I recently completed a bankruptcy petition for a client who had around £40,000 credit card debt. She was solely dependent upon State Benefit and had been for some considerable time. Coming to the end of the petition, the debtor is, of course, required to give details of employment and the reasons for his/her inability to repay the debts. When I asked her if the credit had been accrued when she was in employment (as I naively presumed), she looked amazed and said of course not, she hadn’t worked since 1979. I would like to know why/how five credit card companies thought that Income Support and Disability Benefit could be stretched to service debts of £40,000. I readily admit that this lady should not have sought or accepted the funds. However, there are ALWAYS two sides to any issue.
I think it fair to say that if individuals ran businesses the way the senior bankers have run their organisations, we would be accused of wrongful trading, be wound up or bankrupted and banned from being directors of limited companies. Completely mis-manage a bank or building society, however, and you keep your job and are paid a massive bonus. Truly appalling and I firmly believe that we are now seeing less financial morality in individuals simply because the general public see how these so-called captains of industry have behaved and been rewarded.