Of Housewives and Government Ministers

HOME ECONOMICS

A housewife has bad news. Her home has lost much of its income as her husband has been thrown on the dole, because of worrying economic times. She still has some money coming in, from the dole, from money given by her older children, from child benefit and so on: but the income is noticeably lower.

To make matters worse, like so many others, they have debts. They have a sizable mortgage, plus bank loans and credit cards.

So what should she and her family do?

They seem to have three choices:

1. Cut back severely and suffer for however long it takes, less food, turning down the heating, a meagre Christmas and New Year.
2. Borrow more money, from the banks - primarily on the credit cards (they just had a notice stating their limits have been increased) - hoping that the husband will soon find work and things may improve in the near future when they can pay off the increased minimum payments on the cards.
3. Go to the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) and come to agreements with the banks and credit card companies, freezing the debt, drastically lowering the payments (to a mere fraction of that usually demanded), which may mean going to court to show their reduced income and lack of means to pay. In essence this would be sticking two fingers up to the banks, and they wouldn't be able to borrow in future.

What would you do in that position? Cut back and continue to pay the credit cards? Borrow more and increase the pressure? Or cut up the credit cards, freeze the debt and make your money stretch further?

Now I would say it's (to coin an Americanism) a "no-brainer."

Surely you'd put your family before suffering to pay the banks, or borrowing yet more to accrue the problems for a future date?

Now, let us move that scenario to a political one.

Our government thinks it is preferable to borrow more in this recession. In stead of putting the people first, it is racking up the national debt: it is, in essence, bashing its credit cards to death and we will all have to pay the banks back by the tubful in years to come.

If you saw a housewife buying her food or getting new carpets laid on credit cards when her husband was not long on the dole, wouldn't you take her and shake her and tell her to wake up to reality?

Yet not one MP, not one economics "expert," not one of the media talking heads has the nerve to do likewise to our Chancellor Alistair Darling.

No one has the nerve to stick two fingers up to the banking system - the system responsible for this mess in the first place!

We need politicians (and housewives!) that aren't afraid of the usurers!

We need politicians (and housewives!) that espouse traditional Christian thinking, that view usury as totally wrong, that view the financiers with utter contempt.

We need politicians (and housewives!) that will fight to help create a usury-free banking system.

As has been detailed elsewhere, in the recent world bank and shares collapse, the Islamic banking system (which operates on a non-usury basis) escaped the nightmare.

If we had our own banking system, a Christian banking system (as opposed to a Jewish one!) that negated usury in totalis, then we too would escape these collapses, these taxes and the deadening power that the usurious financiers wield in the fields of economics and politics.

At the moment finding a politician willing to oppose the banking system is a lot harder than trying to find a housewife that will face up to the credit card companies in a county court.

And that is to our eternal shame.