Who owns these organisations?

Which ones? I think that Wonga, for example, is a private company owned (and therefore owned by its shareholders, whiich I believe may include private equity backers, venture capitalists and, I guess, its founders).

The Great White, the Hammerhead, the Basking, and the Mako

You missed off Porbeagle (sp), Tiger & Whale

Mostly tory party donors

Thinking of approaching them to bail out Leigh RLFC?

most of them started under a Labour government.

Care to explain the link, if any, between date of incorporation and political patronage?

You got anything to back that up or is it yet more lefty hot air?

Find out via Companies House if you are interested.

Think its mostly Aliens from the Planet Zorg though.

Was just trying to point out that successive governments, of any colour, have failed to legislate against these shysters.

I am sure you remember Shopacheck, and I'd bet £100 you own(ed) a shirt with their name on for more than one season.

Ask Adrian Beecroft

The words to use who owns them would severely break the AUP. and Dennis nordans bleeping machine

Off the top of my head, wasn't it something like £250k to dine with the PM and then get to come up with a paper on policy proposals that certainly gained publicity?

A few months ago, I did an interview with a debt counsellor, and her attitude was pretty much exactly that - which was sort of rather amusing, given that she had a very plummy voice.

She and her colleagues are increasingly seeing people get caught by these companies. And the people who get caught are NOT living lives of luxury, way above their means. Debt counsellor a go into huge detail about people's incomes and expenditure, and much of what they're seeing is a direct consequence of wages being depressed and the cost of living rising way beyond what the official inflation figures suggest.

It really is a disgrace.

Yep, plus long term expensive contracts for things like phones etc are very easy to sign up for with little to no checks on whether the person can afford it.

But there's also a point that, increasingly, people need these things – computers are another.

With an increasing amount of, say, jobs being only offered via the internet, people have to have access.

And similarly with phones – it's becoming difficult not to have a mobile. It's expected now as the norm.

Really? It hasn't been a problem for me. I don't think it is a case of need more a case of want for many.

Have you tried job hunting without one or worked on a zero hour contract where an employer wants people in quickly when they need them?

Oh I agree, a friend of mine is unemployed and he now HAS to use the new government Universal Jobmatch website to search for & apply for jobs or record what other activity he has done in terms of jobsearch. If he doesn't his benefits will be stopped. Not to mention, like BG points out employment agencies almost demand a mobile number. A phone line now is about £13-15 a month just for line rental nevermind actually paying for broadband. There are fairly cheap mobile deals out there though.
But my point was that people are attracted by the best, brightest and newest, all-singing, all-dancing new products like phones, or expensive products like broadband, SKY TV etc and all these things can be taken out in minutes online with no checks to see if the person can afford £50per month for 2 years for a new phone. Compared to even a small credit card which requires credit checks and income assessments. I know of people on JSA who have signed up for Sky TV and the newest mobile phones.
Whilst there is obviously responsibility upon the person to budget properly, that is (in my opinion) more difficult these days when everything is available (sometimes solely) by a monthly charge that seems fairly cheap but builds up over time.

I don't disagree. But what I think also plays into this is the importance, in terms of the national economy as it is, of people spending money.

It's not just unbalanced household budgets, it's a national economy that is also unbalanced.

Spot on, an economy is always going to be largely dependent on the general public spending their money but as you say the balance has shifted too far. Of course if other imbalances in the economy, such as low wages, high energy prices and ridiculously high housing costs, were more fairly balanced then people would have more money to spend as well.

You would think, wouldn't you (and this overlaps with the other thread on the bedroom tax and policy) that the state of affairs we have at present would finally have kicked into touch the myth of rising wages as being the main cause of inflation?

But even after 30-odd years of downward pressure on incomes, and the cost of living rising substantially, and well above the official inflation figure (itself manipulated by successive governments for political reasons), it still seems to exist as the orthodoxy, along with the entire terror of inflation. Ha-Joon Chang is interesting on the issue of inflation [url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-They-Dont-About-Capitalism/dp/0141047976/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370608031&sr=8-1&keywords=ha+joon+changhere[/url – it's a standard piece of neo-liberal rhetoric and yet he explains why it's nowhere near the problem that it has simply become unquestioningly accepted as.