Yesterday’s Times had several articles of interest in it, which is news of itself.

Sam Coates its Banking Editor
advised that Proposed Legislation concerning Peer to Peer Lending is to be welcomed. Would such Legislation be intended to tidy up the National Loan Guarantee Scheme (NLGS) and The Business Finance Partnership Scheme (SMEs) ? Both of which were launched the day before the 2012 Budget. One or another of these schemes concerns loans to small and mid size businesses.

In another Place one reads that personal PAY DAY LOANS are becoming more of a burden than a benefit to Society. We live in days of High under employment and such borrowers have bills to pay, and the Poor man has a more urgent need for money that the Rich man, so is tempted to take out a ’Pay Day Loan’. One doesn’t need to be an indigent skiver, nor a feckless individual to run short of money at the end of the month. Those with Assets might foresee any such problem before it arises, and either sell off an Asset or seek loans from allegedly more prudent lenders of first resort, the Banking Fraternity. Alas Banks advise that few seek loans from them. Indeed even I tend not to call upon my small standing over draft facility, whilst would be borrowers are told the Banks have no money available to lend.

Friendly Societies do a good job, personally know less about them than I do about the Banks, but does Government Guarantee the loans they make? Does it give Tax Relief on dividends to Investors who fund Friendly Societies and Building Societies. Don’t think they do, except in the case of ISSAs. If they don’t maybe they should. Would that not attract Investors with cash in hand who’d be pleased to accept more than the dismal ½ of 1% per cent interest that Banks pay on money deposited with them. If Banks don’t make Pay Day loans, maybe some new sort of better regulated Institution should. There is no less money sloshing around the system now looking for a billet than ever there was. As an illustration

Miles Costello’s Article
‘New Lloyd’s Syndicate seeks to work with Names.’ Advises that of recent years private Investors known as ‘Names’ have found difficulty in finding a Syndicate wherein to Underwrite Insurance Risk. This because their role has been usurped by Corporate Investors, much I suppose as the City Lloyds Broking firm which once employed me has been successively swallowed up by others. Such though is progress. As too,

Patrick Hoskin the Time’s Financial Editor tells in his article
‘ Diabolical’ decline in factory production raises the spectre of triple dip recession.’
Well now there’s a funny thing . Who would have expected that to happen. Have we as a country not done all the right things. Exported much of our shipbuilding to France, together with our Cement production, and sold our motor industry to China Japan and Korea, and Steel Production to India. Much of our Electricity is now supplied by the French (EDF), whose country is apparently to build our nuclear power stations, much as it currently builds most of those Turbine Generators, so ‘beloved’ by Dorset Folk. Other assets such as Gas and Water and BT and our Railways have been, as the term is ‘Privatised’.

Governments encouraged such short sighted iconoclasm on the basis that the way ahead was our ‘Service Industries’ such as Banking and Insurance ( be the latter at Lloyds or elsewhere) Well a fine old Mess Bankers got us into, and one reads that HSBC’s day of reckoning is at hand. Somehow or another all such incompetent Government sanctioned bungling brings to mind a mixed metaphor,

‘Selling off the Family Silver for a Mess of Pottage’.

Andrew Clark, The Times Deputy Business Editor.
Reports on the dire circumstance of Removal Firms during this current Housing Slump, and its effect for an example on Pickfords . My immediate family line owned and ran such a business in Hammersmith for two hundred years, as it passed from father to son. However at the end of the last century, possibly sensing the game was no longer worth the candle, the firm shut up shop, and its premises were disposed of to a Property Developer. Only this last summer I detected on the Internet a Banner Headline from the Hammersmith and Fulham Newspaper, demanding to know whether anyone remembered the Firm? Seemingly when I owned up to such an acquaintanceship all of six weeks later, I was the only person who had been willing to acknowledge the fact. All the prime enquirer wished to know was what my father had done with the bits and pieces he had bought when the RMS Olympic was broken up. All I could do to help was to tell him where the items no longer were, for a recent owner of our then family home has seemingly disposed of for many thousands of pounds ,what father paid tens of shillings for . Such though are the changing values of life.

Having had a Warehousing business the firm had two hundred years of its books still in tact, these illustrated that day in and day out , through Peace and War, Staff and Owners turned up for work and got on with the job in hand. Possibly despite all the hardship the world was a better place for all such dedication to hard work. 10th.December 2012.