Debt

Audio

Between The Stools Service 30^th January 2022

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Welcome to our first service of the year. And to mark Imbolc and Candlemas in that order, and the birthing of lambs, we turn to something that has been at the fulcrum of keeping our world in darkness. It is the very thing we need candles to extinguish – yes, the lighting of a candle extinguishes the dark. As snowdrops push through, it symbolises the work that has been done underground, now coming out into the open.

I am feeling encouraged, for recently and suddenly, long held restrictions in more than one country have been dropped and phased out. Although the official narrative is that it’s because the precautions have done their work, I am told by other sources – and my intuition backs this up – that the narrative is being dismantled, along with the old system.

And this, our topic tonight, is at the heart of it.

Prayer

Perhaps we may first think of debt as economic, but I am going broader and deeper to the epicentre of what debt is.

Some of my thoughts come from Margaret Atwood’s Payback – we have similar thought processes.

She was often more catalyst and educator, in the original sense of leading out of what was already there, but I thought I had best mention her. Even now, we’ve started on debt: the of attribution of ideas.

Debt is essentially that you are incomplete and remain in that state until you have done something to fill in the gap. I won’t say that debt is righting the balance, as that suggests that debt is equitable in every sense of the word; that it is fair, and that it mathematically and morally tallies. It does not.

It is simply about balancing books, even when it is qualitative.

Debt means that the person who has a debt is wanting, and is obliged to act to supply that want. The person to whom the debt is said to be due, the creditor, is generally seen as the one with the power. Their action is to remind about the debt, and to collect it. Thus debt involves work for both parties.

In law, a debt involves a contract. It is about literally giving an account, and as Margaret points out, it involves writing and a memory. A contract holds the parties concerned into a supposedly binding agreement – hear that: bonds. Not in the glue sense, or the family sense, but as in you are held together and not free until you are released. Usually, the one being released is the debtor and it’s thought that the creditor is the one whose word does the dissolving.

I don’t believe it is so, but debt is a confidence trick.

What is not commonly understood, and needs to be, about contracts is that:

they must be freely entered into, without coercion, with full knowledge, and full disclosure of all terms before the debt is created, and there must be a realistic choice. They must also be equitable, the meeting of minds of equals.

Think on that as we discover what constitutes as debt, especially theologically.

The other aspect which governs all contracts is that a non-negotiated contract to the customer’s disadvantage does not stand. So if you are presented with a pre-written contract and asked to sign without being able to make amendments then it is not individually negotiated. And if that contract makes the consumer the weaker partner with terms that significantly imbalance the rights and responsibilities, then that contract doesn’t stand.

In England, we have the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations from 1999 which lays out the above in section 5.

A ‘consumer’ is a word I dislike, and it’s only partly useful in a discourse which takes debt at its essence, not just limiting it to trading terms. I have heard the word widely defined, but I will call it in this case the opposite of a supplier – the receiver.

This principle against unfair contracts is entrenched in Common Law; and by that I do not refer to precedent law made by judges, but the underlying universal principles. Common Law can be a confusing term as it means both of these, and it is used interchangeably with universal or natural law – that which everywhere is common sense intrinsically obvious justice to any moral being. It is not, however, unarguably synonymous.

Already, law is seeping in and at a more fundamental level than economics, but this is not to be the long promised law essay. What I will say is that debt is an aberration of Common Law, masquerading as it.

Debt can be money but it is just as often payment in kind – honour, oblation, sacrifice, gratitude.

To create a debt is to control others and have power over them.

A debt which cannot be repaid is slavery.

I want you to hear that again. A debt which cannot be repaid – that continues throughout someone’s life and beyond – is slavery. Modern and ancient.

In fiscal terms, rent and utilities and tax are thus defined as slavery. Mortgages are long term slavery with the possibility of release. Our work is slavery. Yes we may apply and resign, but we are pressured into selling our labour to someone else in order to be able to survive and participate in society.

You may be surprised to hear these aspects of life that you had accepted called slavery. The term slavery invokes strong images, especially of the African triangular trade, and we may feel that our current lot cannot be compared. We may not suffer the kidnap and violence that centuries, nay millennia, of slaves around the world did, but there is a more subtle kind. Note the year that your country or state outlawed slavery, and the year that the registry of births to the state became expected. There is a correlation. I invite you to explore the significance of that.

We are working to pay a kind of debt to a master who may change, but we will often need to find another master. Hence, many people go self employed, retire, and several in the last couple of years have refused to return to the working conditions that they hitherto put up with.

Debt is linked to being socialised, and paying bills and earning via labour are two ways that we are meant to feel good or bad… if we work, we are worthy; if we are unable to pay the invoices we are given and often tricked into, let alone if that’s because we don’t work, we are unworthy. We suffer stress and can be seen as undignified. It puts off other would-be traders from contracting with us. It’s an indignity which even seeps into our dating: profiles show a preference for ‘solvent’ partners without debt; advisers personal and professional can underscore that a debtor needs to sort out their problem, much like an alcoholic, and that they are best avoided until they have done so.

Most disturbing is the spiritualisation of debt paying and debt avoidance; along with cleanliness, we’ve put ‘financial responsibility’ next to godliness and made it a sign of master manifestation. Christian charities such as Christians Against Poverty support debtors by resocialising them into paying; they do not rescue from debts or question them and the ethos of the creditors; they often work with them.

Licensing is a form of debt paying; something we might do is taken into the hands of the license giver, and it is created illegal not to obtain one. We are told that not to pay, for instance, a TV license, is stealing from those that do, and is dishonourable. We are expected to undergo intrusions to ensure that those wicked would-be non payers do not escape the system.

There is perhaps nothing more infamous than tax as an example of a debt which we are expected to pay as a matter of honour and fairness to our governments, local and national, and to society. A debt to society of course means spending time in a barred, locked room at public expense, following a judicial conviction. We are threatened with this scenario if we do not pay debts; not just the Marshalsea (infamous Victorian prison for those with unpaid accounts), but specifically for not satisfying the demands of licensing agencies and tax offices.

We therefore see that tax is an ongoing demand which we cannot be free from; as long as we live, unless we are deemed too poor and thus exempt, we must continue to pay our taxes, and probably our licences, unless it is withdrawn or becomes free in our senior years. We do not get to withdraw our consent: taxes come with punishment. There is a movement which sees taxation as theft.

Margaret Atwood points out that as taxpayers, we are creditors who rarely see return for our investments. I would also point out that rent payers of any kind are creditors. Rather than the minions who owe someone bigger than us our wages, this turns the coin.

Now, instead of debtors, we are victims of stealing; the subterfuge sleight of hand is not dipping into a till or snatching an item into a bag to swiftly leave a shop with. It isn’t a hacked account, although some governments do give themselves permission to hack into our banks and help themselves if they deem that we have not paid the tax that they say is due, and they also give themselves permission to send people to our door to harass for money or take goods if we do not pay. The subterfuge is both legal and in advertising; it entices via force and decency. Force says: you cannot disagree, for there is punishment or dissenters. And decency says that any good citizen will comply anyway, for it is your duty to your contribute to the kitty from which you draw. It is made difficult not to draw from the kitty, whether your work requires a licence, your transport, your worship (we won’t be having one – BTS is entirely independent), or just for living in this land. If you move, the new land, if they’ll have you, will also have charges – and they might be worse. And so might their punishments for not paying.

Hence, the law of contracts is not being fulfilled, because even if the full terms are disclosed, we don’t have a realistic choice to opt out or to influence the terms. The terms are not in our favour, unless you happen to be a tax collector or license giver. Hence, the public is materially disadvantaged, and the UTCCR comes into play.

I trust that it is becoming obvious that debt and creditor and the moral duty is not as inarguable as we are socialised to believe.

The debts of honour extend to those who died in military service. It too is an unpayable debt apparently, for we can never do enough to show our gratitude to our war dead. Some of you may feel offended, because perhaps you lost someone in battle or you have suffered during military employment, and you believed you were helping your country and keeping people safe. I particularly acknowledge the suffering that many in the military have undergone, and that of their loved ones. But I do point out how political, if not religious, our military remembrance has become.

Now we have a new profession to add: our medical staff. It has felt as pressured to give the clap and wear rainbows here these last two years as it has to wear poppies in November. My local poppies are still there, eight weeks later, although the Christmas lights have long come down. We are told that both sets of workers have done something for us, risking themselves to keep us safe. And thus our oblations are due, and we cannot offer any other opinion. It might be signs expressing thanks, it might be offering discounts or priority service, it might be giving to charities, it may be a public act. But we are being asked to give secular veneration. And I’ve not even got onto God yet.

Before I do, for the second half of this, I just want to leave us with a question….

Can involuntary debt, in any of these forms, be a true obligation? When we are both forced and cajoled into paying, is not this debt actually negated? In what ways have we paid debts that are unfair, in the legal sense? In what way have we considered ourselves creditors inequitably?

And what might we do?

I’m going to give a little silence – there’s no music this month – and then I’ll come to the theological part.

Debt is linked to both guilt and to sacrifice. Debts involve punishment, and the guilt of not paying and going on with our offerings is part of the punishment. Guilt is also a catalyst, an engine driver. Paying a debt, in any sense, is a sacrifice – some of what you considered yours is to be given to someone who claims that it is in fact theirs… your time, your produce, that which you call money.

Also, you have a debt because someone made a sacrifice to your benefit…those nurses…. those soldiers… and of course, God.

I hereon refer to the Christian God, but other gods have required sacrifices, which is a kind of debt. In fact, it seems a kind of godly thing to do – or ungodly. Gods require you to forfeit something to give them honour. They made your sun rise – or their Son, who gave Himself for you. So you must give something to your god.

For Christians, Jesus, the Son of God, who is part of the Godhead, came from Heaven to end sacrificial offerings by becoming one himself. The most prevalent traditional theology is one of sacrificial atonement – that Jesus died in our stead, appeasing His Father’s anger at our sin. The price is too great for us ever to repay, and it passes on to each new human in all the generations that have ever been. The debt started with Adam and Eve, the first humans, and was settled by Jesus, but our debt to the Lord is eternal – until He comes a second time, or we die. Or is the eternal praise expected of us in Paradise also part of this debt? [Know this is not my opinion, nor that which follows]

The debt is of servitude. I was taught that unbelief is the greatest sin against God, and the one He will punish the most. Servitude is tithing, say the churches gleefully… it’s the 2^nd anniversary of my leaving the Anglican church. I’ll be taking on their tithing as part of our September service. Servitude is your time. Servitude is giving up and setting apart. Servitude is standing out, it’s suffering for My sake. Servitude is your devotion – telling Me that I alone am your God and am all powerful and wonderful and beautiful and that you give yourself to Me again and again.

Your guilt – of these terrible daily sins offending your righteous god’s nostrils – is what drives this: the need for Me, Jesus, to come to Earth as a human and die this terrible, unjust death for YOU; and it makes you writhe before Me each Sunday, and preferably more often… ‘miserable vile offenders unworthy to gather up the crumbs from your table’… says the liturgy of Anglican communion, but other denominations have their writhing via prayers, preaching and psalms… we are wretches who personally put Jesus through the terrible agonies of crucifixion and let Him down constantly with our lack of devotion and repeat failing.

This debt is not only psychologically manipulative, but it involves fear and punishment. If the above is not enough, there is a greater reason to obey God and get into a relationship with Him: those who die without knowing Jesus as their personal Lord and saviour (or joining the church and submitting to it) will be cast forever into a terrible, inescapable place of torment called Hell, with the really wicked spirits. Hell has been a useful tool for the medieval church, and more latterly for those of a more evangelical persuasion, in bringing great numbers ‘to faith’. But how much of the latter is genuinely being stirred, and how much is being seduced through slick preaching and terror?

Many Christians still believe in a literal Hell, but many do not. It’s the doctrine that has pushed many out of Christianity. The above description, as I have pointed out before, and will continue to do so, is hardly the behaviour of the One True God. As Xena, Warrior Princess pointed out, some One True God behaviour sounds like the worst of any other pantheon, and all too human. Where is Love and Wisdom and Righteousness in all this? Can this really be God’s teaching? Is the Bible always the True God’s voice? No, no and no.

I want to end with the antithesis of debt: Grace. The Old Testament has a tradition called jubilee which released debts. It was advocated for national debts in 2000; I think it should be again. A year of jubilee is a time of forgiveness – see, even letting go of hurts and poor treatment also, in English, has a fiscal release aspect. What does Jesus really mean when he asks us to forgive our debtors?

I haven’t talked about debt as sin. Margaret Atwood did, but I dislike the connotation between being told that you owe money and being morally wrong. Sin is mark missing, according to one translation. But I have also heard that the traditional English translation of the Lord’s prayer is not true to the Aramaic or Jesus’ true teachings. I am told that the real meaning of the forgiveness line of the Lord’s Prayer is about unentanglement, but our fiscal legally minded translators inserted ‘debt’ and used terms such as justification and redemption – the latter being the language of the pawn shop. This true meaning is why Jesus forgave sins to heal people…. but his healing and the meaning of sin is something overlapping which I’ll take up another time. I think that forgiving sin about wholeness, and rebalancing, which is different to debts.

Grace is not about deserving, not about being beholden, not about a transaction which says: If I do this, you are expected to do that. Grace, like true forgiveness, releases debts, and those ties of the Lord’s Prayer. It does not create entanglements, it dissolves them, for good. Grace is not about punishment, not about contracts – it is free, voluntary association. Grace is an anathema to capitalism; it is its antidote. It is not driven by fear or fealty, servitude and profit making. It is not behaviour steering and control inducing. True grace is not about hierarchies. It is giving for its own sake, out of love. Grace is Love in action, without a shadow.

And you’ll not be surprised that I wish us to move into grace and freewill giving and associations of choice, honour, and of the heart. It’s what I believe is at the heart of true relationship with God.

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Do introduce yourselves to me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk and feel free to ask for prayers. I would appreciate yours.

Please join me in just being at 22.22 GMT on 2.2.2022 and I’ll have a blog post for then

I will do the same on 22.2.2022

Our next service will be at 8pm GMT on Sunday 20^th February: The Wisdom of the Smurfs: Ideal Society and Doing The Work We Love.

On March 13th there’ll be a sermon on The Wisdom of Anne of Green Gables

There will be blog posts into the spring about Anne and the Titanic

On April 10^th, it’s the 110th anniversary of the launch of the Titanic, so we’ve a special service leading us into Holy Week

We’ll have a Maundy Thursday night watch service from 1140pm my time til 2.20am GMT, 14/15th

Justice in Banking

To the House of Commons:   

The petition of Elspeth  R… declares that:

Our current rules regarding banking and bankruptcy need urgently revising.

Since the downturn, there is very strong negative public feeling towards financial institutions. There is much anger at the bonuses and that public money has bailed out highly paid bankers of a crisis which we are suffering and paying for in many senses, whilst banks create debts for private customers as well as the country as a whole.

Banks extract huge fees from thousands of personal customers for going only a little over a limit, and these fees have no cap. Fees of up to £100 per month are taken automatically and there are cases where these have made those in hardship have four figure fees whilst investigations go on. This can lead to loss of banking facilities and demands for further money from banks. The High Court test case was a very drawn out way of looking at this issue, which is clearly deeply unbalanced. It is entirely in the bank’s favour, and the furore around the unsuccessful case shows how strongly popular feeling is about this matter. Banks make over £1 billion each year through these fees, on top of their other profits.  

Bankruptcy laws have been tightened without public consultation or even widespread knowledge; most websites on debt don’t mention it, including the government’s. In this time, debt has become very common. Debt is seen as bad but it is often the only way to improve circumstances, such as setting up business or paying for an education. Debt is also a result of materialism and consumerist society. Government cuts make this worse, especially to legal aid and for medical treatment.

Bankruptcy laws have been put in place by those who are well off. The previous £50 free spending money a month was tight – but the current £10 for 3 years shows no understanding of modern life or poverty. £10 per family member shows no understanding of single people and expects the burden and shame of bankruptcy to be spread across a whole household. And for a person already under pressure, to not have any kind of relief asks for other problems, such as depression. £10 a month means a single coffee a week. It won’t buy a meal out; it won’t allow you to leave your home town. It isn’t even enough to rent a DVD each week. It isn’t enough for a television licence. Bankrupts may have to sell anything of value. The law does not understand how things like DVD players, music and especially instruments, or computer games are vital. Whatever our financial circumstances, we all need a richer life; and after and during all the indignity and stress of debt, having pleasures and passions taken away is wrong and unfair. Being without a bank account is very hard in today’s society – even benefits want to pay into one. And anything extra the insolvent earns during those 3 years goes to the creditor, meaning that doing better financially gives them no relief and no benefit. Insolvents are even asked to pay to become insolvent, and are publicly shamed by having their bankruptcy published.

Our whole ethos is built up on a contractual debt, blame and punishment that enters into every part of our existence. Banks and law unfairly control much of our society. The recurrence of recessions and other problems suggest that our current systems are not the way, and invite us to urgently look again – not try to continue much as before.

 The petitioner(s) therefore request(s) that the House of Commons

 urgently revisit these rules and the ethos behind them.

Regarding bankruptcy:

One should not have to pay to declare oneself bankrupt. It should last and have effect for only one year. There should be no public publication and shaming. The allowable personal budget should return to £50 per month, and to rise appropriately with inflation. Bankruptcy should not affect members of a household or family, only the persons directly filing for it. Creditors should not be able to take extra monies earned in this time.  There should be a system in place to allow bank accounts for bankrupts without further fees. There should be no ban or public offices or other roles. Personal bankruptcy should not stop a self employed business and vice versa; this is the livelihood and will mean no money for the person filing as bankrupt. Creditors should not be able to force borrowers into bankruptcy, particularly when the creditors have created the debt, such as with banking fees or aggressive lending.

Student loans of all kinds should be covered by bankruptcy; the 2004 ban should be repealed as should the March 2011 legislation.

Having to attend a court hearing should be stopped – this is extra stress and cost (to attend) and quite often humiliation.

Information from debt advice centres should also be looked as many of these encourage insolvency as a way of freedom, and do not present the facts properly.

The law should protect genuine people from large preying creditors without encouraging non payment from reckless borrowers.

Bailiffs should stopped. It is unsupportable to be harassed in your home for goods not related to the creditor’s claims.

The blame, debt and contract system of out society needs to be revisited and debate begun and implemented about a fairer way forward.

Banking fees should be abolished. They are not necessary; they are only partly as a deterrent. If one goes over your account’s limit, the account should simply not allow further withdrawals until further funds are put in. Banks should be banned immediately from following up fees with demands to further repay overdrafts. where unreasonable fees have been charged and or hardship has been caused, these fees should be returned to customers.

And the petitioner remains, etc.

Signed

If you have any stories of how these issues have affected you or someone you know, please share (you can give as much personal detail as you feel comfortable). You can put them in comments or send them to me privately. All details will be respected.

I’ll have a BTS service on this on Sun 30th Jan, 8pm GMT

Equal Society

I have just been to a ridiculous talk and discussion on this, based around a book by two British epidemiologists. I will not name them or the venue out of respect for the latter, and because I don’t wish to be personal.

I went because I care passionately about equality, and like most in the room, are sympathetic to the book’s premise that equality is beneficial to all.

What was ridiculous about this event was the arguments used for this premise and the way it was carried out. The authors of the book were not present, leaving a relation of one of them to flog the book and – in his own words – speak at a ‘glacial speed’ over badly presented slides in a physically uncomfortable setting.

The open debate was not facilitated, with some dominating and others being excluded for long periods. Whenever the tenets of the presenters were queried, the presenters talked over the challenger.

It is fundamentally wrong to use science to prove these kinds of ideas. Had I known the discipline of the authors, I would not have attended. We need to get away from narrow foci into interdisciplinary discourses. We need to get away from being obsessed by facts as quantifiable data that can be shown in graphs.

What is shocking and ironic is that some of the stats were gained by injecting humans and animals with diseases. Even though these may not have been used by the researchers, the supposed results are heavily drawn on in their thesis. No-one at the meeting challenged this shockingly unethical methodology.

Since starting sociology at school, I could never understand how something like suicide could be measured and predictions made about likely groups who might resort to it. It wasn’t factors such as financial difficulty, loneliness, disease, unemployment, or deep and sensitive personality types: things that might reasonably have a bearing. It was social class, location and gender.

I have always hated the concept of social class and refuse to speak of people in those terms. I follow my mother’s friend: I am in a class of my own. And so are each of you. This presentation was full of class related comments assertions. The researchers admit they had to reclassify Swedish jobs to fit the British system to be able to make a comparative graph – isn’t that rather stupid? And why is class measured by occupation? Class is outdated and much more complicated that that anyway.

Nothing in these statistics – quotable facts that are easily manipulated and discredited – was backed up or explained, and questions often couldn’t be answered due to lack of the authors’ presence. The thesis was not convincing or even interesting from the start.

What I want to say is: is equality desirable? What is equality in society? I am for justice and fairness and for a good living standard for all, and for opportunities for all. I am not a socialist or communist, wanting everyone to earn and own the same. I am not for increasing taxes and taking the vast majority of the rich’s income.

There was the assertion from the floor that what we mind is perceived lack of deserts of the richer, not that some have more than us. I think we need to be better at not comparing with or resenting those differences. I agree that I mind not if someone’s richer than me, but if what they have seems disproportionate to what they actually do. If I love the arts, I don’t mind that those in the movie industry or successful writers earn millions, especially if they use that money and profile to wider benefit. Terry Pratchet donates some of his income to supporting orang utans and Angelina Jolie is a peace ambassador. The arts also have great value in themselves, and if used well, are more than entertainment; they can be social critiques and purveyors of spiritual values. If I enjoyed sport, I would argue that watching games gives great pleasure to millions, that spectator sport puts money into our cities and countries, and that related charitable work is done with clubs’ money – eg youth football teams in deprived areas, and it promotes exercise.

Big businesses provide jobs and bolster the economy.

Rich people can use their money well. Being wealthy and philanthropic often go together – it was very much so in Victorian times. I don’t believe in super taxes because wealthy people can choose to give their money to causes that the government may not and may be able to do so with far less red tape.

Rich people can be generous on a personal level.

What many of us mind is people like senior bankers – fat cats who are rich for riches’ sake and whose activities harm others, and do not give widespread and accessible benefit. I add lawyers to my list of those who command so much for their services and I ask – why is theirs worth so much more? To get justice, we have to go into debt. It’s an inaccessible system. And democracy is built on law which is run by people the public do not choose.

I am not against expensive things. People’s talents have a price – it just has to be a reasonable one, balancing the cost of providing it and valuing yourself with avoiding a puffed up sense of what you’re worth and what you do to your customers if you ask too much. Without these pricey things which some call trappings of excess, others would have no work and their skills would be not utilised and they would lose the satisfaction from providing it.

I accept economic differentiation and the possibility to go higher which is rewarded financially. That isn’t materialism, it’s ambition, and it is not unspiritual and unethical. Not all of us want to live in a commune.

The discussion today was often on status, which I really don’t think is so important, and such discussions perpetuate it. It spoke of feelings, but that was only in relation to status, not rich inner life.

The introduction spoke of a community where sacred and secular are not distinct; but sacred is not the same as spiritual; in today’s talk, values and ideas focussed on the material.

It used teenage pregnancies as an indicator of inequality and bad things in society. This is another topic itself – but I want to question that negative value against differing cultures, sexual morality, the legal notion of adulthood. I want to query whether the much toted idea of education (which is often another word for being told about birth control) is really such an important factor in improved lives.

Education is sadly not the system of enquiry and exploration it ought to be, but one of conformity and limitation. Education is another form of status, and I felt it implicit in the book that people presenting and writing have attained academic qualifications, believing that they are better equipped to argue than those without at least three degrees. They also let on that the research is long and expensive. So this methodologically and philosophically dubious dry argument is costing money but not offering any solutions – they said they hadn’t money for that.

What I wanted to know was: how do we improve our clearly unbalanced world?

That will be a subject for another time.

Morally Bankrupt

That’s what our system is at present.

It’s all about those in power making those without more powerless.

It’s about taking more from those who already don’t have and keeping them at the bottom, floundering between poverty and insolvency, barred from various roles.

It’s about public shaming, as if everyone in financial difficulty is a would-be swindler and public danger.

I refer to Britain’s sneaked in new bankruptcy rules, which are not well known. Whereas debt relief companies are as aggressive advertisers as loan firms, they rarely mention the full implications and problems with bankruptcy. Even the government’s website doesn’t mention these new rules, which cut the allowable free monthly expenditure from £50 per month to £10. These are obviously written by someone who has never been poor. What do they think £10 a month buys?! For one already struggling and under stress, this is a 3 year sentence that is likely to lead to illness and depression, or at least very deep unhappiness and ostracization. And made by people for whom £10 is barely noted when they come out of the wallet.

I am not for unbridled lending and silly borrowing, or for those who take on things they cannot repay. But the fact debt is so prevalent is because of factors to do with our society and its attitudes, more than irresponsible and feckless people.

The whole credit rating system is based on values that banks like. It stupidly looks at your address – as if who you live with or who has lived there previously is any indicator of you. It means fallings out with grown up families and houseshares who do not want to be brought down by someone under their roof with a low credit rating. It means a new occupier, a complete stranger, at an address of poor credit scores works to put that rating back. And as if moving or job changing or ad hoc income are in themselves a bad thing. It’s a system inherited from American investment markets, people who themselves have ad hoc but extortionate incomes based on very unsound and immoral factors.

In Britain – and this isn’t some thing we can call ourselves ‘great’ over – we legally allow banks to sting customers for going over their overdraft limits – sometimes a couple of quid, or even, pence. These fees can escalate to an uncapped rate. It’s over £20 per week, and many of us only get paid monthly. So this means borrowing to stop the £20 becoming £100 by the end of the month, which can then kick in again later and re-set the whole process off, even when you have paid your fees and gone back within your limit. Banks can then demand you pay the money back, even after they have automatically taken the fees and left  some cases without use of the account.

Complaints procedures can take many months,  even years, and involving the Financial Ombudsman makes the case even more laborious, who are not sympathetic or helpful. The FO says it is not a lobbying institution but claims to be impartial, yet many of its rulings by its own admission upset both sides and often fall on the side of the huge corporate greedy bank, not the poor individual.

Debt management programmes are little better. They are not keen on written contact, but want to speak to you on the phone to and then you to share very personal financial details, asking more of you than they’ll tell you about them, and hiding their true fees. The group Christians Against Poverty is a misnomer. They do nothing to reduce the poverty that debts cause; they also do not fight the customer’s corner, but get the individual to comply with the banks. No wonder then that ex Barclays CEO calls it ‘win win’ – for the debt company and the bank, yes; but there’s no going into where the debt came from, and seeing  if is really is a case of poor money management and careless spending. More likely it is about aggressive lending or unfortunate circumstances.

The British High court test case of 2009 regarding banking fees was unsuccessful, but that seems a very poor way to look at this. It involved that other pillar that needs reform, overpaid, power hungry lawyers, in whose interest it was not to open the worm can that would unhinge their fellows in the banking world. But the case started in motion the public awareness that these fees are not necessary or reasonable and that you do not have to accept them.

Around the world, we’re angry at the financial downtown and how our governments have used public purses to bail out the rich bankers who caused the problem and have not suffered its effects. In Britain, we’re facing cuts by a government we didn’t vote for because of this.

They need to be aware of how the public feels about banks and governments, and how we are no longer willing to be squeezed by faceless, uncaring machines.

 If you agree, I urge you to write to your MP and to sign my petition which is at this link

 http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/banking-fees-and-bankruptcy.html