A new consumer law came into force yesterday. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 is intended to clamp down on many sales practices that most of us would have thought should have been illegal years ago. There are 31 specific offences such as
1. Claiming to be a signatory to a code of conduct when the trader is not.
2. Displaying a trust mark, quality mark or equivalent without having obtained the necessary authorisation.
3. Claiming that a code of conduct has an endorsement from a public or other body which it does not have.
You would think that blatant lying to make a sale would always have been wrong but apparently it was ok before this law came into effect. 12. Making a materially inaccurate claim concerning the nature and extent of the risk to the personal security of the consumer or his family if the consumer does not purchase the product. This is well overdue. How many frail and concerned consumers have been frightened into buying by a scenario created by the seller. The Act contains a whole lot more and you can read it here… The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 There are far too many scams and deceitful practices taking place around the country and this new law is to be welcomed. Unfortunately the Trading Standards officers are not enugh in number or well resourced enough to be able to really take on the dodgy dealers to any great extent. It seems a great shame and a wasted opportunity for the government to have brought in rules that will be welcomed by just about everybody but not to provided the funds for that law to be fully and properly enforced. We can only hope that a few successful high profile cases will scare off most of the smaller fry who prey on consumers.
We hear a lot about education, how it is so vital that our children are prepared for the future and the country is supplied with qualified people to take us through this new and exciting century. No doubt this sort of thing was being said 20 or 30 years ago but it is questionable whether the results matched up to the hopes for education.
Nobody can be blamed for not forseeing the changes in the use of computers and the finance industry. We had no preparation for the huge development of the finance industry and the enormous impact it has had on our lives. The problem with revolutions is that their consequences cannot be forseen and there will no doubt be huge changes in our lives in the future.
Being trained for life as it is today is not going to be a great deal of help for the children starting school today. When they leave school in 12 to 15 years life will be very different, the world will have changed significantly and the skills they need will no doubt be different to what matters now. Knowledge of the environment was considered as an interesting bonus to education in the past, yet now, the importance is hard to comprehend. The changes in the environment and awareness of the problems and changes they will bring are unimaginable at this point in time. The only thing we can be certain of is that there will be big changes in our energy use, the weather and how our societies respond to these changes.
What is certain is our children will need to be adaptable and able to deal with the changes. Being creative and adaptable may be more important than how good their skills are in some of the more traditional acedemic subjects. We don’t just need workers, we need visionaries, developers, inventors and free thinkers. We need creative children to be encouraged and help children reach their potential in whatever they are good at and enjoy doing.
I just watched a fascinating video about this very subject and if you care about your children’s future you might enjoy it too. Our children are our future and they are the ones that will decide the financial scenarios for us in our old age. We must hope that they, and us, are as well prepared as possible.
Watch the video and see if you don’t agree with the views put forward by Sir Ken Robinson.
The council of mortgage lenders is suggesting that house prices might drop around 7% in 2008. This would seem more than likely as demand for houses has halved, according to some sources, and the availablity of mortgages has been reduced.
The credit crunch has demonstrated that you cannot go on borrowing more and more, forever. It seemed obvious but somehow those in charge of these things didn’t notice that basic fact. For most of us who have no plans to sell up it makes little real difference whether our houses are worth a million or tenpence but it will be a worry for those who bought at the peak of the market. No doubt prices will rise again in a year or two when we have all got our finances back into better shape but it could be that this year will actually be a good year to invest in housing, if you get your timing right.
