Credit Unions V Payday Loan Companies.

For someone to know the difference between a Credit Union and a Payday loan company you have to know the difference between usury and lending.

Usury is exploitation. It is when someone benefits financially from exploiting another person’s situation. That is what Payday loan companies do. Built into their business model is the scenario where they hope the borrower will not be able to pay back the loan in the specified time, because the borrower is on a low income, allowing the loan company to apply exorbitant interest and penalty charges. The loan company is exploiting the borrower’s situation. It is as simple and pernicious as that. The premise of a payday loan business plan is that the borrower will default.

 Payday loan companies build a business on the backs of people who are victims of the policies implemented by detached and out of touch politicians who, in turn, receive party donations from the same payday loan companies committing the exploitation. It’s a lucrative arrangement and shows capitalism in its most destructive, insidious and harmful guise.

Credit Unions also lend. However, to borrow from a credit union, you must first be a member of the credit union and be saving a certain amount with the credit union each month. When you apply for a loan you must submit all your outgoings and the credit union will only agree an amount of borrowing the borrower can afford, and it will be at low interest rates. Credit unions are not exploiting a situation they are alleviating one.

The only drawback of credit unions is the lead time between applying for a loan and actually receiving the funds. It can be up to four weeks. This weakness is the main trump card for payday loan companies and they capitalize and succeed largely through this opportunity to offer quick, almost immediate, access to funds. In order for credit unions to compete with payday loan companies and to threaten the existence of payday loan companies, they have to update their processes and decrease the lead time between application for funds and receipt.

Credit unions are humanitarian and compassionate in their endeavours, help to enrich people’s lives, and alleviate poverty, while payday loans are callous, manipulative and abusive organisations that destroy lives for profit.

Prince George.

The coverage of the birth of Prince George was overhyped and ridiculous, a classic case of ‘bread and circuses’ for the compliant and brain dead masses. When a BBC journalist is gleefully reporting that the Duchess of Cambridge’s cervix is dilated 9cm you realise we have crossed the Rubicon into celebrity absurdity.

The sad truth for the lad, is that currently he is wrapped in a nappy and when he assumes the throne of, what will probably be Londinia, as the rest of the UK will have gained independence, in 90 yrs,he will also be wearing a nappy.

I would find the whole situation much more interesting, if I thought there was a chance that in 30yrs, Prince George would be sat astride a fiery steed, parading in front of a mounted cavalry, about to charge down a hillside and do battle with the troops of his father, King William. That would be so much more fun.

Stupid GP’s.

Apparently, over half the number of GP’s, think a charge should be paid when you attend a doctor’s appointment at a surgery. This is proof that even if you are paid over 100k a year, it doesn’t exclude you from being an imbecilic f**kwi*.

If charges are applied, apart from destroying the ethos of the NHS’ being ‘free at the point of access’, it would be calamitous for the health of the poor and the nation generally. People would only seek medical attention when they were gravely unwell, which would probably be too late, parents may delay seeking medical attention for poorly babies and children, which would increase infant mortality rates for illnesses such as meningitis and Accident and Emergency departments would be over run and descend into chaos because patients would avoid attending surgeries in favour of A & E’s, to avoid the charge.

It is an idiotic and foolish suggestion, made by people who appear, possibly due to the excessive salaries they are in receipt off, to be out of touch with the majority of their patients.

Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, said he would “have to stuff GP’s mouths with gold” to ensure their cooperation in the creation of the National Health Service. You couldn’t stuff GP’s mouths with gold now. They already appear to be full of bul*s*tt at the moment.

Police Inaction.

The police response to the abuse and threats, Caroline Criado Perez has received via Twitter, has been truly pathetic. Perez was the woman who started a petition to give women greater representation on UK bank notes. This lead to a torrent of misogynistic abuse, via Twitter, including threats of rape, as well as someone posting her address online, thus, presumably, encouraging someone to carry out these disgusting threats.

Apparently, the police response to these threats, after four days, has been one phone call. When you consider how the police responded to Paul Chambers, who made a joke of blowing up Robin Hood Airport, due to delays, which involved arrests and a court case and the response to ‘criticism’ of the Olympic diver Tom Daly’s performance at the London Olympics, also involving the police springing into immediate action you wonder how more obvious can the police be in openly demonstrating their institutionalised prejudices and chauvinism.

Now obviously, in this new world order, the criticism of a ‘sleb’ is just beyond the pale and it’s quite right the police should divert thousand of £££’s in funds, resources and wailing sirens to alleviate the suffering of a teenage diving ‘sleb’. Obviously, dealing with an uppity woman, who is living in fear for her life, while being harassed and threatened with rape, just doesn’t rack up the same PR brownie points a high profile arrest of someone who said something unkind about a ‘sleb’ does.

I expect, when the desk sergeant was filling out Miss Perez’s complaint and issuing her with a crime number, he was thinking “she‘s asking for it anyway”, what with her being a women and having a point of view an all.

On the wider point of abuse and ‘trolling’via social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. In the UK there are laws for abuse, harassment and threats of violence. It is not for Facebook or Twitter to censor contributors, but the responsibility of the police and the justice system to prosecute impartially, without fear or favour, if these laws have been transgressed.

Trolling is not exclusive to social networks. It is alive and well and being perpetrated by journalists in some of the UK tabloids, the likes of Quentin Letts and Richard Littlejohn come readily to mind. They may consider themselves, I use the word loosely, ‘journalists’ but their mindset is no different to that of any troll currently thumping away at his/her keyboard in his/her bedroom, dressed only in their underwear. Hate speech is as much a part of the tabloid repertoire as it is of the so-called trolls.

Our Brave Home Secretary.

Yesterday, it was announced, on the front page of The Mail On Sunday, that Home Secretary, Miss Theresa (“with a ‘h,’ she’s not common yer know”) May is the first person, in the universe, to be diagnosed with the disease, that will be forthwith know as diabetes. The courageous Miss May has (sob, sob, sniff. “Sorry reader I’m filling up”) vowed to carry on, like the millions of sufferers, around the world, that already have diabetes have to, to earn a crust (“hey, pack it in. Nobody else has ever had diabetes, right, Miss May is the first, Ever!”,) and continue in her role as Home Secretary.

It has been reported that she may have to, like thousand of oth….. (“I’m warning you, writer”) inject herself upwards of twice a day. Some people have to inject up to four time’s a day. (“right I’ve warned you writer. If you keep trying to suggest that millions of people, across the world, have suffered from the progressive illness known as Diabetes for many years and that they just get on with their lives, rather than being portrayed as some sort of medical martyr, like what Miss May is. I mean it writer, I will smash yer face in”), but this will not prevent her from carrying out her duties as being the best Home Secretary this country has ever had, well since the last one anyway  (“right you asked for it writer, now you’ve gone to far, besmirching poor brave Miss May”).

Sound of punches, grunting, cries of pain and tumbling chairs.

The Mail on Sunday did not go on to say that diabetes is brought on by lifestyle choices and that the type our gloriously brave and courageous Miss May has contracted was probably giving to her by immigrants, who as we all know, are all infected with the plague, or Islam or something unpleasant.

(“I think you broke my nose writer”).

Footnote: Writer has been a diagnosed diabetic for 15 years. Writer did not contract it via contact with immigrants. He contracted it via contact with cake. Writer thinks cake is bloody brilliant.

“Hey, farmer, farmer, put away your DDT. Give me spots on my apples and leave me the birds and the bees.” Joni Mitchell.