Wills, Inheritance and Last Wishes

Worst case scenarios

• Your partner dies suddenly, and you're faced with complex paperwork and rocketing legal costs.
• Despite being a long-term stepmum to your stepchildren, you are unable to make decisions about their care and have no legal say in their welfare.
• Your parents or an elderly relative lose the ability - either mentally or physiclly - to manage their money and you're left to unravel their finances.
• Your recent marriage fails and someone you knew for just a few years is entitled to half your assets.
• Your children don't inherit anything - the tax man takes it all instead.

True: Pre-nups are not legally binding agreements. While a pre-nup will be taken into account, a court has the discretion to go against it if it believes it to be unjust or in conflict with the current benchmark for deciding what is unfair in the division of marital assets. (Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973)
False: My partner will automatically inherit my estate when I die. Intestacy rules are the legal rules that apply if someone dies without a will. They divide up an estate without taking into account need or anything other than blood or legal relationships, such as being married. If you are not married, your partner won't automatically receive anything other than assets you already hold as joint beneficial owners.
False: I am liable for my parents' tax if I take on power of attorney. Fortunately, the attorney is not personally liable if the donor cannot pay. However, the person with power of attorney could be responsible for paying debts and taxes on behalf of the donor - but only from the donor's own funds.
True: I can't make any decisions about my stepchildren without my partner's permission. In the case of a separated couple, where Mum moves in with someone else who the kids treat to as a father figure. If anything happened to Mum, the biological dad could simply remove the children, regardless of their best interests or Mum's final wishes. Stepdad would need to go to court to prevent this hapening. This applies to married and unmarried couples.
False: Common law rights apply to unmarried couples after a certain period of time. There is no such thing as a 'common law wife'. An unmarried partner living in property soley owned by the other partner would have no automatic claim over it.

Make a Will. Whether married or unmarried, there are important reasons to make a will. (a) Those you leave behind face large legal bills and lengthy court procedures. (b) The State allocates your estate to your next of kin - an unmarried surviving partner would lose out, and potentially, estranged family members could have a claim to part of your estate. (c) Writing a will ensures than children are provided for, plus bequests to charities, friends and others, and you can also record details such as funeral arrangements. (d) As well as large financial decisions, include your last wishes - such as where you would like your ashes scattered and who receives which keepsake. (e) Don't forget to update your will if your circumstances change. Existing wills are revoked (made void) automatically when you remarry, so updating wills is essential.

Taking on Step-parental responsibility. You need this to have a legal (though not automatic) right to look after your partner's children. A solicitor will prepare forms for about £200. Everybody with parental responsibility (mothers and fathers named on birth certificate) has to give written consent, witnessed by a magistrate or justice of the peace. All parties need to sign the document.

Organising Your Parents' Affairs. To fully manage their financial affairs, you need to be named in a legal document called a lasting power of attorney (LPA). There are two types of LPA: financial & property and health & welfare. You cannot do this - your parents must apply while they still have the proven mental capacity to do so. Without a LPA, every time a decision is needed on their finances or welfare, you as next of kin would have to apply through a court of protection to be apppointed their deputy (£400 per application plus cost of potential legal advice).

Feature in Good Housekeeping November 2014

Windows Slow Loading

Windows runs great on a brand new PC, but over time, it gets slower and slower until it reaches the point where you might have to wait for a few minutes for it to load in the first place. Part of this delay is down to the accumulation of unwanted files and a defragmented hard disk, and Windows' Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter utilities are there to help you with those problems.If you’ve tried those and still have to twiddle your thumbs while Windows loads, here are two more things you can try to speed things up.

1. Hard Drive
Part of the problem with slow PC start-up times is the hard drive. Hard drive technology is inherently slow, but you can remedy this by replacing it with a solid-state drive, or SSD.
Since they have no moving parts and store data on chips much like a USB flash drive, SSDs are extremely fast and can give a new lease of life to an old PC that’s running slowly. It doesn’t make much sense to fit one to a PC that’s more than a few years old, though, since the processor and other components are also likely to be contributing to the general snail’s pace of the machine.
The only catch is that SSDs are much more expensive than hard drives of a similar size, but prices are coming down all the time.

2. Unwanted Applications
A new PC should run super smoothly fresh from the box, but some manufacturers have the unfortunate tendency to preinstall so many unwanted applications that using Windows can still feel like wading through treacle. The solution is a free application called PC Decrapifier.
Download and install PC Decrapifier from www.pcdecrapifier.com - there’s nothing to catch you out during the installation. Run it and click the big blue Analyze button to see what it finds on your PC. You can then choose from a list of recommended programs to remove, but look through the list carefully to check that there’s nothing there you actually want to keep.

From BT News on Email Login Page, 21 March 2015

To Die For: Is fashion wearing out the world?

To die for: is fashion wearing out the world? by Lucy Siegle
Fourth Estate, 2011

Every year around eighty billion garments are produced worldwide, but when we buy them we are able to learn very little about where it was made and assembled and in what conditions.Today's fast fashion has brought exploitation of people, the planet and in the end, the consumers. This book is intended to guide you to becoming an intelligent consumer who asks the right questions and buys more carefully. Here are just some of the facts Lucy Siegle has unearthed, and that big business doesn't want you to query.

• Where once we bought clothes within income and for changing seasons, and cared for and mended our clothes, since the mid-1980s we buy many more items, wear them on fewer occasions and readily discard them if damaged, and sometimes unworn. In the UK an estimated 2.4 billion garments have not been worn for 12 months, many of them possibly never worn.
• On average, 15% of fabric is discarded during the cutting process. Retailers are known to damage surplus stock so that it is unwearable when put out for rubbish collection.
• In order to have frequent changes of stock and prices that entice us to buy, the industry focuses on how little it can pay and how fast it can be achieved in every aspect of the production process.
• An estimated forty million garment workers toil away, in working conditions that are typically very poor and often dangerous. The use of child labour is common but often concealed. Forced overtime to meet shipment deadlines and impossible task targets keeps people at work for more than 12 hours a day. They are paid a local 'minimum wage' which in many cases is not enough to buy sufficient food to live on, even at a basic level. Many of these workers are women.
• The auditing process, which aims to check the above abuses, is often flawed. Visits are often scheduled leaving factories time to manipulate what is seen and workers cannot be interviewed individually.
• To get the eighty billion kilograms of fabric produced every year takes 1,074 billion kilowatt hours of electricity (for which we need 132 million tonnes of coal) and six to nine trillion litres of water.
• Synthetic fibres made from natural materials (e.g. viscose from wood pulp) are processed using a range of highly toxic chemicals. In poorly regulated places, these can affect workers' health directly and even seep or drain into watercourses. Scientists have calculated, however, that while making a viscose blouse needed eleven megajoules of energy, a cotton t-shirt required twenty-four.
• Dye-houses are typically dangerous places of work, using toxic chemicals and little or no protective clothing available. Again the chemicals leak into nearby water sources. Processes to distress denim can leave workers with respiratory problems.
• The American cotton belt receives large subsidies, allowing them to keep their prices low, and forcing other countries into a desperate plight. The Cotton 4 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) are dependent on cotton, but are among the poorest on the planet. The world cotton crop is disturbingly dependent on pesticides, and is one of the thirstiest crops grown (ironically it is increasingly grown in some of the most water scarce areas on earth.
• Cashmere comes from the downy under-hair of a goat (hair from three to six goats is needed for a sweater). The fragile eco-sytems of Inner Mongolia are having to support an ever-increasing goat herd instead of camels which do far less damage.
• Autralian Merino flocks now number 107 million sheep; pasture land is one quarter of the land mass. These herds contribute (through belching and farting) to global methane emissions, a greenhouse gas.
• Leather tanning uses toxic chemicals which often contaminate local water sources. Solid waste containing chromium is dumped on soil tilled by subsistence farmers, and then eaten, with subsequent impact on health.
• Increasingly our discarded clothing ends up in Africa, in the process damaging their own textile industry. Clothes donated to charities are sorted by clothes recycling companies. First grade (just 10%) is good enough to sell in charity shops and another 52% is good enough to be sold on in bales. On arrival in Africa the bales are sold to local stallholders who sell the individual items.

What can we do to change things?

• Slow down the rate of buying and buy better quality. Plan ahead for your shopping trips and don't buy on impulse. Look after the garments you own.
• If donating for recycling deliver direct to charity shops. keep an eye out for bogus collectors who turn up an hour before official collectors arrive (they will have an official registration number.
• In 2011 some large companies were starting to be more ethical in all of their supply chain but will this continue.
• We need more information on labels as to where items were produced. In the absence of labelling and other information, we have to do more research before buying, which has the add-on effect of slowing down our purchasing rate.
• Support organisations that focus on labour rights abuses, for example: War on Want, Labour behind the Label, No Sweat and the Clean Clothes Campaign.
• Look for organic cotton items which do not rely on noxious pesticides and Fairtrade certified cotton which ensures farmers get a better price for their crop.
• Consider buying items made of hemp, cottonised hemp and hemp&cotton or hemp& silk mixtures.
• Buy better quality. The cheapest items are likely to have the most deleterious impact on human health and living standards, and effects on the planet.
• Buy from ethical producers. These come and go but People Tree (sustainable and fair trade fashion) has been trading since 1995. Others listed by Lucy Siegle are Anatomy and From Somewhere.
• Wash clothing at a lower temperature (in the UK we wash at a higher temperature than in other countries) to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Where and when you can air dry clothes outside.
• Use more progressive dry-cleaners who are replacing 'perc' (perchloroethylene) with alternatives such as liquid silicone.
• Keep items carefully, and mend when possible. Look out for local tailors who will do alterations and support local business at the same time.
• Consider clothes swapping events - but you will need to be prepared to donate good quality items as your contribution - and clothes customisation and reworking businesses.

Now it's over to us.

Walking Fitness Plan

All walking is good, but the benefits to your heart, lungs and bones - and weight - multiply as you step up the pace. Here's how to improve, whatever your fitness level. For more inspiration, see walkthewalk.org

Standing Start: Walk for 10 minutes three times a day, five days a week, fast enough to feel puffed but still able to talk. If every step is a challenge, take it slowly, and if you have a health problem, check with your GP before you begin.

Strolling Along. Once you can easily walk at 2 to 2.5 mph for 10 minutes, increase your speed to 3mph and double the time you spend walking. Walking for two miles at this speed without gasping for breath shows you are ready to move on.

Get Up to Speed. It takes 4 to 6 weeks for your body to adapt to fast walking, so don't rush it. Try the following gradual approach, where each walk takes place on a separate day, with a rest (or Pilates) day in between.

Week 1: Build Stamina.
3 two-mile walks and 1 three-mile walk at 20 min/mile.

Week 2: Pick up the Pace.
1 two-mile walk, and 2 three-mile walks at 18 min/mile.

Week 3: Go the Distance.
1 three-mile walk at at 18 min/mile and 1 four-mile walk and 1 five-mile walk, both at 20 mins/mile.

Week 4: Focus on Speed.
1 three-mile walk at at 18 min/mile and 2 three-mile walks at 17 mins/mile.

Week 5: Further and Faster.
1 six-mile walk at 17 min/mile, 1 three-mile walk at 16 min/mile, and 1 four-mile walk at 15-16 min/mile.

Week 6: Power Walking.
1 six-mile walk at 16 min/mile, and 2 four-mile walks at 15 min/mile.

Feature in Good Housekeeping October 2014

GooglePlus

Join up to GooglePlus (or G+ for short) at https://plus.google.com/ and click to create yourself an account. But what can it be used for?

• G+ Circles is like a distributed mailing list. You can add people to a circle and see everything they share publicly. If they choose to follow you, they'll also see what you are sharing in that circle.
• In G+ you can choose to follow a person and they don't have to follow you back, but all you will see from them is anything they post publicly.
• G+ has no character limit (unlike Twitter) and you can also broadcast to specific lists within G+.
• G+ has a 'hangout' feature which allows you to have a video chat with up to ten of your friends at once - you can inform a single circle that you are starting a hangout and people can join you. (Facebook video feature is just 1 to 1)
• G+ will check your Gmail account if you have one and will suggest names to you. You can invite people or view their profiles to see who they follow or who follows them. There is also a search engine at www.findpeopleonplus.com/ which you can use

It's unlikely to replace Facebook, Twitter, other social networks, or blogs but provides a further alternative to them. One option is to keep professional / work contacts in G+ and keep Facebook for friends and family.

Phil Bradley in CILIP Update August 2011