This week’s blog discussions include …
Banks make millions from the most vulnerable
As mentioned, I’m dealing with my mother’s financial affairs as she reaches end of life, and I’m finding it incredibly frustrating. The process is that there first needs to be a Power of Attorney in place. Luckily, she saw that coming and gave it to me. That’s a government portal which allows me to take…
What does the UK budget mean?
In a rather parochial perspective, I asked my friends to give a reaction to Rachel Reeve’s budget, and got a nice summary back. Here’s the low-down: Autumn Budget Brings Relief for Pensioners but Sparks Debate on Inheritance Tax Changes The UK’s autumn budget is setting the stage for significant changes aimed at helping pensioners maintain…
What has Genghis Khan ever done for us?
I recently had a discussion about Genghis Khan, who I think of as some ancestral tyrant dictator who sowed his seed so far and wide that most of the modern world has his DNA. However, he also had another side called leadership. A friend of mine decided to use Khan’s leadership model to frame digital…
Is our world too woke?
At the end of the 1990s, a colleague of mine was sacked because he complemented a fellow female worker on how lovely her hair looked. I thought it was political correctness gone mad, but it’s even worse today. You feel you’re walking on egg shells all the time. For example, I got sacked for saying…
Who do we trust, how and why?
It intrigues me how quickly our world of money is changing from crypto to fintech to BaaS to infinity and beyond. The question that constantly sits in the back of my mind is how to regulate all this stuff to maintain trust? From Synapse to FTX to Beenz to Boo, how can the regulator keep…
A Cashless Whisper
During lockdown in the pandemic, I went a bit off script and started singing karaoke songs, with the words changed to focus on banking and payments. It was just a bit of fun to keep me busy at that time. Nevertheless, there are still many moments where I hear a song and think oh, that…