I have had a bank account since I was a teenager back in the mists of time.
Initially I was with Barclays but dropped them in
the 80s over South Africa. Lloyds came next until they joined with TSB then
consciously uncoupled as I was planning to move to Scotland. There was not a
Lloyds on any high street up here so ended up with TSB. They’ve been ok and, as
I’ve never done online banking I didn’t get caught up in their 2019 online
banking fiasco. I was also briefly with Bank of Scotland (to access an old
Lloyds account – don’t’ ask) but the only branch near me became so down at heel
it was obvious it would not be around for long so I closed that.
As more and more high-street branches close and TSB
have been crap over my business banking problems since covid (despite the
blether on their advertising) I thought I’d look for another basic ordinary
account with a bank I still see on the high street.
Simple. Or so you would think.
My appointment made – details taken and all my
documents in hand I went into the new bank last week and spent 40 minutes with
a nice young woman who clicked away at her computer screen and chatted
pleasantly and copied documents. She explained how the account would open and
when I‘d receive my debit card and pin etc. Then she went to press the final
button (I presume) and everything changed. NO! said the bank computer.
Apparently, as I’ve never been in debt and do not have store cards or credit
cards, am not on Facebook or any other social media – in other words I only
exist in the real world – the computer said NO. I would have to be referred.
Checked out. Higher up…
Fumbling and stumbling, the nice young woman said
she’d get back to me. Clearly this doesn’t happen often with such basic
accounts. I told her not to fret. It has happened to me once before where not
having an easily traceable online history of debt / credit (CREDIT IS DEBT) caused problems for the
mega-companies that exist in the backgrounds of our lives cannot easily pigeon-hole
a real person. A few days later someone somewhere clearly decided I wasn’t an
international criminal and I can have my new little no-overdraft, debit
account. Wehey…
Boris Johnson may not be able to do track and trace
but everyone else can and everyone else wants to do it and is doing it all the
time about every aspect of your life.
This will be an increasing problem for a decreasing
number of us. We actively train our kids to live in debt. Thanks to the Blair
government and its introduction of tuition fees, it is now normal for young
folk to be in heavy debt long before they have had time to work the world out. A
significant number will live under the dark shadow of that leaden liability for
most of their working lives – if they are lucky enough to get work. They will
put off having families because of the debt and they will probably not be able
to afford starter homes. They will, however, probably own cars – when I say own I mean they will pay a credit
company to use an item that will depreciate in value faster than almost
anything else they will ever buy.
We now bring children up to believe that being in
debt is a natural state; essential, even a desirable one. I listened horrified
to a financial programme on the BBC where one of the ‘experts’ they wheel on
regularly – the mate of the producer or someone they went to school with who
lives handy – advised an 18 yr old just starting out on her independence to GET
A CREDIT CARD AS SOON AS POSSIBLE – start building up a ‘credit history’.
Get plugged into The Matrix at the earliest opportunity and before you have
enough experience to question if it’s the right decision for you. Before you
know it you’ll be getting into debt for random holidays, shite you buy at the
weekend and use once, meals out, leisure items you never use and memberships
that lapse.
‘Get a credit history’ means – get into debt asap and
then you will always be allowed to get into more
debt whenever you want to.The real irony is that with
banking (and with much else of commerce) as we retreat further and further
behind algorithms and mass data, given up freely and i-knowledge
replaces the real knowledge of a real person by another real person – the
financial world has become a criminals’ playground where fraud increases
exponentially day by day.
In a country obsessed with reality TV, real reality really is a fading phenomenon.
And - thanks to Johnson’s cabal of incompetent lunatics and
the cluster-fuck of Brexit and a horribly mismanaged covid crisis – even those
who manage not to end up as Pavlov’s Debt Dogs will exist in a debt-blighted country
til the lights go out.
I understand that folk laugh when they see my
not-a-smart-phone. I note the eye rolls if they find I don’t own a car or
microwave. I’m used to the indulgent chuckle at not being on social media or ever
owning a dishwasher (both equally pointless and time wasting and toxic) ditto the
bemusement that I haven’t had TV since last century, long before there was the
online world to go to instead but I tell you – it’s getting very strange just
being a real person living out here in what is left of the ‘real’ world…