reputation for the quality and variety of the live music, and also for the friendliness of the pub.

Since then they have gone from strength to strength and last week I was there at an unusual time, Monday morning. The occasion: BBC Radio Bristol was broadcasting live from the pub for two hours, because the following day Jan and Mick were going to the Grosvenor House in London for the award of the “Publican” trade paper’s “UK Music Pub of the Year”. The CoriTap had made it to the last six.

One reason for this success is that it’s not just the punters that enjoy the live music sessions here. Without exception, musicians line up to describe it as their favourite venue; this despite the fact that in terms of space it’s less than ideal. Atmosphere is hard to specify, but this pub has it in spades. An appreciative clientele is another reason why Jan is constantly being approached by new acts, some from beyond our shores, that have heard about the CoriTap legend from fellow-musicians and want to come and see what all the fuss is about.

Jan and Mick didn’t win this time; I believe that we came joint second. But there is always next year. This is the first time that the pub has entered the competition, so to have reached a national shortlist at the first attempt is some achievement. I am confident, and so are all the customers and musicians who love this venue, that next year the title will come to Bristol!

http://www.thecoronationtap.com/calendar.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/hi/people_and_places/newsid_7959000/7959612.stm

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Bristol-s-CoriTap-running-UK-s-best-music-pubarticle-591011-details/article.html

Does the UK need an equivalent to Jon Stewart ? Does it already have one?

I have been reading lots lately about the way that the spoof news programme “The Daily Show” in the US has dealt with the economic meltdown, socking it not just to the banks but also some of the financial commentators, who, they allege, were complicit. I’ve also seen unexpurgated video of Jon Stewart, the show’s front man, “doing a Paxman” as we say here, on TV financial “tipster” Jim Cramer. Meaning he borrowed some of Jeremy Paxman’s relentlessness, albeit with more humour. Just go to Google and search for "Daily Show Jim Cramer".

As a result Stewart got lots of favourable comment in the British press, plus the question, “why don’t we have a British equivalent?” The coverage of the story in The Observer (London) harked back to the BBC’s “Not The Nine O’clock News” and “The Day Today”, saying these were the only examples we had of satirical news coverage; both brilliant but both many years ago. (1980s and 1990s respectively). The charge was repeated in an editorial.

I thought this was unfair, because we’ve had “Bremner, Bird & Fortune” - extremely sharp satire, whether or not you agree with its political standpoint. The fourteenth series screened in November 2008.

The Observer‘s leading article concluded, “There is no British equivalent; that’s a shame”. I don’t agree; there is a British equivalent and I for one am keen to see it back on our screens.

"If you can deal with triumph and disaster ..."

My title comes, of course, from Kipling’s “If”; the poem that for many years was voted the UK’s favourite. The rugby players of Wales & Ireland were put to that test on Saturday, after they had played out the final stage in the Six Nations tournament. In the event Ireland won, though they might have lost in the final 30 seconds had not a Wales penalty goal attempt fallen 61 inches short. “Who measured that?” I thought, on reading it in my paper. Then I remembered that by winning, Ireland had achieved the coveted “Grand Slam”, which had eluded them for 61 years, so this was a forgivable bit of poetic licence. Whether it was 61 inches or 62, it was a damn close-run thing. So the reactions of the players when interviewed after the game were a test of character, which I am glad to say they passed.

Normally I can do without the interviews of the players. They have done their talking on the pitch; it’s a rare sportsperson who can offer an instructive insight after the game; especially just a few minutes after having played 80 minutes of top-class sport. I’d rather hear the views of the studio panel of top-class and well-paid summarisers that the BBC has assembled to give an overview. But first we always have to endure ten minutes of banal questions followed by mostly (sorry, guys) anodyne replies.

I say normally … but on this occasion the players’ responses were instructive and I think they passed with flying colours. I didn’t hear all the interviews but in those I heard the Irish were gracious in victory and the Welsh gracious in defeat; both gave credit to their opponents, following traditions which I had feared had been outdated.

But my all-time favourite for grace in defeat, or at least getting a sense of proportion? Boris Becker, after winning Wimbledon in 1985 (at 17 years old, and the first unseeded player ever to do so) and winning again the following year, was then beaten in the second round in ‘87. Replying to the inevitable overblown shock-horror questions at the post-match interview, he said simply: "I lost a game of tennis; nobody died."

Who'd want to run a railway?

It’s good to have an opportunity to defend the UK’s often-criticised rail system. Did I hear you say “a rare opportunity”? Shame on you!

Last Sunday I was travelling, as I often do, from Cheltenham to Bristol Temple Meads. This time I took the first train of the day, the 09.52; I had been surprised that there wasn’t anything earlier, but as the train was half-empty, the operator would no doubt have replied that there’s no demand for an earlier train on a Sunday.

You don’t have to be a railway fan, just a traveller, to know that the franchise for cross-country routes, particularly from my home in the South-West to the North-East and Scotland, is no longer held by Virgin Cross-Country but by the imaginatively named Cross-Country Trains. You might not also know that Cross-Country Trains is / are run by Arriva.

I was chatting to the very helpful guy running the shop (probably his title was Retail Manager or something like it.) I was keen to found out what differences the franchise change had made (I hadn’t observed too many, apart from a new and rather dull external colour scheme on the trains which they had taken over from Virgin) and he was very forthcoming. Yes, there was a definite improvement in the new company as seen from the viewpoint of the employees, all of who had transferred across from Virgin, like the trains.

I told Paul (not his real name) that my only beef about the change was that it had been reported that the main reason Virgin lost the franchise to Arriva (several years earlier than it was due to expire) was because of frequent complaints of overcrowding, i.e. insufficient capacity, but I had seen little change in that regard.

Paul however said that progress is being made and Arriva had just bought five renovated “HST sets”, i.e. the so-called High-Speed Trains. They’re widely used elsewhere in the country; I say “so-called” because the name is a misnomer on this part of the route, where average speeds are not that high due to the frequent bends. He said that these new acquisitions had been extensively renovated and were better than the “Voyager” trains that were previously the only trains on this route. I agreed that the HSTs were more comfortable and roomy, less noisy, and had more capacity compared with the four- and five coach Voyagers. I added that they also didn’t suffer from the smelly-loo syndrome of the Voyagers; the latter always remind me of the scene in the movie version of “Glengarry Glen Ross” when the Al Pacino character, holding forth in a bar, says: “all train carriages smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don’t mind it. That’s the worst thing that I can confess. You know how long it took me to get there? A long time.”

Enough of movies: Paul told me that the five new trains (well, second-hand but renovated) were the most that “the Government” had allowed Arriva / Cross-Country to buy. That’s not the first time that I’ve heard “from the horse’s mouth”, i.e. from a railway employee, that the TOCs (Train Operating Companies) cannot make their own decisions about procurement of new trains and that new trains / rolling stock are allocated centrally. Makes you wonder about the thinking behind privatisation. It seems to be a typical British muddle. You sell off the railways, giving private companies local monopolies. However, their prices, i.e. fares, are controlled to a great extent in a way not many private enterprises are. Then you can take away their franchise if their services are overcrowded, i.e. they don’t have enough seating capacity (e.g. the Virgin Cross-Country case, plus threats of similar sanctions have probably been discussed with First Great Western) but if they want to buy new trains they are told they can’t. The FGW employee who first told me their hands were tied in this respect, said that most new trains are currently being allocated to routes serving the north, where FGW doesn’t operate. I don’t know how true that is. Furthermore, I know that late running can bring financial penalties, but how many times have you been on a train that is held up by a signalling problem (which is clearly outside the TOC’s control), or because another train (which may be from a different TOC) is running late? That's often been my experience.

I know that the Rail Minister Tom Harris (in July 2007) said Arriva's commitment to increase capacity – “it has promised a 35 per cent rise in the number of passenger seats on rush-hour trains by June 2009” - had played a key part in the award. Strange that he used the phrase “[Arriva] has promised to … “ when his department has so much control over whether they can keep that promise.

In short: we love to complain about the railways in this country. Our moans are generally directed at the company whose train we’re travelling on, but who’d want to run a railway company these days, with the messy structure we have? Just stand at a major junction station (say Leeds) and count how many trains arrive and depart every hour; many of them operated by different companies, and using track and signalling systems owned by yet another company. I rest my case.

Pantomime as community

This week I am getting back to normal, after having been involved in a most wonderful local event. It was a pantomime: in early March moreover!

A pantomime in March is pretty unusual, and this was the first time I had been involved in this particular event. In fact I hadn’t been involved in thespian-type activities for longer than I can remember. Which means certainly 10 years, maybe 15. (those of you, like me, whose age is closer to 60 than 20 will identify with the syndrome whereby one always underestimates how long it is since you last saw such-and-such a person, or did such-and-such a thing, by at least 50%)

The famous Hotwells Panto always happens in March; years ago they very sensibly decided that the traditional period around Christmas is very crowded, whereas people’s diaries are less full in the first months of the New Year. I said it was famous; and that’s true if you live in or around Bristol (the one in England, that is) and take an interest in theatre. I hesitated to say “amateur theatre”, because this production was very professionally run in many ways. Nobody got paid, so in that sense it was certainly amateur. But then I have just remembered that the French word “amateur” simply means “lover of”. Everyone involved in this production certainly qualified in that sense.

I very nearly missed being involved. On 4 January I was walking the beautiful streets of Clifton – “handsomest suburb in Europe” as Betjeman called it, and I will not disagree with him on any matter, least of all this one. I happened to see a poster which read: “Hotwells Panto; Robin Hood; read-through and casting 4 January.” That very evening, in fact, but what struck me was that they were being very previous. Casting now for next Christmas, which is when pantos normally happen? So I went home and Googled it (“like you do”) and got loads of hits, including a half-page article from the “Independent” (a national paper in the UK, in case you’re reading this from anywhere else). The article claimed that the Hotwells Panto was the hot theatre ticket in Bristol, even above the city’s famous Bristol Old Vic. So I naturally had to go along to the read-through and see for myself. Now, two months later, and with the run having finished last Saturday, I can report that what I found was most impressive in many ways:

Longevity: this Panto has been running for nearly 30 years and it seems the vast majority of those involved have been involved for the vast majority of those years.

Commitment: there were, I believe, about 100 people involved, including cast, crew and those making costumes, scenery, props etc. The cast ranged from children of primary-school age to “seniors” like myself, although we were short of performers in their twenties. Any takers?

Local popularity: it’s very much seen as a community event, so all the seats for all four nights were sold out within days, as that article in the “Independent” had predicted. A total of well over 1000 seats went in double-quick time and as far as I know the show is not advertised.

Accessibility: despite that core of long-term involvees (is that a word? It is now), there is no clique culture. Despite being a total stranger off the street, so to speak, I was offered a great part. (see below)

Tradition: this Panto has developed its own traditions but it also sticks to the “traditional Panto” format, unlike many professional pantomimes that rely increasingly on hiring celebrities and recycling lots of smutty jokes. (This one had lots of witty double-entendres but that’s different from gratuitous use of four-letter words; this is supposed to be a family show, after all)

Quality: given top marks by a friend who came to help with makeup, then saw the show. This was her first exposure to the Hotwells Panto and she said it compared very favourably with many professional pantos to which she’d taken her children over the years.

Topicality: this is a major feature of Panto, whether amateur or professional. This year the theme was, of course, the credit crunch or recession or whatever you like to call it. That being the case, I was delighted to be offered the part of Baron Hardup: very much in line with the zeitgeist.

Creativity: in so many ways. For example, in a wonderful spoof on the TV show “Strictly Come Dancing”, all the male dancers were dummies, made and dressed by members of the “Ambras” – the female chorus of local legend and named after a nearby street. One dummy was Barack Obama, one was John Sargeant, referring to the British broadcaster’s recent “career” as a ballroom dancer. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/strictlycomedancing/contestants/john_sergeant.shtml)

Originality: anyone who liked Monty Python will recall the phrase “Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition”. I certainly didn’t expect a troop of Vikings to appear in the middle of “Robin Hood”, and neither did the audience. But appear they did, with great impact and to the delight of the audience.

Laid-back production & direction (apart from the occasional but inevitable tantrum!) by Gill Loats and Amanda Webb. Not content with directing this one, they also direct the Southville Panto and Gill is also a producer with the professional “Show of Strength” theatre company in the city.

A witty script produced by a team of writers, in a process developed over the years. The claim is that it’s written by locals for locals, and that is certainly true. One of the local issues that surfaced this year was the City Council’s controversial plan to bring in parking permits. The superbly villainous Sherriff of Nottingham, relating his taxation plans, says: “and I’m even going to tax them for parking their horses outside their own houses”. Then he adds with an evil grin: “of course there will first be a period of full consultation ……. dream on!” A good script needs people capable of delivering it, and the cast was full of such people. It’s well-known that a successful panto needs good people in the role of the villain and the Dame; this production had them. These and others were people who could have succeeded on the professional stage if they had chosen to.

To end on a serious note: we were all handed a questionnaire asking us for our feedback for a local research project investigating whether theatrical and similar events, such as this one, promote community adhesion. It seems clear to me that they do. Twenty years ago we lived in a village so small it had neither a school nor a village shop. However there was a real community spirit and, yes, there was a flourishing panto. Then we needed a larger house, so we moved to another village, similar in many ways but it wasn’t until we got there that we found much less of a sense of community … and, guess what, no panto. Did a panto help to create a community spirit or vice versa? Which was cause and which was effect? You tell me.

I feel privileged to have been part of such a great local institution as the Hotwells Panto, and especially to have been made so welcome, being a newcomer. If you want to know more, here’s the piece that appeared in the local paper, the Bristol Evening Post, last week. Granted, local papers are rarely negative about amateur shows, but even so, it’s worth a read: http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/seven/Hotwells-pantomime/article-732338-detail/article.html

Non-retirement

I "retired" last July. I use the quotation marks advisedly; what I mean is that I retired from full-time work and from being on someone else's payroll. I personally don't like the R-word; sounds too final for my taste.

A friend I'd invited to my retirement party (there we go: the R-word again) asked "aren't you nervous about this? It’s a big change.” Yes, it is a big change, but one I was looking forward to. And most of the people I know who have recently retired or are contemplating it, seem to welcome it; but by no means all of them. Some were looking forward to more time playing golf or just taking it easy in general; others had lots of projects lined up and I was in the latter group. Some, on the other hand, contemplate the prospect with uncertainty at the very least. After all, it’s not just the financial implications; it’s the loss of structure and, for many people, (particularly men) a large part of their identity.

Then there’s the group that were worried about it in advance but pretty soon realised the benefits; like a man I met last week who said he’d been dreading retirement but within 7 days was wondering why he’d been concerned. Maybe he hadn’t had a plan of how he would fill his days, but he soon realised there were already more other things in his life than he’d realised; or maybe he was just discovering lots of new activities, on the basis that nature abhors a vacuum. Like the retirees who use the old chestnut: “I don’t know how I ever had time to go to work.”

A few years ago I was in Canada, visiting my brother David who’s lived in wonderful BC for 30 years. He, like me, was contemplating retirement and he’d decided to invest in a few sessions with a retirement coach. That in itself surprised me; although I was very familiar with coaching principles and had coached a bit myself, I’d never come across retirement coaches before. “Cost me $700 and it was a great investment!” said David. The first thing this coach told him was: “I find that the people that are happiest in retirement are not the ones with the most money: they’re the ones with a plan.” That impressed me, even though I’m not a great planner; it certainly chimed with David, who is.

I did already have a plan of sorts but my next question was: what kinds of things should "the plan" ideally contain? So that’s something I am researching at present, for my benefit and hopefully for readers of this blog too. I’ll be talking to people who have retired, are planning to retire, or maybe just have it on the distant horizon. I will also be bearing in mind the wise words of Charles Handy, who coined the term “portfolio working” – a principle that I have found a great inspiration for more than 10 years now and which I’ll explain in forthcoming blogs. The beautiful thing is that portfolio working survives retirement. Watch this space!

If you haven’t heard of portfolio working and want to know about the principle, check out Handy’s “The Age of Unreason.” (Harvard Business School Press, 1998) It’s also referred to briefly in his autobiographical “Myself and Other More Important Matters” (Arrow Books, 2006)

Radio Ga Ga?

No, not the title of the Queen hit (though that’s a great track anyway in my book) but the tale of a retired (and therefore maybe slightly gaga) person (strike that; I prefer the American term “senior”, as in the T-shirt I saw in Pike Place market in Seattle, proudly stating: “I’m a senior; give me my damn discount”) and a project to renew his acquaintance with radio presenting.

A few years ago I was a presenter (all right, DJ if you prefer) on Hereford Hospital Radio. Great times, although I often wondered how many people actually listened to our programmes. I don’t recall that we ever did any in-depth market research to answer that question. Maybe we were afraid of what the answer might be and anyway we were all having too good a time. So, as I am no longer a wage-slave / salary-man / whatever you like to call it, I thought I might take it up again.

The local hospital radio organisation in Bristol, where I now live, took ages getting back to me, so I tried the newer community radio station, Bristol Community FM. So far I have been impressed with the comprehensiveness of the training they are offering for us six volunteer inductees. In fact during the very first training evening we were told that at the end of just four training sessions of two and a half hours each, we needed to be ready to record a one-hour pilot show. Provided that show meets BCFM’s criteria, especially with regard to having a Bristol angle, it’ll be broadcast and could lead to a regular slot in the schedule.

When given this unexpected and prompot challenge, my off the cuff response was this: one of the things I have enjoyed most in the five years I have been here in Bristol is the quality and variety of the live music scene; much of it in pubs and other informal venues; all inexpensive or free. I have seen so many very talented performers who don’t make their living from music, maybe because they are in less-commercial genres, but maybe because they would prefer the music to be a part-time activity. But I have also seen performers who are full-time musicians but have been happy to perform in pubs, including Andy Shepherd, a legend of the jazz saxophone for years and Beth Rowley, who’s gone from pub gigs to #4 in the album charts in very short while. I though I could interview musicians on both sides of the financial divide and investigate what makes the difference, as well as talking to venue owners and of course playing some music, both live and studio recordings. So far so good; however it turned out that four of the six of us on the course wanted to present a show focused on the local music scene, albeit different genres in some cases. I was thus persuaded partly buy my better judgement and partly by the station, to propose a second option.

Before I retired (sorry, that word again) I had spent the last 5 years of my full-time work in the employ of The Stroke Association and the last two of those was in media relations; placing stories about stroke and stroke survivors and being interviewed on radio and television. During that work I had met some really fantastic people who had fought back from the often devastating effects of this condition and none them more so than a Jamaican-born Bristolian called Lafrance Gordon. This man was introduced to me by the local Black Development Agency who said, “We have here a very charismatic stroke survivor who could be a banner-carrier for you.” How right they were; I set up more broadcast interviews with Lafrance (many of which I did with him) than pretty well all the other stroke survivors in my region (the whole of the South) put together.

Doing those interviews I earned more about a fact that I’d already known: that people of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian background are significantly moiré at risk from stroke than are white people. What’s more, there are large gaps in awareness in those communities, as Lafrance showed me.

As stroke is the nation’s #3 killer and its #1 cause of severe disability, I thus decided that the most worthwhile subject for the pilot would be this very topic. I’d been in touch with many of the local experts on stroke both in the NHS and the charity sector, and I could interview all those as well as Lafrance and other stroke survivors. Finally I could salt the mix (sorry, spice it up, as salt is a no-no) with musical requests from the interviewees.

Watch this space!

Health & Safety hits the fishing industry

“In the past few months my boat and I have had several visits from various officials concerned with safety. A total of six people (all with clipboards, naturally) from three separate organisations.”

I was talking to a fishing-boat skipper in West Wales and, as a potential consumer of the fish he was catching, I might have been inclined to applaud the fact our laws are being policed so assiduously. That was before Andrew told me that, strictly speaking, it is an exaggeration on my part to call him the skipper, as he is generally the only person onboard. Not because he’s an unsociable fellow – far from it – but because it’s a 14-foot boat. There’s really only room for Andrew plus the fish he aims to catch. “Mind you, if I get all the new equipment they say I have to get, there won’t be room for both me and the fish.”

Is this another example of our over-zealous attitude to the new orthodoxy of Health & Safety? And could it be that, as usual, we are policing these EU laws far more enthusiastically than other EU members? “Discuss”, as they say on exam papers. All I know is that, in one of my previous lives (20 years in the chemical industry, man and boy) it was a well-known fact that our competitors in certain other EU countries were always happy to see strict EU Directives enacted on environmental pollution and “Elf & Safety”: because they knew that we, who invented cricket, would police those laws more strictly than our neighbours, thus putting our domestic producers at a commercial disadvantage.

In Andrew’s case I don’t imagine he is too concerned with competition from the big Spanish trawlers, but I wonder if the various functionaries that are taking up his time and causing him such frustration, no matter how humorously he may express it, are as keen in chasing the big battalions who can afford to retain legal advice.

I won’t go on – there are already books on the market composed solely of examples of the idiocy that can result from to-the-letter enforcement of H&S laws – but two facts really tickled me. Firstly, Andrew is required to wear not only a hard hat when fishing (and a high-viz jacket maybe?) but a hairnet. (“Because you are handling wet fish”) He has also been given a unique number for his boat (16 digits no doubt) which has to be painted on the underside of the hull. Why? “So that, if you should capsize, the search & rescue team can check your boat number against the database”. I should have thought that the mere fact that the underside of the hull was visible should be a clue to the fact that someone needed rescuing; checking the identity of that boat and skipper could come later. I hope and trust that anyone involved in search and rescue (an essential service in the waters off the Pembrokeshire coast) would agree with me.

Mind you, it’s not all bad. As I said to Andrew: “As a consumer and a frequent fish-eater, I am glad to see that these regulations are being policed. If I should buy the fish you’ve landed, after it’s gone through two or three other pairs of hands including my local supermarket, if then through my own stupidity I put it in the fridge, forget to cook it for a fortnight, and consequently give myself food poisoning, I will be glad to know there’s a tracking system in place that’ll tell me who to sue.”

Welcome!

In case you've found this blog by accident (I can't think how else you would have found it, as I have only just set it up) then welcome! "Stuff" will be posted here very soon on a variety of subjects that interest me and, I hope, will interest you too. Watch this space!

Michael J MacMahon
Clifton, Bristol, UK