[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16002022Radio 4's Money Box programme[/url has revealed:





"I'll have £0.01p, Bob"
"Sure! That will be - only £73.20"



I wondered where the banks would go next, now that obscene pay and bonuses have been reined in, and lending to small businesses maxed out, and find it heartwarming that they can have moved to such levels of public-spiritedness in such a short time.

Thanks, i'm teetering on going overdrawn without an agreement, i'm now ting it, time to quit work and declare bankruptcy

I've thought for a long time that banks (and others) thought "Wall Street" was a mission statement, not a film.

Greed is good is our mantra and Gordon Gekko is our god

APR in meaningless over short periods.

If you can pay back in the short period, yes.

The Barclays figures given above are fair. You have your money, you have an overdraft (the bank/it's customers money) and then if you take the pish even more, then they charge you.
If they didn't have some way of enforcing what is essentially a fine, then at what point do you suggest they stop letting you withdraw money.

FTR I bank with Barclays and have this facility. What the above article forgets is that the payment isn't due if you go back into your overdraft from your emervency reserve within five days.

Is it worth pointing out, Mr FA, that Mr wonga.com payday loanshark Adrian Beecroft is the same individual who came up with a report for David Cameron (as a return on his big donation to the Tories), saying that it would be mega cool to to be able to sack people without reason – something based not on something as mundane as 'research', but on a few 'conversations'.

Except that the article refers to this as a pre-aranged facility, it does NOT refer to taking the pish, or doing anything unauthorised, so back in your box.

Indeed. I've long thought that peasants' rights have come too far. Wouldn't you agree that the abolition of employment rights and the reintroduction of serfdom would restore the country's fortunes?

It is quite extraordinary (or so it seems to me) that so many people really believe that we're regulated up to the hilt.

Clearly that was what caused the financial crisis – there being an over-regulation of financial institutions.



And, as highlighted a few weeks ago by Coddy, there was the situation of the Ellesmere Vauxhall plant, which the company was going to close – because it is easier to close a plant in the UK, and dump workers, than it is anywhere else in Europe.

And yet, if you read the forums at the [iTelegraph[/i, say, you'll see the tery about too much regulation repeated over and over. I've seen it on the [iIndy[/i too – together with the ludicrous claim that this country is socialist/communist now. Some people really are so thick they will happily adopt the latest Tea Party stupidity* without even exercising their one remaining brain cell.




* ie, 'anything that isn't rampant, free-market, neo-liberal, fundamentalist capitalism is socialism/communism 'cos we say so'.

I have many happy discussions with a couple of Americans I know via blogging/facebook over their opinion on healthcare, in particular "Obamacare" which they absolutely refuse to accept.

These are normal, sane, very pleasant people, one is an artist who I have exchanged work with, one is a client of mine, I thought "knew" them until one of them posted a message on Facebook one day in opposition to Obamacare, I replied simply asking why a person could be so opposed to something that would benefit them in the long run.

A couple of hours later there was a huge string of replies from other Americans all based on the premise that anything with "social" in the title, ie social care, social housing, social securtiy, was basically communism in disguise, I was even told that the British NHS was a cover for Muslim terrorists.

The discussion sort of stopped dead when I gave a detailed explanation of how the NHS works and particularly what percentages our income tax deductions run at, and what NIS contributions are for, and their rates - I then asked them to go away and look at their payslips and tell me what National income tax they paid, what was their local income tax and what did their healthcare insurance and pension contributions amount to - never heard a peep after that.

I know it's a very slight diversion, but someone from the US I know via the internet, who has been working in Germany for a couple of years now, posted the other day that he was utterly stunned at a book he was reading on the roots of the Cold War, which stated that: "Right up until the launching of the long-postponed Allied invasion of the German-occupied Normandy coast in June 1944, Soviet forces were holding down more than 80% of the Wehrmacht’s divisions."

This is a very intelligent bloke – not a 'bad' person at all. But he had never seen or read (as opposed to someone like me making a comment on a forum) anything that suggested that the war was not actually just won pretty much on its own by the US.

Every country has its propaganda, of course – and reading history is the art of trying to dig beneath it – but this is just remarkable.

Not wishing to stray too far off-topic, I had some great fun over the last day with the s who commented on [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/britain-unleashed-the-future-of/9429347/Britain-unleashed-the-real-crisis-is-welfarism-not-capitalism.html#comment-598954073The real crisi is welfarism not capitalism[/url in yesterday's Torygraph.

As any fool knows, Blair and Brown's profligacy in spending on restoring service to health, teaching and policing, is the sole reason that Lehman Brothers collapsed and the greater part of global finance soon followed.

And it is indeed a pre-arranged facility. Mine has been running for about two years and has never needed reviewing. I earn my money, and should I go into my overdraft then I pay for that as I would expect - it's not my money I'm spending, it's - in effect - a loan I can call on at any time.
If I go over that overdraft, then that is definately taking the pish, but Barclays are happy to let me have that money for five working days without charging me any extra.

If I should hit the limit on that facility - as has happened in the past on a couple of occasions - then I can't withdraw any more.

Are you following this?

I am, but it appears to be far too hard for you, as the astronomical charges which I quoted are so mind-blowingly, unbelievably out of any proportion to the sums initially involved that only someone who can't actually follow it would defend it. You, of course, are a perfect example of how and why they get away with this mother of all ripoffs.

Indeed.

The company I work for rent a lot of equipment out to other businesses - I can't think that we'd rent anything out at all if we had a clause that said "If you don't pay your £15 a month rental on time then we'll charge you 100,000 times that amount, because we can"