Thread: State-sponsored daylight robbery

Daily Mail United Kingdom

Labour is about to introduce a law which will, quite literally, legalise daylight robbery. A bill giving bailiffs the power to break into our homes received its second reading in Parliament yesterday.

If it passes on to the statute book, any of us could find our front doors kicked in and our valuables seized.
Supporters of this outrageous piece of legislation claim it is necessary because so many people are falling behind with their credit card bills and can't afford even the minimum monthly payments.
Sending in the bailiffs is the only way the banks can recover their money, they argue.
Hang on, we're talking carts and horses here.
While I've no sympathy for those who recklessly over-borrow simply to fund a luxury lifestyle way beyond their means, surely the real villains are the lenders.
They bombard people with offers of unsecured credit and shower money on them with little regard to whether they can actually make the repayments.
Wouldn't it make more sense to tighten the rules on loans, so that fewer gullible fools find themselves drowning in debt?
If that happened, there might not be a pressing need to make it legal for bailiffs to enter premises to repossess second-hand DVD players and plasma screens which should never have been bought in the first place.
Why the hell is the Government giving extra powers to some of the most unsavoury individuals on earth?
An annual convention of Debt Collectors and Wheel Clampers would make last week's London Gangland funeral look like the guest list at Liz Hurley's wedding.
This is not a profession which goes about its business with a copy of the European Convention on Human Rights taped to the dashboard.
The Citizens' Advice Bureau has a dossier as thick as a builder's bacon sandwich on the routine intimidation, thuggery and harassment endemic in debt recovery.
Sometimes the State and these Sopranos wannabes go hand in hand. Here's just one instance.
Red Ken makes no money out of London's congestion charge. He relies on the extortionate fines levied against those who either refuse or forget to pay.
When it comes to collecting his environmental protection money, Livingstone doesn't ask a sympathetic social worker to pay you a call. He sends in the scum of the earth.
A friend of mine, a well-known sports presenter, recently arrived home to find his 22-year-old daughter's car clamped on his own driveway and his wife in tears.
She told him how a pair of thugs in a scruffy van with its wing mirrors held on by masking tape had turned up on the doorstep and demanded she hand over £798.47.
They said it was money owing on her daughter's failure to pay the congestion charge plus court costs, their fee and other incidentals, including the hire of a tow truck — and one for yourself.
When the cash wasn't forthcoming, they clamped the vehicle and said they'd be back to tow it away.
Before they could, my friend removed the clamp and drove the car to a place of safety.
His daughter was studying abroad and had no knowledge of the alleged nonpayment.
The debt collectors claimed that four court letters had been sent and they had made several unsuccessful attempts to recover the money.
If my friend had received four letters marked "URGENT", addressed to his daughter and warning that court action had been taken against her, he would have opened them.
On at least two occasions the bailiffs claim to have called, he was at home and would have known about it.
He lives in a gated close and no one gets in and out without identifying themselves through a CCTV intercom system.
None of the neighbours had ever seen these men before and insisted they hadn't let them in.
So how had they managed to get through electronic security gates and clamp a young woman's car on her own driveway?
And what gave them the right to do that?
Yet they had the nerve to threaten to have my friend charged with criminal damage for removing the clamp.
For the time being, I can't identify him or the firm involved because he's put the whole affair in the hands of Mr Rumpole.
But my best guess is that the letters were never sent and the previous visits never made.
The kind of hooligans who work for debt collection agencies don't leave the billiard hall for less than £500.
So they let the debt mount up and wait until it's worth their while before steaming in and putting the frighteners on.
All this for a disputed non-payment of an £8 congestion charge.
Imagine the mayhem when tens of thousands of pounds are involved and the bailiffs are given official powers to trash your home and help themselves to anything they fancy.
And that's just the private sector. I haven't even got round to mentioning Gordon's Gestapo, coming soon to a home near you with their cameras and clipboards and their swag bags marked "Council Tax".
Nice little conservatory you've got there, wouldn't want anything to happen to it.
These days, there's little difference between debt collection and tax collection. It's all daylight robbery.

There today, here tomorrow

Haha.

I won't say much except:

Stop proving me right, UK.

WTF???

Wouldn't it make more sense to tighten the rules on loans, so that fewer gullible fools find themselves drowning in debt?

Duh, ya think?

How very sad. It seems the UK has more than its fair share of corrupt politicians on the payroll of large corporations. Hopefully people will react to this pretty badly and stage mass protests. After all, people's property and their religion are the two things everyone is most sensitive about.

Originally Posted by gashleyf

How very sad. It seems the UK has more than its fair share of corrupt politicians on the payroll of large corporations. Hopefully people will react to this pretty badly and stage mass protests. After all, people's property and their religion are the two things everyone is most sensitive about.

There are more than enough corrupt politicians to go around, so every country has its fair share. But what the UK has is the Labour government you have, when you are not having a Labour government.

Tony Blair is simply finishing the work that Margaret Thatcher started. Because, like the US, we have a conservative party, and another almost identical party which does not call itself conservative, but looks after the big end of town nontheless.

All three nations, Australia, Great Britain, and the USA, appear to be run by mean-spirited, greedy and unintelligent bigots.

Originally Posted by Leo

All three nations, Australia, Great Britain, and the USA, appear to be run by mean-spirited, greedy and unintelligent bigots.

Wait, wait, you mean politicians?

Yeah.

Another reason I hate Socialism. "Gee wilikers, we're unable to use our money to help the poor unless someone else forces us to, therefore we're going to give some nice, honest politicians the authority to steal it from us, and our neighbors."

Originally Posted by Leo

There are more than enough corrupt politicians to go around, so every country has its fair share. But what the UK has is the Labour government you have, when you are not having a Labour government.

Tony Blair is simply finishing the work that Margaret Thatcher started. Because, like the US, we have a conservative party, and another almost identical party which does not call itself conservative, but looks after the big end of town nontheless.

All three nations, Australia, Great Britain, and the USA, appear to be run by mean-spirited, greedy and unintelligent bigots.

Well, all that isn't completely true. While our party that doesn't call itself conservative also looks after big business. It looks after different kinds of big business. Democrats look after lawyers and unions. Republicans look after oil, pharmaceuticals, and debt collectors.

Lastly, our politicians are very intelligent.


They have to be in order to come up with their schemes.

Way to generalize.

Did you know that most union members vote Republican? But that most union organizers vote democrat?

Did you know that most mid income attorney's vote Republican?

Do you realize how much income the Clinton family receives from oil investments? And from WalMart stock they still hold? Do you know how much of the Kennedy family fortune is in oil? And pharmaceuticals?

There are no clear cut lines. Politicians talk big, but when its go time many of them support their own investments (look at some of Al Gore's votes while he was in senate, for example). Democrats and Republicans support whoever pays them. Thats it.

Originally Posted by Feslin

Wait, wait, you mean politicians?

Yeah.

Another reason I hate Socialism. "Gee wilikers, we're unable to use our money to help the poor unless someone else forces us to, therefore we're going to give some nice, honest politicians the authority to steal it from us, and our neighbors."

LOL! I was ranting about the conservative government, masquerading as a socialist one, which Britain has, and you try and turn it into ammunation against socialist policies.

Just try and forget that stingy ethos of protecting your (not yet) hard earned money from the 'undeserving' poor for a moment, and realise that it is the forces of political conservatism about which I am talking.

It is the conservatives (and wannabe conservatives like New Labour) who want everything to be in the hands of private corporations (so a fast buck may be made without any regard for at whose expense). If you think charities and the corporate world are such a great partnership, tell me how many charities Exxon, Pfizer and Monsanto operate.

And have you ever heard of the Public Service? In Britain and Commonwealth countries, public servants swear allegiance to, and are answerable to, the Crown, not to the head of executive government, or the party he represents. It is the public service which administers programmes of social justice, not the executive arm of government. If it were up to our politicians, no school, hospital or aged care institution one would get one penny in a non-election year.

Get yourselves a decent system of government with an apolitical head of state, and give lobby groups such as the insurance industry, the oil industry, and the NRA, the boot. You won't believe it's not butter.

:flickoff: This is not a socialism issue. This is greedy banks who ALREADY have "illegal" or pretty close charges on their credit cards. Some Banks have a charge for not using your card!! :O and now this. Corrupt, Useless, Beaurocratic and Idiotic labour government. This new legislation even though studies have shown that 40% of baliffs are already corrupt and abuse their powers. wooo giving criminals a liscense. :whistling: