Debt Crunch

Karl Dayson has written a note for the Grauniad Joe Public Blog.
Households not banks the real victims of the credit crunch
October 29 2008

It likens the victims of the credit crunch, such as banks and other financial institutions, to train crashes. They have, quite rightly, exhaustive inquiries into causes and bring forth recommendations as to what can be done and how they can be avoided in the future. Individual and family problems of debt are considered as car crashes on the super highway of capitalism.
Scrape up the pavement pizza and move along now.

The rich are always with us.

I have had my differences with Polly Toynbee. I was once moved to write to the Grauniad to accuse her of stirring up apathy in the middle classes. She had penned an article containing a disparaging reference to community credit unions. Strangely, it was published. I have refrained from corresponding with national newspapers ever since, preferring to sit in a darkened room with a damp towel over my head. I now feel it is only right to give her and David Walker credit for a little book Unjust Rewards. Some very nice ideas and some very interesting results. I particularly liked the suggestion that, effectively, tax returns should become documents of public record.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

Social Entreprats.

I have felt for some time that a lot of fairly mediocre people make a fat living out of being, ostentatiously, Social Entrepreneurs. They do not do a good job, they often move with the money and their only skill is in browsing jobs from one grant scheme to the next before the moolah runs out. The poor, apparently, are always with us. The Social Entreprats are never far behind. I have sat, often cringing in disbelief, totting up the cost of delivering grants, advice, support, tea and sycophancy, monitoring, reviews, consultancy, reports and general factotemry to the poor and ne'er-do-wells. Of course, such persons and activity require a parallel universe of flunkys advising such characters. These are embedded in charities, representational structures and executives of central, local and European government. Just don't start me off on registration and regulation.

I have decided to name these characters Social Entreprats.

This week I sat marveling as one Social Entreprat shook his greying locks in disbelief that anyone should get his or her hands dirty doing anything positive apart from passing the policy recommendations up the food chain. No good could come of encouraging direct positive legal action against what you, or the person on the 38 bus, would reasonably regard as unfair terms and conditions of a loan. Always unwilling to suffer fools gladly I pointed out that similar action had brought the banks to heel, almost, over overdraft and account charges. The Social Entreprat retreated into the worsted greyness of his suit unwilling to challenge the wild eyed pinko! There was not a squeak from the blue serge, 500 sovs a skull, at my right hand representing the Government Office in our region and him wearing an MCC tie!The woman with the permatan looking slightly bilious in a slinky grey dress who had arrived in a beamer over an hour ago had uttered not one word but presumeably was looking forward to the final salary pension she would enjoy from the government agency that fed her.

Have you any room?

Have you any room in your heart or your house?
Helen Garner's book, The Spare Room, is a portrayal of life at the end, what we will do to hang on and what we do to those around us.
I liked the writing.

Always leave 'em laughing department:-

I was discussing the problem of books recently with someone who, manifestly, has too many.
I recounted the famous solution advanced by the detective Pepe Carvalho, see Murder in the Central Committee, by Manuel Vazquez Montalban. He burns books to keep himself warm and cheerful through the Barcelona winters.

Hmm... The bibliophile pondered;
Maybe what I need is a book burning stove.

Voodoo Computing

It's really strange how ideas have their time. Voodoo computing was the subject of an article by Charles Arthur on the Grauniad tech website.

This has come at the end of a little computing saga of my own. For some time emails from the secret government department that I represent, but could not name because then I would have to surcharge you, have been on the fritz. Attachments from some colleagues have disappeared! The lectrons were duly input to one computer and then whizzed by the miracle of lectricity and the GPO's equipment to my computer where they were found seriously lacking in the attachments department. Enquiries by me caused responses along the lines that the problem was - my end!
Quite so Lord Copper but my inadequacies in that regard, not unusual in a man of my age and social background, are nowt to do with the email thingies.
An expert opinion was sought and the voodoo view expressed that it was something to do with firewalls and virus protection. This might have a bearing on the case as I had recently had a flu jab. Still it did seem unlikley and I could see no good reason why. Rejecting voodoo computing for the wisom of crowds I entered

Where are my f.....g email attachments you thieving electronic bastard?"

into the gooble box and the answer came back as a first hit. Outlook or Outlook Express, made by Microsoft the well known purveyors of fine software, takes attachments to emails coded in HTML stuff and puts them into code which is not always recognised by us plain text Jimmys.

Hapily, we are properly attached and discretely visible once more.

Now, where did I put that flash drive with the details of the overseas investors. I'm sure I had it with me in the pub last night!

42

They have had a few problems.
While they get the bicycle repair kits out with the rubber patches and plug the leaks here is a crossword to take your mind off it!

1, 4, 5, 7, 10 and 23 are all 8s and are not defined further.
5, 23 may be seen in the 24, 1, 16 at 13

Across

8 Equal time commanding the French - elementary (8)

9 Spike immersed the Italian in frozen water – cold inside (6)

10 8 for weight (6)

11 Return o got (2,2,4)

12 Home untaxed – choice for transformer (9)

13 Accelerator use - some concerns (4)

15 Lucas has lost point and upset his Dublin darling (7)

17 24 sound the beginning of everything (3,4)

20 Student in his cups creates opening (4)

22 Hold to view of messy bib and curses (9)

25 Air riven badly living next to the Thames, say (8)

26 Modern city examination (6)

27 Venus is bovine provocation (3,3)

28 Bringing together organisation if feminine principle has force (8)

Down

1 See 24

2 Drunk mixing drinks with debts (8)

3 Can be viewed from craggy Ben Canals (9)

4 Turn on drug – wild 8 (7)

5 8 in his horse (5)

6 Member directs that system concerns basic emotion (6)

7 Nero, Celt – crazy 8 (8)

14 Fuel- workings lie soiled (6,3)

16 See 24

18 Rob’s tidy made fun for feathered friends (4,4)

19,21 Very successful physical idea true - quoth many roughly (7,6)

21 See 19

23 Sounds like Petty Officer’s 8 (6)

24,1,16 Rocking Elgar had roll on cider smashing 8s (5,6,8)

XWD8


Hints are available, modestly priced, via my profile email.

Never Never

A reference in the Guardian to Never Never by David Gaffney tickled my fancy. I have just finished it, courtesy of the Stakhanovites in Suffolk County Libraries. I thought it was going to do for debt, money lending and the North West what Christopher Brookmyre has done for Caledonian crime. Not quite as much mayhem or ingenuity, a bit more arty but some real gems.

The debt advisor who is up to his nostrils in debt, and because he knows how to work the system, about to borrow a whole lot more. He advises one of his clients to go bust after taking out credit for tens of thousands of pounds, which is split with the advisor, of course. The debt collector who is driven out of business because the debt advisor is so efficient at getting debt written down or written off. The ex-debt collector who pitches up at the debt advice centre because he is now pennyless.

The final ruse is to submit a fraudulent grant application for funds to build a new improved debt advice centre! There is the mandatory drugs, sex, rock and roll and violence.

A novel for our times and our greed.
Very disturbing for a non profit moneylender!

Should you need a fast fix of credit after reading the book or you find yourself strapped for the old doubloons in these terrible times then ABCUL News provided the following web address to make sure you get the best deal.

My suggestion would be, and it does not constitute advice in the meaning of the Act, find yourself a credit union and start saving hard!

Don McCain and Sancho Palin

It's one of those laughable, scary radio pictures.

McCain and Palin in the guise of the Don and Sancho wearily plodding across the wide open spaces of middle America passing deeper into paranoia, hate and bigotry.

Not mine, I have to admit. I'm not sure I want to thank John Naughton for that but it seems to have started something.

Worthy of Credit

Muhammad Yunus has had a creditworthy mention in these pages before. Not the best clerihew ever produced but it gives a flavour of the man.

I have been reading his book - Creating a World Without Poverty - A not inconsiderable ambition as John Major might have said had he ever shown any interest in the subject.

It has taken me a while to get into it but there are some real gems. I suspect they are much used and polished but one which seems apposite now is given on page 49:-

In the past, financial institutions always asked themselves,
"Are the poor credit-worthy?" and always answered no.......
I reversed the question: "Are the banks people-worthy?"

Well now, there is a question. Would you like to know the answer?
Would you like to know the answer before Gordy and Al make £450 billion and change of doubloons from our pockets available to them?

I certainly do not want to see people thrown out of their homes or jobs, small businesses closed down, I don't want to see queues of people outside banks, I don't want to see ATM machines flashing up messages to say:-

- Sorry chum no more doubloons, ever! Have you ever considered the advantages of a barter system?-

I hope they have secured said sum on the soft and squashy parts, the first born and sets of golf clubs of the merchants of debt. I hope they have the bottle to take action when the culture of corporate greed reasserts itself. Of course it could be that the man with the plan at that time will be Dave!

If banks are not people-worthy, what can we do to make them just a little bit more?
Yunus started his own bank, Grameen, and I am sure you could argue about lots that he has done and how it has been done but I think he has done something to attack systemic poverty.