Quick Review: Bobble water bottle

I, like most people find reviews a bit tedious. You never know how biased internet reviews are and they end up being too long. What you need is a simple review that gives you pros and cons and a final verdict.

Here's my first review. I received a bobble water bottle for Christmas 2010:

<This is not an advert and I have received no renumereation from any corporation to write this>

PROS

• Looks good
• Filters water
• Small & light

CONS

• Filter makes annoying loud hissing sound every time to take a drink
• Plastic is "too hard" when you need to squeeze it for water
• If you squeeze the plastic too hard (easy to do) the bottle deforms permanently 
• High chance of losing the lid as it is not attached to the bottle
• Expensive filters - albeit after 1000 refills

Overall

5/10 - Good design, but most work places have filtered water anyway and the bottle is difficult to drink from in a hot desk environment because of the hissing noise and difficulty in squeezing the bottle. A cheap 1L volvic bottle would do the same job - only buy this if you need to actually filter your water.

"No country can defend itself if bankrupt." - head of Britain's armed forces, General Sir David Richards (2011)

Like all empires before it, USA and the UK is now crumbling because of their need for growth. Rome collapsed bacause of government greed and their inability to pay their armies. To the victor go the spoils and as an army keeps expanding and winning new resources they can continue to reap the benefits. But ask yourself this - when you have expanded and there is nothing left to take over how do you continue to increase pay? How do you continue above inflation pay growth when the low hanging fruit is gone? You pray for technology or invention but that is sporadic at best.The same will happen to the West. Without innovation we are dead in the water and the government is praying for something because right now the "plan" is a blank sheet of paper

The mainstream media will suggest that it is impossible to predict another financial collapse and eventual world war but it is coming. Timing is difficult to predict but the wheels are in motion. The political elite are only in it for themselves. Despite what they say, its what they do that counts. The UK has sided with the US and left Europe entangled in a web of debt. The politicans know their children will never be in the firing line in a war, and their fat salaries and pensions will be all but guaranteed in a war situation. They have nothing to fear. What do we receive for the £50m a day that we provide to "Europe"? The groupthink herd mentality has good and bad. We could walk blindly off a cliff if we don't think for ourselves. I'm not affiliated to any political party because they are all useless but David Cameron has released that the European system may need Britain more than Britain needs it! Yes, we need the free trade zone, but we can negotiate our own agreements with standalone countries, we're used to doing it. In fact it creates more work for our business services, legal and accountancy workforce!

If you are in the army you will be sold the "for king and country" line but the harsh reality is that the war is really for the political manipulators who have no intention of giving up power and will use any tricks to convince a desperate public that they "must fight" for "the good of the nation and freedom" . Rhetoric over substance. In the end, the absolute crux will always be personal survival.

The title of this blog post really summarises where we are. We are fast approaching the point of bankruptcy with high fixed costs and massive debt to repay. Germany was in a similar position after WW1 (albeit they were losers of WW1) before they embarked on an assault on Europe to gain growth. Our army will be contingency planning, first to protect their masters in the event of wide spread civil disobedience and second to determine how to prevent the system from collapsing by giving the public growth.

The Failing London Tube system - why reform will come soon

The London tube network is falling apart at the seams.

Everyday most of the workers in London can see the trains becoming too crowded, the delays becoming more frequent, disruptive and for spurious reasons like leaves on tracks. Using the network every day I can only foresee a catastrophic accident occurring which will bring this commuter mouse trap its day of reckoning.

The unions will use such an event as a way to exert even more power, hiring more of their staff to fulfill non-roles.

Its time to get serious about automation on the tube service. Other signalling systems around the world can fit twice the number of trains into a one hour window. Driverless carriages will become the norm because the cost of drivers is rising too fast. The DLR works perfectly fine with this system, the tube will too. If something is trapped in the door, the train won't run, this has been an automatic safety feature since automatic doors, they rarely require human intervention. Platform staff can handle other issues.

The Olympics will be the catalyst for these future improvements. It will finally show the world that the tube system is well beyond capacity and any major breakdown or accident will require herculean man management and planning to prevent world wide coverage of London Transport failure. [see update below]

Part of its failure is due to its overriding success. More and more people are using the tube system for shorter journeys  We need to remedy this with more than just the bike system ("Boris Bikes"). We need to allow commuters the ability to have small electric transport that can carry them through London quickly and safely without pedal power. I think the YikeBike is ideal for this purpose. A small bike that can be folded and fit into a ruck sack which weighs 10kg! Its the best idea I've seen, unfortunately our laws in the UK do not permit this or the Segway to be driven on public fairways because they do not have pedals! Eventually the government will have no other choice as the tube network will reach capacity faster than they can build more track or homes. Neither of which they have been very proficient at in the last two decades.

Its a shame people don't launch preventative change until there is an incident which damages members of the public. What ever happened to long term planning?

Update: Having attended a few events at the Olympics I have to admit I was wrong. Although it was full to capacity the Tube service did an admirable job preventing a transport disaster. Although, this was achieved by what looked like a trebling of staff and a assertive campaign to prevent normal commuters coming to work with horror stories of terrible congestions.

Corporate Governance is a complete joke in the western world

The principal-agent problem surfaces time and again with public companies. Management in no way have the collective guts to shout when the "emperor has no clothes".In fact none of them are incentivised to do so. The myriad of committees, Audit, Remuneration, Risk , Income, Sales etc. are all just talking shops. The sad truth is that everyone in lower rungs who works at these companies knows this but they aren't given the voice to tell anyone. If you are a "normal" employee and you're reading this, have you ever wondered what the senior management do in their board meetings? Or even the non-executive directors who are paid your yearly wage for 3 days work? We were told that these wages come with great responsibility. Where is the repercussions that come with failure then? I haven't seen any board members accused or sent to prison for their fiscal failures. Surely, we tell even our children that actions have consequences. Well, where are the consequences to presiding over management failure? Even if you are fired you keep your benefits and the ill gotten gains of million dollar salaries to tide you over whilst you look for your next "consulting role" from one of your other management pals? Would you care about your decisions if you knew you would walk away with your pension and a million pound salary for the rest of the year?

If you think about it, mid level employees (managers etc) have the most to lose from a bankruptcy or fraud, they are the people with values most in alignment with the retail shareholders and pension fund owners. The management are simply paid too much to care. We've all seen the obvious scenarios, longer term incentives are bought out in cash/incentives when a senior employee moves from one organisation to the next. They have no long term skin in the game as they can simply cash in whenever they take a new job. With the removal of long term job security, we now have a merry-go-round. The latest I saw the other day was the CFO of RSA Insurance moving to Lloyds Bank as the new CFO. So, Lloyds Bank (now the taxpayer) has to pay to "buy out" the employee of his previous long term incentive plan.

Why is this not obvious to everyone? The gravy train has been running for years, through remuneration committees recommending each other's pay or "recruitment professionals" announcing market rates and persuading staff to constantly look at other job. These shenanigans are plain to see and benefit the upper middle class and elites who run companies which are owned by pension funds (whose owners are teachers, nurses and policemen). What a ridiculous system. With current social media shareholders should be able to broadcast and evaluate all decisions a board makes within minutes not in an annual report and we should physically tie compensation to a role. If they choose to leave the role, they can forfeit their compensation and make it a rule that their future company cannot replace it through salary or additional compensation.

I think its time to truly tie generational performance, pay and responsibility to monetary remuneration. Without this, the agents will simply skim into their own pockets using stooges to make it look legitimate. Put rotating workers from each corporate level on the board so they can understand and disseminate what the board are doing and where they are taking the company - 99% of decisions aren't market moving.

What a joke we have become - the systems set up to safe guard our investments in society have been circumvented for rich rewards for the few and a lifetime of debt servitude for the many.

UK heading for collapse within a few years

Nov 2011

As we continue "austerity" the public has no idea that we haven't even started yet. For the last 40 years we have spent more than we have earned! They just don't understand, the media and politicans ensure that they  don't find out so no one gets the blame. The small cuts we have had in 2011 is nothing compared to the reall cuts we need for the next 10 years. I think we will be in the same place as we were in the 1970s when we had to call the IMF in and introduce capital controls to prevent money leaving the country.

Already, Goldman Sachs clients have begun shorting UK based companies and banks (they were doing the same to Italy in June 2011 and we can see where that ended). Since politicians can't or won't tell people the truth we will end up with technocrats controlling our budget so the politicians can finally say they have no control and shouldn't be blamed. Sadly, for all their wailing about responsibility they will lump the future of the country on our children by increasing deficits. Its not a Labour or a Conservative problem, its a systemic problem. Our politics in broken. New governments don't change anything.

We are in a depression. Even in 1920s they didn't talk about a "depression" until later.  One further question to ask you all - Would you ask an unqualified surgeon to operate on you? Then why do we give control of the economy to people who have no basic training in economics expect to please the people by telling them what they want? We complain about politicians, but its the system thats broken. People need to stop asking to be told what they want to hear!!

I like to mention solutions along with highlighting issues (unlike our politicians):

Here's an idea - Cut Winter Fuel Allowance for those earning more than 30K a year. It'll save around £500m, or put another away most of the money needed to prevent tuition fees in universities. Simples.

Comments welcome.

Why the stock market will fall for the next couple of years (2011-2015)?

An impasse has been reached. In your heart of hearts most of you know when you're getting a deal that's too good to be true. That's what we've had for about 20 years now. We lurch from crisis (1975) to crisis (2008) without fixing any underlying problems. Our system just doesn't seem to cope well with the idea of steady growth (with occasional growth spurts). Everyone in the population wants to be part of the "spurt" this in turn leads to a lurching economy that rolls from one extreme to another.

How sad it is that millions have to suffer because of our own inadequacies. Maybe Tom Cruise was right in the film A Few Good Men - "We just can't handle the truth!". So politicians can't tell us the truth. I'm not blaming them, I'm blaming the Western world. The whole idea of politicians is to have someone deal with issues that we have no interest in. I don't blame them for taking advantage. If they told us the truth (like Ron Paul in the US and some of Vince Cable in Britain) we just don't elect them. Divided we will fall - and the rich shall continue to inherit the Earth. By rich I mean the old moneyed class who simply use labour as a productive asset to gain a large inequity between the working class (if you work, thats you!) and them. The money they have is essentially wasted unless it is funnelled to entrepreneurial ventures. Don't get me wrong - if we taxed them, the Government would also waste the money so I don't think they should be taxed to death either.

The problem lies with TRUST. Gaining trust always takes time, but losing it take a nanosecond. As we lose trust in our governments the very system we have created to create our security blanket will fail around us. We will lose faith in other systems too, such as corporations and the stock market. These will plumet as our fear intensifies and we realise that there are no quick fixes to our debt problems. Only time, i.e default through inflation or massive debt write downs could save us. These will inflict too much pain on the monied classes, our pensions (i.e baby boomers) and are politicians (they need an explanation to enable re-election).

So, the stock markets will fall, probably overshoot their actual real losses due to paralysis. But don't fear, after that the era of private growth will begin again just as it has done countless times in history (fall of the Chinese, Roman empires). We will slowly enable real capitalism again e.g survival of the fittest with proper risk management and rewards for success rather than the status quo. In the new period the stock market will race to new highs as the money which used to sit in government bonds comes flooding into the growth areas of society. It'll take a while to get there, and there will be pain along the way but like each cycle, for every trough there will be a peak, as long as human beings exist and continue to strive for uneven gains over solid sustainable growth - the grass is always greener syndrome drives us to new lows as well as new highs!

The failure of France within 3 months

11.11.2011
Its all kicking off folks. As the mass media controlled by politics and wealthy media moguls continues to hide the truth from the people; they are increasingly unable to explain the events that are occuring in Europe.

Next to fail. France!

The markets (from whom France has borrowed all its money) are raising rates for French bonds - basically where Italy was 3 months ago.




Herbert Hoover’s Memoirs are available free online. He opens Chapter 7 
concerning the Sovereign Debt Crisis of 1931 explaining:


“In the spring of 1931, just as we had begun to entertain well founded hopes that we were on the way out of the depression, our latent fears of Europe were realized in a gigantic explosion which shook the whole foundations of the world's economic, political, and social structure. At last the malign forces arising from economic consequences of the war, the Versailles Treaty, the postwar military alliances with their double prewar armament, their frantic public works programs to meet unemployment, their unbalanced budgets and the inflations, all tore their systems asunder.”


Chapter 7, pg 61
http://www.ecommcode.com/hoover/ebooks/browse.cfm


[Source: Thanks to Armstrongeconomics.com]

Is Austerity the answer? Not really. Its a vicious circle. By making your population lose confidence they will "try" less. This will lower productivity and entrepreneurship and therefore decrease tax returns which will mean France will find itself in a debt spiral. The rules of mathematics don't change.

How long before our entire consumerist and housing based economies comes to a screeching halt and we revert back to productive assets? Those engineers, farmers and content producers who have been sidelined by banking wealth for the last 20 years will finally have their day in the sun!

How do we fix this mess? Well, we need to have massive bank right downs and let banks fail. People with their money in bank accounts won't lose anything but everyone who lent cheap money without assessing risks properly will go bust - that's how capitalism should work! Its been poisoned by bankers who have supported politicians election campaigns! They have systematically lied to everyone to retain power, wealth and influence. To stop countries going bust we need innovation and education, lets reduce defence spending and increase energy innovation and education spending (we have enough nukes in the world for defence!).  We can all see that asset prices are too high! What kind of society do we want to live in? One in which wealthy people continue to take more and more for less risk or where we reward for new and innovative ideas which benefit all of society not the chosen few?

As I've said in my previous posts - this will all end badly. Remember make your own decisions after you listen to everyone, use the facts and understand them yourself. That is the key to breaking this cycle.

Update: 20.1.2011:  France lost its AAA rating in Jan 2012 - the IMF, ECB, FED continue to enable European countries to sell debt in the securities market. Without insolvent institutions with no need for profit and loss propping up the false economy the periphery countries in Europe would have failed. This cannot last forever. Something has to be allowed to fail!

Update 31.05.2012: The world is in turmoil. Sarkozy lost the election in France and Spain is on the verge of "total emergency". Amazingly the central banks are keeping it all together. This can't last.

Update  11.10.2012:  Well, the central banks went "all in". The Federal Reserve promised to print $40bn per month forever and the ECB said it would buy any Eurozone country bonds if they asked for help. Does this look like a system that runs without intervention? What is the difference between this and Russian/Chinese communism. The ECB/Fed now decide what you will buy who will pay you and what you will pay for items as market prices. Sounds like central planning to me. Its never worked.

Update 27.02.13:  Well the UK just lost its AAA rating....the dominoes are falling one by one. How long before Germany decides they are better off without the drag of Italy, Spain and France?

Update 30.08.2013: France attempting to distract the public by starting a war with Syria and replacing the  UK as America's poodle. Nothing has changed economically for France they are barely surviving and any minor economic instability will signal a return to crisis mode for them.

will ios5 slow down iphone 4

I upgraded my Iphone 4 to Ios5 when it came out. Here are some observations about the experience.

1. No noticeable speed loss. It seems to run just as fast as before.

2. Some people have talked about battery loss but I haven't noticed it. I keep my WiFi off most of the time - but even when its on I haven't noticed a difference.

3. Imessage means you can send imessages instead of texts to anyone with ios5 all over the world with out using any of your text allowance

4. There is a better notification center accessed by pulling down on the time displayed at the top of your phone. When your texts arrive you can go straight to them from the slider screen

5. You can get to your camera straight from the home screen and use the volume button to take a photograph.

Changing consumer behaviour: Will second hand goods become more acceptable?

For the last 20 years we have been moving to an unsustainable consumerist society. We no longer fix things; we don't value skills that enable cobblers, electricians or upholsters. We decided it was cheaper to import cheap inflation from China. As the price of goods fell we just thought we could keep buying new things to replace anything that was over 18 months old.

Those of us who are older can clearly see we were on a path to distruction, but kids in the last 15 years have known nothing else. They expect new generations of products - white goods, TVs, DVDs on a regular basis, each attempting to be better than the last. Unfortunately, new products rarely deliver significant improvements. Human beings tend to be iterative whilst a few true inventors produce the next generation of ideas to market. To replace this "invention timing gap" we decided to use advertising to fool the majority with upgrades and new colours to ensure we could continue the ever increasing R&D costs that true invention requires in large companies.

With the recession and high inflation around the world we will soon move back to our old ways. Using second hand goods and repairing are old products to ensure they give their full useful existence for the money we paid. This in-turn will have an effect on our electronic and white good stores who will begin to see sales declines as people move to a repair culture rather than throwing everything out for a cheap replacement. Websites like ebay.com will allow people to buy a multitude of items cheaper than list prices and people will begin to move away from wanting shiny new toys and expect the rich to pay the full price whilst they pick up the same goods at up to 40% off, sometimes after only a few days...

Its going to be tough for the next 6-7 years as easy credit disappears from our society - salary declines will increase due to inflation and labour costs will become more competitive with the cost of purchasing a brand new item. Perhaps this is the end of the large bricks and mortar stores churning out new products every 18 months. The service will exist but it will be usurped by online stores who can perform the same function without high overheads. Kids today (the adults of the future) no longer need the customer service and "human service" that our parents took for granted. They would prefer to shop online rather than speak to human beings.

If we're not careful this will create a more isolated society where separation is even more prevalent...comments welcome

G20 Failure: Cannes est pointless!

Can't people see that our politicians have no more answers except to spend even more of our future earnings. What an absurd situation:

1. The Eurozone are lending Greece money in order to...pay back the Eurozone! - are you kidding? They think this is a solution?

2. a 50% @"haircut" in Greek debt doesn't constitute a  "default event". Its the equivalent of me asking my bank to give me 50% off my mortgage because I don't think I'll pay it anymore and the bank saying that the loan is not impaired! These people have gone mad!

3. We are continuing this farce because banks did not calculate risk correctly on Italian, Greek, Spanish, Irish and Portuguese debt. The only job of a bank is to manage ****ing risk! If they can't do this they should fail! That is how capitalism works!

 4. Banks can't fail because who would then lend money to feckless politicians to for election promises that they have no hope of achieving! The world has been built on a lie...no wonder people want something better. They can finally see behind the curtain and there aren't any smart people there with firehoses - there's nothing!

5. The ESF Fund is dead! It will never work! Why!? Because we are creating a fund using investors who have no money - to invest in bonds which will definitely lose money!? Who would do that?! The Chinese are too smart to be the whipping boys of Europe.

This is going to get ugly. We should put our politicans in prison for gross mis-management but they way they have in-acted laws now - they are all above the law! You can't even put them in prison for stealing taxpayers money and illegally using expenses and advisors to gain cushy jobs after they finish their terms in office! Government has become a gravy train for the rich to gain even more money, power and influence - IT HAS TO STOP!!

Has anyone else noticed how we've suddenly turned on Iran and the rhetoric from the US and Israel is about "striking first". Do you think this will be the war that the politicians use to distract us from their failures!?

US Government Q3 GDP Lies

It seems we have let our governments run amok. They beat their people in the streets (see Occupy Wall Street), threaten to disband peaceful demonstrations (see Occupy London Stock Exchange) and now just blatantly lie with new statistics.

Let's look at this graph for a joke[Straight from ZeroHedge:]

How can this be? How can GDP in Q3 in the USA incerase by 2.5%? Most people are struggling and cutting back expenses. Jobs are unavailable and we are heading for a depression. Except the US government will have us believe that we have had the largest spike in personal consumption in history! So, either everyone is suddenly going to get very jolly in the next 12 months? Or someone is lying about the consumption statistics...heaven forbid we have any investigative journalism here folks. Wouldn't want the 99% to know that they pay for departments to make up statistics..teehee.

Why the baby boomers have a lot to answer for - why are you poor?

Let's compare a few facts about our lives to those of the people over 45. The legacy they left us vs that left for the baby boomers by the generation above who fought for our freedoms. As the boomers get older and blighted by disease and old age do you think the under 35s are going to look favorably at their legacy?

They are the privileged many! How about a tax on second and third homes of 20% and 60%. Add to that a tax on non productive land owners of 50%. That would bring down living costs!

Baby Boomers (what the older generation left them)	Under 35s (what the baby boomers left us)
One income family allowed mothers to spend more time with their children	Two income families the norm because the cost of living has gone up and capital owners have lowered salaries as women came into the workforce
Free university education	Forcing people to pay first £3000 per year and now £45000 for 4 years education – about the same as the mortgages the baby boomers used to get when they left university in the 70s
Allowed on the property ladder	Majority unable to leave home and achieve independent property purchases with the median wage
Built enough family homes for all of their children	Stopped building family homes and built smaller and smaller inner city flats to make a profit
Built a decent amount of equity in their homes	Unlikely to have any equity to use to trade up the housing ladder
Provided jobs which were filled from the workforce	Outsourced as much manufacturing to the Far East as possible
Grammar school education and apprentorships for anyone who could prove their ability	Dumbing down of GCSE and A-Level exams to hit “targets” rather than caring about the future of a skilled labour force.
Enabled a care system to look after their elders (a combination of decent work hours and extra bedrooms in their homes)	Forcing society to put their elderly in care homes with little family time for bonding due to excessive work hours
1933 Glass-Stegal act banned the integration of investment banking and retail banking to prevent another Great Depression	Repealed the Glass Stegal act in 2000 to enable a repeat of the Great Depression – for greed not sustainability
Opportunity to fulfil the American dream of homeownership and hard work to achieve a decent living standard for the average citizen	Largest income inequality since records began
Working hours much lower in professional jobs	Banking, legal, doctors, all made to work hard to feed ever  increasing salaries at the top
NHS full of local town natives who cared about their local community and had a rapport with patients	NHS full of management and temp agency workers from abroad. No caring, simply process orientated jobs

Here's another great post from Zero Hedge showing the zero return we have had from our baby boomers since they turned 30 they simply comsumed on debt which they have now asked us to pay for. They complain that "kids today" are unruly and undisiplined when they themselves have provided very little future legacy for their children.

Heed the advice - stop buying pointless plastic crap, start educating your kids in useful activities and generate revenue for the future!

Why banks will fail in 2011... nationalization beckons!

Apparently its too difficult to predict a banking crisis so let's see if anyone takes notice of this blog in a few years.

Key facts:

• USA banks wrote most of the CDS against European credit risk - i.e they pay when Europe defaults

• BoA transferred $50 trillion(!) notional derivatives into their holding company this month essentially now backing dertivatives by the US tax payer protected retail accounts via the FDIC. Clever move -wonder how much the tax payer is receiving for this guarantee? Zero! Bet the BoA execs will earn more than the median US wage though...a lot more!

• French/German/Austrian banks have become technically insolvent if they counted the true value of their Greek debt on their books instead of accounting gimmicks endorsed by politicians who lie to the public

• Runs on French banks have already started with large corporate customers moving their cash away and highlighting that they can get better USD financing with their credit rating than they can from their own banks!

Not that it would be worth reporting in the main stream media but 80(!) smaller banks have already failed in the USA in 2011 with a slightly smaller number failing in 2010 as well. Do you hear about this on Fox News/Sky/ABC/BBC? I wonder why?

Which ones are going to fail? Well here's my punt at the first few...

• BNP Paribas
• SocGen
• UniCredit
• Bank of America (incl. Merril Lynch and Countrywide)
• Spanish CaJa's
• Morgan Stanley

Who knows who is next...but one by one they will crumble due to their inter-connected derivatives, leverage ratios and debt burdens. Once the Greek debt write downs begin all bets are off. If even one bank calls additional collateral due to higher credit risk then its all over. Thanks to the greed of politicians, we're all a bit screwed in the West. What ever happened to civil leaders who had civic duty. Money wasn't  important - the success of their society was the driver. Its all just words now.

Welcome to the complete collapse of banking. I'm sure the bonuses were worth it! Its going to be pandemonium. The Euro is likely to collapse in all but name without issuance of Eurobonds at each country's relative exchange rate (pre Euro).

When will more people learn that the banking system is an outrageous lie allowing a few to gain wealth over the many. It shouldn't be that way but that's what its turned into. Complex mumbo jumbo which has kicked "risk" down the road and made tax payers pay upfront fees that guarantee wealth to a minority! What a clever system if you're a sociopath. Look up kleptocracy, it has taken over democracy.

The only question is when this is going to happen. Timing is tricky but if I were to guess-itmate I'd say we will have smaller failures in 2012 with epic failures in 2014 and complete crisis in 2016.

Update 2013: The ECB and FED have instituted massive swap lines with each other in order to keep banks alive. They have allowed banks to pass worthless collateral to the taxpayer for 100 cents on the dollar and they have pushed money to banks by buying most bonds issued by western governments. Banks are simply trading with this money instead of lending it for real economic growth. IMO, They are only delaying the inevitable

Removing black mould from bathroom / shower corners and silicone

Its the scourge of existence. The black mould that generally occurs in damp parts of houses in the UK. It not only looks bad but it smells nasty and the spores you inhale aren't good for you. There are plenty of online guides which recommend the following:

1. Don't dry your clothes inside

2. Install a humidity controlled extractor fan

3. Open the window a tiny crack before and after you've had a shower

4. Use a fungicide or other brand name mildew remover

Well, a lot of people can't do these things. For instance, the weather is always a bit crap in the UK so no working person can ever dry their clothes outside!

There are a few easy ways to remove this black mould.

1. To prevent mould taking hold: Take one of your empty old spray bottles of Flash/CIF or other spray cleaners and fill it with one part bleach and 4 parts water (try Domestos but any will do generally it has to say the words "bleach" to contain Sodium Hypoclorite - the magic ingredient). Spray this on the mixture in the damp parts of your shower and leave for 10 mins then rinse off. Basically, spray it on when you finish showering and then rinse off after you towel dry your hair etc.

2. If you've already got mould what can you do? Well, put some gloves on, take some bleach in a little tray/takeaway carton and an old toothbrush. Apply the bleach liberally where ever you have mould growth. Then go and make a cup of tea. Come back in 20 mins. Take the tooth brush and scrub along the mould infested areas. You'll find it just comes away easily. Do this a few times for heavy mould areas.

3. If the mould is really bad (i.e you haven't managed to clean it away for a while!) then it may have made its way behind the silicone in the corners of the shower/bathtub. In this case you have have to apply the bleach method above then, if it has gone through into the silicone you'll have to remove and re-lay the silicone. Its not too hard. Remember to get silicone that is fungal resistant.

4. If the black mould has appeared on walls and windows it means you need to spray the bleach mixture (1 part bleach 4 parts water) on the wall. leave for 20 mins then scrub away. Once removed you will probably need to re-paint the affected areas with mould resistant paint. Or buy some mould resistant additive to add to normal bathroom paint (you can find good American ones on Ebay).

All these sprays sold by most retailers are just selling the same ingredients in different forms. The advertising is the only difference - that - and the higher price! Normal bleach just costs too little to make a large profit any more. As far as I'm concerned, good bleach and a chemical to remove limescale (Viakal normally works but there are a few others) is all you need. The rest of the market just enhance the "Citrus" or "lavender" smells but don't make a better cleaning product - which after all, is the main reason you need it!

Retail bloodbath at Christmas 2012

Its safe to assume that all the major department stores and large scale retailers did their planning for Christmas 2011 in July possibly August. This was just before the world fell of a cliff due to the "sudden" realization of the excess debt plaguing western economies. Unless they can reduce their contracted stock they are going to massively discount to get us to buy their oversupply (just like 2008). Don't fall for it Britain. You don't need several new pairs of boots or hundreds of jumpers. Think before you spend - every £1 you spend is effectively borrowed money. The UK government borrows 42p for every pound in your pocket. The deficit spending is over - reign in your desires just for a couple of months over Christmas. If you are unhappy with our economic system this will begin the re-balancing that we so desperately need in the world!

If you want to send a message to governments to fix this mess, its time to stop buying anything this Christmas that isn't made in the UK, Europe or the USA. I know it'll be expensive and right now I couldn't tell you what you could actually since everything we purchase each year for our loved ones seems to originate from the Far East! Maybe by buying raw ingredients and making your family dinner. Look at sustainable ingredients from the UK and Europe. This is the year where we give people our time rather than a crappy Christmas cracker!

Reduced demand for Chinese products will force the communist state to improve its internal demand - we need to rebalance - it is the key to a sustainable economy. Each country in the world must sell useful services and goods to each other. 


Stop the debt - its not too late! The red line has to be below the blue line!

Iphone iOS 5 will remove all SMS revenue for mobile phone providers

Not sure if any telecom analysts read this but:

IoS 5 will enable iMessage in all iphones. This, together with 3G data tariffs and ICloud subscriptions will mean that all the major UK telecoms will lose revenue from SMS. Remember that SMS revenue was far higher than data revenue - its a service that gains a ludicrous margin in %'000s. It cannot be replaced by margin from data services easily. As Iphones become cheaper and cheaper and eventually hit the PAYG market the telecom companies will really miss this revenue. No more excessive charges for SMS text messages whilst abroad. If you're on wi-fi it'll be free through iCloud.

On the other side of coin. Apple will now have access to information from all the texts sent around the world and be able to build a network to determine the people who are most interconnected and targeted for advertising. A real world facebook - no need to register, you just have to use a mobile phone and send texts on a regular basis. That's pretty much 60-70% of the UK earning population - if not more. They'll use this technology eventually to target adverts for adMob and beat google and Facebook in the mobile space.

Let's see if I'm right...

Our politicians can't speak their minds!

Imagine if we had a day where we could allow our politicians to speak their mind. To really tell us what's hindering them or what's wrong with Britain. They could do this without affecting their chances of re-election or pissing off their rich donors, business and vested interests? What would they really say? That's probably what the Bilderberg group is for. You see, it's only wealthy people that can be trusted with this information because they have as much to lose as the politicians when the Ponzi scheme that is Capitalism is discovered by the people.

Now, I don't choose either politician party. Each have merits and disadvantages, and most choices in life do. It's not quite black and white. The problem is telling the truth is now impossible if it upsets any powerful vested interest who can prevent that message being delivered to the population. Take the hacking affair - it took two years for the Guardian to plug away until that made any impact. The damage it did to Rupert Murdoch was obvious and no one was powerful enough to take on the media Barron.

Today many secrets exist in plain sight, talked about by masses of journalists but unavailable to print because of super injunctions. If our public service bodies aren't there to serve our public interest then what are they there for? If people are manipulative liars shouldn't the public know? Even if it's deemed tittle tattle or gossip its misrepresentation if you choose to let celebrity in your life. There are plenty of people who live in the public eye and don't appear in tabloids - that's how we know it's achievable!

Officials once had a duty to serve the population but that sense of government has long since disappeared. In fact in all walks of life professionalism has been replaced with clock watching or box ticking. You can't measure passion and pride that easily at work. It's one of the reasons the NHS has begun to be a heartless organisation - process is king and money is the measurement. Is that what the public want? No.

The trouble is politicians have to ask the public to reign in their spending and manage expectations. That is difficult to do when the last 25 years have only re-enforced the idea that greed, consumerism and individuality is good. In fact, its actually not terrible but like anything its about moderation. Politicians just didn't want to tell people about moderation.  Our elders in society are meant to use their experience to prevent previous issues affecting our future society. They have the benefit of hindsight. Unfortunately, when you give humans this power they tend to use it to enrich themselves rather than save the masses.

Take a simple example like house prices. If they rose at 10% a year (as they were in 2003-2006) for even one average life time say 75 years. The average house would be worth £165m. Obviously not sustainable. Why did they not tell us or implement rules to stop this? It's because they got greedy. The vested interests, banks and developers realised they could enrich themselves so they paid off the politicians to do their bidding. Newspapers still seem to think that this "hand in the cookie jar" is of some great surprise to the public. Sure, it sells papers, but everyone knows it happens and that no one will stop it. Its not even "news" anymore.

So how do we create a politician system free from this moral hazard, where the richest get to control feckless politicians for their own nefarious purposes? Well, its time to use technology. We need a crowd sourced government with multiple voting opportunities. We need summarised information for each part of society and equal ability to vote in this new world. The answer seems to be the mobile phone software. Use it vote, capture your thoughts to elected representatives and publish results borough by borough. Basically we need direct democracy - by the people for the people. Mistakes will be made and i'm sure people will attempt to subvert the system but the wisdom of crowds suggest that it would be very difficult to do this on a country wide scale. Now I'm not suggesting I write down a full manifesto here but here are some key suggestions:

1. Enable a simple text/web/phone based voting mechanism that sets deadlines and broadcasts votes and deadlines on all communication mediums next to the programmes with the largest captive audience (make this a broadcaster condition of licence)

2. Enable parliamentary debates to begin with 100,000 signatures on a web portal. The debate should simply present all the material and allow a mass vote.

3. All contracts the government farm out should be presented on an open bidding forum where all limited companies have the right to participate. If they do not complete the contract correctly they receive negative feedback from the people whose service they provide (i.e allow the public to vote if a NHS records system is working correctly - that way you have limited the possibility of corrupting individuals). If we did this at a council level wouldn't it improve voter apathy?

4. Vote in politicians but rank them via a vote system on the number/quality  of solutions they have proposed to a larger is of parliamentary debate problems. They are supposed to have access to the finest minds so technically they will come up with the best solutions from which the public can choose the one they want.

5. Enable governance of employee bank accounts and relationships with civil servants. If they choose to be civil servants they have to be above reproach and more scrutiny will be applied to their private lives - they need to accept this.

6. Bankers should become civil servants to only gain bonuses when the companies they back succeed on improving society. The measures of this need to be worked out but in essence the ideas they back with money should make life interesting, exciting, better, easier or simpler. Difficult to measure but I'm sure we'll think of a way.

Pensions

What I've learned from researching pensions for my dad. [this is in no way investment advice]

So, my dad's turning 65 in April 2011 and I took a look at what his options are. Obviously, because we decided to provide jobs to many middle class workers (see previous post) we  had created hundreds of needless rules to ensure that only the rich can be tax efficient whilst the rest of us have to spend inordinate time and money for the same result.

 One thing I've found is that the insurance and investment industry create a whole new language to make themselves appear more knowledgeable than they really are! Terms like index-linked, annuity, income drawdown, ETF, fund platform ensure that you lose your hard earned money to someone who gives you all the risk and takes a big fat reward upfront. So after doing some significant research as a mere mortal there are a few things you should look out for.

1. If you have a pension, find out what its been invested in all these years, give your pension provider a call and then look up the prices over the last 2 years on Google finance and Trustnet (or similar) and see how they did. In all likelyhood you paid them over 2% of your fund every year to give you supposedly better than average returns.

2. Inflation is supposed to be the increase in the value of goods and services each year. These days its the increase in the amount of money in the country because the government keeps printing more. When the money supply goes up (i.e the goverment prints more) the value goes down. This often leads to misleading statistics about bread costing 3p when your grandfather was a youngster and 90p today etc etc.. The cost of bread hasn't increased, the value of your penny has actually decreased! Its just a "clever" way of controlling the middle and working classes to ensure the majority stay poor - after all everyone can't be rich that's not how capitalism works.

3.Thanks to the financial crisis, insurance companies have pretty much pulled back on good offers for annuities.  An annuity is simply a guaranteed income for the rest of your life. So you give a pension company your saved nest egg and in return they calculate when you will die (based on statistics) and agree to pay you a set amount for life. If the amount is linked to inflation i.e it goes up every year with the cost of living then they will start out paying you less. Remember they want to make sure they keep as much of your money as possible! That's how they make a profit.

4. Its definitely worth asking a few different insurance companies for quotes - they will 9 times out of 10 be higher than your own pension company. Additionally, this is the only time in your life where telling them all about your illnesses, previous health related issues and your chain smoking actually makes you money!


5. Income drawdown - In my opinion income drawdown (for pensions that are reasonable e.g over 100K) is now a better bet than annuity. You can take 25% of your fund as a tax free lump sum and use the rest to invest in some income funds which pay out rates more likely to be higher than inflation. If you think logically, solid companies which earn profits must be part of the inflation calculation. As their costs rise they pass them on to the consumer. If you are an owner of these companies (via a fund which owns shares in them) you become inflation protected. Obviously your capital (your cash invested) may rise and fall with the stock market but the return you make should be reflected by their continuing profits in a inflationary environment. For instance, a utility company will increase prices to maintain its profits when the price of oil and gas rise.


6. Invest yourself - why pay someone else to screw up your life?


Investment managers take up to 5% of your fund upfront simply to provide a "service" which has no guaranteed results. Its like buying an iron and after a year of not being able to iron your clothes you are told you can't return it and you've lost the money you paid for it.

In my opinion if you spent a 3 or 4 days in a year focused on your funds and move them if necessary - you would save that 5% fee and probably do as well if not better than these "advisors". Sometimes people feel they don't know enough to do this or feel that investment professionals know more about which investments are better. The reality is that most of these professionals don't really provide better returns so why pay them?

If you look at safe "income" funds which provide you the money from your investments each year, you can invest these in safer funds through an income drawdown pension investor and pay a yearly fee of around £500. Services like SIPPs provided by Alliance Trust. Take a look and have a read. Save yourself £000's of pounds. Look at what the funds invest in and think logically about what people will always need and purchase e.g food, light, heat, weapons, drugs.

Comments welcome.

The future of Britain (UK) - it looks bleak

So, apparently its really difficult for politicians to tell the public the truth. We all know this but yet we continue to believe them. I just don't understand why. Is there a choice you might ask? Yes, there is! We need to occupy the streets and make change happen! Look at occupy Wall Street. The movement has been ignored by all western media - whilst they continue to show us "arab spring" scenes from Syria they refuse to show thousands of people acting against their governments in the UK or America? Could we be controlled just as easily as the human beings in the Middle East?

Lets look at two simple graphs and try and look at what is going to happen in Britain in the next 5-10 years

Graph 1: Population of the UK split by age

So, we can see the population through the eyes of those over 40 is a perfect pyramid scheme. There were always more workers to pass your work off to. You could comfortably go into management knowing that the next generation will be there in greater numbers to do your grunt work whilst you think of "strategy and direction". Do younger people not realise a pyramid scheme when they see one?

Now look at the population after the 40 year olds. There's a huge gap in the pyramid. The older generation have filled jobs with immigration and outsourcing and as a double whammy made having children and child care in general very expensive for the middle classes. We have a inverted pyramid for those who are 39 and below.

If the Conservatives do as they have promised and close down immigration from outside the EU we will see the cost of younger skilled labour rise if there are jobs available.

Remember those currently in the 15-19 age group will also hit the job market with debt of £40-60K actually equivalent to the mortgages that the 50-55 age group actually started to buy when they were starting a family. This will make kids even more unaffordable for the middle classes as they will have a huge debt on their heads before they can even begin to build equity in a property.

The politicians can obviously see all of this but won't bother showing this simple graph to the public nor will the media as its one big game to make you believe in an idea like "we're all in this together" or " the squeezed middle". The politicians always get paid and magically they are all wealthy enough to afford two houses, children and private education. So they have safeguarded their future the question is are the British people willing to fight the political classes for theirs?

It's time to get government that lives by the same rules that its population has to live by rather than simply being the overlords. Its time for no more free housing and transport for politicans - they do a job like everyone else. If they need to move down to London - buy a house and move your family. You can stay in your continuency house when you need to in a one bed room flat owned and paid for by the government or local authority each MP represents. Plenty of mums and dads have to leave their family behind in order to work why shouldn't politicians? They chose the career!

Next up: Who is going to pay for the health costs for all of that lovely pyramid of 40+ year olds?

Graph 2: Health care costs

Its unavoidable. There will definitely be more older people in our future. Look at the population graph its a mathematically certainty!

Now lets study the healthcare costs. Since Tony Blair came to power he pumped a very high real term increase in spending for the NHS (i.e above inflation). That kind of spending can't be sustained unless Britain is growing its economy at a phenomenal rate.

David Cameron will have to reduce spending but even so, we've seen from the population graph that more and more people are getting older. If he reduces spending each person will have less and less spent on them. THE NHS WILL BECOME TERRIBLE its a foregone conclusion based on the facts. Less beds, less space per person, less treatment, more self care and out patient work, and fewer operations until absolutely necessary. The list can go on and on. We just don't have the money to pay for over 40s to get sick. Now remember which age group all the capital (i.e money) and power (i,e heads of companies, senior management and cabinet ministers etc) They will look after themselves rather than the children in the UK. The wealthy ones know that their kids will be ok. They would rather enjoy their retirement than let the nation's kids have a lifestyle anywhere close to the one they enjoyed. Why do we think equality and child poverty are getting worse in the UK?

The future will therefore be one of mass emigration for the younger generation who look elsewhere for cheaper house prices and higher wages or significant wage inflation for the smaller supply of labour in the population. Robots (or other technology) may change these dynamics but that has yet to be proven. As things stand the pictures above illustrate that it was easy to see this coming but the politicians just couldn't be bothered to do anything about it. Instead they promised the world to retain power at all costs. 

Its a shame the younger generations will pay for the sins of their fathers. I hate it when people simply complain with out actually trying to think of solutions. Shadow cabinet politicians seem to think that is their role for some reason - when actually we need them to price and forecast different ideas to share with the public. So in an effort to help - here are actions we could undertake to minimise the trough in this business cycle - How to help Britain

Have you had enough yet?

It strikes me as odd that people don’t realise they are becoming economically poorer every day. Central banks and bankers have been actively increasing the prices of basic necessitates for 3 years now. But none of the “older and wiser” generation seems to care. They let the bankers earn their bonuses and the politicians continue to lie to the public and embezzle taxpayers’ income in exchange for opinions. Dividing the people is the best way to stay in power. They will continue to have debates and enquires whilst ignoring all the conclusions. Where do people think all the money comes from for these lavish public enquiries? Its more and more debt burdening our society with payments we don’t wish to make. Remember in the UK the largest part of society is the baby boomers, they are unlikely to do anything to change their lifestyle – even if it means the destruction of society after they have long passed away. The Media are equally guillty of self interest - why is the Levenson enquiry into media the number one news story, when we our very economic foundation is failing?

I believe this will all end badly. We do not seem to have enough economically active participants in society. A generation has been mollycoddled into believing that money is the new God and owning “things” will make them happy. There comes a time where the leaders in commerce, politics and society have to think about a purpose greater than just having a quiet life and ensuring their children are safe and happy. This is that time. We need leaders who remember that they can change history and inspire confidence in society. They can change the very nature of our consciousness. I only hope they realise the sense of accomplishment that comes from a greater purpose before its too late.

We are looking at war. As the price of basic food stuffs increase and society becomes increasingly divided, people forget about the empathy that binds humanity and destruction ensues. To ensure we remain divided our leaders (unable to think of new ideas) simply ask us to turn on each other rather than using our collective power to generate ideas through which we succeed. Maybe this time might be different – but I doubt it.

What we should be focusing on how to fix this:

Dilution of vested interests

We need competition to keep them busy and actively free market. Break up the “Too Big to Fail” banks ensure that we enshrine into law the inability for a firm to take more than 15% of a market thus forcing companies to move into other markets to grow and compete through ideas. Banking is a special sector it is not really a service it is the providers of capital to make our system work – it should be efficient but boring and stable! After all its risk management. They should not have growth targets set by analysts, capital should be provided to them through equity looking for a safe place to invest not speculate for capital growth. Stable dividends and growth with inflation! The same with any part of society that is linked to our basic needs – utilities, food. Speculators have plenty of other riskier ventures to investigate – films, fashion, new technology, developing world economies and towns etc...

Debt for measureable return

Arguably what bankers are meant to be good at? They should evaluate the risks and provide debt to governments and companies where they expected return and risks are carefully balanced. Of course we should spread our wealth, investing in a few risky items; but the majority should be linked to the obvious investment we need in housing, education, defence and economically productive work.

Link economic goals to average life span

We should be able to predict the size of various sections of our economy. Eg 0-10 year olds, 10-25, 26-39 and so on. Each section has clearly documented needs. We need to link our economic goals to the age groups and execute clear plans to enhance each of these sections of our society. As an example we need to link state pensions to average life expectancy to enable retirement age to rise as our chance survival increases.

Farmland and Food production

Push to enhance mechanisation and new bio-technology industry and can feed the world with a smaller amount of natural resources. Whether its Myco protein or laboratory enhanced plant produce. We need the world to buy our ingenuity and create food for the starving people of the world in an affordable way. This would be far better than continuously giving them a bit of development aid.

Education & Invention

We need to link these two concepts. You need to learn through practical experience. Develop an understanding of education and the real world applications.

Generation of Power

We need to invest in scientists and R&D to develop a new power generation system .Whom ever does this will be the strongest nation on the planet. There are two arguments to this. Either necessarily is the mother of invention and we start a war to turbo charge our R&D to destroy an enemy or we provide huge incentives, tax breaks and prizes to companies and individuals around the world to gain the expertise necessary to do this. We discount maths, engineering and physics and chemistry fees at university; give firms incentives to pay these people more; and develop R& D discounts which increase when products generate larger profits through international sales.

Smaller more community based local government

Much has been said about David Cameron’s “big society”. No one really knows what it is or how to do it. What we agree on is that the government is too large and we need competition which enables change in our communities. I would advocate the “open source” approach. Why do programmers work for free in open source communities to execute a new piece of software and then maintain it? It’s because they are passionate about it and find it interesting. We need to do the same in our communities. Why doesn’t the government open source their requirements in local communities and ask the people who want to help to engage? From improving council tax collection to keeping the streets clean, the government needs to publish the data they have and allow people to take control. Like any organisation, they need to create a free and open area for people to communicate and create so build a government version of SourceForge.Net. We have the resources and the passion to help why not provide the tools to do this?

Simple ideas that have impact:

• Linking council tax IDs to payment, billing, housing, benefits and tax systems online
• Enabling communities to send it repair requests through mobile phones and keep abreast of community changes
• Develop an auction style system for government projects where Limited companies bid for work and build up a reputation of success through a feedback and recommendation system that is transparent.

why is the economy so bad 2011 - simple

Well its pretty simple (not really but lets simplify a bit)

1. The banks create money and they created too much based on assets that were not worth anywhere near their valuations. Mainly due to humanity's greed. No one wants to better the world for the next 100 years when they can enjoy money in their 30s/40s now! No sense in preparing for a future economy when you won't be there to enjoy it.

2. The baby boomers have been patting themselves on the back for 40 years on how well they have built the economy. On the face of it everything was amazing. The world was a completely different place compared to 1970 - they surmised that capitalism worked and greed was good!

Unfortunately everything they build was using debt - which was based on an expectation of future improvements, growth and a straight line graph of good happening in the economy. We know from history that the world doesn't work that way but they seemed to ignore these lessons.

3. If we take away the effects from debt the world economy barely grew to sustain the population growth. In other words we stood still, all the computers and machines and factories and management consultants didn't seem to improve our productivity faster than the population that we serve on planet Earth!

4. Lastly the 0.1% of very wealthy people on the planet don't want to lose any money and so they try and pretend that all the money they gave to poor people as loans is still worth the same. Like a cancer the problem continues to grow bigger until it kills the patient. The politicians don't have the tools of a skilled surgeon to resolve this so it will destroy government upon government until we find a new system. Let's hope the new path isn't right wing fascist! Remember when Germany were given a War debt they could never repay in WW1? No? Well it gave rise to a lovely fellow by the name of Hitler. He surmised that he could never repay the loans but if he killed all his creditors then there wouldn't be a problem!

5. This kind of monetary change leads to social volatility and creates instability in the world and when people become desperate they look for "the answer" from anyone who they think can help them. We didn't learn from our economic mistakes of the past; do you think we will learn from our world war mistakes? Time will tell...

6. This is the end of the business cycle. As we head into 2012 things will get worse until we are forced to change the way our system works.

7. FYI for every downward cycle there will be an upward one. The best we could have hoped for was to prevent deep troughs and high peaks but then we would be looking out for the future after we die....and no one does that!

8. All those baby boomers born in the 40s/50s/60s are now about to start retiring and there isn't enough money from our taxes to actually pay their retirement income. So objectively, a war which kills off part of the older generation would be perfect for wealthy investors...let's see if they can make it happen! [NOTE: No one would actually want this to happen - but then no one seems to want a war and it happens anyway]

9. The government keeps promising without ever delivering and the public don't have another alternative to choose from.

Comments welcome.

How to protect my savings?

Its tough in this inflationary environment to protect your savings from being eroded. People with financial backgrounds will tempt you to buy annuities (basically a set income for life) or buy various funds they recommend (and often get kick backs from).

The truth is no one knows the exact answer and some people will be lucky and others won't. For my 2 pennies worth you can read my recommendations below:

1. As a middle class person if you have a large capital sum of cash from a pension or savings (say 100K-200K) I'd say firstly check how you can lower your fixed costs. Which should be food, mortgage, utilities, council tax and travel. So buy in bulk at the places newsagents buy from - everything is a third cheaper although you have to buy 5/10 of them.

Utilities
For utilities, check if you're house can support solar panels for heating and/or electricity. With prices going up 16% or more a year, spending 10-15K of your money on this would provide you a return outweighing any risky investment as the returns are guaranteed by the government. For solar panels make sure you have a south facing (as far as possible) roof with no shady areas for best results. Ground water heat pumps also provide free heating for an upfront cost. Its worth removing yourself from the crazy fuel inflation we are all facing.

Tax
Check you're in the right council tax band by reviewing similar houses in your area on the UK Valuation Office Website

Travel
Get your freedom pass to travel on local transport for free after 930am and walk a little more (if you're in london try www.londonwalks.com which are quite entertaining)

Mortgage
If you have a large mortgage consider trading down to a smaller property.  If you don't have a mortgage maybe you don't need the space any more and you could sell giving you extra income for the future.

2. For zero risk for some of your money you can invest in inflation linked Gilts (UK government debt). From time to time the government issues these and its worth taking as a older person looking to protect savings rather than a normal savings account at a bank. Look the the post office website to see how to get them.

3. Make your income last further by travelling to countries with a lower cost of living. Buenos Aires in Argentina is a reasonably cheap city that is hard to distinguish from western european cities or the Ukraine/Slovenia are other cheaper countries - Do some research.

4. If you're going to invest in the stock market wait until 2012 as its much too volatile now and invest in companies that you know will always sell/make products because human beings need them and look at the dividend yield (the share of the profits vs your money invested) that the company provides you. As long as its higher than 5% your doing better than inflation. You can do this through shares ISA or in your pension through your income drawdown account. Corporate Bonds in larger companies may also have higher returns now - you'll need to buy a corporate bond fund to participate either through an ISA or your pension account.

5. Put your savings in another country on fixed deposits. If you have family abroad, say India, you can open a bank account there using their help. Rates in India are 9-12% per year on fixed deposits. Of course, you do run currency exchange rate risks but right now the West is unlikely to grow as fast as emerging markets countries like India.

6. Annuities are at their lowest level for decades and basically you're just outsourcing your money to someone else to look after in exchange for peace of mind. But with all the scandals and Life company failures it seems their not as safe as people once through they were. If you have the time do some research with lots of annuity providers if you're going down this route. Sometimes other providers can offer you up to 40% more for your capital. Remember to always give them a full medical history. Anything wrong with you will only increase your annuity. In this morbid world their trying to estimate when you will die so give them every reason to think it will be sooner!

What to change in Britain to improve the economy

There's no way to sugar coat it so here goes:

• We need to spend less money on consumer goods not made in this country which provide 5 seconds of entertainment

• We need to train more engineers, computer programmers, electronics experts, builders, plumbers and scientific personnel. Kits should exist to teach kids how to program, build and create electronics from a young age - making it a game! Remember games like sim city, it taught you about taxes, reliance on only one type of industry, failure, success, people's needs and desires...

• We need our broadcasters to set our children an example by helping them achieve their aims within the context of what our society needs. Basically, stop pointless celebrity programming and start showing science, hard work and praise from your society as important parts of our culture. In India for instance, the parents complained to the national stations when they scheduled cartoons during exam revision periods. What is good for salesmen is rarely good for our society

• Create amazing prizes for those that do well in all our schools. Nationally celebrate these people in newspapers and kids shows.

• Develop our tourism and historical cultural hertiage and broadcast it around the world with our leading arts programmes. Whether that's Downton Abbey or Who Wants to be a millionaire. We need to monitise our ideas quickly and efficiently - Britain has always been good at marketing.

• Give children a place inside and outside school where they learn and develop new ideas through gaming. Games help teach you about the importance of perseverance; hand eye coordination; educational games enhance your vocabulary; action games improve team work and communication for a common goal. I don't mean games where you just shoot people but remember even these can teach you about planning, team work, co-ordination to achieve one goal and the pleasure of success.

• Invest in Thorium power research and tidal power instead of wind and solar. Not only are wind and solar power remarkably unreliable for peak time electricity, they also have terrible efficiency rates and all of the production has already begun overseas. Thorium, is like nuclear power but cannot be weaponised and is much safer for the envronment. 15g of Thorium in a car can power it for its entire lifetime! It is Earthquake safe! We need to be first with this!

• Create invention labs at universities and towns across the country where anyone can register and design an invention prototype within a computer simulation. When 3D printers become widespread people can even create real versions of their prototypes.

• Crowd source more ideas about every law and every issue facing us

•  Move to open source programming environments for the government. Push as many problems as we can on to an internet problem solving forum with cash rewards. Anyone who solves the problem will be rewarded with kudos from the country and a payout to enable them to make a living. e.g develop a robust automatic payment system for councils to collect council tax, develop a model of congestion on the tubes and likely solutions. We pay consultants millions to "think" about these ideas but they never solve them - its not in their interest.They just churn the same stuff out over and over again - only people witn commitment and focus can solve these problems and to many consultants ist just another project.

• Link pensions and retirement age to the average life expectancy as measured by the 15 largest towns in the UK. Ask pensioners to teach in school part time about "life lessons", from what they learn, to what they felt you should avoid as a young man or woman. We learn through stories!

•  Publish government expenditure through centralised book keeping (automated). Count each council as a subsidiary and model their performance via automated utlities. They should all be inputing their standard accounts into one on-line system or uploading a standard template. After all, cash flow is money in and money out. It should be fairly obvious to spot outliers in many different categories.

• Develop larger supercomputers and quantum computers to crunch through protein shapes looking for cures to cancer and aid. We are the leaders in chip design. We need to expand on this hard. 

• The largest three broadcasters should provide free advertising in equal proportion for each of five largest parties in return for their broadcast licence. Also, the state should set a budget for the 5 largest parties by popular vote for an election and it should go up with inflation. Other parties will need to use innovate social media and popular policies to get into the top 5.

• Identify all vested interests when a politican makes a law or proposes one. If subsequently, their interests were not aligned to the government policy they should go to jail

• Force opposition parties to only argue a policy if they have another one which has been costed and explored in the same way (a tough ask!)

• A Tobin Tax should be implemented to prevent high volume high frequency computer trading creating volatility in our markets and prices.

• 99.9% of the world are consumers only 0.1% are creators - Britain needs to be in the latter category. As an example, everyone uses the Ipad/Iphone to consume information but only a few people at Apple helped create it.