A few years ago, when I was looking for my first property to buy and a chance to get on the housing ladder, I found myself in a bit of a quandary. Despite the drop in house prices from their peak a few years earlier, a new house was still incredibly expensive. I looked at many houses, and there were some really beautiful houses out there. I saw some houses which were absolutely perfect in the way they had been designed inside – perfect doors and windows, beautiful wood floors and carpets, wonderful kitchens – clearly people had spent a great deal of time and money renovating old properties and transforming them into something very special. The only problem was with these properties that were just about within my budget were that they were very, very small. One property, as tasteful and beautiful as it was, was so small that they had to store the table and chairs under the stairs during the day so that you could walk through the room, and then pull them out when you needed to eat. After many months not finding exactly what I needed, I realised how stupid I was being. If other people could buy small old places, do them up and sell them on for a large amount of money, then why didn’t I do the same but with a larger place? So that is what I did. I found a large old place for sale that had clearly been a wonderful home once upon a time but had gone back in recent years. By having gone back so much it was affordable, and it just meant having to rough it for a while whilst saving up bit at a time to improve it. But I was young, that wasn’t a problem. One of the first things I felt after getting the keys was that the house felt not just cold and a bit damp from not having been lived in for so long, but it felt like the spirit and heart of the house had gone. So my first big purchase was a log burning stove. Some might argue that this was the wrong priority, but fitted into the old fireplace in the centre of the house, it instantaneously brought heat and light to the house, the fire restored the heart, spirit and character of the house, whatever the building work going on around my head I was able to close the door on the winter nights, sit in front of the fire and forget about it, and when people came to visit, despite the mess, their first focus was the fire, not the building site! It became the central point of the house from which everything else spread out, and it’s amazing what a difference that one purchase made. The renovations are still ongoing, slowly but surely, and are a long way off being completed, but I have a home I can call my own, am no longer throwing money away renting or living with my parents, and at the end of the day I can proud of the work I have put in to restoring a once lovely house to its former status.
In wealthier times, if you wanted something done to your house or home, your flat, apartment or garden, the easiest and quickest thing to do was to phone the local handyman, odd job man, carpenter, plumber, builder, etc. And for many jobs, that is still the right thing to do, for example with plumbing, electricity or gas. If you don’t know what you’re doing, then always get the professionals to do it. But there are other things that need doing around the house that you can do yourself if you have the right tools and equipment. Painting for example. So many people get a painter in to paint their walls, when really just about anyone can paint the walls. Shelves can be easily made with a jigsaw and the right wood. The same applies to doors and work surfaces. Hedges can be trimmed easily with a hedge trimmer, and unless you have a particularly big garden it isn’t that hard to get to grips with it. I often see people in the local DIY store forking out a huge amount of money buying expensive, electric tools. Items such as carpet cleaners, concrete breakers, floor sanders, concrete mixers, shredders, generators, enormous ladders, angle grinders, belt sanders, chainsaws, tile cutters and pressure washers. Whilst it is great that more and more people are getting the DIY bug and doing tasks around the home and garden themselves rather than spending a fortune to get other people to do it, I do often wonder how many times those people will use the tools they are buying. I suspect the answer is probably somewhere between 1 and 5 for many of them, with the number being closer to 1 than 5. After that, they just get left in the garage, under a bench or on a shelf, cluttering up the shed never to be used again, until a few years down the line they’re in such a state they can’t be used. Hundreds of pounds wasted. Why not just hire them? There are plenty of good tool hire companies around that offer a friendly, convenient service, with experienced staff to tell you what you need and a wide range of tools. So, it’s great that people are trying to save themselves some money, but they could do even better.
For anyone who is a first time property buyer, it is a pretty grim world out there. Yes, house prices have stayed low for the past few years, but then so have your chances of actually being able to get a foot on the property ladder. For that reason it is great to see a company like Pink Estate Agents in York providing what they describe as “a friendly, approachable service to first time buyers and sellers in the York area, specialising in properties up to £150,000”. As someone who was a first time buyer not that many years ago, I’m sure that this is incredibly reassuring to first time buyers in the York and Yorkshire area. Particularly as they go on to say that “Pink Estate Agents in York are an innovative estate agency specialising in the first time buyer marketplace ... Pink sells property up to £150,000 and are able to offer a more individual hand-holding service to first time buyers and sellers alike”. Being a first time buyer now is incredibly daunting. A few years ago you could quite easily get a lone and get a foot on the property ladder. Now, you need an eye watering amount of money to put down as a deposit, an amount that for first time buyers is almost impossible to imagine being able to save. Property prices rose ridiculously and uncontrollably around the turn of the century, which didn’t seem so bad when you could get a loan. But now you can’t, they’re almost impossible to buy. For those who argue that it is right that you should have the money to put down as a deposit, as it was banks loaning to people who couldn’t afford the loan that got us into this mess, I agree! But before all this happened, houses were a lot cheaper, so it was a lot easier for people to afford the deposit needed. Not so now. The average age of people getting their first house is now 38, although that figure seems to fluctuate between mid thirties and mid forties. That means that people are waiting half their lives before they can afford their own house. Something has to change dramatically.
Many people who have lost their job as a result of the recession are still out of work. In March, unemployment figures showed that the rise in UK unemployment in the previous quarter was the smallest in almost a year. But it is still a rise, and the reality is that 4 years on, things haven’t started to get better. They aren’t really getting any worse either thankfully, but there is no movement either way. In effect, the economy is stagnating, with unemployment totals for young people being particularly worrying at 22.5% for 16-24 year olds. Some of those out of work have no doubt been tempted with the idea of setting up their own business. I was out of work for nearly a year, and that idea certainly crossed my mind, and lots of people suggested it to me. But I wasn’t brave enough. The economic environment was a scary place, and still is, and I didn’t feel confident enough to go into battle on my own. I needed some sort of safety net. However, there is a third way, and one which doesn’t get much coverage. Many companies offer franchise opportunities. Companies such as the national house cleaning company Time For You have franchises all over the country. In fact, they have over 200 franchises across the UK. They are the longest established of the cleaning franchises in the UK, and work by having a central head office and a chain of franchises all over the country. The franchisees that run these franchises have control over their own staff and business, but have a support network of the head office and fellow franchisees all over the country. They have their own page on the national website, a forum to communicate through, an annual meeting, a strong national marketing campaign and a well established brand. In effect it is an ideal half way house, and one which should be considered, as it gives you a huge amount of business experience and the chance to “go it alone” without actually being on your own.
_And so, the end of the year is upon us. Another year over, and it seems to have absolutely flown by. 2012 promises to be a big year, what with the London Olympics, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the potential collapse of the Euro, and the Mayan prophesised end of the world! For many of us, it is a time to relax and have fun with our families, to celebrate religious holidays, eat, drink and be merry, and recharge our batteries ready for the coming year. However, as we drive along the roads, and see wreathes of holly or bouquets of flowers tied to lampposts, signs, fences, bollards and traffic lights, we remember that this time of the year is a very sad time for many people. People who may have lost loved ones around this time of year. For them , even as the years go by, Christmas is and always will be a very sad and painful time. People who have lost loved ones over the course of the last year may be feeling particularly emotional, knowing that this is the first Christmas they have spent without that loved one, perhaps for many years, and knowing that they will never spend Christmas with that loved one again. Then there are those people who have found themselves out of work over the last year or longer, who are struggling to get by and don’t have the money for food, drink and presents. For them, affording every day commodities is enough of a struggle, without the luxuries of Christmas. The release of the Military Wives Choir CD reminds us of those in the armed forces serving overseas during Christmas, and of the possibility of families receiving news on Christmas Day that their son, daughter, brother, father, mother might have been killed in action. There are those who are homeless and sleeping rough for whom Christmas will be just another day. And of course, there are those who will be working all over Christmas because they have to, because they work in industries where people can’t just up sticks and go for three days. The police, the fire brigade and ambulances of course are the obvious ones, but all sorts of other businesses as well. IT support companies, with businesses expecting their websites to be maintained over Christmas, funeral directors in Merseyside, as people are as likely to die over Christmas as at any other time, coastguards, people on the ends of phones, electricity and gas providers, the list goes on. So if you’re fortunate enough to be in a job where you can have Christmas off, don’t take it for granted, and if you’re lucky enough to be happy this Christmas then count your blessings. All the best for 2012 from the Brilliant Sites team.
_2011 has been an incredibly eventful year all round. Firstly, 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring. Although the spark that set of the chain reaction of events actually took place in Tunisia on 18th December 2010, 2011 will be remembered for the huge events which took places as a result of Mohammed Bouazizi setting himself on fire. Whilst events still rumble on, with Syria having seen an estimated 3000 deaths so far, it is important to remember how much change there has been so far. In January 2011, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fled to Saudi Arabia after 23 years as ruler of his country. The following month President Hosni Mubarak resigned as President of Egypt after a 30 year rule, forced out by continuing protests in Tahrir Square in Cairo. And, of course, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in Libya in August 2011, following 5 months of military action from various countries including the UK and a Libyan Civil War. He was of course then killed when he was found hiding in his hometown of Sirte. Colonel Gaddafi wasn’t the only terrorist leader to be killed in 2011. On May 1st the world awoke to the news that Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda and the man responsible for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on 11th September 2001 had been killed in Pakistan and buried at sea. And, of course, in December 2011, the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il died at the age of 69. Whilst not killed, the former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic was finally captured in Serbia in May 2011 for war crimes, crimes against humanity and war crimes during the Balkans Wars. And at the end of the year, the USA formerly withdrew from Iraq. 2011 was the year that a madman killed 76 people in Norway on the 22nd July, first by bombing the capital Oslo, and then going on a shooting rampage at a youth camp on the Island of Utoya. March 2011 saw a huge earthquake hit Japan, killing around 16,000 people and causing panic over the fate of its nuclear power stations. There was also famine in Southern Somalia for the first time in thirty years. 2011 was also dominated by bad economic news and with continuing worries for much of the year surrounding the potential collapse of the Euro. The EU had to step in to save Portugal and Greece during the year, a year which saw both the Prime Ministers of Greece and Italy having to step down and being replaced by unelected technocratic replacements – and in Italy’s case the whole government of Silvio Berlusconi was replaced by unelected technocrats. It was also the year that the head of the IMF, Dominic Strauss Khan, had to resign and step aside from the French Presidential Election due to accusations of a sexual attack on a maid in New York. There was some good news in 2011 as well though! April saw the wedding of Prince William of Wales, the second in line to the British throne, to Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. They became the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their wedding day, and their wedding was watched by an estimated 2 billion people around the globe. On the royal front, the Queen became the second longest reigning British monarch in May, and the first one to visit Ireland since 1911. The world’s first artificial organ transplant took place in July, and the world’s newest country, South Sudan, was created following their vote for independence. The Basque separatist movement ETA announced an end to its 43 year campaign in October. England won the Ashes in January, and the final Harry Potter film was released in July. In politics, David Cameron’s Director of Communications Andy Coulson was forced to resign in January over phone hacking, a scandal which has rumbled on throughout 2011, with the closure of The News of the World Sunday newspaper, and Rupert Murdoch appearing before a select committee of MPs to answer questions. A referendum was held in May over whether the UK should adopt the Alternative Vote for General Elections, which was rejected, and the SNP under Alex Salmond won a majority in the Scottish Parliament, the first party to do so since devolution in 1999. August 2011 saw a week of riots across the UK, with businesses looted and burnt to the ground and some fatalities. St Pauls Cathedral closed for the first time since World War II due to anti-capitalist protests outside. In October, the Defence Secretary Liam Fox was forced to resign, and he was replaced by the Transport Secretary Philip Hammond. There were mass public sector strikes in November, with public sector workers from teachers to car transporter manufacturers to civil servants going on strike over public sector pension reforms. And finally in December the Prime Minister caused a stir when he vetoed a European Union treaty over Eurozone finances. 2011 saw the deaths of actor Pete Postlethwaite, Elizabeth Taylor, golfer Seve Ballesteros, painter Lucian Freud, singer Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, boxer Joe Frazier, Welsh football coach Gary Speed and the 1st President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel. Finally, it should be noted that October 2011 was the month when the world population reached 7 billion. Quite a year, and 2012 is already looking to be even more eventful!
_Many offices or commercial buildings have a large amount of unused headroom which just goes to waste and is expensive to either heat or cool. At the same time, there are many businesses who would love to expand, either by taking on more staff or taking on more stock, but feel they can’t buy more premises or buy or rent larger premises at the moment because of the somewhat precarious economic situation. Yet the two situations can be quite easily combined with the clever use of a mezzanine floor. Mezzanine Floors are relatively quick and easy to install in a building, and can be custom designed for whatever purpose you want and need. So, for example if you have a large warehouse space, and have been using a third of it for office space until now, thus dramatically reducing your storage space, you could install a mezzanine floor and have all of your offices on the mezzanine floor level, whilst keeping all of the ground floor level for your storage. If your commercial premises are for retail rather than storage or offices, then a mezzanine floor could also help you to greatly expand your floor space. You might have been in many stores that appear to have two floors, whereas in fact all they are is large warehouses with beautifully finished mezzanine floors installed, often with a wood effect finish and glass and steel balustrades to really make them look classy and stylish. Beautiful flowing staircases leading up to what are in effect large balconies really are fashionable and really give a shop a professional look. Not only does installing a mezzanine floor in either your offices or retail store mean that you can have up to double the amount of space utilised without having to acquire new buildings, extend your current buildings or swap your existing building for a larger one, but it also freshens up your business dramatically. For your customers, it is quite exciting and refreshing to come into your store and realise that it now has an “upstairs” section, as it means more of their favourite products, new areas to explore, and it makes their shopping experience more interesting. For your staff, it is also refreshing as it gives them a change of scenery at work, but also means they have more space to get around in, store stuff in and work in, meaning they are no longer working in such cramped and crowded conditions. Mezzanine floors can be tailored and made according to your exact specifications and requirements and can be made to look extremely attractive, so don’t just think that they look like standard warehouse steel structures. They really are a fantastically cost effective way to expand your business, so well worth at least looking into if you are considering or wanting to expand.
_ For many elderly people, having cataracts is an incredibly limiting experience. A cataract is a cloud that forms across the lens of the eye, and can vary in severity from very slight to causing the sufferer to have no sight, and therefore can lead to the person with the cataracts going completely blind if they are not treated. Cataracts usually affect both eyes, hence although the word cataract is singular; it is usually referred to as cataracts because they generally come in pairs. The normal case is for one eye to get a cataract first followed by the second one at a later point. It always used to be the case that doctors would wait until a cataract was “ripe” before carrying out an operation on the patient’s eyes to remove the cataract. However, it is now felt that the operation can be carried out at any point, although it is best to wait until the cataract is causing problems with vision before carrying it out as the operation still carries some risk. Saying that, it is an operation that is carried out under local anaesthetic, and the patient is allowed to go home the same day. Despite this relatively simple operation, according to the World Health Organisation, age-related cataract is the cause of 48% of blindness in the world, an incredible 18million people. Cataracts are therefore the leading cause of blindness in the world. It is a sad fact that in many countries surgery is not advanced enough to be able to remove cataracts, and that is why millions of people are left without sight, without being able to see their loved ones, family and friends again because cataracts have made them totally blind. Unsurprisingly, it is the poorest countries as always that suffer the most, and therefire almost all of Africa is the worst effected by blindness through cataracts, with large numbers also in Indonesia, South East Asia, the Middle East, and to a less extent in India and Central America. As with most types of illnesses, the more elderly the population gets, the higher the number of people suffering with cataracts. It is also thought that the destruction of the ozone layer will lead to more ultraviolet radiation, leading to more cases of cataracts in the following years. It is particularly sad that cataracts have blighted so many millions of peoples of lives, because they are so easily operated on, and even if surgery isn’t available there are other forms of medication out there that have been developed that can reduce the impact of cataracts if not cure them altogether. Eye drops containing N-Acetylcarnosine have been clinically proven to treat and reverse cataracts. Two drops, twice a day for six months sooths and improves vision without surgery. It is when you read cases like this that you realise the importance of science, research and discovery, and think about how something like this can change the lives of so many millions of people.
_Mary Portas, the star of the popular TV show, Mary Queen of Shops, unveiled her report in the state of Britain’s high streets last week and her recommendations as to what could be done to improve fortunes in Britain’s town centres. But will they really make a difference. Commenting on her proposals, Mary Portas said that “the model of the High Street is so outdated. It is working in the same way that it did in the 1960s, but the 1960s are no longer here.” The British High Street has been in gradual decline for a long time, and has seen some major casualties in recent years because of the recession. Perhaps the biggest name to go under in the recent economic downturn was Woolworths, which went bust at the end of 2008, to the great sadness of many people across the UK who had bought their toys, clothes, stationery and, of course, pick and mix. In fact, statistics published by the government published at the same time as Mary Portas’ report showed that a third of High Streets were degenerating or failing. Many of the small, local businesses that used to inhabit the High Street have gone – with small local bakers having been replaced by Greggs and local pubs having been replaced by Wetherspoons. Neither of these are major problems, as Greggs is very popular on the High Street and Wetherspoons tends to do the High Street a service by buying up old, run down pubs that have gone out of business and retaining them as a presence on the High Street. But the replacement of favourite businesses with charity shops, mobile phone stores, pound shops and health food stores has hardly done wonders for the High Street. Whilst some useful shops remain, like Boots, Argos, the occasional IT support Leeds shop and maybe a chain book or DVD store, most of the good stores are now out of town. In the last decade, out of town shopping centres and online shopping has risen dramatically. Those looking to revive Britain’s High Streets should perhaps consider why out of town shopping centres are so popular. Firstly, everything you need is generally under one roof at an out of town shopping centre – and that doesn’t just mean shops. The restaurants, the cinemas, the bowling alleys, etc. everything is there in one place not just for a shopping trip, but for entertainment to break up the often tediousness and hard work of a day of shopping. With an out of town shopping centre, it is not just a case of you go to the High Streets and trudge up and down a long, winding road in the rain making your purchases, going from one end of the town to the other to find what you need. Instead, you can go and meet your friends for breakfast, do some shopping, have a coffee, do some more shopping, have lunch, do some more shopping, then maybe watch a film or go bowling before having a meal in the evening. What’s more, everything is under one roof and doesn’t involve your feet killing you by the end of the day. People have less free time these days – so the free time they have they would rather spend enjoying than trudging around on the High Street. It is the same reason why online shopping is so popular – it is quick, easy, and far less time consuming. Mary Portas recommended in her report that town centres should be run more like businesses, with “town teams” responsible for developing businesses in the town centre and on the High Street. She also suggested a relaxation of the licensing rules to allow people to set up market stalls, an end to restrictions on night time deliveries, affordable town centre parking and a national market day.
_I was speaking to an elderly person the other day, and the internet came up in conversation. They said that they honestly could not see the point in it, that it was just a fad, they didn’t understand why people use it, and couldn’t see what anyone had to gain from it. Despite my protestations, I could not make this person understand the importance of the internet. Yet there is a huge amount to gain from the internet for elderly people as well as young people. For example, there is the ability to keep in touch with people. When Friends Reunited was first created, it was seen as revolutionary, because it enabled people to get in touch with their old school friends, which in some cases they might not have seen or heard from for perhaps as long as 60 years. It was the precursor really to the social media era, when along came sites like MySpace, Bebo and Hi5, before finally Facebook. Because of sites like this, people can now keep in touch with each other much more easily than ever before. Many elderly people now use Facebook and other such sites as a way of keeping in touch with their friends and relatives, catching up with people that they haven’t seen or heard from for years and viewing photos and videos. In short, as people become less able to get around with ease, the internet helps to make sure that they are still able to keep in touch and not lonely. An email will get there in seconds, whilst a letter would have taken weeks. Then there are such issues as being able to buy products online, to browse through online shops without having to try to get from shop to shop on the high street – often a daunting enough task for those of us who are able bodied, but as we get older it becomes even harder to get round shopping malls, high streets and supermarkets. So, for example, if the prospect of going up and down each aisle at the supermarket seems daunting, there is the option to shop online through your favourite supermarket. At Christmas, mega online stores such as Amazon mean you can search for and buy Christmas presents without having to battle through the Christmas rush. In fact, the internet can be used to buy all sorts of things, so you can go to www.carbatterywarehouse.co.uk and order a new car battery, sent next day delivery if your car goes wrong, or submit photos to specialist websites and get personalised cards printed. Because of the internet, the world is your oyster when it comes to shopping. You can even buy things from all over the world, greatly expanding your scope. With sites such as Ebay, it also means you can sell your belongings easily if you want to make more space. Then of course there is the educational factor. With the internet you have access to informative sites, such as the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia, a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, blogs, dictionaries, books, articles and whatever else might take your fancy. With online search engines such as Google and Bing, all you have to do is type something into the search box and you have your answer within seconds. For entertainment, facilities such as the iPlayer on the BBC means that you can catch up on any of your favourite programs that you missed, by downloading them quite easily. In short, the internet can be quite life changing, and make life so much easier.
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