We’re now appreciating the value of all the local stuff we’ve lost over the years, infrastructure that was needed when people couldn’t or wouldn’t travel. Like now. Cottage hospitals, village shops, village bobbies, baker’s ovens and neighbours whose names you know. There are still, however, many local trust funds, set up long ago ‘to relieve the poor of the village’. The trustees spend a lot of time these days looking for poor to relieve. Now’s the time, I’d say, for them to think laterally and go into action; before many are beyond relief.
“Record year for annuity sales driven by advisers”
I was asked this week whether annuities are now ‘a good investment’. They’ve been recommended very rarely in recent years, since ‘pension freedoms’ allowed pretty much unlimited drawdown on pension funds and anything left to be passed on to beneficiaries free of Inheritance Tax.