vivweb01blog

I first published this mini-review in July of last year - since the employment situation has worsened significantly since then, I've recently updated it to reflect recent developments and the prospects for our economic recovery.  It's important for the sake of our economy and our children's futures that we address our poor productivity as a nation. We can only hope to do this if we make maximum use of our home-grown talent. It's important that we now include more of our older workers in our workforce, whether they have retired or not, and we can only tempt them out of their 'economic inactivity' by providing strong incentives. The following article will I hope provide some practical suggestions on how we might do this. UK Government has, somewhat belatedly, declared this as a priority - time will tell whether they (or indeed their successors!) are prepared to put their (i.e. our) money and resources where their mouths are... -------------------------------------

There is little doubt that more and more of us are struggling to keep ourselves and our families fed at present. This unhappy situation has arisen because of a ‘perfect storm’ of adverse circumstances and events that have hit us all over the past couple of years, and which shows little sign of abating.  The pandemic is widely seen as the principal source of our recent decline in fortunes, but in reality our population demographics, Brexit, the Ukraine war, mistaken monetary policies and a decade of austerity introduced by the coalition government after the 2008 financial crisis, have all contributed. Food banks have been a lifeline for some of the least fortunate in society for many years.  Until relatively recently, however, the numbers really needing to use them were relatively small. Over the past year, however, the added financial pressure of sudden-onset and rampant inflation, and the rush by BofE  to raise interest rates in a vain attempt to restrain it, have pushed many more

Increasing numbers of   our ' celebs' nowadays are publishing their memoirs, sometimes quite early on in their careers.  Perhaps the most noteworthy of these recently was Prince Harry, whose book 'Spare' quickly reached the best seller list and is still going strong. While memoir writing isn't for all of us, anyone contemplating doing this at some stage in their lives needs to ensure they keep a personal diary on a regular basis. This ensures that they have an accurate and detailed record of their lives to call upon when compiling 'The Book'.  Keeping a diary does of course require quite a bit of self-discipline, but has many benefits apart from just generating a life record and is therefore well worth the effort. A couple of lines of text taking maybe 5 minutes a day will usually suffice to cover the key events for that day. It will also help cement our memories and enable us to recap usefully on what we have (or haven't !) done that day. Many of us may