Retirement (or Last of the Summer Wine)

I don't have a mobile argon, but I do have a landline, always have. However, some of my friends seem to have a problem with that. - Tough !

Dreamtime, If you live in the UK you will have to have a "Voice Over Internet Protocol - VOIP" phone after landlines are withdrawn by BT during 2025, and pray that there is not a power cut or a network outage when you need to ring 999.

Choirboy, I will just have to rely on a batch of carrier pigeons then (they would be cheaper too). 999 would be costly. We have to call 000 here. The postal service isn't operating too clever at your end as I am still waiting for a Christmas present (Christmas 2022) but I am not giving up yet ! Outages - we invented the word !

Since just about every telephone connection to a dwelling has either a internet connection using adsl or fibre as well as a connection to the telephone company's own phone network the companies do not want to continue the expense of maintaining their own proprietary network as well as the internet. If you do not already have a modem and router with the voip facility you would need a modem supplied by the telephone company that has a rj11 socket for a standard wired telephone as well as wifi and rj45 sockets. Your old telephone should work when pugged into the rj11 socket on the modem once voip has been activated. The drawback is that you need to power the modem whereas with passive telephones the power was provided down the copper wires from the telephone exchange. Being deaf I make very few voice only calls and find video calls via the internet with captioning to be very helpful. Agree, the international postal services have deteriorated. A Christmas card from Hong Kong arrived last week and my family are still waiting for the ones posted in the UK. Yet an order for a lawnmower carburettor from China via ebay arrived in 10 days! (For a seventh of the price demanded by my local service agent!) (Brain rapidly trying the add something that makes my reply relevant to Coventry history): In 1970 I called at the British Telecom office, I believe they had a counter in Owen Owens, to order a telephone line at my parents' house in Wyken. I was told the waiting list was 2 years! Ironic since GEC Coventry made all the bits for the exchanges.

These problems are relevant to Coventry today and will be history eventually Change is not the problem, the speed and lack of preparation are. Losing 3G phones and landlines at the same time is a bigger issue than the authorities realise. Add in Net Zero and power supplies are vulnerable too, as all the replacements not only need more electricity but they rely on it to be available all the time. My 3G phone lasts weeks without a charge, not so my 4G version.

It wasn't until 1970 that the first TXK1 electromechanical crossbar exchange came into use in the UK and it was many years before the old Strowger system was phased out leading to greater capacity and reliability The waiting list issue in Coventry was due to the lack of sufficient underground cable size to accommodate the rapid increase in new subscribers which resulted in a massive renewal programme from local telephone exchanges to cabinets and from cabinets to poles.

Hi all & good afternoon, Welcome to the lounge, pull up a chair, does he take sugar? This chat is not about a scam. It may be for some folks just the right cup of tea. More tea? They want your money. Accompanying the main leaflet, comes a letter. I want to explain a bit about that. I'm not going to paste my letter as it has details in the main text, plus the QR or bar codes. Be ware of that when posting documents personal to you. Anyway. McCarthy Stone, like other competitors, have already used their systems to gather my details as far as they can, so the reason that the letter is separate from the leaflet, is because the wording is tailored to who they believe that they are trying to market. You would receive different from me, Jo, Elizabeth & so on. When you feel that you've been enticed to enter their retirement facility scheme, then look at the exclusions, usually small print at the bottom. They are there by act of parliament, dig a bit deeper & ......... The exclusions almost make a panto announcement. I'm hardly going the wear the same clothes that I arrive in for the rest of my life am I. No one would sit near me or even in the same room. "Extra charges apply for laundry, personal & lifestyle support services". As said, these schemes work well for some folk, but please, please, Oh please look at what you are letting yourself into. As time goes on, I know what I hope for me, but I haven't a clue as to how I'm going to be tomorrow, leave alone the time periods involved in these schemes. As with equity release, it doesn't have a reverse gear, outside of a benefactor. It's in parallel with equity release, as it's trying to get us to fund a scheme by capitalising on our owning our own home. More tea?

Like many companies, McCarthy and Stone was bought by a private equity organisation. This has happened to so many businesses, most Vets many Rest Homes, they are taking over dentists and I have heard of some doctors surgeries being taken over. What worries me is that these are faceless organisations, often in other countries, and as I see it only interested in the bottom line. I deal with any company like that with extreme caution but often there is no alternative these days.

You already know my feelings about these halfway housing options before care homes. You can hire a lot of home help and aids for the money wasted on these places.

While I agree with you about the costs and rules of these God's Waiting Rooms, loneliness and abuse are common problems with people living alone without family or friends nearby. A major player in this business is building a huge complex close to where I live with about 600 units going for about $700,000. Gyms, saunas, pools - all sorts of fun stuff. Also, it's just across a zebra crossing from a huge cemetery. Handy, huh?

I think that if the costs work out and people go in early enough, it's not necessarily a bad idea. You can make friends, get a routine and settle but the majority go in because they aren't coping at home and any friends made could be sadly temporary. By the time that people have sorted out their things, organised moving, made friends, etc, they're not necessarily in a state to use the enticing facilities or worse aren't fit enough to even be able to stay in the complex at all. That's what we mean by small print. Even without all the fees for the basics (maintenance) and extras, I found that there were very strict rules about how you could sell (you had to offer the management company first refusal and they got to vet any potential buyer), how much their fees were for just being allowed to sell and how much the management company would pocket if the property gained in value. There was a very long list of conditions that would allow them to force someone out, including the person not being fully mobile. My aunt wouldn't have been eligible from day one but none of that was mentioned when looking at the flat and was buried in the contract. In reality, the personal services that the place we looked at were offering were less reliable than ordering the services specifically. The emergency response service was just a call centre who would ring a relative or ambulance. Nobody would rush to a person's aid. There are services that could do the same in your home. Everything from prepared food to washing and ironing services were cheaper sourced elsewhere. It would have been cheaper to hire a limo to ferry my aunt to any sauna or gym or activity group she felt able to attend. Add in the pit fall of equity release to tempt buyers and I'd be very wary.

Most of the fancy complexes here have a 3 tier system. Those who tango, speed walk and play bridge or Mah Jong are in the first. Modest activity, and making friends in the next. and folks with more difficulties in the third. There is sometimes a last stop medical section too.

I think that the US has that sort of thing better organised than here. Here the last tier and the medical section tend to be a separate facility to the retirement flats. People prefer to stay in their own homes until the last possible moment. There's a big drive at the moment to persuade older people to downsize but the maths rarely works and people just don't want to leave their home, routines and neighbours.

Hi all, It's him again, well I've not posted an issue on here for ages, so everything must be ok! Really! Two things I would like to share, more about awareness than anything else. I've made it known to you that in 2016 a new state pension level was introduced by Government, that only applied to those starting to receive their pension after March of that year. It's currently about £40 per week more than the seven million pensioners that were already receiving their pensions. I actually believe that the logic of the new pension level is floored & fogged, but that is my opinion. Maybe this is an issue that might yet raise its ugly head, when the realisation gets any sort of motivation & traction, like the Post office scandal has. The post office scandal is such a live wire & so on going that I'm just listening & whilst angry at a total disregard for an institution that's ours. The post office scandal has prompted me to share this below. HOPEFULLY MY HELP NOTE. If any of us start something new, particularly involving expenditure, possibly unfamiliar, please always keep in mind what you did before. Never mind someone saying we do it this way now, keep a note. It doesn't need to be detailed, but keep your eyes on the ball. The post office scandal quite apart from any rogues & so on, happened because of one thing. The postmaster had no facility to keep his past record of transactions. The postmaster had no record of what he had done. During my financial working career, our office was such a boring office. If ever we were introducing a new system or procedure, we did it in parallel with what we had before. That enabled us to verify or not. Another example. I have an energy smart meter. Had it for ages. It is except for the vat, very reliable & accurate. There are issues with some smart meters, but after installation of a smart meter, there should be no change in level of consumption. That's the initial indication of its accuracy. The smart meter is a bit like a speedometer. You can speed up or slow down & it will reflect that. We might be old & full of wrinkles, but please don't be intimidated by new stuff. Whoever we are, we eat, drink, bath, sleep & try to keep comfortable. That has never changed. Love to you all.

Philip, As a young engineer, I was always encouraged to keep a logbook of what I was working on. As I moved into management that logbook became a daily journal. The number of times those books proved their worth! Even going through a divorce, I was advised to keep a detailed diary. Again, it proved invaluable when untruths were told to the court.