Debt.  What is it?  It’s when the ordinary man or woman on the street owes someone else money.  Now, if you buy something, you should expect to pay for it, as long as it works properly and does what it says on the packaging.  I understand that.  But certain types of debt rub me up the wrong way.  One of those debts was the subject of a story ran by the BBC on their web site the other day.

The story concerned a man aged around 56 or so, with two beautiful daughters in their twenties, and he was divorced from the girls’ mother, but he still lived in the home which was bought after he and his wife first got married.  In other words, the house was the only one that the man’s children knew.  All their childhood memories were there.

This man had survived kidney cancer and a divorce which cost him £36,000, not to mention £200 a month each for his daughters.  He had got through those things.

But what he could not surmount emotionally was a debt he got into after he missed a council tax payment.  One month.  Probably between £100 and £150.  That’s all.  Because of that missed payment, the local authority, South Lakeland District Council in Cumbria, decided to bill him for the entire year, which was £1,473.  Through various means, the debt spiralled up to £9,332 – an extraordinary amount given the initial ‘offence.’  The council, in 2014, decided to have him declared bankrupt.

The council were successful in their petition, which enabled them to sling thousands of pounds more debt at him, until it had risen up to over £15,000.  Trustees were appointed to collect this debt, and the man almost paid all of it off – but the trustees themselves then billed him a heart-stopping £72,000!!!  An extraordinary amount considering his initial missed payment was around £150.

The man killed himself in October 2017, and it is now left to his estate – basically, his two daughters – to clear the ‘debt.’  They managed to haggle it down to around £25,000.  But still, considering the initial sin…

What gets me is that there were other options the council could have considered, but they chose the bankruptcy route, sending bailiffs round, changing locks, cutting off the utilities, etc.  They chose a route that would make everybody else money at his expense.  He would have to pay for their profits.

But there was one problem.

The man never once replied to any of the letters the council or their representatives sent him.  If he had, they would have found some other way to settle the debt.  Even the council realised there was no way this debt would ever practically be recovered, but to pursue a bankruptcy so aggressively was a mistake and they knew it.  Nevertheless, the man buried his head in the sand, hoped it would go away and that too was a mistake.  So, there were mistakes equally so severe on both sides.

The council have since stated that had they known about the man’s situation, had he communicated with them in the first instance, they would not have pursued bankruptcy proceedings.  It is an important lesson, one which makes it obvious why the BBC covered it as a story.  It is a big lesson for us all; that local authorities will literally pursue you to the grave if you miss so much as one council tax payment and not tell them why.

Whether you get your money’s worth from your council tax is open to debate.  But that is not the point, is it?  The point is that the financial and economic system in the UK, and in most countries of the world, even the ones that are not, in theory at least, corrupt, is geared towards the big guy, and not the little one.  And the banks jump in as the middle person because there’s money to be made in interest payments.  It’s appalling, really, to think that a £150 debt can quickly rise to £1,500 and then to almost £9,500.  That’s over £9,000 profit for someone right there.  How can someone who cannot afford the initial £150 afford the £9,000 interest on the amount?

The man had a rational head on his shoulders.  When he decided to kill himself, it wasn’t a snap, mad decision he could have come to regret in five minutes; it was calm, collected and planned meticulously.  He left notes for the bailiff as to where he would be found, and he left notes for his daughters telling them not to blame themselves.  He knew what he was doing, he knew the impact that it would have on his loved ones, and he tried his best to accommodate that.  Then he went off and did himself in.

This, in itself, is a window into the world of someone who is suicidal.  I have felt that way many times, but have always stopped short because I couldn’t have left the impact on people’s lives that this man did.  But who knows?  You cannot judge the mental state of someone whose every possession is taken from them to settle alleged debts.  Financial rape.

I feel angry that the system is geared towards ‘them’ and not ‘us.’  We have to settle any small debt immediately, or it becomes a very big debt almost overnight.  But if ‘they’ were to owe ‘us’ money; well, that’s a whole other story.  Try to get money out of a bank if they owe it to you.  That seems to be OK, though, doesn’t it?

The system has got to be a level playing field.  If the banks, councils, corporations owe you £150, try compounding the interest to £9,000 and see what they do.  Try threatening them with bankruptcy and find out what you get for your money.  It would probably cost about nine grand a week in legal fees, and they won’t be paying that for you.  If someone owes £150, what about leaving it at that amount for the period of the debt?

They say, we can’t do that because in that case nobody would ever pay off their debts, would they?  Well, that’s an absolutely valid point and does demonstrate a clear malfunction of human nature.  If there’s no penalty, people do tend to think, ‘well, if they’re not going to chase the debt, I’ll not bother paying it.’  Is it not possible to cease providing a service to the tune of that amount?  There must be a way to make it fair for everyone, because to drive people to suicide leaves South Lakeland District Council at least in part responsible for this man’s death.  Not entirely; the man’s family do accept that he would bear some of the responsibility.

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