An update

Well, it has been a short while but I had some holiday to take. Bizarrely, in a twist of fate I can't take any more from now until April. It's a brand new year but I only had 5 days for Jan to April because, in their infinite wisdom Toxic have introduced Flexible Benefits.

This means they bend staff over a barrel, empty our pockets of more salary because you now pay for any benefits (!) and you walk away thankful for it.

The heady benefits are in 3 groups financial, health and "lifestyle"

Unfortunately the financial benefits are:

Critical illness insurance = money if too ill to work
Income protection = money if, errr, too ill to work
life assurance = money if you die and are too dead to work
accident insurance = money if you are too disabled to work
accident insurance for kids

oh and a Pension.

The health bit is normal and strangely more than some other medical insurance schemes.

The "lifestyle" choices are the best:

You can buy more holiday days(!!!)
Get travel insurance (woooooooo)
A mobile phone (double-woooo)
Vouchers
or wine by the case

I think you can guess that none of these are cheap but that's another story for another time perhaps.