Society Matters

Cute and cuddly characters can't disguise outrageous loan repayment interest rates, says Pete Cashmore.

If you live in the UK and own a TV you are no doubt familiar with Betty, Joyce and Earl. You will know how they are all adorably dotty and work in the same office; that Betty and Joyce usually have something to say, most often making disparaging remarks about Earl's harebrained ideas; and that they like to watch films together, during which naughty Earl lets his wrinkly hand wander and gets his wrist slapped.

With the exception of Go Compare's moustachioed tenor, Betty, Joyce and Earl are probably the most recognisable current characters in TV advertising, cropping up with increasing frequency. They are the 'Wongies', the loveable face of payday loan firm Wonga, whose typical APR (Annual Percentage Rate of interest) is 4,214%.

You're probably less familiar with Speedy Roo, who is yet to make an impact on our TV screens, instead preferring to engage with the public on our streets. Speedy Roo is the cuddly marsupial face of Speedy Cash (APR 1,410%), and he has a blog where we can get to know him. It tells us that he bounces into the offices around 10 am, where he spends time catching up with employees and preparing for events – but only after he checks his Facebook profile. Speedy Cash currently have 25 high street branches in the UK, all festooned with bright balloons.

And it can't be too long before we get to know more about the Pounds To Pocket aliens. There are two of them at the moment, her a brassy no-nonsense Geordie, him a scatter-brained amiable Brummie.

Cuddly, friendly, adorable, eccentric – the Wongies, Speedy Roo and the P2P aliens share all these attributes. And they're not alone in the world of cuddly payday loan company mascots: Reel Big Cash (APR 1,737%) has a kindly old man on a fishing boat, reeling in that loan money; while Dosh Now (APR 4,559%) has a grinning man who doesn't have a nose or eyes – he's so happy with its service he seems to have grinned his own face off.

The payday lenders' approach is similar to that used by Britain's banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. As the word 'banker' increasingly came to be used pejoratively, so there was a sudden rash of cutesiness and adorable eccentrics: the Halifax (bailed out to the tune of £25bn) and their staff-run radio station; the Woolwich's amiable work-obsessed 'Steve' character; and perhaps most unctuously HSBC's nauseating little vignette in which a Malaysian family employed by the bank relocate to Vancouver, so the bank thoughtfully buys the mourning daughter a gecko to replace the pet snake she was forced to leave behind.Wonga, in addition to boasting its wrinkly triptych, regularly runs competitions to win cash and games consoles via Facebook – its Spot the Ball competition currently offers more than 400 prizes. A few months ago, perhaps inspired by the popularity of BuzzFeed's feline-related enterprises, it attempted to break into the cat market by inviting users to send in pictures of their feline friends, for no specific reason other than people think cats are cute, and that a payday loan company who shares your love of cats can't be all bad.

All this fluff seems somewhat at odds with a recent report released by Citizens Advice, describing payday loan companies as 'out of control'. The study of 780 cases revealed that companies were targeting the under-18s and – more disturbingly – people with mental health issues, and that some customers were even drunk at the time of being talked into taking out a loan.
Almost nine out of 10 borrowers were not asked to provide proof that they could afford to repay the loan, and 84% of those having repayment problems were not given the chance to have their interest and payments stalled. Faced with figures like that, one starts to understand the charm offensive and the need for comedy kangaroos.

Lenders occasionally do get their wrists slapped – witness Cash Lady's witless attempts to use Kerry Katona's well-publicised financial problems to attract customers to its 2,760% APR loans; or Peachy Loans' 'quirky' way of reading out its 1,918% interest rate ("nineteen eighteen").

However, the advertising watchdog admits its powers are limited, and there is currently no ban on 'cute'. Perhaps the government could throw that in to the mix when it overhauls the rules, before we witness the rather sickening spectacle of children begging their parents to buy them Betty, Joyce and Earl dolls.
Pete Cashmore
Posted 4 July 2013

This article first appeared in The Guardian and is reproduced here with kind permission.

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain 

Dick Skellington reports on one piece of Government legislation that is definitely worthwhile 

Good news has been hard to find in 2013. Even harder to find has been universal acclaim for a piece of Government draft legislation. But the news that the Coalition is to ban the use of wild and exotic animals in circuses from 2015 is good news for animals and animal lovers across the land. You can download details of the draft bill here.
 
The publicity given to the cruel treatment of Anne, an Asian elephant, was one of the factors which persuaded Ministers that a ban was now long overdue. The elephant was secretly filmed by the Animal Defenders International (ADI) chained to the ground. Footage posted on YouTube showed Anne being beaten with a pitchfork. Bobby Roberts, who ran Super Circus in Polebrook, Cambridgeshire, was convicted of failing to prevent an employee from repeatedly cruelly treating Anne.

The RSPCA welcomed the move and said it was vital that quick action was taken to end the suffering of animals working in circuses. A spokeswoman said: “What is important for us is that there is a clear deadline date for the ban and a proper retirement plan is put in place for the animals. There are huge welfare concerns involved with hauling circus animals like zebras, lions and tigers across the country for our entertainment.”  

It is estimated that across Britain there are 35 wild animals being used in the only two circuses still operating.  You may see some when the travelling menageries visit your local park this summer. The hope is that in the interim period wild animals will be not exposed to any further mistreatment.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We announced in March 2012 that it was our intention to ban the use of wild animals in travelling circuses and we are now working towards bringing in a Bill to achieve this."

I am with the American Civil Rights activist Dick Gregory on circus animals. He drew a parallel between the treatment of animals in circuses and the treatment of slaves: “When I look at animals held captive by circuses, I think of slavery. Animals in circuses represent the domination and oppression we have fought against for so long. They wear the same chains and shackles."

The new law will ban wild animals, but perhaps does not go far enough. Domesticated animals such as cats, dogs, rabbits and horses will still be allowed.  I remain concerned too about the caging of animals in zoos, but that concern is for a post in the future. Here, after much ministerial prevarication, let us give the Government its due.

Anne survived and is now enjoying life in her new surroundings at Longleat.

For details of the Government position see here.
Dick Skellington 1 July 2013

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain

The cost of government spending cuts can be measured in human lives, reports Dick Skellington.

The Coalition Government is sticking to Plan A –A for Austerity – and carrying on regardless of any argument that insists other strategies may be more productive for delivering growth and economic stability. The next two years promise more cuts to welfare and local services as austerity bites. We have already witnessed a suicide by a woman so desperate about a bedroom tax designed to boost Government coffers, that she took her own life. But how common are such incidents? Is there a connection between austerity and a nation's public health? 

In a new book The Body Economic, researchers David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu present a convincing case that such suicides, and a consequent rise in physical and mental ill health, are a product of the austerity regimes gripping many of the world's developed economics since the global financial crisis of 2008.

The book puts forward a weight of evidence suggesting that the kind of policies adopted by the Coalition Government, designed to alleviate debt and reduce the deficit, have devastating consequences on people's lives.  If austerity had been run like a clinical trial, David Stuckler argues, it would have been discontinued. "The evidence of its deadly side-effects – of the profound effects of economic choices on health – is overwhelming."

Since 2008 in the United States over 5 million people have lost access to health care because they lost their jobs and with them their health insurance  In Greece, one of the hardest hit nations in the downturn, ill-health demographics have shown a disturbing upward trend. Greece has experienced a 200 per cent increase in HIV cases, for example, and across worst hit nations such as Spain, Portugal and Italy, suicide rates have increased. In the UK Stuckler found that 10,000 families have been pushed beyond welfare and into homelessness by the austerity cuts to housing benefits.

Stuckler is a distinguished Oxford academic who specialises in exploring the connections between political economy and public health. His book is a chilling warning about the impact of future austerity measures. "Recessions can hurt. But austerity kills," he concludes.

With his colleague Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiologist at Stanford University, he describes a "devastating effect" on public health in Europe and North America. Stuckler identifies 10,000 additional suicides and over one million extra cases of depression across Europe and North America since 2008.

The most extreme case is Greece. "There, austerity to meet targets set by the troika is leading to a public-health disaster," says Stuckler. "Greece has cut its health system by more than 40 per cent. As the health minister said: 'These aren't cuts with a scalpel, they're cuts with a butcher's knife.' " 

For Stuckler what is most galling about the cuts is that they have been decided "not by doctors and healthcare professionals, but by economists and financial managers. The plan was simply to get health spending down to 6 per cent of GDP." Where did that number come from? he asks. It's less than the UK, less than Germany, and far less than the US.

Cuts in HIV-prevention budgets coincided with a 200 per cent increase in the virus in Greece, driven by a sharp rise in intravenous drug use against the background of a youth unemployment rate now running at more than 50 per cent and a spike in homelessness of around a quarter. The World Health Organisation, Stuckler says, recommends a supply of 200 clean needles a year for each intravenous drug user; groups that work with users in Athens estimate the current number available is about three.

The suicide rate in Greece was relatively low before 2008. Since then the rate has risen by an astonishing 60 per cent, while depression has doubled. Public health services have been overwhelmed and charities report a tenfold increase in cases. "There have been heavy cuts to many hospital sectors. Places lack surgical gloves, the most basic equipment. More than 200 medicines have been de-stocked by pharmacies who can't pay for them. When you cut with the butcher's knife, you cut both fat and lean. Ultimately, it's the patient who loses out."

While the book makes abundantly clear the cause-and-effect link between austerity and decreased levels of public health,  such public health disasters are not inevitable, even in the very worst economic downturns. Stuckler's analysis of data from the 1930s Great Depression in the US shows that every extra $100 of relief in states that adopted the American New Deal led to about 20 fewer deaths per 1,000 births, and four fewer suicides and 18 fewer pneumonia deaths per 100,000 people.

"When this recession started, we began to see history repeat itself," says Stuckler. In Spain, for example, where there was little investment in labour programmes, there was a spike in suicides. In Finland and Iceland, countries that took steps to protect their people in hard times, there was no noticeable impact on suicide rates or other health problems.

So in this current economic crisis, there are countries – Iceland, Sweden, Finland – that are showing positive health trends, and there are countries that are not: Greece, Spain, now maybe Italy. Teetering between the two extremes, Stuckler reckons, is Britain.

According to Stuckler, The UK is "one of the clearest expressions of how austerity kills". Suicides were falling in this country before the recession, he notes. Then, coinciding with a surge in unemployment, they spiked in 2008 and 2009. As unemployment dipped again in 2009 and 2010, so too did suicides. But since the election and the Coalition Government's introduction of austerity measures – and particularly cuts in public sector jobs across the country – suicides are back.
Ministers seem unwilling to address the increase in suicides, arguing it is too early to conclude anything from the data. But based on the actual data, Stuckler is in no doubt. "We've seen a second wave – of austerity suicides," he says. "And they've been concentrated in the north and north-east, places like Yorkshire and Humber, with large rises in unemployment. We're now seeing polarisation across the UK in mental-health issues."

He cites, also, the dire impact on homelessness – falling in Britain until 2010 – of government cuts to social housing budgets, and the human tragedies triggered by the fitness-for-work evaluations, designed to weed out disability benefit fraud.
Stuckler calls on governments to set our economies on track. The book publicity blurb sums it up succinctly. 

"We can prevent financial crises from becoming epidemics, but to do so, we must acknowledge what the hard data tells us: that, throughout history, there is a causal link between the strength of a community's health and its social protection systems. Now and for generations to come, our commitment to the building of fairer, more equal societies will determine the health of our body economic".
It is not to late. Almost, but not quite.
Dick Skellington 28 June 2013

The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu is published by Allen Lane. 
 

The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.

Cartoon by Catherine Pain