Common Sense Utilities

Utilities in France are enormously expensive - and the French are enormously reluctant to spend money that could otherwise be socked away, or used for something essential. Like food.

The methods French people use to avoid paying huge utility bills might seem a bit OTT to us, but I think we could learn something from their cut-it-down or cut-it-out and pay-as-you-go philosophy.

We have a friend who has a small business. She lives in a newly refurbished rented house, does alternations, makes garments sometimes, makes toys, bags, belts and ties out of scrap fabric all the time. Her house is equipped with a new shower and bath, a new washing machine, and a new central heating system.

She doesn't use any of it - and she doesn't have a land line telephone - but that doesn't mean that she doesn't stay warm, doesn't bathe, doesn't wash her clothes, and never speaks to anyone.

• Heating is paraffin, which is cheap, pay as you go, and doesn't smell. The house is always warm.
• €32 buys her a power-shower 7 days a week for three months at the local leisure centre - and she can swim as well when the hours suit her. Cheaper than using water and electricity at home, and fitness is a bonus.
• 'Smalls' are washed by hand. Bigger things go to the Launderette once a fortnight - cost €2. A lot cheaper than using water and electricity at home.
• Telephone is a pay as you go mobile. Why support France Telecom?

The downside is that she needs to dust the shower.

OK - it's pay-as-you-go gone nuts, and it wouldn't suit everybody - but it's a regime that works for a lot of people, so it's worth thinking about how you might turn it around to suit yourself.

We haven't adopted the whole regime - but we haven't turned on the central heating this winter either. Even taking into account the cost of buying and using alternative sources of heating, our electricity bills have been reduced by €600 over the last two months alone - and the house is warm and so are we, and we don't miss central heating.

It really is worth a thought.

Emily

Riots - We All Need To Agree On A New Vocabulary

Like everyone else everywhere, I've been watching what's been going on in Britain over the last few days - and in fact is still going on now, in Manchester City Centre.

The thing that has really struck me hasn't been the destruction or the fires or the theft, or the sight of violent hooded and masked people (some of them children!) throwing stones and bottles; it has been the innocent people who felt somehow obliged to apologise for it all - most of whom would have referred to themselves as 'black'.

I've always been very much opposed to the idea of referring to human beings as 'black' or 'white' because it seems to me to be not only racist, but ridiculous.

I have a black cat who is really and truly absolutely black - but I have never seen a person of that colour, and I don't expect that I ever will. Albinoism runs in my family - but whilst I have seen many things that are truly white, I have never seen a person of that colour, and I don't expect I will ever see one of those either.

The fact is that all people are - in that absolutely horrible American phrase - 'people of colour', because if they were not, they wouldn't be people at all. Indeed, the only real difference between all people anywhere is that whilst most of them have an internal moral lodestone, some of them do not.

At the moment, we are seeing people wreaking havoc in Britain who have no internal moral lodestone, no sense of community, and no sense of consequence.

It's important that we don't use the terms 'black' or 'white' to think of or to describe those people because those words are not only inaccurate and inadequate, they divide people in an arbitrary, and dangerously erroneous way.

I think we can all - people of colour as we all are - agree that the words 'dumb', 'immature', 'inconsiderate' and 'greedy' can at least begin to describe the people who wreck buildings and businesses and destroy other peoples lives, and use our social networks to undermine our society.

Emily - http://www.metlissbarfield.com

Stress & Spring and Hair & Nails

All the pharmacies here are suddenly displaying shelves and shelves of expensive pills and potions designed to stop your hair falling out and your nails splitting irreparably in unfortunate places.

And that's quite smart of them, because everyone loses more hair than usual in Spring, and right about now is when it begins to be obvious that quite a bit of ones' crowning glory seems to have gone missing.

There's nothing wrong with the potions; some hair products are better than others, and the difference in price between name-brand products that specifically target a problem and generic products that don't isn't very great.

You should think very carefully before you shell out for the pills, though.

All the pills (no matter which brand) contain the same basic ingredients - and actually they are the correct ingredients. The problem is that they don't contain nearly large enough dosages of hair building vitamins to make any impact - even if used over the long term, which is, of course, exactly what the manufacturer advises.

If you're really having a problem with 'fall out' - particularly if you've been under stress - get a recipe from the internet (try looking at Natural News and use the suggested vitamins and foodstuffs. It's cheaper in the long run, and at least you know exactly what you are getting for your money.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com

Support the 'Get Brtain Trading' Campaign - It Could Get You into a Job

Get Britain Trading is a new campaign which aims to raise awareness of the contribution that SMEs make to the UK economy and improve the conditions under which all SMEs are forced to operate. It calls for changes to be made that would allow SMEs to prosper - and, of course, to grow, and employ and/or train people.

If you're out of a job for any reason at all, this campaign is important to you.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of small or medium sized businesses in Britain that would like to expand, and would like (or need!) to employ more people - and they would, if they could. The campaign aims to create a climate that would make that possible.

In order to make sure that the campaign has the maximum impact and achieves the desired results, the Forum of Private Business, which has launched the campaign, needs as many SMEs as possible to support the campaign and its aims by going to Get Britain Trading , and signing up to the 'Get Britain Trading' pledge.

Signing up costs nothing and takes seconds - actually, signing up, downloading the logo you can see on the right of this blog, and putting it into place took me, an admitted IT idiot, less than a minute. And it will be on our website tomorrow.

If you know anyone who has an SME, please ask them to sign the pledge and display the logo on their website or blog. If you have started up in business yourself - sign up to the campaign today, and get as many other SME people to sign up as you can.

Any SME owner who puts in an e-mail address - and I did - will get a free guide giving practical and expert advice on common small business issues like bank lending, late payment and cost reduction.

We ALL need the changes that this campaign could bring about if it gets the support it deserves. Please do try to make that happen by spreading the word or taking the pledge here .


Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com/

You Certainly Don't Need Cold Calls From Rogue Debt Management Companies - And Do you Really Need a Land-Line Telephone Anyway?

Better late than never, Citizens Advice has filed a 'super complaint' with the Office of Fair Trading and called for a ban on cold-calling - and upfront fees - by debt management and 'loan finding' companies.

Debt management companies make approximately 840 million cold calls every year - frequently to people who are already in debt or have poor credit histories. Some offer loans against an upfront fee, persuade people to part with their bank details, and extract their 'upfront fees' from their victims' accounts. The promised loans, of course, rarely materialise.

The Charity estimates that rogue debt management and 'loan finding' companies are costing the public £190 million pounds a year. And if something very serious isn't done about cold-calling very soon that huge sum is likely to increase. Current economic conditions have put main-stream credit out of reach for a lot of people - and made any offer of financial help very tempting indeed.

Obviously, you don't have to fall victim to cold-callers of any kind. You can just put the telephone down willy-nilly on all cold-callers. Or you can avoid the nuisance of cold-callers, put yourself out of the way of temptation, and save a lot of money by 'going French'.

The French are dumping land-line telephones in favour of bog standard, no frills, pay-as-you-go mobiles in droves. Several thousand people, for example, live in the same small town I live in - but the telephone directory lists only a few hundred, and those are mostly businesses. Everyone else has opted out of the expense of an in-house telephone that can only be used in the house - and the number of which is, alas, instantly accessible to anybody and everybody who can read - and gone for cheap and secret instead.

There are, of course, pros and cons to not being 'in the book', but the advantages can outweigh the disadvantages. For one thing, bog-standard, pay-as-you-go mobiles are much cheaper than land-line telephones. For another, you can always be sure that you might actually want to speak to whoever happens to be calling you...

Geoffrey - http://www.metlissbarfield.com/

Your Forgotten Assets Are Worth Money - and Maybe You Should Let Go of the Past

I cleaned out the garden shed yesterday - part of the mighty Spring Clean that I force myself into at about this time of year every year - and as I hauled gardening tools and equipment to and fro, and applied spit and polish to everything that was standing still, a couple of things occurred to me.

• I own two lawnmowers - one moterised and an old push-me-pull-me job. I haven't had a lawn (or anything else mow-able!) for getting on for seven years.


• I have a strimmer - but I haven't had anything to strim for getting on for seven years either.


• I have a tiller - but my garden is mature now, so there isn't anything left to till.


• I have a spade - but it's too big and too heavy for me, and it's been hanging in a corner with a John Lewis label attached to it since 2006.

Today was attic day. I found four kitchen chairs (blue with rush seats à la V. Van Gogh), a cupboard full of curtains that haven't seen a window since we left England in 1994, enough glasses to stock a public house, and a stash of ornaments and picture frames that have never seen the light of day in any house of ours. 1984????

Oh, yes. And when I opened the wardrobe this afternoon to pull out fresh clothes, I spotted a red feather boa. I tried it on. If you've got one - don't do it.

All that stuff! It's all in good condition and good working order - even the feather boa - but I had to ask myself why I'd still got it.

It's all going. It's all going in the next car boot sale I see advertised - along with the unwatched, unread and no longer listened to videos and CDs and DVDs and books that are clogging our shelves and cupboards, the clothing that we will never wear again, the tablecloths that we never use, and everything else that might be useful to someone else, but will never be useful to us again until it's turned into money and becomes the future, rather than the past.

Two things:

Firstly, your forgotten assets are worth something to someone else - and the money you get for them could pay a couple of bills, give you walking about money, or let you eat for free for a week or two.

Secondly - and this is just as important - all that old stuff is PAST. It's gone. It's lumber. Getting rid of it isn't just about getting money for it. The fact is that when you get rid of your old stuff you clear your mind as well as your cupboards, make tomorrow a better, unencumbered day, and leave space for the future.

It's Spring. Time to clear the dead leaves and leave space for new growth.

Emily - http://www.therapypartnership.com/

Secret Resources...

There are lots of reasons that you might be barred - or believe yourself to be barred - from becoming any kind of landlord or landlady - but if you are living in fear of being unable to pay your rent or your mortgage, it's time to ignore the obstacles, bury your scruples, and work out whether or not you can squeeze some life-saving cash out of the place you hang your hat. And, maybe, let's not forget, help somebody else out of a nasty hole at the same time.

The fact is that even if you have a small one bedroom flat, you can still let a room. It means sharing a bathroom, making cupboard space for someone else in your kitchen, finding hanging space for your clothes in your sitting room and using that room as a bedsitter, but it can be done.

I appreciate that nobody in their right mind is going to be in love with the idea of doing that, and that few people will relish the idea of sharing an intimate live-in life with someone they are not sharing a bed with - but it really depends on what the alternatives are, doesn't it? And let's face it, if the alternative is losing your home - whether you rent it or own it - or sharing it with someone else it until times get better, then sharing it has got to be a better option.

Our families are no strangers to sharing their personal spaces. My son and daughter in law have let at least one room in their house since the day they bought it 12 or 13 years ago. Bill's son has let all the rooms in his flat (including the sitting room) one by one, and has now moved out altogether to live with his girlfriend. In every case it was a 'needs-must' decision - and in every case it has worked out very well for everyone concerned.

Obviously, if you contemplate sharing your living space, you need to do some research - work out the practicalities of exactly how you are going to share your space, and find out what your shared space might be worth and price it (including estimated utilities, but not including the telephone which is always going to be a separate issue) accordingly. And then move yourself out, as it were, so that the space remains furnished and attractive, but is empty of your belongings, and ready to be let.

Then, of course, you are going to have to decide how you are going to find a tenant. Word of mouth is best - my daughter-in-law invariably lets to members of her Church - but advertisements work well if you obtain (and check!) references and get a month's deposit and a month in advance.

You ARE, of course, going to have to declare the money you receive from letting your space on your Tax Return, even if you are paid in cash. That might mean paying someone else to help you prepare your Tax Return - but you would still have your space, and you would still be quids in.

Geoffrey - http://www.metlissbarfield.com

£27m Reprieve for the Debt Advice Agencies

In January, Mark Hoban, the financial secretary to the Treasury, announced that funding for debt advice agencies - including the Citizens Advice Bureau - would be cut at the end of March. The CAB issued 900 redundancy notices to its advisors as a result.

The Government has now, however, set aside £27m of funding to provide for free debt advice during 2011/12. The money will be distributed between the CAB and other independent advice agencies in England & Wales offering hundreds of consultants facing redundancy a reprieve, and ensuring that everyone will continue to have access to free and unbiased advice and assistance in sorting out their financial difficulties.

Despite the renewal of funding, however, the Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills has called on "other funding streams" such as local authorities to provide more financial support to the free debt advice sector, and has also asked the Consumer Financial Education Body - which is soon to be known as the Money Advice Service - to deliver a free national advice service online, over the telephone, and face-to-face. The CFEB's site is already an extremely useful resource. The new service should be available by the Spring.

Geoff - http://www.metlissbarfield.com/

Keys & Gray - Dinosaurs are Still Roaming the Earth Then...

Three weeks ago Richard Keys and Andy Gray, who were then employed by Sky Sports, made derogatory and objectionable remarks about Sian Massey, a perfectly ordinary and very well qualified young woman who works as a football referee or, more generally, as an assistant referee.

The remarks were supposed to be 'off-air' - but they weren't, and so the shit, as they say, hit the fan.

Sky Sports - no fool it - fired Gray immediately; Keys dug his own grave by way of an hour long interview with Talksport which left him with no real alternative but to resign.

The interview caused a bit of an uproar - The Sun called it 'Skin Crawling'; Ollie Irish (of 'Who Ate All The Pies?' in case you don't know) called Keys a 'deluded buffoon', and there were print media people around who, whilst being less forthright, were even less complimentary - but as a long-term parliamentary correspondent I'm afraid I only found it dishearteningly familiar.

Keys' insistent, repetitive, but never quite wholehearted, apologies, and his talk of 'dark forces' at Sky, and 'envy' everywhere else, reminded me of nearly every disgraced politician it's been my doubtful pleasure to deal with over the past thirty-five years. These people, you see, are never the authors of their own downfall. It's all brought about by other people, and it's all so unfair.

I had great hopes that after Keys resigned we would never hear either of him or of Gray again - but no such luck. The Gruesome Twosome began a new job yesterday, hosting a three hour radio show on Talksport, five days a week.

The papers thought the show 'dull' - and interestingly there doesn't seem to have been a single caller despite the fact that Talksport's number was plugged as often as ever.

Could it be that a lot of people find these two clowns as repugnant as I do?

Bill - http://www.therapypartnership.co.uk/

Only in France - But Why?

One out of ten people are unemployed in France - and forty per cent of those people are considered to be 'long-term unemployed' because they have been out of work for a year or more.

So concerned is the French Government about that state of affairs that France's unemployment office recently launched a small test project designed to rebuild the confidence of the long-term unemployed. The project involves job counselling, and a lot of professional advice - not just from 'human resource specialists', but from make-up artists, hairdressers, manicurists, and image consultants.

The project is a day-long affair, and at the end of the day, participants go home, 'made over', loaded with goodies provided by the sponsors and - like anyone who has gone through a 'makeover' process - looking (and likely feeling!) a lot better for the experience.

Whether the project will ever help any of those people to get a job is moot - although a similar project designed to help 100 homeless women resulted in fifty percent of them getting jobs - but that isn't the point. The real point was more than adequately summed up by the organisers of the project, who emphasised that 'appearance isn't frivolous'.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that you are going to get a 'makeover' courtesy of Her Majesty's Government any time soon - or, indeed, at any time at all - but you can still take note of the French message, and take it seriously.

You need to spend time on yourself whatever your circumstances - not for someone else, not to get a job, but for you. Spending time on your appearance isn't 'frivolous'.

Emily - http://www.thetherapypartnership.com/

Herbal Remedies are Going to be Licensed - But That Isn't a Good Reason to Buy Outside the UK

As of the 1st of May this year, all alternative remedies must be licensed.

That does not mean that the herbal remedies that have been on the shelves of your local health food shop for years are going to be banned or unavailable.

It simply means that as of May 1st those remedies can only be manufactured by companies that can afford to purchase a licence to produce and label them in accordance with the new guidelines, and that you will only be able to buy those remedies from outlets that are regularly supplied by those specific manufacturers.

Which, sadly, means that you may no longer be able to buy everything you want from your local healthfood store - which likely buys from smaller manufacturers who will be unable to afford to license what they produce - and will have to go elsewhere, or buy on-line.

Buying elsewhere, or buying on-line, need NOT involve shopping outside the UK or EU. Boots Herbal Stores is not going to disappear, and if you can't find what you're looking for there - try Auravita or Vega Nutritionals .

This EU Directive - like many other EU Directives - has not been thought through, and is bound to put some small businesses in the UK out of business and some people in the UK out of work, but there is no need to make bad worse by rebelling against over-regulation by ordering goods on-line from companies based in countries where there is no regulation at all.

Geoffrey - http://www.metlissbarfield.com/

The Redundancy Hub

I discovered The Redundancy Hub when the Facebook Group that's associated with it asked me to join them on Facebook. The website site says that The Redundancy Hub "... is the one stop shop site you can go to if you are facing redundancy or constructive dismissal", and it means it.

If you have been made redundant, or face the risk of redundancy, the Redundancy Hub is going to be useful to you on an emotional level as well as offering career action plans, job hunting advice, training options and - last but not least! - help with debt management.

And you can get a free 28 day redundancy action plan.

Emily - http://www.metlissbarfield.com

Is Self-Employment the Answer to Unemployment?

When we began to write this blog in 2009, we all had great hopes that we wouldn't still need to be writing it in 2011. Unfortunately, things haven't worked out that way, and when Government cuts begin to really take effect later this year large numbers of people will find themselves having to deal with unemployment and all that that entails.

Informed opinion is that a large percentage of those newly out-of-work people will look to become self-employed, and whilst I'm all for that, I also know that self-employment doesn't suit everybody, and that not everyone can make a success of being self-employed simply by using the same skills that they once used for an employer.

There has, for example, been a big fall-out of credit management staff over the last couple of years - and I've lost count of how many of those newly redundant people decided to go it alone and set up as a debt collection agency. Despite the fact that there was (and still is!) and lot of debt around to be collected, few of them lasted beyond the first few months, and for the first time ever I began to see insolvency reports relating to debt collection agencies.

If you think you might want to go it alone,Start Ups is the perfect place to get advice and help on every aspect of starting a business. There's a "Business Idea Evaluation Tool" and a lot of other free tools and resources on the site - and a section that talks about the sort of personality that has what it takes to go it alone!

Posted by Geoffrey Metliss - http://www.metlissbarfield.com