CM September 2021

VIEW FROM THE SEAFRONT
AUTHOR – David Andrews
those on lower incomes being far more likely
to be drawn to fast food services, conveniently
delivered by a 17-year-old determined to beat his
PB for the local High Street two-wheeled dash.
But no worries if you can’t afford it, as there
are always the fast loan crew who will help you
out of a pickle if you find yourself a bit short.
READY MONEY
One prominent online loan service is
advertising ‘instantly approved cash in your
pocket’ with no credit checks. It goes something
like this: £300 loan repayable over 35 weeks at
£15 per week, Rate of interest 111.4 percent p.a
fixed; Representative 498.34 percent APR, Total
amount payable is £525
To put this horror-show into perspective, the
Bank of England lending rate is 0.25 percent.
That is the prism through which we must look.
Down through the ages from Shylock to
Fagin, money lenders have always preyed on the
poor and vulnerable, but in the twisted logic of
2021 our society is now either too weary or too
cynical to object to this obscene exploitation of
those on the lowest rung.
Plus ca change, as the French might have it.
Things change, but they don’t change.
online. Which means – guess what? – more DPD
vans screaming around the corner just when
you managed to dodge the guy in the low-slung
black helmet on a souped up moped, making
an urgent McDonald’s breakfast delivery to the
flat where they have the full symphony fast-food
app addiction.
Apart from the clear fact that our roads are
overstuffed and drastically over polluted – does
anyone not get that? – is there anyone among us
not driven crazy by the incessant demands by
the likes of Deliveroo to utilise its food delivery
services?
The over reliance on kamikaze youngsters
urgently revving their leased motorcycles to
invade every corner of our lives is whipping
up a perfect storm of polluted obesity, sending
us hurtling to an end of days scenario of toxic
corpulence.
Apart from all the grievous harm we are
inflicting on the planet, am I alone in wondering
how can people afford to call on the services of
the Mad Max brigade to deliver a cheeseburger
and fries? And all this, when data suggesting that
three in five under 10-year-olds are technically
obese. For the most part those children are
raised in poorer homes, yet data points to
Yet, what’s this…
at just 9-00am on a
Saturday morning
there was already
a huge queue
snaking around the
block for Primark,
standing now like
the stoic Alamo
fort surrounded
by thousands of
Mexican soldiers.
THE NEW NORMAL
For those who have slipped through the net,
the ones who have never been able to drag
themselves out of poverty – largely because
they have been defeated by a system designed
to protect the status quo, to ring-fence privilege
– for them the new normal may well resonate
with the old.
‘Don’t look so glum, David,’ chirped Vinod,
who has run my local newsagent/grocers/
anything you might need corner shop for the
past three decades.
Slowly pushing a heavily laden trolley,
stacked precariously with towering rows of
canned tomatoes and huge six-pint milk bottles,
Vinod, well into his seventh decade, paused for
breath.
‘The thing is, my friend,’ he beamed, now
leaning gratefully against his shop doorway and
flashing a knowing grin,’ it’s the youngsters who
are going to have to deal with it all. It is they who
will inherit this mess…our time is gone now,
vanished. Like our youth.’
And he was right. As EM Forster put it in the
fading pages of Howards End, it is not the meek
who will inherit the earth, but the destroyers.
Like the Wilcox family. The hardened and now
faceless corporations who have constructed a
vast cyber economy, silicon empires controlled,
unseen, and without empathy.
David Andrews is a
freelance journalist.
Advancing the credit profession / www.cicm.com / September 2021 / PAGE 33