Financial & Travel Musings

My Dad would have been 84 today had he lived but, sadly, he didn’t quite make it to even 82.

The photo here was taken on whilst he was over in France with us for John’s first birthday.

That’s the pity really… John was only 3 when he died so for him his Granda left him half a lifetime ago. We were over in France for most of John’s life up to that point whilst James grew up knowing him most of his first couple of years of life.

Interestingly though, both of them continue to mention him every couple of months or so and they haven’t forgotten him as much as I’d thought they would have by now. Sadly, they both have fewer memories of him than I’d hoped they would have had over the years but sometimes they create memories of him in situations where they would have expected him to be. Thus, James mentioned that Granda would have been there on his first day at he new school and that he’d have still been looking after them in what’s still their favourite park.

Of course, in many ways most of their “memories” of him will be of things that they would have expected him to have done over the years but which he didn’t live long enough to do. So he didn’t see them start in their new school, didn’t get to see James in the end of year event nor either of them in the Christmas carol singing. But they carry the memory of what he would have done through their experience of the things that he did do for them.

I think it’s fantastic that they can keep the memory of their Granda alive in that way.

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One thing you can be sure of is that the car insurance companies will use any excuse to increase the car insurance rates and the icy weather is the excuse that they’ll be using when the rates go up the next time.

You can’t really blame them this time around as there definitely has been a rise in the number of small accidents arising from the icy roads. Unfortunately, they can’t claim anything back from the various branches of the government that should have been doing something about those roads so instead it’s the insurance companies and hence us that end up paying for this.

Still, at least it’s not so daft as the argument put forward this morning by the local government representative who claimed that they couldn’t do the work as it would mean that their ratepayers would end up paying for it. Her argument was that since “the department” had loads of money, they should pay for it. Actually, it makes no difference in the end as those ratepayers are the tax payers who provided the “loads of money” so the choice is between paying it via the council taxes or through income taxes but they’ll end up paying for it either way.

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What is with this country? The second busiest airport in the country is closed, trains are stranded and thousands of people can’t get out of their houses. All because of a relatively small amount of snow.

What on earth would it be like if there was another mini iceage like they had in the 1800s when the Thames was regularly frozen?

Ironically, it would probably be a whole lot easier going. The reason for many of the problems this year is simply that the UK as a whole simply isn’t prepared for really cold weather. Were it to be a regular feature of our climate then more money would be thrown at the problem and many of the difficulties that we’re currently experiencing would go away. After all, colder countries don’t have all these issues.

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