Posted by adi on Sep 8, 2011 in
Default On BBC Breakfast this morning they announced that the incredibly low interest rates after the credit crunch have cost savers around £45 billion over those two years. Of course, borrowers have gained, to the tune of around £52 billion.
This it should be remembered comes in the wake of a financial disaster caused by people borrowing more money than they could afford to pay back, and generally not having enough money tucked away for a rainy day.
So you would think encouraging growth by encouraging people to borrow more and save less would be folly enough. To add insult to injury however, as growth is slack the government look likely to print more money. More money = higher inflation = even less value for those poor, prudent souls that are bothering to save money.
It really does beggar belief.
Tags: borrowing, credit crunch, interest rates, saving
Posted by adi on Oct 12, 2010 in
Default,
Play For the past month or so Jitka and I have been beavering away raising money for The Winchester Project, a kids charity up in Camden. The culmination of these efforts will see us both leap from a plane tomorrow and hopefully float serenely to the ground somewhere in Sussex.
Our final, and biggest, fundraising push was at the annual Ride of the Falling Leaves sportive organised by Dulwich Paragon bike club. The ride holds a special place for me as the first sportive I ever did a few years ago. The rain that day was torrential and we were hoping the weather gods would be kinder to us this year.
I’d spoken to Bob, the organiser, about putting on some massages for the cyclists at the end of the ride, both to ease a bit of the inevitable pain and raise some cash for the Winch.
Paul Browne kindly helped us find a massage table for hire and turned up early on the day to help Jitka get setup. We were fortunate enough to be able to call upon the expert services of Danielle Barnett, Liz Walker, Lynne Taylor (and her partner Tim Budd).
Tim and Lynne are qualified Sports & Remedial Massage Therapists, graduating from the respected North London School of Sports Massage (www.nlssm.com) earlier this year with the prestigious Level 5 BTEC Diploma. They’re both members of the Sports Massage Association (www.sportsmassageassociation.org). They’ve been involved in event work at the 2010 London Marathon, 5k & 10k Boutique runs in Battersea Park and now the Ride of the Falling Leaves.
The Ride
Initially when I set off the historic environs of Herne Hill Veledrome for the start of the event the weather seemed like it might be kind, and the first 90 minutes of the ride were done in sunshine, albeit with a pretty strong headwind making tough going of things.
I’d managed to complete the annual round the Island ride the weekend before in 3h 20mins so was hoping for a time of around 3h 40. Alas the weather kinda put paid to that and achieving the gold time of 4hrs became the new target.
Much grunting up Toys Hill later and I was riding into London as quickly as my legs would carry me. Despite battling cramp for the last 15 minutes the thought of getting back to Jitka and the massage girls as quick as poss drove me on and I managed to get home in 4h 5mins. Just outside the gold time, but 10 minutes quicker than last year, so still pleasing.
The Massage
Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.
Rolling into Dulwich Sports Club it was lovely to be greeted by Jitka looking cheery under her umbrella. She filled me in on the days events thus far. We’d been setup in the changing rooms to shelter from the rain and it was a wonderful sight to see the ladies (and Tim) doing their thing, with three weary cyclists already getting some relief on the table.
After a bit of food at the wonderfully stocked kitchen it was my turn on the table, as Tim gave my legs a much needed rub down. Suffice to say that 20 minutes wasn’t really long enough to heal the damage done by the preceding 4 hours but they certainly felt better than they did.
I stayed around for an hour or so longer, chatting to fellow riders before wobbling off home for the recommended ice bath. It was a really great day and we managed to raise over £200 for The Winch, so very worthwhile all round.
I would certainly recommend any of the people we worked with on the day, and you can contact all of them below:
Paul Broome massage tables
Lynne: 07985 251 185 / Tim: 07738 494 207 (or contact@globaltherapies.com )
Liz Walker lizziwalkerholistic@hotmail.co.uk
Danielle Barnett daniellebarnett@massagetherapyexpert.co.uk / 07533 212342
Tags: charity, falling leaves, massage
Posted by adi on Mar 29, 2010 in
Default Feeling it after riding the Cheshire Cat sportive yesterday. It was a fun day, with the infamous Mow Cop a good challenge (see pic below), but the strong crosswinds in the middle section particularly tiring.
Still, I finished in around 6h30m so am quite pleased with that time. A good day that should set me up for the rest of the season.
Mow Cop
Tags: cheshire cat, cycling, mow cop, sportive
Posted by adi on Nov 28, 2009 in
Default As an Everton fan I normally approach the derby games with excitement but our awful form coupled with our injury list havn’t filled me with optimism this time round. Thankfully Liverpool don’t seem in any better form so we may well sneak a result and turn our season round.
You’ll have to forgive me for being less than partisan but the game I’m really looking forward to is the Gran Classico between Barca and Real Madrid. For me its the biggest match of the year between the biggest teams in the world. Hopefully Messi and Ronaldo will both be passed fit for what should be a belter. Can’t wait.
Tags: barca, everton, Football
Posted by adi on Nov 14, 2009 in
Default I’ve recently switched bank accounts to Alliance & Leicester and activated my card today. After it was activated the call operator tried to sell me ID theft insurance.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony of someone who it is impossible for me to verify was actually from Alliance & Leicester, and who had just secured a wide range of my personal information in order to activate my card, was now trying to sell me insurance against someone stealing my ID.
Far be it from me to advocate phishing or ID theft in anyway, but it would seem much easier to send out fake letters with a fake telephone line than it would be to set up a fake website.
At least with a website you can judge fairly accurately that the site you’re on is in fact an official one. How can you do the same with a telephone number?
Tags: banks, id theft, phishing, security
Posted by adi on Nov 14, 2009 in
Default A few years ago I setup an Everton fan page on Facebook as there was no official page at that time. It proved really popular with fans and quickly grew to 20,000+ followers.
Recently Facebook have been cracking down on pages and as mine was not an official Everton authorized page my publishing rights were revoked. Finding out how to contest this decision was an incredibly difficult job, but that’s probably for another blog.
What has amazed me however was the response from Everton when this issue was put to them to see if they could help out.
Instead of seeing the potential for communicating with this large list of fans the club instead started threatening legal action for using things like the club logo and daring to use the clubs own Facebook application on the page. The only way they would help is if the page was changed to something not mentioning Everton at all.
Talk about biting your nose off to spite your face. Such a shame as football clubs are such a natural audience for social media as fans are so willing to do an awful lot of work on the clubs behalf. Sadly few clubs seem willing or able to let go of control and leverage this enormously powerful resource. A message to the clubs should surely be that the brain power of these supporters is just as important, if not more so, than the money you can extract from them.
Tags: everton, Facebook, fan pages, social media
Posted by adi on Nov 14, 2009 in
Default I went to a ‘measurement camp’ last week with the aim of finding out more about how social media activity can be measured. Unfortunately it didn’t really shed much light on things.
Do you go after the revenue approach to measurement, in which case it almost inevitably means last click wins? Do you look for a more PR type measurement? I’m fairly sure that headline numbers such as that of Twitter followers is useless, but what else is there?
What do people use to measure the effectiveness of their social media work?
Tags: measuring, social media
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