LATE RETIREMENT

Raising the age of retirement in the UK from 65 to 66 and then beyond to 70 seems to be a major topic of conversation with the new government this week.
Am I the only person to wonder how the logistics of this are actually going to work?
The first problem I see is a major number of workers in the middle and upper management categories being made redundant in their late 50s, or 60 at the most. These people never get other similar jobs afterwards - they are dispensed with because they are seen as part of an older generation that needs to move aside for newer ideas or technologies. Does the government really expect our managing directors to go and spend the last ten years of their working life in ASDA or B&Q? And why do we want 70 year old managers working on the check-out in ASDA when our unqualified 16-25 year olds are unemployed? I don't get it!
Secondly and even more significantly the UK does not offer affordable childcare solutions. Maternity leave lasts a maximum of one year and the government offers you a free three (not eight) hour nursery place from your child's third birthday until they start school. As a laugh I will calculate childcare costs I would incur had I not given up on childcare long ago, but imagine for a minute I only had Anna and Amaia - that is after all not an unusual family for a 42 year old uni graduate. Anna is 2 and Amaia is 5 months. The private nursery I used when Léon was one year old, a great nursery but average in price for a Glasgow suburb, would cost me £1479 a month. When I left my job a year ago my full-time net pay was £1667. Even if petrol had been free, would you work full-time for a month to earn £188? So how do women on salaries of up to about £35K (which is way above average female income) manage to work in the UK? Well, for the most part (myself not included) women leave their under fives with their grandparents who give up their own well-earned retirement to babysit their grandchildren so their children can afford to pay for their inflated mortgages while still having children. I wonder who is going to babysit these millions of under-5s while granny and grandpa toil in ASDA till 70. Has the government budgeted for full-time childcare for all 1-5 year olds when raising the retirement age?
And that amusing calculation I promised you... If I worked full-time away from home my monthy childcare bill once Léon starts school in August would be £2323 a month during term-time rising to a £3041 month during school holidays!

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE REALLY LOST THEIR JOB?

Commuting home from Glasgow city centre
Originally uploaded by zawtowers

According to our darling chancellor in this week's debate, the UK has come out of the recession and things are looking up. Something is striking me as odd however...
I was a commuter on Glasgow's hellish M8 for the best part of 20 years before I started working from home. When I lived in the West End and drove to Bishopbriggs every day the journey was 40 minutes instead of the 25 it took outwith rush hour. When I moved to the south side the no go period on the M77 started at 7-20am and went right through to 9-20am... bumper-to-bumper chaos, 20 miles in 2nd gear. The only respite was school holidays when suddenly many parents took a holiday and you could drive almost freely at least till the M77 merged with the M8. Fridays were often slightly lighter (not sure why) but in general the 25 minute trip to Bishopbriggs at rush hour took the best part of an hour.
Last Friday Amaia had an appointment at Yorkhill hospital. It was at 9-30am. Nightmare... Factoring in 10 minutes for parking, I left early around 8-40am and was in town by 9am without going below 6th gear. Where had rush hour gone? Assuming it was a Friday anomaly, I didn't question too much.
Yesterday Anna had an appointment at Yorkhill hospital at 9-30am. Nightmare... Factoring in 10 minutes for parking, I left early around 8-40am and was in town by 9am without going below 6th gear. Now I was really puzzled. It was Wednesday, it wasn't a school holiday and the weather was miserable. All these factors should have meant I would grind to a halt at Silverburn Tesco but no. Rush hour was simply non-existent.
I have to conclude either that at least 60% of Glaswegians have started working from home, or that they've lost their jobs and are still home under their duvets at rush hour these days. What is the truth?

HOW WILL I GET HOME NOW?

What with Woolies, Borders, Zavvi, Land of Leather, MFI, Allied Carpets, Barratt Shoes, Adams and all the rest we should be used to UK companies going bust but the news that Flyglobespan went belly-up today really has upset me. Although I have not used it in the last 3 years, Flyglobespan was my favourite 'route home', my direct flight to Nice and the whole Côte d'azur and the first place I intended to take Thomas and the kids once our own finances stabilized enough :-( I am not a happy bunny.

WHAT RECOVERY?

So Brown still claims we're on our way out of recession? Can me sceptical but I did work in shops over Xmas as a student. This is not the length of queue I would expect ten days before Xmas in Glasgow's largest shopping centre for Santa's grotto. Granted, it was taken on a weekday, though given it is aimed mainly at under-school-age kids, that shouldn't matter. But in saying that I was in Silverburn last Saturday at 3pm and the queue was a mere three people longer.
Certainly, when Marcel and Lots were tiny, Santa queues could take more than an hour to move into the grotto. This one patently wouldn't! I suppose the politicians think we aren't noticing these small details.

GERMAN XMAS MARKETS

I see the German Xmas market is back in Glasgow. It has been here for the past few years and I've tried to drop by at least once. It isn't quite up to the standard of Trier or Freiburg where I went a few times when I lived in France, but it has enough Glühwein, sausage and gingerbread to make it smell right and often has some nice, though slightly pricey arts and crafts. That makes me wonder... after the pound's 35% nosedive this year, the Germans are going to have to make a decision on whether to make no profit over here by reducing their prices, or make their prices so high that no one buys anything. Hmmm - I guess what will be more interesting to see is whether they are back next year or not!

WHAT THEY'RE TRYING TO KEEP QUIET...

I read this the other day and despite what I consider fairly in-depth economic knowledge and first-hand experience of the recession both at home and in Europe, I was shocked at some of the percentages:

Since the UK banking crisis started in mid-2007, the pounds has fallen by:-

75% versus Japanese yen
50% versus the Czech Koruna
49% versus Swiss Franc
39% versus Singapore Dollar
37% versus Brazilian Real
36% versus Euro
33% versus Australian Dollar
28% versus the Thai Baht
27% versus US Dollar
21% versus South African Rand
21% versus Polish Zloty
4% versus Mexican Peso

It has increased in value versus only the Zimbabwean Dollar ,
Ukrainian Hyrvnia and Icelandic Krona.

These figures represent just 2 years!!!
Still glad we didn't join the Euro when it was brought in???

HOUSING

I'm not an economist but I really don't understand current expectations for the UK housing market. Journalists are watching to see when the housing market will recover recent levels. This article suggests we are closing in on 2008 levels. As far as I can see the UK housing bubble was caused in part by banks agreeing to lend up to six times your income on property, unlike the 2.5 times salary I was offered back in 1993 when I bought my first (Glasgow West End) flat for just £45 000 - a price which was not out of reach on a normal couple's joint income then. The same flat in 2008 would have cost more than £200 000 which was out of reach for a young couple just starting on the housing ladder. I thought the banks collapsed and were advised (or was it threatened?) to go back to more sensible lending. If banks can no longer lend six times your salary, then average houses can no longer remain at six times average salary levels, they need to fall in line with lending or there will be no housing market - just stable prices with no one able to move. So why are journalists still expecting the housing market to return to 2008 levels? Maybe we'll all need to move into teeny wee houses like this one!

MORE BULLSHIT FROM BROWN

Once again we are subjected to the usual government unemployment bullshit. What I would really like to see rather than figures for those signing on, are the figures of those who have lost their jobs but not signed on. Unemployment benefit in the UK is so low it is aimed solely at the poorest in society. This is a new type of recession, where middle earners are losing their jobs right, left and centre. There is no way people like Thomas or I could fail to make what we'd earn on the dole every month just by doing some sort of freelance from home, and therefore there is simply no point in signing on, but that means people like us (and there are thousands of us, if what I hear at the school gate is true) are suddenly earning a fraction of what we once did, thus having very little money to plough back into the failing economy, but we are not showing up in any of these statistics that are proposing that things will soon be on track again in the UK. Make no mistake, anyone who thinks that everything will be going back to 2006 after a year or two's hardship is living in cloud-cuckoo land.

UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES - WHO'S KIDDING WHO?

So there are suddenly 2.1 million people unemployed in the UK... come on now - who are the government trying to kid?
When Thomas is made redundant on Friday, he won't be going to the job office on Monday to sign on unemployed - there is no point because the way unemployment works in this country doesn't cater for management and professional people. Your £60 a week wouldn't even cover the council tax in East Renfrewshire so although he is a victim of this recession and the current governmental cock-ups, he quite conveniently falls outside their radar by being forced to either work freelance or try to create his own company whether or not it turns out to be successful. He and thousands like him are simply non-statistics.
Standing in the queue today at nursery to get in and pick up Pudge, the woman in front of me mentioned to her friend that both she and her husband had lost their jobs in the past 2 months and were of course going to 'try contracting - it's all you can do these days' - her friend replied how surprising her news was given she and her husband found themselves in a similar situation. Imagine their joint shock when I added the same story to their list. I reckon there are at least as many people 'ununemployed' as unemployed that the government is happily ignoring.
It's truly pathetic.

AN EXCEPTIONAL DAY FOR STOCKS AND SHARES?

I just checked the FTSE 100 for the day - it seems to be up 169.36. Dow Jones and Nasdaq have followed suit. That's a good day by today's standards. I was a bit dubious, I must admit, when listening to the BBC radio 2 news at 1pm today. The newsreader announced the FTSE was up 1001 points!! Didn't she even question the figure before reading it out? Funny! All this sunshine must have gone to her head.

DIVORCE

"Divorce parties"?
Originally uploaded by wwhyte1968

No one seems to be talking about the effect the recession will have on divorces, so I thought I would.
Divorces are not fun. Firstly in the period leading up to one of you moving out, you ask yourself a hundred times if there is something you can do to make it right again, to fall back in love, to be happy again, you drown in guilt towards your kids, wondering if you have the right to be happy by divorcing. It takes a long time to realize that your kids will not be happy with a miserable parent. When you use all your energy just to stay, you have no energy left to be a happy parent.
When you finally move out, where do you move to? You don't have the finances to just buy another house further down your street. You are disrupting the kids' lives so you don't want to drag them to another town and school if it can be avoided. I spent a year driving mine from the city back here at 6-45 every morning to keep them in the school with their friends. That's costly and tiring. Then there's the joint property. Either you sell your house and split the proceeds, or one of you buys out the other doubling your mortgage on one income. At the same time you try to draw up a separation agreement and a custody agreement with your ex paying around £150 an hour to your lawyer. This easily costs more than £2000. You also have to pay eachother out of each other's pension plan. When the two year separation deadline finally comes and you've been desperate to reach that deadline for two years, because the time spent deciding what was best was the year before you walked out not the two years they make you wait, you then have another several thousand pound lawyer's bill for the actual divorce.
Let's analyse the steps:

• Pay several thousand pounds to a lawyer - during a recession people are losing their jobs or simply under the threat of losing them so you don't want to pay thousands to a lawyer. You don't want to use your savings, you can no longer get a loan because of the credit crunch. If you are still clinging to your job by the skin of your teeth or your partner is, you don't get any legal aid.
  

• Sell your house - you can't the housing market has collapsed.

• Buy a house - you can't - you can't get a mortgage.

• Pay your ex half of your pension upfront - you can't - the pension funds aren't available and you can't get a loan.

So if I was planning to walk out today instead of back in 2006, I have to conclude I couldn't. I can't begin to imagine getting to the stage where you need to get divorced for your mental well being but you are unable to because of the credit crunch. The levels of stress some couples must be under at present is unimaginable. Ironically, I imagine the stress caused by redundancies and house repossessions are probably actually increasing rather than decreasing the number of people wanting to divorce. I can't begin to imagine being in their position.

UK UNIVERSITIES

It suddenly struck me the other day that this economic crisis will be interesting to watch from a higher education perspective. Already lecturer friends of mine have been complaining, or even resigning because of the 'dumbing down' of the current university courses. A professor friend said to me just last summer, and I quote 'You have no idea how well educated you are compared to today's kids - you'd get a PhD instead of an MA at your level these days'. When I asked why the courses were being made easier, he told me they had to be seen to be giving out a reasonable number of good degrees to attract funding and to attract foreign students who were bringing a lot of money into the universities. Often though, the foreigners were too poor at English to obtain the degree they came for so pressure was being put on the university 'not to put off the foreigners'. Now, look at it in this economic crisis. I presume student loans are harder to come by because of the credit crunch. I also assume unemployed struggling parents will be finding it hard to lay out thousands of pounds to allow junior to go to uni. Foreigners however will be rubbing their hands together because the UK currency has become a joke. Foreigners will flood into the universities taking up the cheap places our kids can't afford, the degrees will need to suit their needs and once they are educated - let me guess - will they stay here or will they go back home where they can earn twice as much? Hmmm - hard question! Well done Gordon - looks like you wrecked the higher education system in the UK too.

TIME FOR A RETHINK

Today Thomas and I went in to Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery to see what turned out to be a rather unimpressive Impressionist exhibition. They seemed to have moved half a dozen of the paintings from upstairs, which you can usually view for free, to the dark, dull basement. They then borrowed another dozen from the Edinburgh Gallery and the Burrell, also usually free, then charged you £5 to see them together in one room. They weren't all Impressionist paintings either. Some seemed only to qualify by being from the same era and being vaguely fuzzy in their nature! In fact, I'd go as far as to recommend a trip to the 2nd floor instead where the French gallery has just as many Impressionist period paintings on display in a much nicer and brighter room! It won't be long before any foreign visitors to Glasgow start feeling used and abused either! These donation boxes are beside all the exits. I suppose they'll all be wondering why they should suddenly pay much more than the Brits for the same experience! I guess the massive devaluation in the pound might at least lead to a job or two for people who makes signs like this!

EMPTY SHELVES - WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

lonely and deserted
Originally uploaded by circulating

I don't know if you have read Thomas's prediction for the recession. It is worth a read if you haven't.
I had to drive him into the office this morning as the Express Bus was off on holiday. On the way back I was listening to Radio Clyde - not my usual but that Wogan man was probably on Radio 2 and I wasn't going to risk turning it on just in case. There was a male DJ on rabbiting on about the recession and the sales. He was pointing out that he didn't believe the recession was as bad as people were saying given the sales were so good the shelves in his local Comet and Currys were all empty and big red Out of Stock signs were appearing everywhere.
Let's just analyse that for a minute. People have bought the TVs and laptops in particular but the shop is not restocking despite queues of customers wanting to buy things. Could it be they haven't any credit to restock? Could it be that selling the old stock isn't generating enough money to buy new stuff given the new items will need to be bought abroad with newly devalued pounds but the money they are making is on 50% reduced goods bought with the old strong pound?
I was in the Early Learning Centre yesterday returning a faulty Xmas present. The assistant in there was equally puzzled. We have no stock of these items in any other the Glasgow shops or in the warehouse she said surprised. Hmmmm - another shop which is selling everything 50% off minimum but not restocking shelves. Something deeply sinister is going on and the blinkered shoppers are only seeing what they want to see.
I predict 3 things:

• The shops that don't make enough to restock will go bust in the next 6 weeks and these will be big chains like those that have already surprised many of us.

• Some shops will restock but prices will increase by at least 30% to cover the devalued pound.

• Other shops will start sourcing inferior goods originally meant for the 3rd world markets so that they can continue to sell things at what people consider a reasonable price but the buyers will soon realize what is going on.

Anyone who believes this is good for British manufacturing doesn't realize how many years it would take to reacquire the old, lost skills and how few months we have to do it.

A SIDE-EFFECT OF THE ICELANDIC PROBLEM

Sunset in Iceland
Originally uploaded by Deivis

I hear today that Icelandair is cancelling its regular Glasgow to Reykjavik route for the duration of the winter because of the decline in value of the Icelandic krona. Big deal, I hear you say. But, what you might not be aware of, unless you, like me, have worked in a Glasgow jewellery shop over the Christmas period, is the enormous amounts of money Icelanders pour into the Glasgow Christmas economy.
As a student I worked in the not very interesting H Samuel over Christmas. Tall vaguely foreign people who spoke an almost accentless English would come in by the planeload on a daily basis throughout November and December and bulk buy gold chains and bracelets in particular. You could rest assured that if the woman in the furry hat wanted 12 or even 24 expensive gold chains, the credit card she would tender would have a strange surname ending in dóttir. I think this latest problem will cause a bit of a shock ripple around Glasgow this festive season.

SHOES OR A NEW 7 SEATER CAR - THE CHOICE IS YOURS!

The second most expensive thing about having kids, after childcare - which of course is a cost that can in theory be avoided as long as one parent gives up the day job - must be shoes, and in particular trainers. Unlike the childcare though, the only way to avoid this cost is amputation, and I don't think that's legal!
These are Marcel's trainers - I bought them on 26 June 2008 - the last day of school before the holidays so I remember exactly how old they are. My own trainers (which I bought more than 2 years ago do not look half as bad). It wasn't that they were cheap - Lacoste no less - reduced to a mere £35 in a half price summer sale. Would you look at them? They look like the dog ate them, or a truck ran over them. If I had an infinite supply of cash I'd already be consigning them to the bin but with 4 kids and an ex who still refuses to buy the odd pair of shoes for our kids - what am I to do? If I have to buy each of my 4 kids new trainers every 6 weeks from they learn to walk till they turn 18 I am looking at a bill of £20626.66. Nobody tells you that before you have kids, do they?

UK CHILDCARE - HOW IS IT SUPPOSED TO ADD UP?

I'm getting more and more annoyed trying to work out how a family is supposed to operate in this country. I have just enquired how much 2 nursery places will cost when I finish maternity leave. I spoke to an average-priced private nursery in the suburbs, not an expensive city one. You can only use private nursery as state nursery only offers a session from 12-45pm - 3-45pm for a 3-4 year old and a place 9am-12pm for a 4-5 year old. That doesn't fit in with any job in this country. So there we have it. I can either have 2 full time places costing £1270.80 a month or 2 morning places (8-30am - 12-30pm) costing £677 a month. Work that one out - either £15249.60 a year or £8125 a year. The diesel I use in my car to get to the office and the nursery is now costing me £1.26 a litre (it was 92p a litre when I stopped for maternity leave 5 months ago). I use on average 160 litres a month, so add £201 a month to the nursery bill (that's assuming diesel doesn't go up at all in the next 6 months, which I guess is unlikely given it's gone up more than 30% in the last 6). If I decide to work full time, I need after school care and holiday cover for Marcel and Charlotte at an average cost of £470 a month for 2 places, ie £5651 a year. So to work full time my annual outlay for just childcare and diesel at today's prices is £23312 after tax. That means to cover just childcare and petrol I need a gross income of £35k+ to break even. Add to that an average £150k mortgage at £900 a month and food and I am left wondering where you get a job you can live off, even as a couple.