The Caterinas

All you have to do is download the entry form, print it off and colour in the design. Once it’s coloured in fill in the form and email a picture of it to info@wealie.co.uk by 31 June 2014. All entries will be displayed on the Wealie Arts section of the website and the winner will be announced by 12 July 2014.

There is a really interesting TED Talk video about the difference between our experiencing selves and our remembering selves that I highly recommend you watch and is embedded below.

The experiencing self is where we feel and experience things around us in the moment and the remembering self looks back and reflects on our experiences as memory. At 3.45 mins in I started to see how perhaps the science here could be useful to comms and engagement professionals in our interactions with audiences.

Daniel Kahneman the TED Talk lecturer recounts a study from the 1990s and what is really fascinating when you compare the real time experience with the memory. In the study one person experienced more pain during a medical procedure than another (they were asked to log their pain in real time) in that he/she had more pain spikes and over a longer period of time than the other.

When later asked to recount how painful their experiences were the person that suffered more in the moment did not remember the pain as much as the person that suffered less spikes over a shorter period of time. What contributed to these results was the fact that the person who suffered less pain in the moment ended on a high pain moment, whereas the first person who suffered more ended on a relatively low pain moment.

So what does this tell us, perhaps that it’s not the sum total of a person’s experience of a painful or stressful situation, but how it feels at the end. What I’m wondering is how can we use this knowledge to improve employee engagement and successful delivery of culture change by improving the last ‘moment’ of our audience’s communication and engagement activities.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Wealie x

Gemma Worrall's now infamous tweet

Gemma shared a woeful lack of political, geographic and spelling knowledge by misspelling Barack Obama’s name as ‘barraco barner’ and mistakenly thinking he’s was the British president (let’s not even go there) in reference to him getting involved in the Russia/Ukraine affair.

Though Gemma’s story is extreme it does highlight how people don’t realise the potential size and breadth of their audience, the effect of their words and the potential fall out on themselves should the reception be negative. I feel for poor Gemma and her comments about some of the responses she has received as a result are a sad testament of our times.

Tips for Maintaing a Healthy Social Media Profile

Here’s a few things to keep in mind before you commit your thoughts to your favourite social media.

• Remember, social media is not the same as having a chat with a friend in the pub, round the dinner table or over a cuppa of your favourite beverage.
• By putting something in writing you are creating a record that can be referred to and shared and re-shared beyond your scope of control and influence, rather than a throw away comment to a limited audience that may be forgiven and forgotten.
• If your writing is public, such as tweets on Twitter, your blog/website entries and public posts of Facebook/Google+ then it is published in a legal sense. This means you are then opening yourself to defamation and libel laws should your words be construed as unlawful.
• Remember that when you write something people can’t perceive your facial expressions and body language, they have no cues from your tone of voice, so it is that much easier to misconstrue the meaning of your words.
• Make sure you read over your words before you click send/publish, think about the way people will potentially take it. Replace any ambiguity with clear meaning where possible.
• If you think what you are intending to write is controversial then weigh up whether your desire to express your opinion outweighs your ability to deal with any fall out. If not then don’t write it, save it for a private chat with a trusted individual/group.
• We all have bad days at work and we’ve probably all had a bad boss, work situation that we need to vent about, but there’s a time and a place for it and putting it in writing is rarely the answer. Never write anything openly hostile or negative about your employer or a company you wish to work for in the future on social media. Chances are if it’s a public post there are people employed to monitor all comments about the company and it could get back to your boss/recruiter. If it’s private, well exactly who is on your friend list, in your circles, perhaps you have a work colleague there that you didn’t remember or perhaps you added your boss?
• Be honest about yourself – if you have conflicting messaging, views, opinions and data about yourself on different social media (e.g. between LinkedIn and Facebook) chances are that recruiters and employers may pick up on it and start to question your honesty and integrity.
• You are entitled to a private life, but online you have to take steps to ensure that you manage and protect it. Social media like Facebook and Google+ will automatically default you to the most public and open settings and each time they bring in new tools and features you’ll automatically be opted in.  If you want to keep a private side to your online life then make sure you regularly check your privacy settings and use tools such as the ‘view as feature’ in Facebook to see how different types of people view your profile.
• Having no public Facebook presence can raise concerns with recruiters. It shouldn’t have an effect, but it sometimes does. In some places (notably the US) recruiters are illegally asking candidates for employment to give over their personal Facebook information for recruiters to ‘peek’ at your world.  My advice is to never give this kind of access and be sure to state that what they are requesting is against the law. However, it is possible to avoid getting into this situation in the first place by putting the occasional public post up that is non-confrontational and says something about what you’re interested in and do with your time. You can see my public Facebook profile as an example of this.
• Regularly google yourself and any aliases you use. You’d be surprised by how much information can come up and how a post you might have put on the internet back when it wasn’t all that popular (if you’re as old and geeky as me) can come back to bite you in the bottom! I make a point of googling myself about once every other month and always google myself before I start looking for work.
• When you’re looking for work it’s a good idea to become a bit more publicly active on your social networks, most notably LinkedIn to increase your chances of getting noticed by recruiters in your field of expertise. I find writing about my expertise and field of work helps enormously. I contribute to groups and try to blog on my website more often.
• Don’t be afraid to sell yourself, but not too much – when I’m looking for a new contract I update all my social networks to show that I’m looking for work. However, be mindful that on your more ‘social’ social networks like Facebook your friends might not want you to keep going on about needing a job. With LinkedIn, it’s the opposite, take time to refresh your status and profile, post frequently – but only on relevant topics, be active in groups and state that you’re job seeking where appropriate. Take the time to recommend colleagues on LinkedIn that you would like a recommendation from and then request a recommendation in return. It’s a lot harder to turn down someone’s request when they’ve already done something for you.

So, in conclusion use your social media to raise your public profile in a positive way that helps attract recruiters. When using social media for personal use take a moment to think before you publish your undiluted thoughts and feelings in a public forum. Most people don’t say everything they think and feel in crowded public places, perhaps it’s time to adopt this thinking for online as well as offline interactions?

Happy posting!

Wealie x

LinkedIn is an excellent tool and social network and as I’ve previously mentioned in other blog posts I highly recommend that everyone should maintain a LinkedIn profile if job seeking and it is also a highly useful resource for learning and sharing whilst employed as well.

Disturbing Practice by Pay Day Loan Employees on LinkedIn

Of late I’ve come across a disturbing development on LinkedIn; first I’d like to recognise that this isn’t a practise perpetrated by LinkedIn, but by enterprising pay day loan company employees! Basically these loan companies are creating LinkedIn profiles which have a normal person’s name and a photo, but the majority of the profile is advertising for the loan company and a link through to their website.  These profiles then send out spam connection requests to actual LinkedIn users like myself and are also liking your LinkedIn activity posts to garner good will and perhaps attract people to view/connect with their profiles.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of accepting one of the connection requests on the iPhone app as the name sounded familiar to me.  The iPhone app doesn’t show as much information as the full LinkedIn site and in the past I’ve often accepted a connection without really checking his or her profile.  A few days later I realised my mistake when I received more spam connection requests from profiles with similarly named loan companies as their current employer and I started receiving likes on my activity updates from these and other pay day loan style profiles. I promptly went onto the full LinkedIn website and found out how to remove a connection and flag a profile as spam to rectify the situation and hopefully stem the tide of further spurious spam connection invitations – I’m still getting a few.

This is a completely unprofessional practise on the part of the pay day loan companies and the profile owners.  I am supportive of businesses marketing their services to potential customers in legitimate advertising and forums, however, there are limits and rules governing how and when they do so.  LinkedIn does not condone the use of your individual profile for blatant advertising and we as the LinkedIn community have a duty of care to report this abuse of the system when we see it happening.

What angers me more though is that this practise is being perpetrated by an industry that I have absolutely nothing good to say about as it takes advantage of ill-informed and desperate people and muddies the good name and reputation of financial services as a whole, where there are reputable companies and institutions who provide valid and vital services to our community.

All I can say is that it was a really bad tactic for these companies to target me; all they’ve done is draw my attention to their further unprofessional practise and spurred me on to add my voice to the growing cacophony of the call to regulate and stamp out this reprehensible business practise of what amounts to legalised loan sharking.

My Advice

1. Don’t accept any LinkedIn invitations without first checking out the connection’s profile to be sure that they are who they say they are, even if you recognise the name and profile picture.
2. If the invitation is spam wait until you can view the full LinkedIn website and report the invitation as spam.  The option to do this is only available on the full LinkedIn website and is shown as a third option after accept and ignore.  This will inform LinkedIn so that they can deal with the situation and hopefully deter the individual behind the profile from doing it again.
3. If you see a spam profile visit the full LinkedIn website and view the profile and then use the flag a profile as inappropriate option.  Again this will inform LinkedIn so that they can deal with the individual responsible for the profile and deter future unprofessional practise by the individual.
4. If you do inadvertently accept a spam invitation visit the full LinkedIn website and remove the connection in your contacts page and flag a profile as inappropriate.
5. Don’t, whatever your circumstances or problem take out a pay day loan, it really isn’t worth the terrible consequences that you’ll face if you default on paying back the loan and the extortionate interest rates you will incur.  It might not seem like it, but you do have options.
6. There’s always a better option than dealing with these pay day loan companies and I’ve listed some sites and organisations below that have your best interests at heart and can offer practical advice and support in getting you back on track with your finances.
7. If you know of anyone considering taking out a Pay Day Loan encourage them to learn as much as they can before doing anything and point them in the direction of alternatives that might be better for their long term financial health!

About Pay Day Loans

For those of you unfamiliar with pay day loans they are short term loans due to be paid back between a week and a month that are given on the back of proof of your wages/employment for usually small amounts, anything up to £1000 and don’t require a standard credit check that high street lenders use.

On first look they seem like a great idea; a short loan of a week or so to tide you over until pay day, but delve a little deeper and you realise that they charge extortionate interest rates of APRs in the thousands, compared with the average credit card which has an APR of between 17 and 40% and the average high street loan of around 9%.  These loans are targeted at people who are ill informed and desperate, taking advantage of individuals who are unable to obtain regular credit and most in need of professional financial guidance!  What’s worse is that often these companies are not following the standards of the Irresponsible Lending Guidance (ILG) required of all companies licensed to provide consumer credit under the Consumer Credit Act (CCA).

Lots of people who take out these loans are already in financial trouble and fall into a debt spiral as they can’t afford to pay back an initial loan and have to keep taking out further loans to pay back the balance and continually increasing their overall debt.  People can end up being unable to cover to the interest let alone the original sum.  Stories of people borrowing an initial £100 and owing up to £20,000 are sadly not uncommon, with many people taking out multiple loans from different pay day lenders and ‘rolling up’ their loans four or more times with individual lenders. Rolling up is the practise of taking out an additional loan with the provider to cover the original debt and the interest accrued.

These companies may have a professional veneer of snappy TV advertising and slick websites and sometimes shop fronts, but please do not be fooled.  We’ve all heard of loan sharks and how they are best to be avoided, well Cambridge English Dictionary’s definition of a loan shark is “a person who charges very large amounts of money for lending money to someone else” and that’s exactly what these pay day loan companies do.  The aggressive debt collection activities of these companies is also not dissimilar to the bullying tactics of the traditional loan shark as evidenced by the horror stories reported in the press and on the internet.

Before Taking out a Pay Day Loan

If you are interested in learning more about pay day loans or are considering taking one out I suggest reading this very useful article from money.co.uk: Warning: Payday Loans Can Seriously Damage your Wealth and checking out The Guardian Payday Loans section on their website.

The industry of pay day loans is under review by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and has further referred the pay day lending market to the Competition Commission citing “…concerns the OFT has about deep-rooted problems with the way competition works”.  The OFT’s Payday Lending Compliance Review Report had some shocking key findings including: “38 of the 50 lenders we inspected failed to comply with at least one of the complaint handling rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service”.  You can find out more at the OFT’s Payday lending compliance review pages on their website.

If you are struggling with your finances there is lots of information on the internet at sites such as money.co.uk, Money Super Market, MoneySavingExpert.com and The Money Advice Service.

The following organisations offer free and independent services to help you to get your finances back on track: Citizens Advice Bureau, National Debtline, GOV.UK, Step Change and Debt Advice Foundation.

You can also read about other peoples’ sad pay day loan horror stories here:

Bude & Beyond: Payday Loans – It’s A Horror Story!

Money Saving Expert: My Payday loan horror

Mirror: Suicide dad hounded for cash as he lies in hospital

The Consumer Action Group: Pay Day Loans Forum

Mail Online: Father dies…after being hounded by payday loan companies….

Mail Online: Rugby league player…hanged himself after getting into huge debt with payday loan companies.

The Sun: Payday loan debts killed our son, 18

Today, however, the spammers have hit an all time low with me and I’m sorry, but I have to make a final stand that this is not okay!  Last time I checked I still had more brown hair than grey, arthritis hadn’t set in and I was still a long way in the right side of 60 and yet I received this…..

Earth to spammers although I’m no longer in the early flush of youth and no longer as svelte as I used to be at that age I’m not so fat or so old or both that I cannot walk without the aid of a mobility scooter and my finances are healthy enough that I don’t need any financial aid for one either.

Yours sincerely

An offended Wealie x

A Fine Strawberry Mess

Another recipe for those of you with a sweet tooth. This one uses my Victoria sponge cake recipe for the cake base and then a load of strawberries, some lemons, limes and clementines or tangerines for the toppings.

It’s a great recipe for using up leftover cake when you’ve made a shaped birthday or occasion cake where you’ve had to cut out the shape and have lots of off cuts.

But the best thing about this recipe is that it is really easy to make, can be made in advance and a great dessert to serve up at a dinner party when your main meal takes a long time and/or you want to spend a bit more time with your guests and out of the kitchen.

Enjoy!

Wealie x

Recipe for A Fine Strawberry Mess

Ingredients

500 g of Vanilla Sponge Cake
1 kg of Strawberries
2 Lemons
2 Limes
4 Clementines/Tangerines
4 Tablespoons of Amber Sugar

Method

1. Before you start take your strawberries out of the fridge at least 30 mins before you begin the preparation.
2. Wash and chop your strawberries into quarters.  Put the strawberries in a bowl and sprinkle the sugar on top and then toss to ensure the sugar covers the strawberries evenly.
3. Juice the two lemons, limes and the four clementines (or tangerines if clementines are not available) into a jug.
4. Pour the juice over the strawberries and mix through evenly.  Leave for one hour at room temperature.
5. Crumble 500 g of Vanilla Sponge Cake (see my Victoria sponge cake recipe) into a bowl and level out.
6. Spoon the strawberries over the Vanilla Sponge Cake Crumble mix evenly and then pour the remaining juice evenly over the entire mix.
7. 

   A Fine Strawberry Mess - Copyright R.Weal 2012

   Leave for one hour to let the juice soak through the sponge mix.

8. Serve with ice-cream, cream or custard and watch your guests salivate at the sight of this Fine Strawberry Mess!

Wealie Nice Muffins

I’ve been baking muffins this evening; I find baking very therapeutic and meditative.  The fact that at the end of the process you have lovely yummy cakes to eat is an added bonus to the sense of peace and tranquillity that the act of baking brings.

Anyway I thought it would be nice to blog my recipe in case any of you would like to re-create them and maybe get a slice baking tranquillity too.

Actually this recipe is my multi-purpose sponge recipe, which is good for Muffin’s fairy cakes, Victoria sponge or a drizzle cake, so feel free to experiment .

Enjoy!

Wealie x

Wealie Nice Muffin Recipe

Ingredients

2 Med/Large Eggs (Weighed)
Self Raising Flour (Same weight as eggs)
Flora Margarine (Same weight as eggs)
Golden Caster Sugar (Same weight as eggs)
Generous teaspoon of Baking Powder
Generous desert spoon of Vanilla Essence (Preferably Mexican)
Optional – Heaped table spoon of Coca Powder to make chocolate muffins

Method

• Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees centigrade and make sure the top shelf is fairly high in the oven, but with enough room to get your muffin tray in and out.
• Weigh your eggs and then your flour, margarine and caster sugar amounts should be exactly the same.
• Whisk together your margarine and caster sugar for approximately 3-5 minutes or until the mixture is a pale yellow.
• Sieve the flour into your bowl of margarine and caster sugar.  If you are making chocolate flavour muffins sieve in your cocoa powder at the same time.
• Add in the rest of your ingredients (baking powder, vanilla essence and eggs).
• Gently whisk together the ingredient working in the contents from the edges.
• Once the flour is all mixed in increase the electric whisk to the maximum speed and work air into the mixture for approximately 3 to 5 minutes until the colour of the mixture has turned pale and the volume of the mixture has increased by about one third.
• You’ll know that the mix is ready if when you put a spoon in you can turn the spoon upside down and the mixture slowly drops off the spoon.
• Put some muffin cases into your muffin tray and spoon out a heaped spoonful of cake mix into each of the muffin cases.
• If you are making half and half (chocolate and vanilla) or marble cakes (chocolate and vanilla swirled) only spoon in half a spoon of each flavour.  To make a marble effect use a wooden skewer to lightly mix together the two flavours before you put the muffins in the oven.



• Put the muffins in the pre-heated oven (180 degrees centigrade) for 15 mins and then turn them around and give them another 5 minutes cooking.
• Lightly press the top of a muffin with your thumb to see if it springs back , if yes the cakes are ready to be turned out onto the cooling tray, if not give them another few minutes in the oven and then test again, but be careful not to over cook or check on them too often.
• Once your muffins are cooked turned them out onto the cooling rack and make sure you as baker supreme, scoff a nice hot one, it’s the muffin baking golden rule!

Wealie Muffins!

I hope you enjoy baking and of course eating your Muffins!

Wealie x

You can purchase t-shirts, long sleeved tees and hoodies for both kids and adults and there are also baby t-shirts and one piece outfits for the little ones.  The clothing is available in a variety of designs and background colours to choose from.

The iPhone cases are available for the iPhone 4 and 4S models.

Additionally you can also order greeting cards & postcards, posters, stickers, calendars and photographic, canvas, framed, mounted, matted and laminated prints of my artwork and my best photographs.

Thanks for taking a look at the designs.

Wealie x

Here’s a few examples of what’s available:

iPhone Cases	T-shirts & Hoodies
Kids Clothing	Stickers
Calendars	Greeting & Post Cards
Posters	Framed Prints

However, it is with sadness that I must now tell you that there will be some charities I will no longer donate to or support, such as Save the Children, Oxfam and the RSPCA. Why is this you ask? Well I am growing increasingly weary and irritated by the current trend of large national charitable organisations to use guerrilla marketing tactics and high pressure sales tactics to obtain donations. Firstly there are the tabard wearing young people who accost the general public for direct debit donations in the streets and shopping centres around towns. How is it that it is illegal to shake your collection pot to gain attention to your cause, but it’s okay to physically put yourself in the way of someone who obviously is not wanting to stop and talk to you and not give up until they have physically passed you by.

I find I have to either be incredibly rude to get my point across with a strong no whilst continuing to walk at a rapid pace or adopt my travelling mien where I don’t make eye contact, ignoring them completely and continue walking. I expect touts in foreign countries where it is the culture, but this is Britain and I don’t appreciate it in my own home, especially when they are canvassing for charity, which should be something that people choose to freely give not feel harassed to do as a duty! I find it disrespectful of my privacy, incredibly invasive of my personal space and highly presumptive that their charity is one that I want to support.

There are so many charities and worthy causes out there, but it is foolhardy to think that you could support every single one and most people pick and choose charities that address issues that most concern them. When I see traditional charity collectors out on the street I give my change to those charities which I care the most about. The difference between traditional charity collectors and the canvassers is that the charity collectors leave the choice to engage with them and donate up to me. It’s an important distinction, because it is my time, my choice and my money that these canvassers are trying to impinge on. I can see their tabards, I can see their clipboards, and surely it is not a hard leap to think that if I wanted to give to that charity I would approach them myself, in my own time and in my own way?

The other main issue with the canvassers is that there isn’t just one of them, oh no they seem to travel in a pack of at least three, fanning out along a street or shopping area thus ensuring that they have both sides and each end of the road covered for maximum accosting! The result being that if you are incredibly unlucky you are accosted by all of them in the space of just ten minutes.

I’ve taken to not going into my local town centre without headphones on and I find myself weaving in and out of certain areas instead of meandering as I would like to just so I can avoid being accosted. Just today I saw one representative of the RSPCA accosting people who were sat down relaxing on a public bench! The problem is also that it’s not just in the large cities or once in a blue moon that this sort of marketing tactic takes place, but quite regularly now, which means I find shopping in my town centre a much less enjoyable experience than I once did.

Compounding my grievance with these charities is their use of harrowing, exploitative imagery, with stirring music and inflammatory words on their advertisements. The just £2 a week or £10 month calls to arms and then should you sign up to regularly donate they are always badgering you to give more. I think charity is an important part of modern societies and that we should encourage and support it, but at the same time there are so many different charities out there that it is not possible for the average person to donate to every single one and the hard sell and marketing tactics don’t take this into account. I’m sure they are raking in the cash and perhaps that’s the only important thing here, but I thought charity was about more than just money?

I will continue to support local and national charities that have not gone down the hard sell and guerrilla marketing route. To local town and city councils I would urge that you think more carefully before allowing this kind of canvassing for support in your shopping centres for fear that it might put other shoppers off coming into town, further driving a move towards online sales. I’d like to stress that Oxfam, Save the Children and the RSPCA are not the only charities that use guerrilla marketing and hard sell tactics, but are the charities that in my area are the most prevalent and therefore the first that came to mind for the purposes of this article.

And lastly I would like to say please do not stop being charitable, with your time, effort, resources as well as your money. There are plenty of wonderful charities and causes out there, but perhaps we the public need to send a message that guerrilla marketing and the hard sell should not be part of charity.

Wealie x

First I went shopping in Waitrose only to see these ducks making a commotion outside in the car park.  Not sure where they were keeping their cash or debit cards and they obviously weren’t environmentally conscious as they didn’t have their recyclable bags with them!

Kudos to them for picking one of, if not the nicest supermarket chain available in Salisbury – then again it might just be the proximity to the river that made this their choice.  Though to be fair both Tesco and Sainsburys are right on the river, though the steps up to Sainsburys might be off putting.

Shopping Ducks - Copyright R.Weal 2011

Then this group of shady duck characters turned up on my wall for what seemed like a clandestine planning meeting. Each arrived alone, looking shiftily around to check they weren’t being followed.  For some reason they seemed to ignore me or not be all that good at recognising they were under surveillance from a human.  They also all left individually and in completely different directions.

They stayed up on my wall for a good thirty minutes quacking away to each other, no doubt plotting their Machiavellian revenge on human society.

Ducks on a Wall - Copyright R.Weal 2011

You have to wonder if they’re looking to organise and boycot the local Chinese takeaways next!  Then again I might just need to get out more (grin).

If you hear a menacing quack watch your back!

Wealie x