John Coleman reports that he has a full team to play against our local rivals, Guildford Probus, at Clandon Regis Golf Club, on April 11th. We wish the team well, and continued success after last year’s successes.

At our April Lunch all members delighted in Don Flack being made an Honorary Member, joining John Glanfield, David Griffin and David Hemsley. John Coleman and guest David Leech, Chairman of Weybourne House, spoke about Don’s contribution to both the Club and to Weybourne House. A huge contribution to both and an honour well deserved.

 John Glanfield presents Don Flack with the badge of office.

Our speaker this month is Julie Beaven, who has spoken to and entertained many Probus Clubs, W.I.’s and U3A’s over a period of several years.

Julie is a very talented musician and plays several instruments, including the Hammer Dulcimer and the Clarsach (or Celtic) Harp.  She is a member of The Nonsuch Dulcimer Club and is Mentor to the National Youth Harp Orchestra of Great Britain.

Apart from her music, Julie also gives talks on her previous careers as a teacher in a Middle East Arab School and as a Sub-Lieutenant Naval Reserve Officer.

However, on 2nd May, Julie will be concentrating on her Hammer Dulcimer and two recently purchased Mountain Dulcimers.  She will talk about the instruments, their history and how she discovered them. She will, of course, also play the Dulcimers in a short concert.

Julie’s presentation promises to be very entertaining and informative.

Speaker Secretary Ian Rutter reports:

We welcomed as our speaker this month, Dr. Colin Summerhayes, who gave his fourth presentation to us in as many years.

Colin is a marine geologist and oceanographer, an Emeritus Associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University and currently a member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy.  He is also a member of the ‘other’ Guildford Probus Club, but we don’t hold that against him! 

His talk was entitled Welcome to the Anthropocene. 

Most geological epochs have timespans of millions of years, (e.g. Cambrian and Jurassic), but what about the Anthropocene – the age of human activity – how long has that existed?  Since the time of Homo Sapiens around 200,000 years ago?  Well, not according to Colin, as he would put the date nearer to 1950 AD!  He gave us a wealth of statistics, which all showed how much the climate, the oceans and, indeed, the geology of the Earth were being affected by the need to feed a rapidly increasing population and to satisfy the ever-growing demands of the consumer society.

However, it is not all doom and gloom.  Some trends are reversing, such as the beneficial effect on air pollution in UK cities brought about by the Clean Air Act, but, as we all know, much more needs to be done very soon if we are to win this battle.

In his vote of thanks, Past-Chairman, Christopher Way, reflected the great appreciation of the members for another excellent presentation.

Have we booked Colin again for next year?  Of course, we have!

Thanks to the efforts of Colin Dorling, we are fortunate to have the opportunity of listening to the views of Charles Stanley at our next meeting of the FFG on Thursday 21 March.

The theme of their talk is “How and where should one allocate assets at this time?” – which, given the present uncertainty over Brexit, the ongoing China/USA trade negotiations and even the potential instability of the UK Government, is a challenging theme for their talk.

Charles Stanley, which is one of the oldest leading “Wealth Managers” in the UK, will be represented by George Coster, Nic Clarke and John Devine, who are all Investment Managers at the local Guildford Office.

It will be an excellent opportunity to hear the views of experts on the current investment scene and a rare chance to raise any queries that you may have over the appropriate investment strategy in the present turbulent times.

We gather as usual at Weybourne House from 9.45am for tea/coffee and biscuits for a 10.00am start of the meeting, which will end around noon. All are welcome and we look forward to seeing a few new faces at what promises to be an interesting meeting.

Speaker Secretary Ian Rutter reports:

Our speaker for March, Paul Whittle, had previously given us two very interesting and enjoyable presentations about railways. This time his subject was completely different – a short history of St. Petersburg from its founding in 1703 by Peter the Great – and, once again, Paul did not disappoint us. His relaxed style of adding a professional commentary to a Powerpoint presentation had his whole audience enthralled and many compliments were paid to him at the end.

To the many photographs taken personally by Paul of modern-day St. Petersburg, he added ancient and current maps of the city, together with images of the Romanov royal family and other personalities, who figured prominently in the history of this World Heritage Site. What could have been a straight travelogue metamorphosed into a wonderful re-telling of the story of St. Petersburg, illustrated by the many excellent and relevant slides.

Past-Chairman, Leslie Cowie, gave the well-deserved vote of thanks and members will be pleased to note that Paul has already been booked for another presentation next year.

At this morning’s FFG meeting we were all impressed by the range and detail of David Bott’s talk on his “Random Walk through the Investment Minefield” (AKA “The 20 Year Learning Curve of an Investment Novice.” ) – and by Gerry Booth’s skill as Chairman.

The subsequent discussion ranged over many topics, including the use of qualifying AIM Portfolios as a vehicle to reduce the impact of Inheritance Tax. The following link to an article in the February edition of Money Observer shows the relative performance and charges of a number of companies offering AIM Portfolios: AIM Portfolio Performance & Charges

We hope that many of you can make the next meeting of the FFG on 21 March, when we will have the opportunity to hear the views of George Coster, Nic Clarke and John Devine of Charles Stanley on “How and where should one allocate assets at this time?” This talk has been arranged by Colin Dorling, who used to work for Charles Stanley and it promises to be an interesting session. (The post 29 March meeting with Andrew Withey could also be “interesting”!)

Speaker Secretary Ian Rutter reports:

Gordon Bridger, a member of Probus ’83 since 2014, gave us a talk entitled ‘The British Empire’. Gordon is well qualified to speak on this subject as he was Director of Economics for British Aid Programmes for many years and also worked for the United Nations in a similar role. He has lived and/or worked in almost every state of the current Commonwealth and many others besides.

After a slightly uncertain start, mainly caused by a recalcitrant audio headset, Gordon soon warmed to the task of persuading us that, in general, the states of the Empire benefitted greatly from British imperial power. We were asked to compare the effect of Britain on their colonies with that of Spain, Belgium, Holland and France on theirs. We are still very welcome in almost all countries of the Commonwealth – indeed some citizens of some countries would like us back!

Gordon pointed out that very few ex-Empire countries have failed to join the Commonwealth, (a voluntary organisation), among them Burma, Ireland, Maldives, Yemen and (dare one say) the USA, but three other states – Mozambique, Namibia and Rwanda – which were not British colonies, have joined the Commonwealth.

He also asked us to look at the situations in many ex-Empire states, since they gained their independence. Many, particularly in Africa, have discarded British values and are now dictatorships with poor economies, much to the detriment of the majority of their people.

Don Horrocks, himself a well-travelled member of Probus ’83, gave a deservedly generous vote of thanks. Certainly, if one judges the interest in a talk by the number of questions afterwards, then Gordon’s presentation was a great success.

Although the content is still basically similar, you will notice that our club website now looks somewhat different.

To make life easier for club contributors to this website, and to simplify site management generally,  the CMS (Content Management System) has been changed to WordPress. In particular this will simplify the management and presentation of pictures. Another change is that “Latest News” is now in blog format – dated, separate articles – which will give a clearer presentation and greatly simplify the archiving of older material.

We have the first meeting of the “re-badged” Family Finances Group next Thursday, 17 January, at the Guildford Masonic Centre. As usual, the meeting starts with coffee & biscuits at 10.00am.
This meeting will be a general discussion under the Chairmanship of Alan Mansfield when everyone will have the opportunity of giving their “two pennyworth” on the revised structure & objectives of the Group, including what we would like to talk about, the type of Guest Speakers in the future, etc.. We will also share our views on the present stock-market and investment conditions but try to avoid talking about Brexit – However, we may fail in the case of the latter !