Preparation is the best defence for your finances. As Karen Torson, partnerships business manager at the Cheshire Building Society, says: “An uncertain economy can cause worry for many individuals, but taking the time to ensure you are well prepared can provide peace of mind and make a big difference — whatever the future holds.” Whatever might lay ahead, our top tips should help:

* Protect yourself

There are many different insurance policies on the market offering various levels of cover, so consider what you actually need, be it mortgage protection, income protection or both.

Research cost options and check the small print. In comparison with income protection policies, mortgage payment protection insurance (MPPI) plans can be greatly inferior and might even cost you more, according to protection specialist LifeSearch. Typically, MPPI plans only pay out for one year, include a number of important exclusions and both the premiums and the conditions of the policy can be changed at short notice.

* Don’t stop the music

Read other insurance policies carefully to know what you’re covered for.

For example, music fans should think about protecting downloads. Many of Britain’s big name home insurers are still not paying out for claims on the loss of downloaded music — despite the fact that digital sales now form a massive chunk of consumers’ music purchases. They include Endsleigh, Barclays and Bradford & Bingley, according to price comparison website Moneynet.co.uk.

* Save for a rainy day

Inflows into building societies are on a high — and cash savings are an important cushion against hard times. The rising cost of living has made it more difficult for most to save, but every little helps: try and put a small sum into a high-interest savings account each month.

* Shop economically

Think of ways of cutting down on spending. Supermarkets, for example, usually have reduced-priced goods near the end of the day, while TK Maxx sells designer and high street brands of womenswear, menswear, homeware, gifts and accessories at up to 60 percent less than the recommended retail price.

* Know where to turn

There are many services out there that can help if you fall on hard times or have a financial problem. The Citizens Advice Bureau is a good starting point.

* Keep your CV up to date

Regardless of whether or not you feel secure in your job, take time to update your CV. It will mean one less thing to worry about if you find yourself out of work.

Are there other ways you are easing the financial strain? Share your tips with us.

A 65-year-old woman with 100,000 pounds-worth of pension savings could be missing out on a staggering 24,162 pounds by failing to exercise this right; a man by 23,025 pounds, according to numbers crunched by independent financial service provider Hargreaves Lansdown. That is around the same as average annual earnings in the UK last year — 23,764 pounds, according to the Office for National Statistics.

More than 85 percent of savers buy an annuity contract when they retire. This guarantees an income for life in exchange for savings built up in a pension fund. “That’s always been the case and is likely to remain the case, as for most people it really is the right thing to do: they need the certainty of income and haven’t got many other assets,” Nigel Callaghan, a pensions analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, the largest annuity broker in the UK, tells Reuters.

Some 200-plus companies offer pensions. Yet only a small proportion — a dozen or so — “play” the annuity market. The average difference between the best and worst annuity rates published by the Financial Services Authority is more than 15 percent. Legal & General, Prudential, Axa, Friends Provident and Norwich Union are among those that vie to be competitive.

But did you know that savers need not buy their annuity from the company with which they’ve stashed their retirement savings? This — the “open market option” — became a contractual right in 2002, forcing insurers to send “wake up letters” to those approaching retirement to tell them of their ability to scour the market for the best deal. Despite that, the number of people exercising this right has remained largely static at around a third.

“Consumers are being ripped off right, left and centre when it comes to retirement,” says Callaghan. “Many, if not most, of these letters are the complete antithesis of plain English. Some are six-plus pages and you’ll find the stuff about the open market option embedded at the bottom of page four in small print and written in Latin. That’s why I think the take-up figure is so shockingly low. It’s not working: it wasn’t working back then and it’s not working now; commercial greed is the bottom line.”

If the current trend continues, insurers stand to make even greater sums: the number of pensioners is on course for a boom. Last year, 330,000 people bought annuity contracts with 12 billion pounds-worth of pension savings. By 2012, that figure is set to balloon to 18 billion pounds, as the baby boomer generation retires and the demise of final salary pension schemes continues.

By exercising the open market option, these people and the retirees that come before them can avoid handing insurers telephone-number profits. And, by all accounts, savers should be able to get a good deal: annuity rates are at a four-year high as the capital value of corporate bonds — used by insurers to back annuity contracts — plummets and yields stretch. “There have been 30 movements in annuity rates this year alone — the majority up,” says Callaghan. “It’s largely to do with the credit crisis and the continued spanking of corporate bonds. Annuities are one of the few beneficiaries of the credit crisis.” A beneficiary of the credit crunch? Well, I never.

You could forgive the public for being confused when it comes to knowing where to eat, where to shop and what to buy.

Almost daily we are bombarded with conflicting information about whether food is healthy or not, or good or bad for the environment. For example, some groups say supermarkets should not give out free plastic bags (this week Marks and Spencer brought in a 5p charge), while other stores, such as Sainsbury’s say that is not the answer and will not bring lasting benefit to the environment.

Ramsay’s latest target is food flown in from abroad. “I don’t want to see asparagus in the middle of December,” he says. Most people over 30 can probably remember when a strawberry would never have been seen except during the British summer and the celebrity chef would like to see a return to the culture of eating home-grown produce.

What’s more, environmentalists argue that it is better for the planet, as according to the Department for Food and Rural Affairs, air freight emits more greenhouse gases per food mile than any other form of transport.

Ah, but what about the farmers in some of the poorest countries in the world who are producing the food for our supermarkets? That trade is vital to their wellbeing, with a million farmers and their families in Africa depending on it, according to the Department for International Development.

What’s more DFID says driving six and half miles to buy your shopping emits more carbon than flying a pack of Kenyan green beans to the UK. “Do we, in rich countries, help poor countries to trade their way out of poverty by buying their exports, or do we say no to air-freighting and buy local produce instead?,” DFID asks.

But then the champions of organic food, the Soil Association, argue that DFID has got it wrong and the government is being irresponsible.

So, is Ramsay just serving up a hot topic to help publicise his new TV show? Or is he right, and restaurants should be forced to use local produce?
Send us your comments

 Authors Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson have written a county-by-county guide to the hundreds of tales that have been repeated down the years.

While some may scoff, the collection contains hundreds of accounts from people convinced they have seen headless horsemen, screaming skulls or supernatural packs of dogs.

Poltergeists, ghostly figures in country churchyards and strange auras in houses are recorded across the country.

Have you seen a ghost? Do you believe in the supernatural? Or do you think it’s all in the imagination?

THE INDEPENDENT: Abortion; the Battle Lines Are Drawn

The paper uses just three lines of text and three pictures for its main story about survival rates of premature babies and its significance in the abortion debate. Story here

THE TIMES: Drivers in Worse Jam as Traffic Plan Fails

The paper says motorists are wasting more time sitting in queues on motorways and A-roads because the government has failed to meet its key three-year target for reducing congestion. Story here

THE SUN: Hitler Made Me Do It

The man at the centre of the Austrian cell scandal has blamed his tyrannical rapist behaviour on his growing up under Adolf Hitler’s Nazis, the paper says - using a photo of Fritzl interposed on an image of Hitler. Story here 

DAILY MIRROR: I Confess

More confessions by Fritzl dominate the front page. Story here

DAILY MAIL: Can You Believe a Thing You See on ITV?

The paper asks the provocative question after the commercial TV channel was fined a record amount by the regulator Ofcom after the extent of its phone-in scandal was exposed in two reports. Story here

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Hospital Services Face Axe in NHS Shake-Up

Scores of hospital departments such as maternity units and cancer clinics will be closed or merged across the country under plans for a radical shake-up of the NHS, the paper says. Story here

DAILY EXPRESS: Banks in Current Accounts Rip-Off

Banks were criticised for ramping up fees on current accounts as fears grow that the days of free banking are numbered, the paper says. Story here

FINANCIAL TIMES: EDF Snaps up “Nuclear” Land

Europe’s biggest power company has been quietly buying land around nuclear sites in England and Wales, the paper says, putting itself in a position to build power stations even if it fails in its attempt to buy British energy, the nuclear generator. Story here

THE GUARDIAN: New Research on Baby Survival Rates Stokes Abortion Limit Row

Survival rates for babies born before 24 weeks are extremely low and getting no better in spite of medical advances, the paper quotes an authoritative study as saying. Story here

Governments, private security companies and law enforcement agencies all play a part in tackling cyber-crime.

But author and academic Jonathan Zittrain argues that we should be wary of “locking down” the Internet with increasing amounts of centralised rules and sealed gadgets that can’t be tinkered with.

In a new book published by Penguin and Yale University Press, he says part of the answer lies in greater freedom and trust, rather than more rules or technological solutions.

We don’t have police on every street corner in the real world, so why have that online, he asks?

People should be encouraged to see themselves as “netizens” — active participants in the online world, rather than passive consumers of Internet content.

They could share the load of policing the net, reporting threats and working together to combat the risks.

He says Wikipedia has shown that online collaboration can work.

“The challenge to the technologists is to build technologies to let people of good faith help without having to devote their lives to it,” he says.

Supporters say it’s just common sense, while at least one critic has described the approach as “utopian”. Who do you think should shoulder the burden of Internet security?

Be it from gangs of drunken teenagers to more serious cases of vandalism, assaults or even murder, stories of problems involving young louts are rarely out of the newspapers.

However, coming up with an effective plan to deal with the troublemakers has proved difficult for politicians, police and local officials.

Anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) have probably been the best-known antidote the authorities have used. But experts say these have their limits and some serial offenders just view them as a “badge of honour”.

The latest initiative to get the backing of the government is a scheme to turn the tables on the yobs with the police hounding them to make their lives uncomfortable.

Residents in Essex, where the Operation Leopard idea was first introduced, say it was a great success.

But it is likely to alarm some civil rights groups, who have expressed concern about the use of ASBOs.

Is it time to get tough on those who refuse to abide by the rules the rest of us adhere to? Or is this just a headline-grabbing announcement? Send us your comments

The Guardian says Home Secretary Jacqui Smith  wants police to harass anti-social youths and make life as unpleasant for them as they do for their victims. Young thugs should be hounded and filmed.  Story here

The Daily Telegraph is among several newspapers to pick up a BBC 2 “Newsnight” expose that foreign employees working in sensitive airport locations are not having their criminal records checked because of the time and effort that would involve. Story here 

The Daily Mail features a picture of the wife of the Chelsea siege gunman looking on in horror during the standoff and runs the story under the headline: “I Love My Wife Dearly” — the message the paper says he threw out of a window before his death. Story here

A report that suggests Britain wastes around 10 billion pounds worth of food a year is the subject of The Independent front page. The paper says most of the waste is made up of entirely untouched food products. Story here

The Sun splashes what it says is the last picture of Elisabeth Fritzl before she was imprisoned for 24 years in a cellar by her father. Story here, while the Daily Mirror leads on the father’s insistence that he is not a monster because at least he did not kill his daughter and the children he fathered with her. Story here

The Times carries allegations from an Iraqi cleaner and two cooks that a culture of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying exists at the British embassy in Baghdad. Story here

The prospect of household energy bills rising up to 40 percent this Winter as oil prices continue to go up is the lead story in the Daily Express. Story here 

The Financial Times meanwhile concentrates on the link-up between Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy of the U.S. Story here

Then why did I feel sympathy for the woman whose look was described as a cross between Lady Macbeth and the snake Kaa in “The Jungle Book”?

Well, perhaps not quite sympathy, but a little more patience.

After all, this is the woman who turned on her colleagues in the boardroom, reduced team mates to tears, had the gall to ask for tips despite losing customers’ laundry, came up with the daft idea of an environment greeting card, tried to bribe a shopkeeper and didn’t know the meaning of kosher.

Financial pundit Alvin Hall had it about right when he said she had ”distorted the idea of survival”.

But afterwards,  as she explained her demonic behaviour on the post-programme analysis with Adrian Chiles, she didn’t criticise her former team mates and even appeared contrite for her brutish behaviour towards Lucinda.

“Miserable,” was how she herself described her callous boardroom tactics.

“I thought I was being shrewd,” she said. “Covering my back. I can’t believe it.”

Aggression can help in the business world, but it can also hinder, she observed.

Am I being soft? Going all American in the face of a public confession?

The other panelists hardly let up.

“You should’ve been fired last week for the environmental card,” columnist Vanessa Feltz told her.

If Alan Sugar wanted to show that integrity and skill wins a deal,  he should also have fired Michael.

The 25-year-old telesales executive said he was a “good Jewish boy” on his CV to impress Sugar, but came a cropper when he didn’t know what kosher was during an exercise in Marrakech.

Worse than that, he mixed up kosher with halal.

“I’m only half-Jewish,” Michael later explained.

This time it was Sugar who went soft, going all dreamy-eyed over his own enthusistic youth.

Cannabis was downgraded to Class C — which includes substances such as anabolic steroids — in 2004. That meant possession of the drug was treated largely as a non-arrestable offence. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended it should stay as Class C.

Since 2004 there has been much debate on the dangers of repeated use of cannabis, the likelihood of its fostering psychotic behaviour and its role as a possible “gateway” to more dangerous drugs. 

Do you believe Gordon Brown is right in putting cannabis back in Class B?