Loans And Credit Cards - And Bankruptcy

Summary: Not so very long ago the moral climate in this country was very different. People had more time for each other, and more time to examine and compare their own moral standards with others. One of the many results of this was an almost unspoken pride in making your own way through life without looking for handouts from the state or elsewhere. This resulted in a high degree of poverty in the working classes and the unemployed with their determination to be in debt to no one, ...

Not so very long ago the moral climate in this country was very different. People had more time for each other, and more time to examine and compare their own moral standards with others. One of the many results of this was an almost unspoken pride in making your own way through life without looking for handouts from the state or elsewhere. This resulted in a high degree of poverty in the working classes and the unemployed with their determination to be in debt to no one, but also a resolve in the so-called middle and upper classes to avoid financial embarrassment. The lowest point of this 'loss of face' was a declaration of bankruptcy - the shame which this carried with it is difficult to comprehend nowadays, but it was very real then. People lived (often very precariously) within their means and a failed business venture was a usual reason for total loss of credit. Credit - even that word has undergone a subtle change of meaning. It used to be a means for businessmen to raise funds for expansion or a new venture, and was a word with very limited use outside the business world. Nowadays credit is more often taken to mean the opportunities for individuals to spend more than they earn and to live beyond their means, with a concomitant increase in the numbers declaring bankruptcy. This situation however seems to have lost its aura of shame, and instead has become, whilst not quite a badge of pride, at least an apparently easy way out of a crisis of ones own making. In 2005 there were almost 70,000 individuals declared bankrupt in England and Wales; the trend would seem to indicate that the figure for 2006 will exceed 100,000. This has resulted in an explosion in bad debts to a current average in the UK of over