The BBC follow their usual template here:
Mortgage lenders 'too fast to repossess' homes
Lenders have failed to exhaust all possible ways of keeping people in their homes in a third of repossession cases, a report by charities has said. Mortgage providers are expected to use repossession only as a last resort under legal rules. But judges did not always step in to ensure the protocol was followed, said Advice UK, Citizens Advice and Shelter. The charities did point out that some support packages for struggling homeowners were having an effect...
The government has said it will provide extra funding for debt advice agencies and help desks at 80 courts...
"I welcome the report from Citizens Advice and Shelter. The people who work in these agencies are, in many respects, the unsung heroes of our campaign to help people avoid repossession," said Housing Minister John Healey...
OK.
1. Advice UK is a fakecharity. Note 3 on page 17 of their 2008 accounts doesn't make it clear who pays them their £1 million income, but half of it is grants (see Note 4), mostly from the usual suspects; London Councils, The Money Advice Trust (see below for more), The Big Lottery Fund and City Bridge Trust (sole trustee: The City Of London Corporation).In 2007 they also reveived over £250,000 from the Department of Trade and Industry, The Home Office and Lloyds TSB.
2. Citizen's Advice is a fakecharity. It received £39 million is from the government or other public bodies (Note 3a and 3b, page 34 to their 2008 accounts). Note 3c lists 'other grants, with another £500,000 from The Big Lottery Fund and The Money Advice Trust, whose Business Plan 2009 states "the Government allotted £5.85m over three years in its Pre Budget Report to expand capacity at National Debtline and Business Debtline and we are working hard to deliver this expansion."
3. Shelter are a sort-of-fakecharity. They get £24 million in individual or corporate donations (Note 2, page 25 to their 2008 accounts) and £12 million grants from the government for Housing Services (Note 4).
Now, maybe I've misunderstood this, but isn't one of the justifications of Home-Owner-Ism that "People should learn to be financially independent and not rely on the government to house them."? If the whole legal system regarding repo's has to be torn up and re-written, and tens of millions of taxpayer's money thrown at just the legal side (let alone the mortgage subsidies on loans up to £200,000 x "standard interest rate of 6.08%"*), then how is that teaching people to stand on their own two feet? Or is this all just a refusal to accept that Home-Owner-Ism** is just a gigantic pyramid scheme?
* Sure, I don't want people to be homeless, but for that sort of money, it'd work out considerably cheaper to build more social housing for them.
** As distinct from 'home-ownership' in the narrow sense, which all-in-all is probably A Good Thing.
No wonder he's never around
1 hour ago
8 comments:
That ** footnote is important, you should put it in more often. I had to go a fair way back in your posts to work out that all these rants against home owners you make weren't exactly against home owners as such.
When were the first fakecharities set up? (the type of organisation, not the concept) Is it something new or just something I've only recently become aware of.
Can you define fake charity please. I'm looking specifically at CA right now who get a lot of support from the council ctte's.
bayard,
"Is it something new or just something I've only recently become aware of."
There's been some government funding of charities for quite a long time, but most of it was based on government (or local authorities) hiring charities with particular expertise to help them out (such as childrens homes).
The current fakes are very New Labour. A huge con which exploits the goodwill of the name "charity" to not only do political bidding, but also to do it with even less oversight than government departments have.
The Conservatives will continue it as the con hasn't yet been fully exposed. They'll run down the more Labour-friendly fakecharity funding, create some new Conservative fakecharities, and convert some Conservative-leaning charities into fakecharities.
My guess is that in a few years, there will be a scandal at a fake charity and the MSM will finally wake up to what's going on.
Totally agree with you this time, Mark. Moral hazard should apply to home owners as well as banks.
R, I ought to insert that footnote every time, really.
B, under Nulabour we have 'fakecharities', under the Tories they were called 'quangoes'. A lot of fc's are very old charities who get hooked on govt. funding (the old Red Ken trick).
RS, make up your own definition - you know one when you see one (they all use the same website template, for example).
OC, thanks, Guido is actually numbering Tory fakecharities as they pop up.
AC, thanks, perhaps that's a defining difference between 'home-owners proper' and Home-Owner-Ists?
Citizen's Advice aren't too bad - mad lefties a lot of them yes - but staffed mainly by volunteers they are far better value for money than a council officer.
They don't tell the government jack about you either, benefit fraudster, illegal immigrant, they'll still advise you. They draw the line at child molester (as most of us do I guess).
Yeah I had a good service from the CAB. Saved my skin when we were all being bullied by the big corp stooges for doing too much work. (made the big guns look shite as indeed they are mostly, maybe we should have a thing about fake corporations too)
But I don't think this is the point of castigating FC's is it?
Isn't it that folks don't want charity, they want justice. Better to stop the robbery and abuse sooner than mitigate wastefully later. Not to mention the pride of the folks themselves ?
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