Rotherham Council gives local supermarket £80,000 - or so they don't say

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Well that's what it looks like to me:

Carl Battersby, director of environment and development services at Rotherham Council, told the BBC the idea to arrange the loan came after suggestions from its welfare reform steering group.

"We're trying to do the best for our local people," said Mr Battersby.

"Clearly we're not quite sure what the demand and take-up will be but we think it's the right thing to do to help some of the most vulnerable people."

He added: "People are struggling to meet the cost of basic items, food being one of them. As a council we wanted to do something positive."

The vouchers can only be redeemed at Pak supermarket in Rotherham until 11 January and exclude cigarettes and alcohol.

For sure all the campaigners against evil loans sharks and other such demons will see this as the action of a wonderful caring council. Indeed that's how the BBC reports it:

Struggling families in South Yorkshire are being offered help with their food bills through Christmas in a bid to stop people borrowing from loan sharks

But why just the one supermarket - and not even one anyone has heard of? Why not just give cash loans? It wouldn't be that cigarettes and alcohol bit would it!

Put simply this is an atrocious use of public money - bordering on malfeasance.

And 'the-man-who-would-be-MP' seems to get on well with this supermarket!

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...add sub-prime loans to business! Hey, that's a thought Vince!

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Sometimes I could cry. Vince Cable wants cheap loans to business from a state investment bank:

"It would almost certainly be necessary to lengthen the period in public ownership. It may well mean state-controlled banks being able to lend at cheaper rates than new commercial banks, thereby affecting the development of more diverse finance"

So fix the market, offer loans to people who can't pay them back at cheaper rates and all in the name of "growth". Are these people actually living on the same planet as me? Is their memory so short that they don't recall that it was cheap, government-sponsored loan-making that got us into the mess in the first place?

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The Mafia would like to thank health campaigners and social activists for making them even richer!

Those who advocate prohibition, ‘denormalisation’ and the state punishment of selected lifestyle sins continue their campaigns:

• MPs are recommending two “drink free days”, minimum pricing and allowing licences to be removed on “health grounds”
• The BMA are urging the banning of smoking in cars and restrictions on smoking in the home
• Stella Creasy continues with her campaign to cap the APR that lenders can charge on loans
• Other ‘campaigners’ are calling for a ‘fat tax’ such as that introduced in Denmark
• And gambling is in their sights as another ‘lifestyle sin’

Setting aside whether a liberal society should indulge in these bans, controls and zealous regulation, there is a massive downside to such actions. A downside that ‘campaigners’ never mention. And it looks like this:

According to a new report by Italian anti-crime group SOS Impresa, as reported by Reuters, "Organised crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country's biggest "bank" and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday."

The Italian Mafia has over 65 billion Euro in liquid assets.

You don’t get the connection with the nannying fussbuckets who want to dictate how you live your life? Let me explain – starting with:

The high tax-induced price of tobacco products in the UK has led to many smokers seeking alternative cheaper sources of cigarettes and handrolling tobacco (HRT), both legal (duty-free and crossborder shopping) and illegal (smuggling and bootlegging). The TMA estimates that in 2009 this non-UK duty paid consumption (NUKDP) accounted for 21% of the cigarettes and 58% of the HRT smoked in the UK.

And:

Seizures of contraband alcohol smuggled from France have surged to around three times their normal levels this summer, say officials. French customs officers in the Channel ports of Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer confiscated 82,000 litres of illegal spirits in the past month.

Plus:

The use of loan sharks is increasing and going to "get worse", according to experts in the South West. The Bristol-based Illegal Money Lending Team claims it is already a serious problem across the region. Spokesman Alan Evans said they were "really concerned" and that with harder times ahead "this problem will get worse". Since its launch three years ago the team has recorded a 700% increase in referrals which are still growing.

I’m sure the picture is becoming clearer – the Mafia (or for that matter any other organised crime group) gets its money from a willingness to trade in things we’ve banned, to smuggle so as to avoid taxes and to fill gaps in the market created when honest providers are forced out by legal changes.

Organised crime is the biggest beneficiary from high tobacco taxes, from strict controls on drink and from restrictions on gambling or lending. And criminals, unlike legitimate businesses, don’t care if you get hurt – so we’ll get dangerous fake cigarettes, poisonous vodka and loan repayments enforced with a baseball bat rather than a court order.

So next time you think a ban or a new tax is a good thing, consider the Mafia. Ask yourself how much money criminals will make from your proposal.

And then don’t do it.

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A thought on the death of Bernard Matthews...

You know the guy - the fat bloke who sold all those crappy processed turkeys and such. Who Jamie Oliver didn't like because kids preferred his twizzlers to the fine, healthy vegetables that Jamie & the Food Fascists (now that's a band name if ever there was one) felt we should be eating so as to avoid terrible deaths at a young age.

I have to admit that we don't eat turkey much. Not for any noble reason but because most of it - including Bernard's - is dry, tasteless and uninspiring. But despite this I can still admire Bernard Matthews and will urge others to be more like him and less like the righteous fussbuckets. And, of course, Jamie Oliver is much like Bernard too - made shed loads of dosh from building up a personal brand that has something to do with food.

But mostly with Bernard its the business success that I like. The fact that you can turn 20 turkey eggs and a paraffin heater into a multi-million pound business reminds us that achievement isn't really about exams and degrees and chartered status. It's about hard work, initiative, creativity and probably more hard work on top of that (which perhaps explains my relative lack of success). Plus flexibility:

Refusing to give in, he tried again – on a much grander scale. In 1955, backed by a £2,500 loan, he bought Great Witchingham Hall, a dilapidated 80-roomed Elizabethan manor outside Norwich which had once been the home of John Norris, man of letters. Matthews reckoned that, at 5p a square foot, it was considerably cheaper than the 30p a square foot he would have to invest to build his own turkey sheds.

Apart from the bedroom in which he and his wife Joyce lived, he turned the house over to turkeys, hatching them in the living room, rearing them in the bedrooms and slaughtering them in the kitchens.

So when we're thinking about student loans (£2,500 was a load of money in 1950 and Bernard paid it back without a quibble and without protection or discount) and the end of jobs for life in the public sector let's spare a thought for the Bernard Matthews of this world. For without their ideas, creativity and hard work we'd still be a poor country. It is enterprising people like Bernard Matthews that lie behind all the good things we have (as well as turkey twizzlers).

We should celebrate them more.

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