REWARDING OUR FUTURE SELVES

Mark Salter, Certified and Chartered Financial Planner, Fort Financial Planning

It is widely known and psychologically accepted that human beings can be very shortsighted and find it difficult to see their future selves.

Imagine your own life and what it might look like in 10 years’ time. Will you still be working in the same job, will the children be leaving for university or will you be enjoying your retirement and spending time with grandchildren?

But perhaps more importantly, what would you like it to look like?

With so much uncertainty at the moment, it is difficult to even consider what will be happening in a week’s time or when your next holiday will be, but as a Lifestyle Financial Planner, I believe we should try and look beyond the next few months and think about our plans for the future.

Every good plan must start with the end in mind. It is vital to think and try to visualise various milestones and objectives you or your family want to achieve. Once these goals have been determined and plans put in place it is important to remain disciplined. This might sound simple but it is not always easy.

Here are a few top tips to help keep you on track with your longer-term financial plans.

Personalise/name your savings and investment accounts. You are much more likely to save if you can visualise the goal and see the immediate value of saving for something specific. Some new online banks make this even easier by allowing you to add the time frame and end goal.

Set up automatic savings. Pay yourself first, make it regular and make it automatic. Savings should be done upfront rather than ‘waiting to see how much is left at the end of the month’. Increase savings and pension contributions alongside salary increases. This won’t feel painful if it’s done each year or in line with salary increases. Don’t let the extra earnings fritter away. Separate accounts for different goals. With different goals, how much you allocate to each account and how much risk you take with each objective should be based on your time horizon. Saving for a new car and investing for retirement would require different types of accounts and strategies.

Review your savings and expenditure regularly. Take a look at your financial position periodically and make changes where necessary. Small changes will add up in the long term and make achieving your savings goals more likely.

‘Fun money’ account. Make sure you still enjoy the here and now and ring-fence money for discretionary expenses such as eating out, hobbies and holidays etc. You are much more likely to enjoy the process of saving and/or investing if you take a balanced approach. Save to spend. When making a surplus or discretionary purchase, try and only do so if you can afford to save or invest the equivalent value into a separate saving or investment vehicle. Whilst saving and investing for an uncertain future is important and necessary for us all, it is important to enjoy the present moment too. Money matters but life matters more.

ffp.org.uk

Here we go again – once more unto the breach. There’s no hiding that times are tough but fret not, we’ve been here before and together, we can find ways to protect your finances and look to the future. Let’s hatch a plan.

Apple, known for its innovative products and services, has recently made a significant decision that has left many users puzzled and disappointed. The tech giant has chosen to discontinue its popular feature called Photo Stream. Launched in 2011, Photo Stream allowed Apple users to effortlessly share and sync photos across their devices. This abrupt decision by Apple indicates a shift in its approach to photo sharing and raises questions about the future of iCloud-based services.

Recently, Apple sent out an email to any customer that has Photo Stream turned on on one of their devices. Understandably most believed it to be a scam but sadly it isn’t and they will be closing down the service on 26th July 2023.

When Photo Stream was introduced, it revolutionised the way users managed their photos on their Apple devices. It offered a seamless and automatic synchronisation of images across all devices linked to the same Apple ID. Users could snap a photo on their iPhone and instantly view it on their iPad or Mac without the need for manual transfers. This convenience made Photo Stream an integral part of many users’ lives, making it all the more surprising now Apple have decided to discontinue it. Photo Stream enabled users to view photos across multiple devices without using iCloud storage space but Apple is shutting down this service in an effort to push users to upgrade their iCloud subscription plan if they want to keep this sync function.

Apple’s decision to stop Photo Stream may stem from several factors. Firstly, the company has been focusing on enhancing its cloud-based services,

Photo Stream End Of The Line

James Flynn, Milborne Port Computers

particularly iCloud Photos. iCloud Photos offers a more comprehensive and robust photo management system compared to Photo Stream, with features like full-resolution storage, shared albums and advanced search capabilities.

Secondly, Apple may be streamlining its services to simplify the user experience. With multiple photo-syncing features like iCloud Photos, Photo Stream and Shared Albums, there was some overlap and confusion among users. By phasing out Photo Stream, Apple intends to streamline its photosharing ecosystem, ensuring a more coherent and straightforward user experience.

What does this all mean for you? By the time this article is out, Apple would have stopped new uploads to Photo Stream as this will have happened on 26th June 2023. Photos uploaded to Photo Stream before 26th June will still remain in iCloud for 30 days. By 26th July, all photos will disappear from iCloud that were in Photo Stream. As long as the photos are stored on one device, they won’t have gone but if you want to sync them across all your Apple devices and essentially have them backed up you’ll need to switch on (if you haven’t already) iCloud photos. Switching this feature on it will upload all your photos to iCloud, however, it may then exceed your free or paid-for storage limit meaning you will then have to buy more iCloud storage so be aware of this.

A slight muddle and we appreciate it can be very confusing so if you need some help, you know where to come!

computing-mp.co.uk

To treat all clients with the same courtesy irrespective of wealth or budget.

Many adviser firms now have minimum fund sizes or high minimum fees making it sometimes difficult to receive cost effective advice. We believe this to be unfair and unethical. Whether you have £10,000 or £10,000,000, we have no minimum investment size, there will be a service to fit your needs enabling you to receive quality advice, now and in the future.

ALL GOD ’ S CHILDREN

Jenny Campbell, Sherborne Scribblers

Mrs Daphne Pugh did not believe in ecumenism. Her husband, Marcus, had been the vicar of St George’s C of E Church in Hampton Meadow for almost ten years and, in all that time, the E word had never crossed their minds or lips. Each of the surrounding churches kept strictly to themselves and it all seemed to work perfectly well.

The Pughs, of course, had many friends outside their own church. Marcus, in between ministering to his faithful flock, enjoyed the company of fellow musicians in the local Chamber Ensemble (one Methodist, one Anglican, one Episcopalian, one atheist) as well as that of his small walking group. Daphne, meanwhile, belonged to the Upper Hampton Women’s Institute and conducted the St George’s Church choir. At Cambridge, before meeting Marcus, she had joined a choral society and enjoyed it so much that she briefly toyed with the notion of switching to Music instead of French and English Literature. Marriage, three children and the role of vicar ’s wife intervened, leaving her little time to do more than conduct rehearsals for Handel’s ‘Messiah’ at Easter and the annual Christmas Carol Service, both greatly enjoyed by the local populace.

Now, a new bishop was insisting that Marcus should follow the general trend and organise a ‘Churches Together Service’ at St George’s. Daphne was furious.

‘If God had intended us to worship together he would have told us,’ she said.

‘And I don’t recall Thou shalt sing with the Catholics among his Ten Commandments!’

Marcus could not resist laughing. ‘ Well,’ he said, eventually, ‘that was a long time ago and much has changed since then. So, please, darling, promise me you will think about it. If the service proves successful, we could well be making that move to York you wanted. But I need your help.’

Daphne sighed. ‘I still don’t like the idea,’ she said. ‘ We may all be Christians but each religion is different and never the twain shall meet in my holy book.’

She did not, however, give up easily. And, in Mrs Veena Singh, the current President of the WI, Daphne was certain that she would find a sympathetic ear.

‘I can’t see her church joining in,’ she said. ‘And Mrs Singh speaks her mind. If she thinks it ’s a bad idea she will say so. That mango chutney of hers is to die for, by the way.’

‘I can vouch for that,’ said Marcus, sticking his dessert spoon into a jar of it on the kitchen table. ‘And I think you will find that the Sikhs have temples called gurdwaras, not churches.’

‘Exactly my point!’ exclaimed a triumphant Daphne. ‘ We are all different.’

At the next meeting of the WI she made a beeline for Mrs Singh. ‘Now, Veena, dear, tell me truthfully what you think.’

Mrs Singh rearranged her dark blue sari, raised her eyebrows and regarded the vicar ’s wife over the tops of her gold-rimmed glasses. ‘Go on, Daphne. Spit it out,’ she said.

‘How long have we known each other, Veena? Seven, maybe eight years? And have you ever been to one of Marcus’s services in St George’s or I into your...your temple?’

‘I’m intrigued, Daphne. Why do you ask?’

‘ Well, our bishop has this ridiculous idea that all the churchgoers in Hampton Meadow and Upper Hampton should come together and congregate in St George’s for a joint service. Now, I’m sure you will agree with me that this is bound to be confusing for everyone and will end up being a terrible mistake.’

‘Oh, but Daphne, darling, I don’t think that at all. It ’s a splendid idea. We welcome people, whoever they are, into our gurdwara and both Dalip and I would be honoured to attend a service in your church.’

‘ You would?’

‘Of course. Now, stop looking so disappointed and let ’s get this meeting started.’

On a designated Thursday morning in late spring, Marcus was at the door of the church to welcome people in and it was not long before he started to worry that there might not be enough seats for everyone. He was just about to return to the church and prepare for the service when a breathless young man in a green anorak arrived.

‘So sorry I’m late,’ he said, ‘I’m Father Brendan from St Joseph’s Church.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Father,’ said Marcus, beaming. ‘I’ve saved a place for you at the front, next to my wife. Are you a singer?’

The young priest nodded enthusiastically. ‘Used to teach it before entering the priesthood!’

‘Daphne will be delighted!’ said Marcus.

That evening, after dinner, they both agreed that the service had been a great success. ‘And I take back all I said about singing with Catholics,’ said Daphne. ‘Even if we don’t get to York, Father Brendan could be a blessing in disguise.’

Marcus looked at her fondly and nodded. ‘ Well, my dear, God truly works in mysterious ways and we are all his children.’

FERDINAND MOUNT

Big Caesars And Little Caesars

Richard Hopton, Sherborne Literary Society

What do Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, Viktor Orban, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, President Xi and even Boris Johnson have in common? The answer according to Ferdinand Mount’s new book is that they are all modern incarnations of an age-old phenomenon, the Caesar. Mount does not offer a precise definition of a Caesar but they are a readily recognisable phenomenon as ‘they all operate along the same spectrum’. ‘It is,’ Mount writes, ‘admittedly a huge spectrum: the Caesars range in intensity from overblown bully boys and con artists to mass murderers of unspeakable wickedness.’ Big Caesars and Little Caesars is also Mount’s credo, an erudite and readable distillation of the experiences of a life patrolling the borders between journalism, history, literature, and politics. He will be talking about the book to the Sherborne Literary Society on 24th July; it promises to be a fascinating and enlightening evening.

Caesars in essence are rulers who consciously subvert the accepted political and constitutional conventions of their polities in order to achieve and then perpetuate their own grip on power. They are not confined to any one age and ‘may pop up in any country and under all sorts of political and economic circumstances’, something the book’s scope certainly reflects. Mount’s Caesars range from Catiline – ‘a Jeffery Epstein of the first century BC, with added violence’ – and Julius himself in ancient Rome to Boris Johnson, taking in Oliver Cromwell, Mussolini, Hitler, Salazar, de Gaulle, Mrs Gandhi, and many others along the way.

The coup is an essential characteristic of the Caesar, big or little. It can bring the Caesar to power - as in Julius’s crossing of the Rubicon - or convert an incumbent ruler’s position from one which depends upon the vagaries of democratic consent to one which is unchallengeable – as in the case of Hitler. Mount wonders aloud at Oliver Cromwell’s posthumous reputation: why does the man who violently overthrew Parliament in a coup to install himself as a dictator warrant a statue in so prominent a position outside the Palace of Westminster? His answer is that time and the polish of revisionist history – a process started by Thomas Carlyle – has cemented Cromwell into the English pantheon: ‘His military dictatorship had become an integral - and valued – part of our island story.’

Just under half the book is devoted to the stories of six failed coups. As Mount says, ‘most coups fail’ but by examining the failures we can see more clearly how the successful Caesars make it and, by extension, how they can be stopped. Mount’s failed coups are a mixed bag: the Catiline Conspiracy, the Gunpowder Plot, the Cato Street Conspiracy, the Beer Hall Putsch, Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency, and Donald Trump’s March on the Capitol. The causes of their failure can be grouped under five distinct headings: Force, Intelligence, Eloquence, Lawfulness, and Diligence with good old bad luck hovering over all of them. Taken together, they are ‘a set of techniques for seeing off a threat to the civil peace’ rather than ‘a blueprint for long-term governance.’

For all the variety of Caesars, big and little, ancient and modern, adduced by Mount, it is the dishevelled, blustering figure of Boris Johnson which casts the longest shadow over this book. Mount is a lifelong conservative – he headed Mrs Thatcher’s No. 10 Policy Unit and was Political Editor of The Spectator – and a fervent believer in the principles of liberal parliamentary democracy but makes no effort to conceal his contempt for Johnson.

‘By an amazing series of coups, by turns daring, fluky and near-illegal, this improbable Prime Minister had become lord of all he surveyed, including hundreds of Tory MPs who had never liked him and still did not trust anything about him, except his unique ability to win elections.’

Mount’s case against Boris Johnson – that is, why he regards him as a Caesar – begins with the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the 2019 general election. This document proposed reforms of the British political system which had the ‘unabashed intent of strengthening the Tory hold on power’ and which, collectively, added up to ‘a systematic challenge to our system of parliamentary democracy as it has evolved over several centuries.’ What Mount calls the Five Acts, which received the Royal Assent in the spring of 2022, were all ‘intended to increase government control in one sphere or another: over Parliament itself, over elections, over the courts, over immigrants and over public demonstrations.’ Mount likens them to the notorious Six Acts of 1819 which marked ‘a low point in British liberty.’

Eventually, as we all know, Johnson was forced to resign. ‘There has,’ Mount writes, ‘been no more humiliating exit in British political history.’ ‘He was thrown out because – let us use his own demotic here – he was a shocker, a rotter, a stinker.’ His successor, Liz Truss, ‘was widely known to be mercurial, dogmatic and not very bright’ but ‘she was only a Boris Johnson tribute act.’ sherborneliterarysociety.com

The stories of the Caesars, successful and unsuccessful, long- or short-lived, stand as cautionary tales for proponents of democratic government. Mount describes Johnson’s administration as ‘the ripest example of bad governance in Britain since the war.’ Nonetheless, this is not a pessimistic book but ‘a hymn to vigilence’. To preserve our hard-won, long-held liberties, we need to be constantly on our guard against Caesarism. This engaging, learned and civilised book should be in all our pockets as we keep watch on the bastions of freedom.

Monday 24th July 6.30pm for 7pm

Ferdinand Mount –Big Caesars and Little Caesars

Digby Memorial Hall, Digby Road, Sherborne Sherborne Literary Society talk and signing with the author.

Tickets £10 members, £12 non-members available via Winstone’s Books and sherborneliterarysociety.com/events

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Suppliers of both new and pre-loved vinyl, official t-shirts, merchandise and memorabilia. Come visit and “Try before you buy”. The Beat & Track, The Old Shambles, South Street, Sherborne, DT9 3LN 07730 356719 thebeatandtrack@icloud.com www.thebeatandtrack.co.uk

Across

1. Taxis (4)

3. Sports grounds (8)

9. Antlers (anag) (7)

10. Long for (5)

11. Sense of self-esteem (3)

12. Assisted (5)

13. Inactive (5)

15. Law court official (5)

17. Of the nose (5)

18. Appropriate (3)

19. Organic compound (5)

20. Diminish (7)

21. Delaying (8)

22. Lyric poems (4)

Down

1. Person who writes letters regularly (13)

2. Stringed instrument (5)

4. Fine cloth; type of paper (6)

5. Absolute authority in any sphere (12)

6. Without help (7)

7. Loyalty in the face of trouble (13)

8. Especially (12)

14. Guest (7)

16. Involving direct confrontation (4-2)

18. Grew fainter (5)