2013 will present challenges

It's been nearly three months since I posted on here.

I'd like to say that I've been busy, and I have. And no complaints about that, for sure.

However, 2013 has not opened quite as optimistically as 2012 drew to a close. One regular two-month contract in early year had fallen victim to internal cuts and I am a victim of that.

Such is economic life, as it has been for a few years. Nothing can be taken for granted.

So it is now time to renew efforts to bring in new work, to search for new opportunities and look for new ways of working.

If it was easy, it would be boring.
If nothing changed, we'd stagnate.

I welcome the challenge and intend to make 2013 even more successful than 2012 was.

Happy New Year!

We need understanding from banks as the cuts bite

The government spending review or "The Cuts" were outlined by Chancellor George Osborne yesterday. They will undoubtedly mean big changes for the way many people run their lives, and it will be several years (at least) before the good times are back.

This is not the place to try and apportion blame, but maybe we all got used to too much of the good times - borrowing and spending money on the never never ... and then the never never came to an end. It easy to blame bankers, and say we should never have bailed them out, but modern society cannot exist without banks and the services they provide. When the good times were good, we didn't try and rein them in. That only happened when things went bad.

Now they are back in profit, however, I do think it is time for the banks to give something back to the people who bailed them out. How about these for starters:

• better, cheaper service
• reasonable loan terms
• better interest rates on our savings
• In general: an understanding that times are bad for us, and they might like to help us this time.