Posts Tagged ‘britain’

Fear of pension crisis grows as workers raid savings

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jun/10/hsbc-pensions-survey

International survey suggests more than 20% are dipping into nest-eggs to pay down debt

More than 20% of the world’s workers have dipped into their savings to pay down debt and 13% have stopped saving altogether, according to a study of retirement trends over the past year.

In Britain, China, India and the US, the study suggests, savings have taken a back seat to maintaining living standards threatened by the global downturn.

According to research by HSBC, almost nine out of 10 people feel they are unprepared for retirement, and three-quarters do not know what income they can expect when they stop working.

Even in countries where the population is relatively young, there is a degree of panic among legislators keen to prepare for the day when over-65s outnumber schoolchildren. According to HSBC’s head of insurance, Clive Bannister, China is drafting plans for a nationwide scheme based on an occupational pension model established in Hong Kong. At the moment, most Chinese workers fall outside the limited number of occupational schemes and must rely for a retirement income on younger family members or their own small savings.

Last year, Britain reached the point at which 65-year-olds outnumbered 16-year-olds.

Bannister said the report, which was based on interviews with 15,000 people in 15 countries, showed there was a “downturn deficit” that the state alone could not solve. He said: “the recession means that people are worrying more about surviving from day-to-day than they are concerned about the future”.

He added that the situation in fast-growing economies such as India and China was more difficult. “We can see the state retreating across the globe as the number of older people increases quite dramatically. There simply won’t be enough workers to support a retired population through taxation. In emerging economies, falling state benefits means that, more than elsewhere, individuals must look after themselves.”

The last six months has seen a severe downturn in projections for retirement savings after a torrid two years for world stock markets and steep declines in interest rates. The problem is compounded by increases in life expectancy in most countries that mean pension planning must be extended to cope with a longer retirement.

Several countries, including Britain, have sought to raise the retirement age, but the burden of working longer has, in the main, been shifted by the current generation of over-50s to younger workers.

Previous HSBC studies have shown that workers from China to Britain expect to work beyond the age when they receive state pensions. But while many workers will remain fit enough to keep working into their 70s, others will find that they are unable to carry on and could fall into poverty.

The reluctance to save in the downturn adds to the “unpreparedness gap” being felt in every major economy, the bank said.

Stephen Green, the bank’s chairman, said: “A perfect storm is confronting pensions planning, created by an ageing population, falling pension fund values, a drop in state and employer contributions and an economic downturn which is forcing people to make financial choices.”

Green wants governments to support education schemes and financial advice centres for workers to make informed choices about their retirement planning.

  • Pensions
  • Occupational pensions
  • State pensions
  • Financial crisis
  • Global recession
  • HSBC
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Tip off: waiters still paid minimum wage out of your service charge

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

A new law is intended to stop restaurant bosses pocketing staff tips. But as Jamie Elliott reports, there may be no change

A change to the law intended to stop restaurants using tips to make up staff’s pay to the minimum wage will do nothing to stop employers pocketing all of the tips diners leave.

Last month the government announced the change to minimum wage regulations, which will come into force in October. It said the measures would close a loophole in the law that allows restaurants to make up staff pay to the minimum wage of ?5.73 per hour through tips, and would “give thousands of workers fair wages … and boost consumer confidence in the use of tips”.

Responding to the news, consumer group Consumer Focus said that from October, “customers can be confident their tips will always go to waiting staff.”

But, under the new rules, employers will still be allowed to keep all of the service charge and will not be obliged to display their policy on tips. Companies will also continue to be free to use income from tips to pay for wages and other business costs.

Since the planned changes were first mooted, Britain’s biggest restaurant chains show no sign of heeding calls for a change in practices – and some clamp-down hard on staff who reveal tipping policies to customers.

“The new rules mean a restaurant will still be able to keep a proportion, or all, of the service charge from October,” says Miles Quest of the British Hospitality Association. “But instead of saying staff receive an hourly rate below the minimum wage, topped up to the legal minimum by gratuities, staff contracts will have to state that employees are paid an hourly rate at least equal to the minimum wage.”

Topping up pay

Waiters working for high-street chain Carluccio’s, for instance, receive ?3.75 per hour, plus three-quarters of tips left by customers on debit or credit cards to top their pay up to the minimum wage. Waiters Cash spoke to said that when this combination of basic pay plus tips leaves staff with less than the minimum wage, Carluccio’s adds an extra top-up.

Under the new rules, Carluccio’s waiters will continue to be entitled to the minimum wage, but this will have to be paid regardless of tips. However, the company will then be under no obligation to pass on any gratuities.

Carluccio’s declined to say how it would alter its policy after October, but a spokesperson said: “All cash tips go direct to the waiter. Credit card tips are split with 75% going directly to the waiter and the remaining 25% shared between back-of-house staff but not management. Waiters and waitresses receive varying hourly rates plus their credit card tips, through the payroll. This totals an average of ?8 per hour. In the unlikely event anyone falls below minimum wage the company simply tops up.”

No change

Last month Tragus, which owns 270 restaurants including the Cafe Rouge, Bella Italia and Strada chains, sent a memo to managers telling them to print weekly reports to check the amounts of service charge individuals were collecting to ensure they were not pocketing any of it.

“If you find certain employees have low service charge, you must organise a meeting with the employee to discuss the reports. This may indicate they are fraudulently having the service removed when it was actually paid for by the customer,” the memo said.

The manager who passed the memo to Cash told us: “When staff join we tell them not to say to customers that they don’t get the service charge, but to say, instead, that it is distributed amongst staff. If a waiter consistently tells customers what happens to the service charge they will be disciplined and eventually sacked.”

He added that the service charge heavily subsidises staff wages – of the ?6.50 per hour staff in his restaurant receive, only ?2.50 comes from the company, with the rest paid for by gratuities left on debit and credit card. Cash tips go directly to staff. “A medium-size Strada restaurant would take around ?2,000 a week in service charges – all our business models are based on collecting this income,” he said.

If his restaurant has an exceptionally busy week, staff may receive an extra 50p per hour on top of their basic pay for those seven days – ?3.50 for a seven hour shift – but this has happened only three times in the past three months.

“It’s very hard to motivate staff to work hard and provide good service when this often makes no difference to their weekly pay,” the manager told us.

A spokeswoman for Tragus said: “At all of our restaurants we are happy for our customers to pay with either cash or a credit card as best suits them.

Concerning the recent communication to our restaurants about service charge, this relates to the tightening of controls around cash processing to ensure that the company protects itself against potential frauds.

“Tragus fully complies with the current law concerning national minimum wage and tips, and will ensure it complies with the amended legislation when it comes into effect in October.”

Small restaurants

When Cash visited four Bangladeshi restaurants in Brick Lane, east London, waiters told us that all tips – those left on cards and in cash – were kept by the management and that the practice was widespread amongst Brick Lane restaurants. “I feel bad about it, but the owners make the rules,” one waiter told us.

In London’s Chinatown, however, waiters in six of nine restaurants Cash visited said they did receive all tips on top of their basic pay – in two restaurants staff told us 50% of gratuities went to them, while in only one did they report that no tips were passed on.

Waiters in four restaurants in the Shoreditch area of London also said they received 100% of tips.

The government plans to introduce a voluntary “code of practice on transparency” later this year which it hopes will encourage restaurants to display their tipping policies. However, Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Unite, the trade union campaigning for change in this area, doubts the code will work.

“There remains an urgent need for a fully transparent tipping system where 100% of tips go to staff,” he says. “Unite is unconvinced that the voluntary code of practice will give consumers the clarity they need to be confident that any money they leave will go to the hospitality employees who deserve it. Our experience of the industry does not inspire confidence in its ability to self-regulate on tips and services charges.”

Liberal Democrat business spokesman John Thurso agrees. “This legislation has been all fanfare and no detail and will not have the effect it was intended to have,” he says. “The law should be changed to make sure waiters receive the minimum wage plus any service charge left by customers.”

What can you do?

Approximately a fifth of the UK’s 30,000 restaurants do not pass on tips to waiters, according to the British Hospitality Association, despite a YouGov survey of 2,187 adults in January which showed that 94% of customers wanted gratuities to go to staff. 79% thought tipping policies should be clearly displayed.

To give waiters and waitresses the best deal you should:

• Pay all tips (including any service charge added to your bill) in cash

• Ask if all tips are paid to staff on top of the minimum wage

• If you are unhappy, do not pay the service charge – it is usually optional

• Avoid restaurants that do not pass on tips to staff

• Go to fairtips.org to see which restaurants have signed up to the Unite union’s fair tips charter

Word on the street: ‘I had no idea … from now on, I’ll put the money directly in their hand’

Cash quizzed a number of people outside restaurants in Brighton and London after telling them about our findings.

Reactions ranged from surprise to outrage …

Carluccio’s, Jubilee Street, Brighton:

“The bill was ?18.40 and I raised it to ?25 because the waiter was working really hard and was so pleasant – I’m disgusted he’s not going to get all of my tip and I’m surprised that a company as big as Carluccio’s would pull a trick like this. I’ll think twice about coming back here.”
Frank Holland, musician

“I had no idea the staff didn’t get the tip on top of their wages – from now on I’ll put it directly into their hand.”
Lesley Aggar, photographer

Strada, North Street, Brighton:

“If the tip I leave for staff is in fact going to the business, that feels like theft.”
Neil Anderson, wine marketing executive

“Restaurants should make it clear to customers where any service charge goes, so you can make an informed choice about the money you leave.”
Melanie Anderson, project manager

Brick Lane, London:

“The law should be changed so restaurants have to give tips to staff on top of their normal pay.”
John Atkins

“I worked as a waitress and can tell you staff deserve their tips – it’s hard and stressful work. In Canada it would be unthinkable for tips to go to the company – no one would work in a restaurant that did that.”
Nicole Brunel, student, Calgary, Canada

“In Germany tips are distributed between the waiters, kitchen and the bar staff, but not the company.

“I leave a tip because I know the staff are not well paid.”
Floran Ochsner, lawyer, Munich, Germany

London Bridge:

“It’s wrong for someone to be sacked or disciplined simply for taking the tip that was left for them.

“I was a waiter in a hotel where we always got the tips and I certainly wouldn’t work somewhere where the company took the tips for itself.”
Alan Jackson, accountant

• Do you work for a restaurant that uses tips to pay the minimum wage? Or are you a diner with views on whether or not tips should be paid? If you think they should be paid, how should they be distributed? Get in touch with us by emailing cash@observer.co.uk or write to Cash, The Observer, King’s Place, 90 York Way, N1 9GU.

  • Consumer affairs
  • Pay
  • Restaurants
  • Work & careers
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Battle looms over right to return goods

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Don’t assume the worst if you’ve got faulty items just out of warranty, says Miles Brignall

Thousands of Britons are being denied their consumer rights every day as store staff hide behind “ridiculously overcomplicated” laws, a lawyer has warned. The Money postbag has been bulging with letters from people complaining they have been fobbed off in stores when trying to return items that are just out of warranty. It has also emerged staff are breaking the law when they wrongly tell consumers they have no rights once the item is more than a year old.

Two weeks ago we featured the case of retired teacher Peter Ward, who persuaded Tesco to replace a flat-screen TV that had broken down a few months outside its one-year warranty. He cited EU directive 1999/44/EC: this appears to give consumers a minimum of two years to take items back to the retailer for a repair or replacement. After a long stand-off, during which he was threatened with being ejected from the store, Tesco agreed to replace his TV.

The article struck a chord with readers, many of whom contacted Money to say staff would not listen when they had tried to return goods more than a year old. We were also contacted by one of the UK’s leading consumer law specialists, Christian Twigg-Flesner from the University of Hull. He somewhat contradicted what European Commission staff told us two weeks ago (that EU law gave consumers a two-year guarantee), but confirmed consumer rights did not end after a year.

“This whole area is complicated and in desperate need of reform,” Twigg-Flesner says. “The two-year directive on consumer sales and guarantees seeks to ensure a minimum standard of protection across the EU.”

Because the UK’s Sale of Goods Act (SOGA) meets or exceeds most of the directive’s requirements, except for a right to repair or replacement from 2003, he says consumers should rely on this when returning items.

“All EU countries have to ensure a retailer could be held liable for all ‘non-conformities’ which manifest within two years from delivery. However, this is not a two-year guarantee (although eurospeak does not help by describing this as the ‘legal guarantee’), because goods are not required, in law, to last for those two years.” He says the SOGA requires three things: the goods must be as described; they must be of satisfactory quality, which is determined by description, price, durability, freedom from minor defects and fitness for common purpose; and they must be fit for that purpose.

Anyone trying to return electronic goods 13 months after purchase and who is told the item is out of warranty, should stand firm, adds Twigg-Flesner.

“I generally find that if you stick to your guns and quote the SOGA, store staff will eventually ring head office and you should receive your rights. It is a criminal offence for them to tell you that, because the goods are out of warranty, you have no rights,” he says.

“If goods break down sooner than expected, there is a strong argument they were not of satisfactory quality when delivered. A consumer who seeks repair or replacement, but not a full refund, during the first six months has the benefit of a presumption the goods were not satisfactory when delivered.”

He says that, after six months, the consumer has to provide evidence the goods were not satisfactory, which will require expert opinion, and advises anyone who feels the item should have been reasonably expected to last longer to go to court if necessary.


Action stations: What to do if you are rebuffed

• If the retailer says you have no rights because the item is more than a year old, this is not only nonsense – it is a criminal offence.

• Assuming the item has failed through no fault of yours and it was “reasonable” to expect it to last longer – given its cost/quality – you should demand, under the Sale of Goods Act, that it be replaced or repaired by the retailer, not the manufacturer.

• After the item is six months old, retailers can demand evidence that it failed as a result of a manufacturing fault. Try the Yellow Pages for an independent repairer. Most stores will reimburse the cost of an independent examination if the breakdown is the result of an inherent fault.

• Presented with the evidence, most stores will back down and replace or repair the item. If that would prove ‘disproportionately costly’ the store can offer a cash sum that would reflect the benefit that you got from the item until it broke.

• If you don’t achieve a satisfactory outcome, the small claims court will happily hear cases of up to £5,000 in value, and it is possible to recover your costs.

Your stories: ‘They said Britain isn’t in the EU’

Xboxes, iPods, fridges and computers are the main items failing just outside the one-year manufacturer’s warranty. Several readers told us their Xbox games consoles had gone wrong just after 12 months. Mary Aspden, from London, complained to Microsoft after her son’s Xbox stopped working 14 days outside warranty. The company demanded £68 to clear the error codes.

Jonathan Sadler is in dispute with Amazon after it refused to replace a shaver it sold him 14 months ago. “It seems they are attempting to get around the legislation and fob people off by saying that it only applies to products that have become faulty in the first six months – so even less time than the one-year guarantee they originally stated,” he wrote.

Michael Ireland told us PC World refused his claim when his laptop failed after 14 months. “The symptoms indicate it is a motherboard failure but unless I have an assessment by an independent expert at my expense (typically £40), they are not interested.”

Several readers said they had been denied replacements or free repairs by Apple UK when they tried to take back iPods that had failed at between one and two years old. In each case they were told they would have to pay for repairs even though the problem appeared to be the internal hard drive, which the consumer cannot control.

Ann Lawson says she was almost thrown out of a Hull branch of Currys when complaining about a washing machine that failed after 18 months. “I was told that the Sale of Goods Act did not apply as the goods were more than six months old and that EU law did not apply as Britain was not in the EU!” She has complained to Currys’ HQ.

Meanwhile, Shirly Mew proves you can take on big companies and win. Her £320 gas cooker from Sainsbury’s went rusty after 14 months. “When I complained, Sainsbury’s response was that the cooker was out of guarantee, and that as I had chosen not to take out insurance there was nothing they could do about it. They referred me to the manufacturer and I got nowhere.

“I was helped to draft a letter to head office. Within days, an engineer called and replaced the components free. My advice to anyone is, don’t give up. If necessary, go to the top.”

m.brignall@guardian.co.uk

  • Consumer affairs
  • Shopping
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Britons on average incomes ‘failed by successive governments’

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

• Median earners ‘face job cuts and repossessions’
• Successive governments have failed them, says TUC

Britons on average incomes have been failed by all governments over the past 30 years and thousands have been left ­facing the twin prospects of redundancy and repossession, the Trades Union Congress says today.

Despite the widespread belief that people on middle incomes earn more than enough to support their families, the TUC says their average annual pay was just under £20,000 – a “long way” from the comfortable middle-class incomes associated with middle Britain.

The TUC says that most politicians have got middle Britain “badly wrong” and that the failure of successive governments to deliver for middle earners helps explain voter outrage with politics after the MP expenses scandal.

Brendan Barber, the TUC’s general secretary, said: “For all the talk of middle Britain, those on real middle incomes got left behind under the Conservatives, were left out of Labour’s boom that has now busted into recession, and are now fearing for their jobs and homes as unemployment bites.

“No wonder there is so much anger at a political system that has seen the super-rich soar away, while too many MPs look to be more interested in joining the wealthy rather than standing up to them.”

Thirty years ago the UK was one of Europe’s most equal societies, he said, but now it is one of the most unequal. “Far from the middle being unaffected by the growing wealth and income gap, they have slipped behind not just the rich but the better-off professional classes.”

The TUC said median earners have seen their income rise by less than average over the last 30 years. Since 1979 the income of median earners has gone up by 60%, while much bigger increases for the better-off have pushed up average earnings by 78%. Though the median income fell behind far more under the Conservatives, the gap has continued to grow under Labour.

Stewart Lansley, the report’s author, said: “This may stand as one of the big failings of the last 30 years. Given the political rhetoric – that the policies on offer would secure middle-income Britain a bigger share of growing national wealth and wellbeing – one might assume that the middle-income Britain of the 1970s and 1980s has genuinely been transformed into the well-to-do middle Britain of current imagining. In fact, this is not the case.

“Maybe because of this, middle-income Britain holds noticeably different values than those above them in the income hierarchy. They are more pro-state and strongly support government action to tackle inequality.”

  • Trade unions
  • Labour
  • Conservatives
  • Recession
  • Work & careers
  • Pay
  • Redundancy
  • Repossessions
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The rewards of solar panels

Friday, May 8th, 2009

Ashley Seager spent £8,500 on solar roof panels and is now reaping the rewards

We live in an old terraced house on a cloudy, rainy island. Yet the solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on our roof, put up two years ago, are supplying around 90% of all the electricity used by my family.

The initial cost is high, but don’t let that put you off. Two key developments in recent months have made it worth considering solar PV panels.

One is that a government incentive for PV doubled on 1 April and the other is that interest rates on many savings accounts have dropped to about 0.1%, meaning it is time your money worked harder.

And don’t be deterred by the idea Britain doesn’t get enough sunshine. In fact, solar radiation here is remarkably consistent and only around one third less than southern Italy or Spain. I have just come to the end of my second year with a solar PV system on my roof and it has been a great success.

We have a 3kW peak system (about 4m by 3m) on the roof. It produced 2,703kW hours (kWh) in its second full year (to 5 April), only 1% lower than the 2,730 kWh it produced in the first year, and that in spite of a lousy 2008 summer.

That was about 80% of the 3,500 kWh we used, and our usage was up because we had builders do some underpinning, which meant lots of kettles and cement mixers on.

The previous year we – a family of four – used 3,000 kWh, so the solar system produced 92% of our needs, a figure we expect to return to in the coming 12 months.

The panels, made by Kyocera of Japan, come with a 25-year guarantee and should last a lot longer than that. What you effectively do when you buy a solar PV system is pre-buy decades of electricity at today’s price, thus shielding you from price rises. One great thing about a PV system is that it is “fit and forget” with little or no maintenance or noise. And they don’t have to go on a directly south-facing roof – ours points south-east and works very well.

So how do the figures work out? Well, buying 3,000 kWh of electricity normally would cost around £420, based on 14 pence/kWh with npower, our supplier. We end up saving almost £400 of that by producing nearly all our own.

On top of that, we were getting payments under the government’s Renewable Obligation Certification (ROC) scheme of around £35 per megawatt/hour, rounded to the nearest whole one. So that is £105, putting us about £70 in the black for the year.

Since 1 April, that ROC payment has doubled to £210, putting us about £175 in the black. That compares with £420 in the red without the panels – a gain of almost £600 a year.

Indeed, the system means that, with a condensing boiler, we are now down to only about £30 a month to heat and light our property while our carbon emissions are very low. So what about the investment yield? The system cost £17,000, for which we got a 50% grant, making £8,500. With a return of £600, that’s around 7%. It’s not taxed, so is equivalent of about 9% for a basic-rate taxpayer and 11% for a higher-rate taxpayer. You’d struggle to do better buying junk bonds and this stuff is ­certainly not junk!

Moreover, that gives you a crude payback period of only 10 years, not the 100 years that some critics have claimed.

Ah, you say, but that 50% grant is no longer available, the maximum is £2,500. True, but systems have come down in price since we installed ours, so your post-grant price for a system like ours would be around £12,000 now. The £600 saving gives a return of 5% (or 7% or 8.5% gross – not bad when compared with just about any other kind of investment these days).

And, if you are lucky enough to be on a tracker mortgage that is close to 0%, you could add on to your mortgage and it would really pay to invest in a PV system.

That 5% yield is likely to improve – next April, the government plans to introduce a so-called feed-in tariff (FIT) when you get paid an above-market price for every unit of electricity fed into the grid.

The ROC system gives you the equivalent of about 27p-28p per exported unit, but the FIT could well be higher than that. It is not clear how the FIT will work but it will probably replace the ROCs and the £2,500 grant.

And the yield will likely improve further as electricity prices are almost certain to increase faster than inflation over the next three decades.

Some critics say PV is an expensive way to save carbon, but system costs are plummeting as world supplies of silicon, from which PV is made, have shot up. Moreover, global panel production has rocketed in response to FITs in other countries. A PV system in Germany, for example, is about half the UK price – no wonder the Germans have 300 times as many PV systems installed as we do. But even with the higher UK prices, it is worth investing in a PV set-up.

Ah, but what if I move house, you ask? Well, I am convinced that a system that saves you £600 a year and protects you against future rises in electricity costs will add to the value of your house. How could it not?

First, cut your consumption

Fitting solar PV panels has made our family focus on not wasting the energy we are producing from our roof – and with just a few simple measures we have managed to cut our electricity usage by 25%.

The obvious thing we did was install low energy light bulbs. Ignore what the critics say – they are really good as long as you choose them carefully, and the prices have collapsed recently.

There are exciting developments in LED technology. I recently fitted some down-lighters. They give the same light as a 35W halogen bulb but consume only 4W. They are still expensive (we paid around £16) but pay back in about three years. Prices are already dropping.

Whenever we have purchased any new white goods, we haven’t gone for A-rated items but the ones at the very top of the scale with an A++ rating.

I have also just fitted one of those “aerating” shower heads that, it is claimed, cut your water and energy use in the shower by 40% by mixing the water with air. My wife has dubbed it the “Schweppes shower” but it works fine and, given how long our daughters seem to spend in there, can only be a good thing. It cost £22.

I have also been trying to encourage my wife and daughters to use the hair-dryer less, but I just get those sort of “get a life” looks.

Undeterred, I am going to get an “Owl” meter which monitors usage, and cost, all the time. They are available for around £40.

If you have an old gas boiler that is coming towards the end of its life, it is not worth doing repairs to try and keep it going. Our old boiler packed up a couple of years ago and the new condensing boiler we installed has cut our gas use by about a quarter.

Most houses in Britain are terribly “leaky” of heat. There are lots of practical­ measures which can prevent this. Fitting extra loft insulation is a no-brainer, and using wool-based insulation­ or the stuff made from recycled plastic bottles, has a much lower carbon footprint than buying the fibreglass stuff. We have the standard amount in our loft but I will be up there doubling it this autumn.

There are lots of grants to be had for this and for cavity wall insulation – another no-brainer but only on houses built after about the 1920s. Victorian houses, such as mine, have solid walls.

Worn-out sliding sash windows can be replaced with double-glazed, draughtproofed ones. You can even retrofit the draughtproofing yourself – see www.reddiseals.com – and it is very effective and inexpensive.

We had to have some walls replastered in the Victorian wreck we bought 12 years ago. We fitted some thermal plasterboard which has really prevented heat loss and means the radiators run cooler than before.

All of these measures cost little and have a rapid payback because of the energy they save. A double whammy!

  • Home improvements
  • Energy bills
  • Household bills
  • Property
  • Green building
  • Energy efficiency
  • Energy
  • Solar power
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Tea and toilets order for railway stations

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

Railway stations are to be ordered to keep toilets clean and offer refreshments to passengers.

Lord Adonis, the rail minister, has set up a review of stations following a six-day rail tour of Britain with low points including a tea drought at Southampton station.

He said: “The quality of stations is extremely variable and, at many major stations, the service level is often downright poor. I experienced stations where toilet facilities were closed or uncleaned, where there was a lack of refreshments or adequate bicycle or car parking facilities.”

Minimum standards for keeping toilets open and offering passengers food and drink will be written into new franchise agreements, he told the National Rail Conference in London. He announced the appointment of two “stations champions” to review services in England and Wales. Sir Peter Hall, president of the Town and Country Planning Association, and Chris Green, non-executive director of Network Rail, will make recommendations for ­station improvements.

Adonis said: “I don’t have unreasonable expectations for stations, but it is perfectly reasonable that they should be offering essential services.”

Network Rail, owner of Britain’s rail infrastructure, is spending £150m on improving 150 stations and the government is planning a multimillion pound investment in ticket gates. Fare dodgers are believed to cost the industry 5% of its annual revenues – about £270m.

  • Transport
  • Transport policy
  • Rail travel
  • Consumer affairs
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How to repair stained glass

Friday, May 1st, 2009

From careful removal to delicate recolouring, restoring ancient glass to past glories is a delicate business

In time, says Steve Clare, it becomes “a complete bloody obsession”. You can see why: this is a thoroughly complex business. You have to understand, first, just how a nine-metre squared window fits into a building and what’s holding it there. You’ll need a knowledge of glass itself, how it was made, why it needs work now.

An artistic sensibility, to grasp the creative intent of the original artist and the forms he used – that goes without saying. As does a meticulous mind (a large window can be made up of tens of thousands of pieces, and a mile or two of lead) and a steady hand: you wouldn’t want to shatter a 600-year-old saint’s head, would you?

In short, you need most of the same skills as the person who made the thing in the first place, and then a few more. “It’s not for everyone,” concedes Clare. “But glass is just delicious. Some of this medieval stuff, it’s extraordinary. It actually gains through the textures it acquires. And of course, they’re major works of art.”

The initial steps are preparatory: you examine the glass in situ, draw up a detailed condition report and take a lot of photos. You decide what you’re going to do on the basis (the Victorians were, regrettably, rather more cavalier) of the less the better.?Then you take the window out and examine its fixings: what’s the mortar like, is the ironwork, or ferramenta, in good nick?

Then it’s back to the workshop, where you photograph the whole window again against a light panel; make a series of rubbings on which you’ll place the pieces when the work is being reassembled; and – gulp – dismantle it. Next you clean and conserve, using fluids, scalpels and brushes, often under a microscope. You may need to touch a piece up with a special paint, stain or enamel, whose precise colours and properties you will have tested in advance many times, and fire it in the kiln.

For the releading, you use an oyster knife (as in a knife for opening oysters) with a lump of lead on the handle: the blade eases the glass into the extruded H of the lead, the handle hammers in farrier’s nails that hold the whole assembly temporarily in place as you progress. You may not need as much lead; these days you can sometimes use resin to stick broken glass previously repaired with leading. The lead itself is soft and easy to cut to length with a sharpened palette knife, and glass, once hazardously snapped and “nibbled” with a tool called a grozing iron, is cut these days with a state-of-the-art tungsten-tipped wheel.

We’ve been making stained glass for 1,000 years, and using it more or less extensively to decorate our cathedrals, churches and (if we were fortunate) our homes since the Middle Ages, peaking in Victorian times. We’ve been restoring it since the 17th century; stained glass conservation has long been a craft in its own right.

At the moment, Clare and his half-dozen staff are working mainly on some remarkable 15th-century windows from St Winnow’s church near Lostwithiel in Cornwall; some of the glass is badly corroded, partly by salty sea air, but the lines that compose the faces of the Virgin Mary, of St Michael, and, beneath them, of the work’s donors, are of quite startling purity.

There are, says Clare, no more than a few hundred stained glass conservers at work in Britain today; several major cathedrals have workshops, and a handful of small firms – including Clare’s, Holy Well Glass – work independently for churches, cathedrals, stately homes and the likes of the National Trust and English Heritage. It’s a profession as vulnerable as the glass it works with.

Bodies such as the new National Skills Academy may help, but for the moment “training is a mess” Clare says. “One qualification we spent time and effort designing has just been dropped, and another is supposedly coming. There are probably 15 people across Britain waiting to start, but it’s an uphill struggle. It’s a shame. These are skills that will die unless they’re passed on.”

  • Work & careers
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Vienna is best city to live and work, says survey

Monday, April 27th, 2009

• European centres top list of most desirable places
• Researcher says higher tax won’t deter global firms

Mainland European cities are the most desirable places to work despite having some of the highest levels of tax in the world, according to a quality of living survey published today.

Thirteen of the top 20 cities in which to live and work are in Europe, including Munich, Copenhagen, Vienna, Brussels, Frankfurt, Stockholm and Berlin, according to research by consultancy firm Mercer.

The survey studied factors including health services, political stability, traffic congestion, crime, media censorship, pollution, mail services, and even the variety and quality of restaurants and theatre. It does not factor in the cost of living.

London, which is ranked 38th, scores well for public services, recreation and telecommunications, but is let down by security concerns and pollution. Glasgow and Birmingham are the next most desirable British cities, jointly ranked 56th.

The Mercer findings, designed to help governments and companies put a financial value on moving workers from one country to another, come amid criticism from UK business leaders of the government’s plans to introduce a 50p tax rate for the country’s highest earners.

Among the super-rich quick to criticise the new tax band have been Sir Richard Branson, former trade minister Lord Jones, bookstore entrepreneur Tim Waterstone, Peter Hargreaves, founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, hedge fund veteran Stanley Fink and entrepreneur Hugh Osmond.

Osmond, whose business interests have ranged from PizzaExpress to Pearl insurance group, said: “A lot of people will be off. I think it’s highly unlikely that I will continue to have the UK as my country of residence.”

But Slagin Parakatil, who compiled the research for Mercer, said tax changes in the UK were unlikely to alter the strategies of multinational companies in deciding where to deploy staff. “I don’t think tax would be an issue. If you need to send someone, you will definitely send someone, no matter whether the tax regime is high or not.”

Beyond Europe, tops draws were Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto, Auckland, Wellington, Sydney and Melbourne, where tax rates have been broadly comparable with Britain’s in recent years.

The most desirable US cities are Honolulu, San Francisco and Boston, ranked 29th, 30th and 35th respectively.

Top of the quality of life rankings is Vienna, which pushed last year’s lead city, Zurich, into second spot. At the other end of the 215-city league table, 16 of the bottom 20 are to be found in Africa. Among them are Brazzaville, Khartoum, Sana’a and Kinshasa.

  • Work & careers
  • Tax
  • Vienna
  • Income tax
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