Colin Boxall, Director at ADVO Group

Colin Boxall, Director at ADVO Group, guest writes on his recent visit to one of China’s hospitals.

We are told our NHS is the envy of the world. If this is true why don’t other countries copy us? This was the question troubling me recently while sitting in a public hospital in Northern China.

I found my way there having rather foolishly bought my breakfast from a man in a cart outside the train station.

Friends urged me to attend the local hospital. It was 11pm and as I was not seriously ill the thought of spending the night in A&E was less attractive than dealing with illness in the traditional English way of just putting up with it and sleeping. Despite my protests I was convinced to attend A&E.

This was a revelation.

After arriving just after 11pm at the nearest public hospital (hospital number 8) I was quickly registered and issued a health swipe-card. A couple of minutes later and, despite being a non-emergency, I was with a Specialist who requested blood tests. Immediately afterwards I went next door and put my arm through a window in the corridor for a nurse to take blood. The sample was handed back to me and two doors down the corridor I passed the sample through another window to the pathology lab. They were very apologetic that it could take 15-20 minutes for results as it was a very busy evening. In fact it was just over 5 minutes before I got the results back before walking the few yards back to the Specialist’s office.

I had to wait a couple of minutes while he finished off seeing another patient but he soon waved me in and swiped my new hospital card to view the results. Since the results showed an infection he prescribed medication via a drip. A nurse collected me and took me to a treatment room. This had a dozen comfortable chairs, half of which were occupied by other patients.

Within 20 minutes of walking into the hospital I had seen a consultant twice, had full diagnostics and was receiving treatment. 2 hrs later I was on my way home feeling fit and hungry. On leaving I had to pay 212 yuan for the treatment received, about £23. If I was Chinese I could have claimed back 80% through the state insurance scheme.

The hospital was modern, staff professional and care reassuringly good.

The Chinese go to hospital when they are ill. The attitude is why wait? I am ill so I will get the treatment I need now.

I wonder how long I would have waited in the UK if I was lucky enough not to be turned away from A&E as a time waster.

So is the Chinese system better? Should we adopt this in the west? The obvious plus is receiving treatment immediately when needed but as ‘free at point of delivery’ is a political red line in the UK no party could consider taking this forward.

But the NHS is not free for many of us. We pay for glasses, dental prescriptions – why not a small contribution to wider services? As with prescriptions, exempt the vulnerable and low-paid but ask for a small contribution. This would be attractive to many if the political connotations are removed.

The Doctor in the Chinese hospital is paid piecemeal; the more people he sees, the more he gets paid. The argument will be that this may lead to poor, rushed service. However I experienced efficiency and immediate care.

In the UK we put up with so much poor service and accept this as normal. We are conditioned to wait and suffer in silence. Receiving quick treatment would remove many sick days and kick start the economy and the health of the nation. Can we really continue to ignore the fact that others may have a better solution?

About the author

Colin joined ADVO Group’s board in 2008 after the merge with e-Xcellenthealth and has twenty years healthcare experience. His role is to lead the corporate team and assist Chris McCracken in bringing connectedhealth™ to the UK market.

Colin is widely respected within the industry and has won numerous awards. He was voted the UK’s ‘Intermediary of the Year’ in 2006 (Health Insurance Magazine) and 2008 and 2009 (Corporate Advisor Magazine).

For more information on ADVO Group please visit http://www.advogroup.co.uk/

Please note that the views of the author do not necessarily represent the views of Radcliffe & Newlands. 

We exhibited at the inaugural Alzheimer’s show this year. We managed to speak to a great many visitors but if you were not able to have a chat on the day then do please get in touch with any queries. Of course if you did talk to us then you are also more than welcome to get back in touch as we would love to really understand your situation in more depth to see if we can assist.

If you or somebody you know is affected by Alzheimer’s then we recommend the show to you. We also recommend that you speak to your Adviser immediately in order to discuss issues such as Lasting Power of Attorney, claiming all the benefits you may be entitled to and your options for paying for long term care.

Don’t delay as it will be much easier for you and your family to take care of these matters now rather than later.

We do have a specialist Later Life team and Mel Kenny, who you may have seen at the show, is accredited by the Society of Later Life Advisers. You can talk to Mel to discuss your situation, confident that he has great experience and knowledge in this area. Call 0845 021 7000 and ask to speak to Mel Kenny.

Evidence, if any were needed, that rain was plentiful on the Team Radders Royal Marsden Cancer Charity walk!

Henrietta, Sarah, Brenda and Peter had not anticipated that this fund raising lark might be subject to rather uncharitable weather!

The aim was to raise money to help The Royal Marsden provide world-class care for cancer patients, and to support the hospital’s pioneering work in cancer research and education. The aim is to help make life better for people with cancer everywhere, and strive for a future without it. The challenge was a 14 mile walk from Royal Marsden Fulham to Royal Marsden Sutton.

It could have been perfectly pleasant in sunny weather even though Team Radders discovered  that 10 miles is the natural walking limit before things start to hurt.  As it turned out significant amounts of unwelcome moisture descended upon our valiant team who were protected only by gorgeous polythene capes and the promise of a St Patrick’s Day Guinness.

It was heartening too that cars beeped their horns, drivers stopped to pass money through their windows, and pubs provided Ribena and Kit Kats as they passed on their way.

Four hours later and somewhat damp due to the incessant rain, they arrived at their destination having raised £1,098.94 in the process.

Artist Andy Lawson and Henrietta Oxlade of Radcliffe & Newlands conducted the draw

Artist Andy Lawson offered a prize draw at the PV of his show here on 6 December. Henrietta Oxlade, Financial Planner at Radcliffe & Newlands, pulled the winning entries out of a handy wine box. The winners were slightly surprising but we can confirm there was no fixing or rigging involved!

The winners, in reverse order:

5. Rosy Forward – bottle of white wine
4. Trish Briggs (Andy’s Mum!) – bottle of red wine
3. Irene Godfrey – signed CD, Wasn’t Expecting That by singer/songwriter Jamie Lawson
2. Dr John Keefe – Oak Framed, Circle Mapped Molluscs by Andy Lawson
1. Jamie Lawson (Andy’s brother!!) – Ebony stained Ash framed drawing, ‘Story of O’ by Andy Lawson

Well that’s a happy family!

Andy’s show is on for another two months so don’t forget to come along if you missed the PV.

Andy is somewhat surprised and amused by the winner

The winning ticket

The exhibition brings together new bodies of work, encompassing an array of different media that continues the artists exploration of taxonomies, chance, systems and traces of evidence of the passing of time.

Lawson uses photography to capture images on itinerant journeys: geometric compositions of reflected lights in a train carriage; circular dots and fragile threads of spider’s webs in the morning mist and everyday observations taken on walks to and from Lawson’s place of work in East London.

Accompanying the photographic works are drawings and collages constructed by the artist using physical materials; either in controlled acts of play or in compliance to a system determined prior to the execution of the work.

British artist Andy Lawson studied at Wimbledon College of Art and London Guildhall University. His solo exhibitions include: Venice Twinned with Newham, at the Cass Library, London 2012, awake | goodbye at Unit 2 Gallery, Whitechapel 2010; PhicoiBia at St Paul’s Art Space, London 2008. Recent group exhibitions include Phantasmagoria, O2 Centre, I sore/I swore, the Nunnery, London, 2011 and being short listed for the prestigious Jerwood Drawing Prize, 2010. Lawson is currently Senior Lecturer at ‘the Cass’ School of Art, London Metropolitan University.

Did you see us at the Employee Benefits Live exhibition? If so, then hopefully you stopped to chat but if we were busy talking to others when you popped by or you meant to stop by but didn’t manage it then all is not lost. Please do get in touch and we can explain everything over the phone or in person. In the meantime you can always download our brochure and discuss the mortgage benefit with colleagues.

Call 0845 021 7000 and ask for Jason Ransted, Scott Rawlings or Sarah Oughton.

Come and see our latest show running from September to November. The Private View is on Thursday 6 September, drinks from 6-8.30pm. Come to 14 Bonhill Street, London EC2A 4BX. As always, buzz to come up to the 3rd floor where the show is.

“Anastasia Lennon’s work is by turns bold, playful and foreboding. Within these apparently innocent images of places and the traces of people, of homes and empty spaces, the world seems endlessly poised on the point of collapse or new potential. This tension exists between the clashing forms in collage and pigment, between image making and image erasure, between representational space and text. Lennon has created a strong body of work. She is clearly a talent to watch and a voice to listen to.”

Ewan Morrison, triple BAFTA nominated Scottish film maker and acclaimed author of ‘Menage’, ‘Swung’ and his most recent project ‘Tales from the Mall’.

Everything has already happened (I remember it well)

‘Two Kinds Of Now’ is the new body of work by Glasgow School of Art graduate, Anastasia Lennon, in which the artist explores her preoccupation with memory, nostalgia, the past and the future. As meditations on the nature of time these paintings are informed by her fascination with quantum physics and how it seems to unravel the standard notion of linear time. There are explicit references to these ideas in much of the imagery and text but these notions also become generally pervasive in the seductive imagery which evokes an unsettling ‘5th dimension’ and consequently leads you into an ambiguous domain of unanswered questions and perplexing narrative implications. The landscapes that she depicts appear to have been peopled but now are void of humanity. The scenarios that remain are unclear. Before or after? Inside or outside? All these things together? Unexpected furniture, malicious trees, spectral motor vehicles and impossible architectural structures create a disturbing inability to locate oneself securely in a recognisable location.

There is an almost cinematic mood in some of the images echoing the notion of fabricated time. But the still image resonates in another way. It’s as if I am being offered a glimpsed shard of some other dimension. A floating world which is evocative, emotive and inviting for me to enter. Despite this apparent otherworldliness or these desolated views there is a simultaneous nudge towards nostalgia. The artist, it would seem, is almost trying to convince me that I have been there before. The titles tease with explanations of a sort but offer little solace. More often they add another layer to the seductive ambiguity of this proposed reality.

Seductive also, because they are extremely beautiful. They are rendered with a direct and visceral involvement which could only be achieved by an artist with a clear affinity with her medium and a love of the nature of paint. Anastasia Lennon’s work has always demonstrated strong drawing ability. Line is only one element of painting but here the draughtsmanship is confident and resonates with the certainty of her vision. Often there are graphically strong black outlines that are deftly fused with lush painterly exposition: gestural mark making, compositional structure, dry over wet and complex layers of translucent colour. This is the full gamut of an artist riding high on the excitement and potential of her latest surge of creativity and the culmination of years of dedication.

A further depth and intrigue is added by the use of text. The words come from a diverse range of sources (as do the images) and include quotes from Diebenkorn, Sagan, Retté and Tarkovsky among others. Multiple layers of handwriting form a rich mesh of colour and texture in which meaning becomes fragmented and often obliterated. This creates a tantalising and beautiful surface, from which it is frustratingly difficult to pick out a message. There is compensation though in the visual richness of this illegible patina. To confound the clarity of the written word like this may seem perverse. The text used has meaning for the artist and has been absorbed into her working method but the aim is not to reiterate these utterances so directly. Like all artists, she is accepting of influence and inspiration, but seeks to embed these in her creative process as she hones an individual vision.

This process of image making is intuitive and accumulative. It is true both in the sense of how the use of paint itself can be suggestive to the artist during the process of painting, but also in terms of appropriation of the diverse image source material which has been entwined with personal photos and sketches, memories and recorded journeys.

Memory’s inherent unreliability has been explored in this work for its creative potential and for how these memories seem to chime reciprocally as one feels the artist is fictionalising experience in order to effect some kind of reconciliation with the past. Nostalgia has a powerful attraction but this nostalgia is not sickly sweet, instead it has a refreshing obscurity. There is a sweep of melancholy in this work but ultimately the outlook resolves to optimism. The notion that the past is not absolute is curiously comforting. In these implied narratives the beginning, the middle and the end needn’t be strictly adhered to. The artist demonstrates a refusal to be propelled by the past but rather embraces it along with the endless possibilities of the future.

Alasdair Wallace, Glasgow, July 2012.

Alasdair Wallace is a renowned Glasgow artist represented by the Rebecca Hossack gallery, exhibiting widely in London and Scotland and winner of numerous painting awards.

Annuity rates are driven by gilt yields and the downward pressure on rates seems relentless. What we need is interest rates to go up but barring a currency or government debt crisis, the outlook for that is poor.

Downward pressures on rates

We hear experts saying interest rates won’t go up until the next year, only for them to change their minds to the following year and so on and so on. It’s clear the outlook for government policy is one of continued low interest rates combined with austerity.

Legislation changes are hurting too. The forthcoming EU Solvency II and EU Gender directives are added downward pressures. Insurance companies will be required to hold more capital in reserves which is effectively an extra cost and male annuity rates are likely to worsen under the gender directive.

The current climate of quantitative easing and UK gilts a safe haven for European money has driven up gilt prices and in turn yields have headed south.

With every year that goes by, improvements in medical science keep us living longer and longer and that exerts a downward pressure too.

The temptation of course is to postpone taking your annuity in the hope that rates will rise soon. You have to be careful though as the lost income from deferring, even for just a year, can take many years to recoup, if at all. It would take significant jumps in either fund values or annuity rates to make it worthwhile.

Yet when we look at gilt yields over the centuries it would appear that current yields are only a little bit less than normal with the high yields of the 1970s, 80s and 90s the blip rather than the norm despite most commentators leading us to think the opposite. So we can’t expect too much from improving yields and alternatively, are you willing to take risks by chasing the tail of prospective growth on your carefully accrued pension fund?

Source: The UK recession in context — what do three centuries of data tell us? By Sally Hills and Ryland Thomas of the Bank of England’s Monetary Assessment and Strategy Division and Nicholas Dimsdale of The Queen’s College, Oxford. Bank of England’s 2010 Q4 Quarterly Bulletin.

Is taking an annuity now right for you? We can help you get the best rates.

One of the biggest mistakes you could ever make is to just accept the annuity rate from the pension provider you’ve been so loyal to over the years. The likelihood is that you would be signing up to less income than what you could have obtained in retirement. Make sure you shop around as you could significantly increase your income with either a more competitive provider or a company that specialises in providing an enchanced or impaired annuity based on your own individual life expectancy. If you have smoked or have an adverse medical history and take medication, you could generate thousands of pounds more income. Always been disappointed with the lottery? You could win yourself some easy money here by taking good advice.

But it doesn’t have to be a one-off lifetime annuity either. There are other options in the form of a fixed term annuity or a full drawdown plan and again you need to speak to an adviser to find out what is right for you.

We can help you choose what sort of annuity you need, the best provider for you and your spouse, or explore some of the alternatives available these days – read more about your options here.

The worst thing you can do is sit back and do nothing while you wait for annuity rates to go up.

Selected Group Exhibitions

‘Paintings’ ‘On the Staircase’, Tunbridge Wells 2011
‘Paintings’ ‘Royal Academy Summer Exhibition’ 2009, 2008, 2005, 2004, 2003 etc.
‘Paintings’ Canterbury Summer Festival 2009
‘Tumblers’ painting series ‘The common room gallery’ Tunbridge Wells 2008
‘As It Seems’, Cheltenham Art Gallery, 2002 Drawings curated by Roy Oxlade & Paul McKee
‘8th Mostyn Open’ Llandudno, Wales 1997
‘City of Journeys’ Arts Café, London 1997
‘Inspirit’ Maidstone Museum Art Gallery, 1996
‘EAST’ Norwich School of Art, Norwich 1994 selectors Jan Dibbets and Rudi Fuchs
‘Paintings’ Forum Gallery Tunbridge Wells 1993
‘Sanctuary Project’ Sotheby’s Bournemouth 1992
‘Painting’ Tunbridge Wells Art Gallery 1985
Summer Show, Serpentine Gallery, London 1983
Air Space Gallery, London 1978
Oxford Museum of Art, Oxford, 1972
Architects Association, London 1972
Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1971

Selected solo exhibitions

‘Paintings’ Radcliffe & Newlands Ltd., London 2012
‘Paintings’ Actors Institute Gallery, London 1992
‘Works on Paper’, Wilkins Gallery, London 1979

Publications

‘Blunter Edge’ Drawings 2009
‘Blunt edge’ Art magazine 2006
‘As It Seems’ Cheltenham Art Gallery Catalogue, 2002
‘8th Mostyn Oriel’ catalogue 1997
‘Inspirit’ catalogue 1996
‘EAST’ catalogue, 1994
‘More equal than others’ ‘Independent’ Newspaper 1994

Public and private collections

Kings College Hospital, London
Kings College, London University, London
Department of the environment, London
Private collections in England and Abroad

Education

BA Hons, Philosophy, London University
MA Fine Art, Chelsea School of Art
BA Hons, Fine Art, Sheffield College of Art
Foundation in Art, Harrow School of Art

Prizes & awards

South East Arts: Support grant for presentation of work, 1996
South East Arts: Grant for research in France, 1995
South East Arts: purchase of work, short-listed.
Committee: Caroline Collier, Isabel Johnston and Sarah Kent 1993
David Murray Award, Royal Academy, 1970

A selection of my paintings can be seen at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaththompson
Saatchi online: Kathleen Thompson

Overall winner

Kerri Jefferis for ‘After you look into the light’

After you look into the light, Kerri Jefferis. Charcoal on paper, 58x42cm.

Special mentions

Mehrdad Bordbar for ‘Time in place II’

Dimitra Carolina Plexidas for ‘Path to nowhere’

Peter Rodulfo for ‘Crossing the road’

Photographs and Pencil Drawing, 80x60cm. 1 of 10 at this size.

Path to nowhere, Dimitra Carolina Plexidas. A3 Digital Photograph.

Crossing the road, Peter Rodulfo. Oil on canvas, 59x84cm.

Congratulations to the winners but also to all of the participating artists who made it into the show against stiff competition.

Visitors can see the show until the end of August 2012 and works are available to buy in person or online in our Facebook shop. Some pieces are extremely competitively priced so go and take a look.

Visitors to the exhibition will also get the opportunity to vote for their favourites. When the exhibition closes in September the votes will be counted and the Visitors’ Favourite announced. You can see all of the works on our Facebook album and click to like your favourite.

And there are also some photos from the opening night.

The selection process

Works for the exhibition were chosen by the Selection Panel and work was judged anonymously.

The Selection Panel included:

Romilly Eveleigh, Regina Gallery

James Swinson, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design

Background to Radcliffe & Newlands as a venue for art

Radcliffe & Newlands are financial planners with one foot in the City and the other in Shoreditch. This location, combined with the directors’ personal interest in art, gave rise to the idea of creating an alternative space for up and coming artists to display their work. We have turned the public half of our office into a gallery, inviting artists to hold exhibitions. We host opening nights and private views but also give artists the opportunity to reach our clients coming to the office to see their adviser. Encountering art unexpectedly is always a pleasure and we believe art should be in all public spaces.