28/02/2011
According to RSM Tenon, the accountancy group,
2011 will see the highest levels of personal insolvency on record. In particular it seems that the elderly are being hardest hit.
âThe 66+ age group seems to have been hit the hardest in these difficult times. Personal insolvencies in this age group show a total increase of 20% in 2010 compared with 2009. In the last quarter of 2010 the 66+ age group showed the smallest drop in personal insolvencies year on year as well, not showing much in the way of improvement with a 6% fall compared to 19% over all age groups.â
Insert boilerplate reference to hypothermic grannies, energy costs and windmills. In addition we have already seen this year 2 million people using their credit cards to pay the rent or the mortage. Both of which I predicted along with anyone else who has a pair of braincells to rub together. Let me make a few more predictions.
Next to come will be petrol hikes for spurious reasons based on minor, and largely irrelevant scuffles in third world basketcases near to the Middle East. Then comes the lower middle classes working only to eat and fill up the car in order ot get to work.
Following that will come mass council tax defaults, as have already been reported, with figures from the City of Lincoln Council showing 421 liability orders were made against residents last month. This along with todays report that Bristol council is issuing 62 summonses a day, even while its own councillors are taking the piss. This on the same day we find yet another half million earning parasite on council books.
Following that, the one thing helping to keep inflation down, cheap clothes, is about to come to an abrupt end. We are reaching a crunch point where for many, work will not only be futile in order to stay out of debt, but actully not affordble without cutting corners on things like car insurance, a problem that will not go away even with the new draconian measures. We are reaching a point where the so-called coping classes are not coping and are being criminalised by way of not making ends meet. The County Court claims office are going to be busy little bunnies.
Following this will come an upsurge in broken homes, domestic abuse and doorstep violence, hopefully involving state licensed thugs receiving head traumas and stab wounds. This after all attempts at getting actual justice have failed.
What is puzzling is why we are not taking to the streets, firebombing their houses and petrol bombing the local branch of Natwest. But all that is to come. The worm is turning. And today we have this and interestingly, this:
Vodafone refused to speculate on whether the break-in could be linked to several high-profile controversies involving the company. It was recently the subject of protests over claims that the firm was let off paying part of an outstanding UK tax bill.
If is it as it appears then the saboteurs have got the wrong target, but if I'm reading the runes right, we can expect more. They keep piling on the bills while their noses are as firmly entrenched in the trough as ever they were. Enough will soon be enough. The growing sentiment, by groups that would normally be considered quite restrained, is that they have to be taught a lesson outside the corporate box.
Many are hopeful that this is precisely that, and that it will be the first of many. For the moment, too many people have too much to lose to risk active resistance. But, in a year or two, as the system strips people to such bare essentials that they have nothing more to lose, sentiment could change dramatically. Then, as they say, we shall have some serious fun. There is nothing quite so dangerous as a man with nothing to lose.
