The world is wide open for young people setting out on a gap year, but choosing the right organisation to work with is essential.  So ....

Ten questions to ask when picking 

your gap-year project

1   How do you select your participants?  

You will have done plenty of research to find the right programme for you but it is also important that the organisation you have chosen takes the time to establish if you are right for them.  This may be in the form of an application form, interview, or an extensive chat on the phone.



2   How much of what I pay covers overheads, and how much goes directly to the project?  
Responsible organisations will be very transparent with their costs.  Your time and energy are extremely valuable, but to be successful any project needs financial support.  Make sure your money is reaching the host project, where it can benefit local communities and recompense your hosts.


3   What level of support will be have if something goes wrong?
Many people choose to travel with an organisation for the support it can provide in emergencies, so make sure that you are comfortable with the amount of help you will receive.


4    Exactly what work will I be doing?
Well-run projects with clear goals and long-term plans will be able to explain in detail what work you will be doing, and how your role fits into the wider project as a whole.


5  What proportion of my money is going to the project and how exactly is it managed?
While some organisations provide full funding for project costs, others will just pay for your food and board.  Some organisations


6  How will I be useful at the project and what happens after I leave?
While you are sure to arrive full of enthusiasm, if the project requires a doctor or an engineer and you don't have those skills then you may feel frustrated.  Also, if you're going for a short period of time, you want to be sure your work is continued after you leave. Asking these questions helps to ensure that the project is realistically sustainable.

7   Can I speak to some former participants?
Many companies have Facebook groups which you could ask to join and speak to people who have already been away with them.

8  Can I talk to the local contact on the ground before I leave?
This will help you understand the project in more detail, get first-hand feedback on the organisation, and get a clearer idea of the local impacts that the project is having.

9  What do you do for local people and the environment?
Responsible organisation work hard to make sure all their activities are benefiting local people and local environments and will be able to show you how they do this.



10  How is my payment protected?
If you're paying for a programme well in advance, find out what financial protection you have and what exactly it covers.  Atol protection, for example, covers only the cost of flights, not any local trip costs.  It's possible that your only guarantee will be the length of time an organisation has been running, but any additional protection is worth asking about.

Some of the gap year companies specialising in volunteering include:

CSV (csv.org.uk) offers volunteering opportunities to more than 150,000 people each year, mostly within Britain.  Includes free accommodation and day-to-day expenses.

VSO (vso.org.uk) is a development charity that sends volunteers

Frontier (frontier.ac.uk) offers breaks for those who want to get involved in community development projects.  A four-week village project in Papua New Guinea costs £1,195, excluding flights.

also 

BUNAC (bunac.org)
Camps International (campsinternational.com)
Changing Worlds (changingwlrlds.co.uk)
CREES (crees-manu.org)
Coral Cay Conservation (coralcay.org)
Global Volunteer Projects (globalvolanteerprojects.org)
1-to-1 (1-to-i.com)
Inter-cultural Youth Exchange (icye.org.uk)
International Citizen Service (volunteerics.org)
Lattitude (lattitude.org.uk)
Outreach International (outreachinterstional.co.uk)
Oyster (oysterworldwide.com)
Projects Abroad (projects-abroad.co.uk)
Quest (questoverseas.com)
Raleigh International (raleighinternational.org)
Real Gap (realgap.co.uk)
The Leap (theleap.co.uk)

... and here's a link to more information on ideas for your gap year - from learning a skill or language, voluntering - to adventure and advice: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/adventure/77133/Gap-Year-100-company-directory-learning-a-skilllanguage.html

(From The Telegraph)

Buy to let

How to tell wear and tear from Capital Gains Tax


If one issue seems destined to leave buy to let investors in the dark, it's tax.  In a recent survey 78% of landlords feel confused or uninformed about changes in buy-to-let legislation and tax, with capital gains tax and Council Tax among the greatest sources of concern.


There's still of need for help, advice, and information.  The buy-to-let landscape never stays the same and new regulations affect professional landlords just as much as relative newcomers.

The first step in making your property tax efficient is knowing what expenses you can offset.

Capital expenses - those involved in buying and selling the property - don't count, but revenue costs, associated with the property's day to day running and management, are a different matter.  Bear in mind, though, that while rental income is exempt from VAT, the costs you incur in running a property may well have VAT added.

The good news is that just about all expenditure is tax deductible and that includes letting and/or managing agents' fees, service charges and ground rent if the property is in a block of flats, buildings insurance if it's a freehold house, maintenance and repairs during the tenancy - for fair wear and tear, but not 'betterment'.  You can also offset cleaning costs, accountancy charges and mortgage interest.

If you have cash, it might be tempting to pay for a property outright - but that way, you lost the tax relief you would get on mortgage interest.  You also lost the leveraging power of your investment.

Instead, most landlords take out interest-only mortgages at a level where the repayments are roughly equal to the net income - usually a loan to value of 50% - 60%.  This means a zero tax bill and makes the equity work harder.

There is also a little leeway on the maintenance and repairs allowance, which landlords may not know about.  If a property is furnished, they can choose to either claim the actual amount spent on maintenance or take a notional deduction equivalent to 10% of the net rent to cover depreciation.

Clearly if a landlord spends more than 10% of their gross income on maintenance and repairs in a tax year, they will do it on an actual basis.  But if they don't, they can claim the 10% allowance, even if they haven't spent anything on this.

Until 6 April 2015, landlords can also claim a special tax of up to £1,500 per property for insulation.  Under this Landlord Energy Saving Allowance, you can claim for the costs of installing wall, floor, loft or hot water insulation in the let property.  As long as the insulation is fitted to a finished property, not while it's under construction, you can claim this special allowance for the work completed before you let the property for the first time.

But you also need to know what taxes you have to pay.

Every landlord is subject to UK income tax, wherever they live in the world (though non-resident landlords may be exempt from paying capital gains tax).  If the landlord lives outside of England or Wales, the agent - or the tenant, if there's no agent - is obliged to deduct income tax before the rent is paid.  The landlord then submits a self-assessment tax return.

For those who haven't  declared their taxable income or capital gain from the sale of property, HMRC's current tax amnesty gives them until 6 September to pay it.

When calculating your rental income and tax liability, check your rental income won't topple you over into a higher income  tax bracket.  If you earn more than £100k (not in this case!) it may be worth not renting out the property at all and just letting the capital grow (legal but possibly not a moral thing to do with so many people homeless!).

Also look into other ways of making you property more tax-efficient, such as taking advantage of the interest allowance.  If the property has increased in value, you can take out additional loans on the increased value and claim interest, providing the amount is not greater than the purchase price.

If a spouse is in a lower tax bracket, you might want to put the property in joint names or in the lower taxpayer's name - but you must be comfortable with your spouse to give the whole asset away.  Gifting property worth more than the tax-free threshold (£325k) may also be tax efficient - but you can't just hand over properties to offspring without financial implications.

Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is another minefield.  On paper the bands are the same as when buying a primary residence.  But SDLT legislation is a complete beast and it's never as simple as matching the purchase price with the band.  

Ultimately, even if you own just one buy-to-let property, it's almost impossible to work out your buy-to-let tax situation on your own.  What applies today may change tomorrow.

So the moral of the story: get out of the dark and seek professional advice.

From an article in the Telegraph Property pages, by Zoe Dare Hall.

Phil Spencer's tips for landlords

• Many landlords don't like letting to housing benefit tenants.  But in the current state of play, with ten years there won't be any social housing in some places, to properties are needed for families on housing benefit.
• Avoid voids if possible, even if you let for a lower rate, for a short period, to get someone in quickly.
• There's an awful lot that can go wrong in the world but if you own the roof over your head, you can cope with almost anything.  

And another thought ...

There isn't a specialist tax regime for buy-to-let investors, which means you might find yourself classes as a 'property investor', 'property developer' or 'property trader'.  Which of these categories you fall into will depend on whether you bought the property to let out, built the property to let out, or just bought the place intending to sell it on but were persuaded by market conditions to let it.

It gets more complicated as any income or wealth secured from buy-to-let is not taxed separately.  You can offset losses against income in some cases, but mostly you can't.

In short, managing tax when property is involved, and making the most of your returns, is a specialist area. Seek help from a wealth adviser or IFA who understands buy-to-let.  They'll best be able to advise you on what to do to minimise your tax bill.

Six Years is a long time ...

Six years ago, the high summer of economic prosperity ended with an horrific bang.  The Ninth of  August 2007 was the start of the credit crunch and the day the world changed.

We all know what happened next. The credit crunch turned into a financial crisis, which morphed into a deep and nasty recession.  Businesses collapsed, many of them well-loved favourites.  

If you were lucky enough to keep your job, you probably had to accept a pay freeze.   Interest rates were slashed, hitting savers and ushering in an era of uncertainty and austerity.

But a series of reports this week suggests that the economy is finally on the mend.  It's a timely moment to examine the 15 most intriguing ways in which our lives have altered since the darkest days.



1   The £10 Friday feasts.  The microwave had a good credit crunch. When families cut back on the luxury of going out to local restaurants at the weekend, canny supermarkets stopped in to fill their place.  M&S started a trend with its dine-in-for-£10 deal,, and other followed suit.  The upmarket ready meal, complete with side dish and bottle of wine - usually eaten - while watching the TV -is now a staple in millions of middle-class households on a Friday or Saturday night.

2  Bricks and marriage.  The shape and make up of our homes changed irreversibly.  The housing market collapse, which caused misery for solicitors and estate agents, meant that people simply stayed put.  Rather than paying stamp duty to move, home-owners dug into their cellars and extended their lofts.  Houses became more crowded, with grown-up children, unable to find a job staying in the nest.  And many, who might have contemplated splitting up, chose to stay together under the same roof.  Separation just became too expensive, hence the 23% fall in the divorce rate.  (another point here is that more people could not afford proper houses, thus the rise in demand for bed-sits and smaller flats - and an increased up-take in the rent-a-room scheme (https://www.gov.uk/rent-room-in-your-home/the-rent-a-room-scheme)).

3  Sobriety.  We didn't drown our sorrows: the average British alcohol consumption fell from the equivalent of 9.2 litres of pure alcohol during 2007 to less than 8 litres last year.  This was partly because of increased prices.
Puritanism entered the work place too. Out went the fruit-platters in boardrooms and free biscuits in meetings.  In came white shirts for men and tan tights for women.  Was the death of dress-down-Friday the reason unemployment hit the much-feared three million  Possibly, although the rise in part-time working is more likely.


4  Clean air.  One of the great unintended consequences of the recession has been a victory for the greens.  We stopped buying new cars, drove fewer miles in our existing ones and hopped onto our bikes.  And if a factory slows down production, it belches out fewer fumes and sends fewer lorries around the country.  Government statistics suggest particle pollution fell by 14% in towns, while there are now an extra one million people regularly cycling.  It's hardly an environmental utopia, but it's a start.


5 Grow your own.  Sales of veg seeds went up, as we ripped out flower beds in favour of edible crops.  Organic food sales fell sharply, proving that much of its success was down to a middle-class fad.  But buying and eating local produce and growing your own rocketed.  Beekeeping became the rage, while some started to keep chickens in town.  
The real legacy is the cachet now attached to making your own sandwiches, as the boom in lunch box sales testifies.  Bringing in home-cured bresaola on a home-baked slice of rye bread is the ultimate badge of honour.  (and they taste better than bought sandwiches anyway!)

6  Bad teeth. Dental hygiene was dealt a double-dip blow by the credit crunch.  Not only did consumers gorge themselves on sweets and chocolate as a cheap palliative for their woes, but they tried to save money by cutting back on trips to the dentist, fearful they would be landed with an unpayable bill at the end.  This resulted in dentists having to deal with more emergency procedures.  And more expensive orthodontistry has almost disappeared.


7  Farewell to bogofs.  Saving money didn't so much become a way of life as part of the fabric of the nation.  Vacant shops were filled with pound shops or funny-sounding supermarkets selling cut-rice German ham.  The success of Aldi, Lidl and poundshops changed supermarkets fundamentally.  Value ranges because huge business, even in Waitrose.
Wasteful buy-one-get-one-free offers (bogofs) fell out of favour. Instead, in came what is called round-pound pricing (£2, rather than £1.99), as people on a budget wanted to be able to calculate the cost mentally by the time they got to the till.  (difficult to understand why people can't see that £1.99 is more or less the same as £2.00!  And I never did trust that the second one was actually free, it seemed that the first one was just an inflated price)


8  Dessert trolley blues.  Those who still ate out did so on a budget. Hence the confetti flurry of discount vouchers  in every pizza place.  Fine diners found ways of trimming their bills. Puddings were the biggest victims and the wheels of the sweet trolley rusted to a halt.  Apparently 96 million fewer puddings were consumed on restaurant premises last year.  (how did they work out that one?!)

9 And now for the commercial break ...  Under huge pressure from the broadcasters, who were struggling to attract revenue, Ofcom, the regulator, allowed channels to up the ads.  In dramas, the total length of advert could rise from seven minutes an hour to 12 minutes.  (more like the US or Australia).

10  A dog's life.  Pets got a bit of a raw deal.  Many of us found that the easiest way to cut costs was to let the cat out of the flap, and never let it in again, with the numbers of dogs and cats abandoned increasing by 65% since 2007.  Even retired racehorses were being sold for just a few pounds by owners unwilling to pay for their upkeep.

11 Wardrobe change.  We cut our coats to suit our cloth, with pyjama sales increasing because we spent more evenings at home on the sofa - a trend that also helped boost the racy lingerie business and the far less sexy slanket (snuggie or snuglet) and onsie industry  (How to make your own slanket: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/6839893/Slankets-how-to-make-your-own-in-three-easy-to-follow-steps.html or to buy one: http://www.theslanket.com/customer-service). 

12  Pop goes the bubble bath.  Shoppers were buying more shower gel than bubble bath, as people cut back on fripperies.  The astronomical rise in heating and hot water costs also played a part: more people chose to scrub themselves clean under the shower. (or if, like me, you're definitely into baths, then find someone with whom to share)

13  Summer Holiday.  We were persuaded that two weeks in damp Great Yarmouth was more glamorous than St Tropez (!?) (although it can be if the weather's kind)  But the real change was the death of the last-minute flight abroad.  Families wanted the certainty of a good time if they were spending money on a break.

14  Goodbye Mr Chips.  Strangely, private education has survived. But like other luxury goods, it has kept its head above water because of the influx of Russian and Chinese money into this country.  Numbers of British pupils have fallen, and nearly 40 schools have closed in the last three years.

15 Red lights turned off.  Rising rents, falling demand from cash-strapped consumers and higher competition from discount operators and the internet - the high street has had a torrid few years.  And, in the oldest professional of all, prostitutes have been forced to but their prices by up to 50%.  Sex sells, but not as well during a recession.

  

From The Daily Telegraph, Friday 9 August 2007

The Paignton

Embroidery

Exhibition

(Westcountry Embroiderers)

6th and 7th September 2013

Open 10:30 - 16:30 daily

50p admission

There will be trade stalls and refreshments

Furrough Cross United Reform Church Hall,

Babbacombe Road, Torquay, TQ1 3SE

For other ideas, see: http://pinterest.com/shushab/embroidery/

I found this today, whilst looking for another pic and thought I'd share it - but not sure under which subject to file it - so here it is, on its own!