Deeply Embarassing? That's money.

So today there was a BBC story about Most Reverend Justin Welby and his embarassment over the Church of England investing funds that indirectly supported Wonga. The BBC article stated "The Archbishop of Canterbury said he was "embarrassed" and "irritated" that the Church of England invested indirectly in online lender Wonga."

It surprised me that this story was spun but some vendors (the BBC not included, in my opinion) as a way to smear Welby's plans to "compete Wonga out of business." He plans to do this by supporting credit unions, some of which charge 70-80% interest rates, as an alternative to Wonga et. al., who charge up to 6000% interest rates. The "embarassing" investment came about when the Church invested with venture capitalists Accel Partners, who led the Wonga fundraising efforts in 2009. Gavin Oldham, of the Church's Ethical Investment Advisory Group, stated that there was knowledge of their involvement with Wonga and "more could have been done with that information."

Well yes it could have. But the Church, like many other organisations and businesses, invests a certain amount of money with professional investors and they then place it where they see the biggest scope for profit. It becomes a sad-but-true fact that a lot of people who place money with professional investors simply put stock in (no pun intended...) their chosen company's ability to invest wisely for them and leave it there. The amount the Church actually invested in Wonga was, according to Welby, a rather paltry by context £75,000, a tiny fraction of the 5.5 billion Wonga actually received. The real lesson here is that if you're going to invest AND have steep moral concerns, you need to monitor and review your investments almost constantly to ensure you are not breeching your own code. Also, just because someone works for the Church's Ethical Investment Advisory group does not mean that they are not business men first and foremost. Wonga WAS a very good investment. If someone had given me £50k at the time I'd have been tempted by it myself. People who desperately need money and can't get it elsewhere go to Wonga (and others providing the same service, of course), are given money at an extortionately high interest rate, and hey, some of them do pay it back. By installments. For the rest of their lives...

The point is that high interest "pay day" loan companies are an investors dream. It's a guaranteed payout, provided the company doesn't lend too much to people who have nothing and goes under because it can't recoup losses. But as anyone who has ever been targeted by a baliff knows, having nothing doesn't mean having a bit - they'll take your TV, your car, any cash you have, I was once told a story about a baliff that walked off with someone's pedigree Pekingese (if this happened to me I'd have broken his arms well before he made it out the door, but my only investment personally is my love in my dogs). Unless you're living in a mud hut and you built that in the field you're squatting in, and you're sleeping in the nude because you have no clothes or blankets, nothing is safe. Hell, they might take your mud.

I don't really think Welby should be embarassed about the investment the Church made. He may be the face of CofE now, but he's not personally responsible for all the goings and comings of everyone and everything inside the massive organisation that is the British religion of choice. What he's doing now is fighting against an industry that targets the poor and desperate and will suck them dry if they don't give back what they took (plus interest). Now I don't think supporting credit unions who charge 70-80% is especially moral myself, but needs must and it's one of the very few alternatives available to people for whom Wongaquickquidloltakeourmoneywe'lltakeyourhouse is an option anyway.

Perhaps the Catholics should open up their own loans company. They're sitting on a good fortune in art and gold in the Vatican anyway. The Pope and Archbishop could create quite a stir by trying to out-Christian each other!

Shame it's a rant

So I was listening to the news on Radio 2 today, and the first story informed us that 12,000 people had moved into work after the benefits cap was announced. That's interesting - I do wonder how many of those 12,000 people were genuine claimants of benefit.

To understand context here, "benefits" would include the following: Housing Benefit, Job Seekers Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Disability Living Allowance, Carer's Allowance, and the new Personal Independence Payment. Note that this list is not exhaustive and DLA/PIP/Widow's Pensions and other such benefits are not capped.

So, the 12,000 who moved from benefits to work. So far I haven't found information on what percentage of them were claiming what, but as I said previously, how many were genuine claimants and how many were what the Tories are encouraging the public to see as all benefits claimants: Onslows who sit around in string vests and designer trainers, sleeping til noon and laughing all the way to the nearest TK Max, counting your precious taxes in their pristine, manicured, never-worked-a-day hands. I am not a fan of Job Seekers Allowance, not because I think we as a society shouldn't support people who are out of work but because it is a ridiculous, impersonal system that offers no encouragement or support. That whopping £56.80 a week naturally affords all the greatest luxuries available to us today, such as hire purchase, interest free credit at DFS and a direct line to Wonga (who, by the way, donated £500,000 to the Conservative party shortly before they announced the week long wait before being able to claim JSA after losing your job - not that there's any connection between the two, of course). It's the other benefits that come with JSA that really make a difference, most notably Housing Benefit. Housing Benefit can be a large amount of money and can be paid either to you, or to your landlord. Essentially Housing Benefit (or Local Housing Allowance) pays the rent. If you make your claim honestly, which of course you should (!!) this payment doesn't include utilities or any other cost-of-living associated money; it is purely for the rent. Your gas, electric, water and phone are paid for using your £56.80. And your Wonga loan.

That's really an aside to illustrate that the benefits system is flawed. I have, in my short life, been a recipient of JSA and HB as well as worked in a Job Centre (to compensate for being Joseph Stalin in my previous life, I expect). JSA and HB were actually perfectly ample for my lifestyle. I'm a mentally retarded cripple who hardly left the house at the time. I could afford some food, especially with my beastly mother-in-law supplimenting our food occasionally, and I could afford lights, and myself and my partner decided given we barely left the house we would invest as much of our income as we could in our internet, the only source of outside contact, information and entertainment we had. So, as long as we didn't go out, didn't buy new clothes, didn't eat high quality food and didn't want the heating on regularly, we had more than enough money and lived the life of Riley! But not everyone lives the lives of two socially inept cripples. Some people have children (madness), cars, friends and like to see the sun. Basic unemployment doesn't cover these things. I can't say what has pushed more people in to work but if the majority of them came from JSA, I applaud their choice, it's the better one and will lead to a better lifestyle. But if they come from the end of the spectrum I come from, where you don't or CAN'T go out, can't cope with daily life, can't even cope with the idea of seeing a doctor because of the anxiety it causes, forcing them into work is not going to lead to helping anyone - well, not directly, as they're either going to end up back on benefit, going crazy and being the responsibility of the NHS, or doing something to really help the economy, like killing themselves.

So what prompted the rant, exactly? Matthew Sinclair, from the Tax Payer's Alliance. Whilst I'm not going to waste my time typing out a full quote, he stated that the fact some people lived a comfortable lifestyle whilst being out of work affected the sense of fairness people who were in work could feel.

Oh really, Mr Sinclair? Does my lifestyle offend your sense of fairness? Does it bother you that I receive DLA and ESA in my home (which we don't get Housing Benefit for, incidentally, but that's another topic altogether)? Do you lose sleep at night because I'm awake at two a.m. and don't have to get up at six?

Well ok. I accept that. But do you know what affects my sense of fairness? That you don't live in constant pain. That you don't have to resort to wheelchairs, grips, hand rails, constant intake of drugs (antidepressants, antipsychotics, painkillers, antiinflammatories) just to feel A BIT BETTER, not even NORMAL. That you and your ilk paint me and others like me to be in some sort of advantageous position, sipping pina coladas in our lush, council-paid-for gardens in our fine, government-financed designer clothes, whilst you go and grind hard at the office/factory/corperate jet. Would you like to trade, Mr Sinclair? Would you like to live like me? Would you like to wake up some days and yes, not get out of bed and throw the curtains open because actually you'd rather go back to sleep, to dream of being painless, able to run with your children and dogs, not be tormented by thoughts of everyone else being out to get you and wanting to cut up your own flesh because you hate it so much and want to bleed out the soul sucking evil that inhibits your every waking minute?

Tell me, is it fair that some of us hurt so much, struggle to breathe, can't be happy, can't have sex because of the drug side affects, can't play cricket or football or enjoy tea on the fucking village green? And when you come home from work every day, kick off your shoes, relax with your family, would you really want to trade your tiredness and your commute for constant pain and mental anguish?

No? I didn't think so.