BACK TO THE BLACK

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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/

MORE REAL ALE!

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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"?

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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

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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!

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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?

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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!