Well after this week of travel chaos in the UK, it seems appropriate to talk about holiday insurance! If it’s not the grey ash of a volcano that is potentially ruining your holiday it could be something else. That is why holiday and holiday home insurance is so important.

Holidays should be a time a relaxation and enjoyment and not stress, so to eliminate the worry of disaster, insurance is a safe bet. Even purchasing insurance for your flight tickets can be important as this last week has proven to so many.

If you own a property abroad then insurance is also of paramount importance, especially if you plan on renting out your accommodation to holidaymakers. Insurance of this kind had to be specialised to cover all of the aspects that are involved in having a second home such as leaving the property empty for longer periods of time.

A bathroom tile company in Exeter has claimed to have made what may be on of the most expensive bathroom tiles in the world. The tile is a reproduction of Gustav Klimt’s famous painting ‘The Kiss’ and is made from several precious metals such as 24 carat gold and platinum.

Currently this pricey tile is on sale for £400 and is limited edition. The tile measures 60cm by 60cm and the design of the tile took three years to develop. The tile has been fired over seventeen times in a kiln and will make a wonderful exclusive decoration to someone’s bathroom!

Although having said that at a time of recession will be interesting to see who has that type of money to spend on a tile…although perhaps it can be seen as an investment? The tile even has the signature of Gustav Klimt and will be released for sale in June.

Recently in the papers a model named Hayley Dixon has been caught out lying, after loosing her uninsured Blackberry phone in the gym, she panicked and decided to claim she had been mugged.

However this was all very well until the helpful gym found her Blackberry and handed it in to the police so now she has been liable to pay over £500 for wasting police time. Mobile phone insurance is not the only insurance you don’t want to attempt to deceive, as health insurance companies are becoming wiser to fraudsters too.

For example, health insurers will look in detail at all circumstances of a claim so that they can be certain they are covering genuine claims and not fake ones. As some people actually lie on their application for insurance, such as smokers claiming they are non-smokers only to claim on a smoking-related disease later on. You can guarantee that your claim will be rejected, and rightly so- there are many people that actually require their claim and have always been honest.

The large office space company British Land has announced that they have plans for a new central London development. This move has been revealed after the company had acquired office space in London, Baker Street for £29 million.

The planning permission for this arrangement has already been accepted and the 139,000 square foot office space has become secured. So could stories like this mean that the recession is slowly recovering? Slowly but surely it does, especially seeing that many business experts have announced their faith in the West End office market.

I suppose like most things in life the only way to see if this is a positive sign of recovery is to wait and see, many people have a positive outlook on the financial future of our country. The only person that I have come across that is not as positive is David Cameron, who is concerned that changing to a new political party could do more damage than good to our economy.

We have all seen in the news in the last year how sensitive documents sometimes end up in the wrong hands or in a place they shouldn’t be. If it isn’t a government document being left on a train, Hotmail password information or the latest Harry Potter script on a pub table then it is something else. This is why for businesses, document storage is paramount.

One way to loose the trust of your clientèle is to loose the information that they entrust with you, whether it is a receipt, address details, medical information the more sensitive the information the more important it is to be kept safe.

Despite being in a digital age there are some laws that mean that certain documents need to be kept as a hard copy and for several years. The best way to deal with problem is to look into document storage facilities; this can keep sensitive information secure, organised and protected from damp, fires and other damaging factors.

I was looking through You Tube the other evening and looking at how we use advertising has changed and has affected TV adverts, viral videos and corporate video production. Long gone are the days that showed tight-lipped business men in suits looking unfriendly. It seems advertising has got a lot smarter and whatever the target audience is-then they are sure to be catered for.

From sheep with LEDs strapped on them to talking meerkats-it seems that the modern world is letting people get creative with their advertising. This is also changing the modern corporate video production as it has been proven that memorable videos are going to be far more successful than boring ones.

Bright characters that are intent on reminding you of the company in a quirky way and are full of entertainment are the best-let’s just hope there aren’t too many annoying adverts and far more funny ones!

As the Easter weekend approaches it is thought that this is the weekend that most people decide to get their paint and tool kit out and do some DIY.  A recent survey predicts that a huge 20 per cent of people will want to sort their home out this weekend. Maybe it’s a good time to look over your holiday home insurance-especially if you fancy a bit of decorating in your holiday home.

Paint spillages, water pipe damage or dropping hammers accidently are all possible accidents that DIY wannabes may have to face this weekend. So just make sure if you decide to redecorate the holiday home or fancy doing some plumbing-that your holiday home insurance has you covered.

The last thing you want to do is end up costing yourself extra money for the weekend-where really you could be spending it on chocolate and Easter bunnies!

I have chosen some really beautiful ones and they are so different to the old white ones we have I think it will make a real difference when they are grouted in. It’s amazing how much a small but important part of a room can make a real difference aesthetically.

The bathroom tiles have arrived and are waiting in our hallway to be used and I am so excited! They will make our little bathroom look so much more modern and fresh!

everyone should be entitled to health care

The media has been covered in information this week about America and the amendment to the US healthcare. Currently in the US there isn’t a universal system of health coverage. There are government-funded but usually it is left up to individuals to pay for health insurance.

Most people are covered by their employees but some American’s choose to sign up to private healthcare schemes. Under most plans that are available people are just expected to pay regular premiums but sometimes are required to pay part of the cost of their treatment (known as a deductible)  before the insurer will cover the cost. The amount of the deductible will vary on the plan and the amount the individual pays.

There are many problems with this system currently, one being the huge cost it is to the people of America and that around 46.3 million people are uninsured.

The changes that have been proposed recently regarding health insurance in the US is to make regulations stricter for insurers, establish health cover mandatory, set up insurance for those that do not have cover provided by their employers and offer subsidies for those Americans that earn less money.

It will be interesting to see the outcome of this as currently the House is divided with no Republican voting for the bill and some democrats also in opposition. I personally feel lucky that here in the UK we have a free healthcare.

isn't data entry fun!

It has been a busy couple of weeks at work recently, feeling particularly tired each night and looking forward to the weekend so I can relax. My other half has also been really busy and every night this week it feels like he has been away for corporate events.

I don’t like it when he is away I feel very lonely in our little flat! I know that he has to do it for work and schmooze but I wish he didn’t have to so much. It is funny with work, you do end up becoming completely desensitised to whether you like people or not.

In my old job I used to work with people that I really don’t think I would like out of the workplace and it’s not until you are thrown into a social situation with them, such as corporate events, that it is make or break time. Sometimes you realise that you got the other person wrong, they DO have a sense of humour… or you discover the complete opposite.

Yes, I am speaking from personal experience too. I spent ages at my old work thinking that I really liked this girl and that we were inseparable. We began to finish each other’s sentences off and people commented on how close we were. That was until the night we all went out and it changed.

I have never sat next to someone and been at a complete loss of words. It was like she was a different person at work. But I should have seen it really, seen her for the boring person that she was. There were so many signs but I guess her car personality* was hidden by the amount of boredom I was subjected to (data entry-bad times). At work we were Thelma and Louise, but in the pub we were more like Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Anniston. Oh well.

*someone, with the actual personality of a car.