And you climb up the mountains and you fall down the holes
We all love capitalism, don’t we? Who couldn’t? Just think of all the crap you don’t need that you bought with money you don’t have to temporarily fill the void you feel inside. It’s like a caressing, velvet glove. Almost sensual.
Now meet the iron fist.
Personal debt is at a record high of £1.4 trillion, averaging £29,684 for every adult in the country. And people now face the possibility of bailiffs being able to break into their homes and take possessions by force. The sweeping new powers will be outlined by the Government in May, when it publishes details of how a new Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act will work in practice.
‘Sweeping new powers’. Just be careful you aren’t one of the those being swept up:
In a statement to the Independent of Sunday, a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) spokesperson claimed that the new powers for forcing entry will be used only “as a last resort… in strictly controlled circumstances”, and only “once full independent regulation of all private-sector bailiffs has been implemented”. But it emerged last night that, despite bailiffs remaining unregulated, MoJ officials are proposing that they be allowed “to use reasonable force, restraint or violence against debtors thwarting the bailiff’s seizure of their goods”.
Define ‘reasonable force’, ‘restraint’ and ‘violence’. Define ‘thwarting’. I bet a debt collector’s lawyers are better at doing it than the poor schlub with the debts.
Define ‘desperation’.
I imagine most people reading that newspaper report will be white, educated and middle class. They’ll read it and think ‘these strong arm tactics aren’t for the likes of me’. I hope they’re right.
The thing is, it only takes a turn of misfortune here, a wrong decision or two there, to send you plummeting with dizzying rapidity. Nobody loves you when you’re down and out. And you don’t have to be a stupid or bad person to end up there either.
The seats in the stalls aren’t reserved exclusively for the feckless lower classes of popular imagination. The banks will and do pull the plug at the first sniff of trouble and you can end up in the hands of a debt collector pretty damn quick.
As a slogan appealing to another brand of hope over experience once put it: ‘It could be you’:
Owen James, managing director of Interim Justicia, a debt collection firm that has almost a million “customers” in Britain, and which had group profits of £37m in 2007, told the IoS: “We are looking forward to controlled sustainable growth… there’s a lot of potential in this market.”
Think on. Don’t realise your ‘potential’.
(Via RickB.)
Posted on February 17th, 2008 at 9:19 am
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You are certainly right to highlight these worrying proposals but in my experience the banks are not the biggest culprits when it comes to debt collecting. In fact banks generally do not pursue unsecured debtors and certainly do not attempt to impose bankruptcy proceedings unless they are certain that the debtor has assets which are not being declared. (Fair enough, I suppose) Banks are so profitable that they can and do simply write off their unsecured debts.
It is after the debt has been written off that the shadier debt collectors move in by having the debt legally assigned to them. Over the years a debt can be picked up and pursued by countless ‘debt collector companies’ and as the debt ages so the proportion of the debt amount which ends up in the collectors pocket increases.
Often, for many people the first encounter with a bailiff is likely to be over an unpaid parking fine. What started out as a £40 fine magically escalates into a debt of several hundred. It’s scandalous and it’s why I always avoid paying to park whenever I can.
Unsecured debts should be like gambling debts - unrecoverable in the courts. Either get security or take the risk that you won’t get paid. That would make lenders sit up and think carefully who they lend to. And it’s not as if they aren’t covering their arses anyway.
Check out the latest interest rates being offered on credit cards compared to a year or two ago. These companies know that they are going to be knocked by some of their borrowers and have already adjusted the game accordingly.
And here’s a tip from an old hand on dealing with bailiffs. Do everything you can to avoid contact. Keep your curtains drawn. Don’t answer the door. Tell them you’re not in if they phone:) Eventually, the law of diminishing returns will prevail. There are so many new cases coming on stream every week that bailiffs (even official court baillifs) simply have to give up on most of their old case load. They will always prey on the weak and vulnerable so never, ever allow them a look in! Just say no to debt recovery!
If that fails, get a couple of Dobbermans;) Ha, ha! Woof, woof!
“If that fails, get a couple of Dobbermans;) Ha, ha! Woof, woof!”
We’ll see which way the Conservatives and the like fall on this issue when the first bailiff is serious injured of killed in the process of committing a violent burglary. When a poor person is defending their home from petty capital, is that home still a ‘castle’?
OMG! Andrew is back! :)) My RSS reader didn’t pick it up. Bartlett’s Bizarre Bazaar was one of my must-reads until it went awol.
That’s quite cheered me up.
Shoot! I misread the date. It’s 2007 not 2008. Boo, hoo!
Please start blogging again.
I worked as a collector for Interim Justicia a few years ago the commision was about17% and they still make a killing. Easy way out is agree to pay some small sum a week then be out when they call for a couple of weeks and they give up and send em back.
That may well be the case as things stand now, mitch, but surely the point of this post is that it may not be the case for much longer. Next time the bailiffs come round to your hous and you aren’t there, they’ll just legally kick in the door and take your stuff.
Dang! That’s true.
Better make that SIX Dobbermans
There’s many a true word spoken in jest, Mike. If debt-collectors are given the right to force entry, it wouldn’t surprise me if we see some kind of arms-race beginning. People, worried about the bailiffs, will attempt to fortify their houses. Big attack dogs would be the most obvious (and most prevalent) solution, but I guarantee it won’t be too long before the newspapers start running stories about bailiffs getting their legs broken by improvised “man-traps” placed just inside windows.
The only reason this doesn’t already happen to burglars is the fact that nobody is expecting their house to be broken into on any given day. But if you’re expecting the bailiffs (as you presumably would be) then there’ll be all manner of Improvised Home-Protection Solutions [tm] available for you to deploy.
Ooh yes! Trap-doors, greased chutes, piranha-filled pools. I’ll get my tool box and make a start straight away. He. he!
“proposing that they be allowed “to use reasonable force, restraint or violence”
So, someone in the pay of the courts can use more force and violence to get into your home to take your stuff away than you can use to defend it fom ‘freelance’ removals?
No, exactly the same amount - reasonable force is already permitted in home defence.
Ok, but I’ve never heard anyone saying you can use reasonable violence to defend your home.
The two words, force and violence, conjure up different ideas, and call me a cynic but I’d wager that the forces of capitalism gets away with more violence than than a threatened homeowner.
Think about all that personal debt, and all that incessant, relentless, pandering from the financial sector; an avalanche of leaflets and flyers imploring us to take out a loan here or there, put all your debts together, take a holiday, snap up that groovy car….
I read somewhere that something like 25% of toy sales are generated purely by kids` pester power. So in short, a quart of toy sales are excess sales. We`re in this situation because our government has essentially thrown us to the wolves; deregulation of the financial sector is the main reason why personal debt is a horror story, why the Northern Wreck debacle came about, why the subprime chaos was allowed to develop, and why economic collapse is only a few corporate losses away.