For something like 30 years I had been protecting myself from the stresses and strains of uncertain motoring dilemma with my membership of the Royal Automobile Club.

Any car can break down or suffer unforeseen problems no matter how well it is serviced and, in truth I came to regard my RAC membership as more important to me than my statutory car insurance policy. The good old RAC and its devoted team never once let me down, and would always go that extra mile to get me back on the road as soon as possible.

On one occasion, after a broken metal aerial had been flung up from the road to spear my car’s fuel tank, the patrolman even went so far as to make a repair by cutting an unused rubber duck aerial from the roof of his own vehicle, and using it, together with (I think) some epoxy resin, satisfactorily plug the hole. That repair was still holding strong when some time later I had the fuel tank replaced under a claim on my comprehensive insurance policy.

However the RAC are not the cheapest bunch to belong to, and as many of their rivals advertise strongly, and appear to have a good and happy following I switched horses for one of the others last year to save some money. I mean why not! They all offer the same service don’t they?

Just short of a year later I am here to tell you that nothing is further from the truth.

Just a few weeks ago, while in the Lake District with my wife, our caravan and trusty old land Rover Discovery we discovered a broken exhaust pipe hanging dangerously below the Landy.

No problem I thought, I’ll just ring my trusty break down service and ask them to send a man to safely secure the pipe so I can drive to an exhaust centre and have a new one fitted. You may imagine my surprise when an hour later I was visited by a man with an enormous recovery vehicle but hardly a tool kit to his name. All he was able to produce was a screwdriver and some cable ties (plastic cable ties) with which he tied up the exhaust pipe and drove off into the midday sun. (Oh yes we were in Coniston during the first rainless week for 6 weeks – it wasn’t all bad luck.)

When very shortly afterwards I again rang the breakdown firm they acknowledged the shortfall in their service, and agreed that if I located an appropriate exhaust centre they would provide recovery of our Landy to that centre the following morning. This was done but meanwhile we needed to request a hire car. No problem with one being provided but it had to be brought to us so we could be taken in it to the hire company’s office many miles away to complete the hire agreement before we drove it back to Coniston

All this wasted a day and a half of a one-week holiday!

So there is a lesson here. Just because the RAC has a proven and reliable brand it is a mistake to assume that any similar organisation can even hold a candle to its level of service. I have been extremely happy to rejoin the RAC and pay them whatever they ask.

Now if I can generate for my business the sort of Brand that the RAC has!!

Flat rate VAT is charged to the smallest businesses with a turnover of less than £150,000 and aims to minimise the red tape around administering VAT.

“When VAT was lowered in December 2008 many rates stayed the same and some were reduced by up to 2.5%. What has become apparent is that after VAT was put back to 17.5% in January this year, nearly half of the flat rate schemes have seen the VAT level rise above the pre-decrease level,” said John Wright, National Chairman of FSB.

“While a few sectors have seen a decrease, the majority of businesses will see their rates rise, which is unacceptable at a time when cash-flow is limited. The FSB believes that this is a stealth tax, which will affect a firm’s overall profitability.”

Business Advice for all UK firms from starting a business to flotation  -  Banking & Finance, business advice or business startups and starting a business. Article from http://www.newbusiness.co.uk

After going through a virus attack,
Losing a hard drive,
Fighting off hackers,
Upgrading all my software,
Installing fire-walls,
losing all contact with my server and website for a week,
And a host of other problems…
I have fixed my computer…
And NOW it works exactly the way I want it to!

See picture below

FACT: 200 drivers are killed or injured each week whilst travelling on company business

That’s a chilling figure, but the law of averages says that many of these drivers will be working for SMEs simply because they employ more people than any other sector of UK corporate business.

Research has consistently shown it is the SME sector which is least aware of the responsibilities facing employers around their driver’s safety and for that reason puts them most at risk of prosecution, if an employee is involved in, or causes a major accident whilst driving on company business.

SMEs, just like large corporate companies are expected to adopt a road safety policy, even if they only have a few employees driving on company business to ensure they protect themselves against possible prosecution.

The latest Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate homicide Act 2007 legislation was introduced to ensure companies focus on their employee safety and a jail sentence is possible if directors haven’t done everything possible to manage their driver’s safety.

Avis has researched all the key aspects that an SME should consider when developing its own Road Risk policy all in a single document. It is full of well rounded advice for SMEs to help them begin their own policy and ensure they meet their Duty of Care obligations.

Avis has also put into perspective how daily rental can help an employer when providing an employee with a car from a day to a period of a few months.

Gareth Ashman lives in Peterborough and has a condition called Keratoconus that affects both of his eyes. Gareth, 35, is a keen motorcyclist and was alarmed to discover one day that he was seeing double white lines in the road, where there was only one. Keratoconus was relatively unheard of in the 1980s and when Gareth’s optometrist examined him he wrongly diagnosed his condition as congenital cataracts, reassured him that it wasn’t progressive and that it was unlikely to get worse.

Ghosting effect – Keratoconus is an illness that affects young adult males more than females and there is a gradual deterioration in vision as the shape of the cornea changes: “I was a student at the time and this of course made reading very difficult. My optician had no idea what I’d got and his advice was ‘get a brighter reading light and put it nearer when you read’. Driving and bike riding were getting harder too,” recalls Gareth.

By 1992, Gareth could tolerate this no longer and asked to be referred to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, knowing that this was the best eye hospital in the world. Indeed, he had been in the hospital for less than 20 minutes when one of the hospital workers ventured that he might have the condition known as Keratoconus. Initially, Moorfields advised Gareth that he needed two corneal transplants. However, a chance consultation with an optometrist there who was working on groundbreaking scleral contact lenses as a non-invasive (ie. non surgical) soluti on for Keratoconus sufferers proved a breakthrough.

 “… with these lenses, I suddenly found my vision was greatly improved, I could read again, I could ride my motorbike on the roads, so all in all these scleral lenses gave me my life back. It puts a whole new perspective on your life!”

Keen athlete – Gareth revealed that he was a keen athlete and did a lot of sailing, skiing and off-road motorcycle racing, so the optometrist found him a pair of scleral lenses to try as an experiment. He found them very easy to insert, wear, clean and within ten minutes Gareth could tell that these were for him. “I found scleral lenses an absolute revelation. The Moorfields optometrist recommended them because of the steepness of the cone in my eyes, because of what I do for a living, and what my interests were. I walked outside and I found I could at last see properly.

“By this time, my vision had deteriorated to a point where I could no longer see well enough to ride, write or work. But suddenly, I found it was improved to the point where I could read and I could ride my motorbike on the roads, so all in all these scleral lenses gave me my life back. It puts a whole new perspective into your life!”

Enduro off-road bikes – In the meantime, Gareth had been wearing hard, corneal contact lenses, which he found uncomfortable and occasionally even dangerous to wear: “Not only were they painful, easy to lose or break, but they had a tendency to fall out in the worst possible circumstances. I have raced track bikes at most of the race circuits in the UK and I remember a track day at Silverstone circuit in the mid-90s when one blew out when I was riding down the back straight at over 130mph on a Honda Fireblade! I remember blinking and the corneal lens just blew out of my eye. It was so painful and of course you then have to close your eye – and with it your other eye too. Not ideal when you’re doing 130mph!” recalls Gareth.

“I also race Enduro off-road bikes through forests and one of the races I particularly remember is a two-day British Championship event called the Natterjack at Weavers Down in Hampshire. I did that in the days when I wore hard corneal lenses and the sand and the dust made wearing them absolute agony. My eyes were red raw by the end of that race. Then a couple of years later I did the same race again, when I was wearing scleral lenses, and I had absolutely no problems at all.

“With scleral lenses I can now ride my bike at over 100mph, in the rain, without a visor, on a track and it doesn’t hurt my eyes. One trick I’ve learned (when I’m doing endurance bike racing at night) is to put some fluorescein in the contact lenses, which gives me much better night vision. An amusing side-effect is when I walk into a night club or disco it makes my eyes glow like Michael Jackson in Thriller !”

‘Guinea pig’ – “Scleral lenses can give bikers an advantage over even people with normal eyesight. My supplier has also prescribed all-enveloping scleral-type lenses to water skiers and skydivers who have relatively normal eyesight or don’t need correction at all but appreciate the physical protection it gives their eyes in these extreme conditions. I also find they give me protection from the effects of chlorine in the water.

Nowadays, I’m a regular ‘guinea pig’ and talk to people at Moorfields and at clinics about Keratoconus to give them as much information as possible about their options.

On seeing a scleral contact lens for the first time some will say ‘you expect me to put that in my eye?’ but I’m a staunch advocate and try to show people how to handle them and put them in,” concludes Gareth.

For further information about Gareth’s condition contact The Keratoconus Group on tel. 0208 993 4759 or visit www.keratoconus-group.org.uk

Submitted by Adrian Foster
AVF COMMUNICATIONS
Tel. 01992 300344
Fax. 01992 303234
www.avfcommunications.com

An Antique Dentist Chair

 An antique dentist’s chair equipped with extraction tools is not the usual thing a landlord or lettings agent expects to find left behind in an average rental property.

But there it was, at the end of the tenancy, after the tenant had packed up and left the house for good.

 And according to Belvoir, Britain’s biggest lettings specialist, which has an office on Lincoln Road in, Peterborough that is just one of the many bizarre items that have been found in properties across the UK.

“There’s been the usual crop of dumped hi-fi systems and scrapped Playstations,” says Mike Goddard Chief Executive at Belvoir. “But then comes the bizarre stuff – and every now and again we hear of a new surprise.”

“Usually tenants are no trouble and the transition between one tenant leaving and another inhabiting the property is smooth, but sometimes when a property is cleared out  it is the letting agents and landlords who have to deal with the leftovers,” continued Mike.

 After the dentist’s chair… 

•  A Christmas tree beautifully decorated in the middle of August that featured a glass eye as one of the decorations
•  A fish tank with two very bemused gold fish, left in the middle of the dining room floor
• A montage of page three models that covered the entire upstairs of a property  
• A stuffed sparrow hawk mounted on a plinth  
• Two surf boards used as ‘saloon style’ doors to get in and out of the kitchen  
• A box of 24 out of date Castlemaine lager with a fishing rod, a kite and a false breast  
• An external door that had been mounted on bricks and used as a coffee table  
• A wardrobe full of brand new women’s clothes, shoes, jewellery and makeup 

“Some items were even left as gifts for the landlord. One tenant left pickled eggs because they wanted to say thank you and thought the landlord would like them!” continued Mike.

 If at the end of a tenancy a number of unwanted items have been left, please contact Belvoir as they can put you in touch with a number of charities that offer a free ‘pick up’ service for unwanted sellable items.

 Belvoir’s growing network of over 140 franchised offices stretch across the whole of the UK and look after a property portfolio valued at more than £1 billion.

“Sometimes these ‘leftovers’ can result in the deposit being held back from the tenant – especially where damage has been caused to the property,” explains Mike.

 “If, as a tenant, you act according to the rules laid out in your tenancy agreement, your landlord has no right – and in the majority of cases no desire – to hold on to any of your deposit at the end of your tenancy.”

 “Those who do lose deposit money do so because they have simply been irresponsible at some point during their tenure,” Mike added.

Established in 1994 Belvoir Lettings is one of the UK’s leading lettings agents with over 140 franchised offices. The company which handles a property portfolio valued at over £1billion offers a specialist service in property rental, property management, residential lettings and buy-to-let for tenants and landlords. Each local Belvoir Property Management Agency is owned and personally managed by local owners, operating under licence from Belvoir Property Management (UK) Ltd. www.belvoirlettings.com

  For further information or to set up an interview please contact:

 Emma Wimpeney  Powell Communication Consultants  T: 0161 8285400  E: emma.wimpeney@powell-pr.co.uk