The recession has left many victims in its wake. The collapse in the housing market has affected a lot of people that considered the equity in their property to be as safe as houses. The increase in unemployment has left hundreds of thousands jobless, and in some cases in severe financial difficulty. There are record levels of personal debt in the UK, where the total is now more than £1.4 trillion. The number of UK consumers with unaffordable unsecured loans, and out of control credit card debt, has never been higher.
As a debt management company, we specialise in helping consumers that have become overcommitted. We are contacted by hundreds of distressed people, every week, that are falling behind with their bills and that are in desperate need of sound debt advice. Since the onset of the recession, we have arranged more debt management plans and Individual Voluntary Arrangements – IVA – than in previous years. The debt problems, that our clients are living with, are real. They can cause unimaginable stress, sleepless nights and even the breakdown of a relationship.
The average debt for our clients is around £30,000, which is apparently the amount of money that an MP spent on his garden. Yes, that’s right, his garden – including £1,645 on a duck island for his pond. It is not hard to see why the general public has now lost faith in its politicians, when they can throw away so much money on something so trivial. For a client of ours, that is struggling to feed their family or keep a roof over their head, to see £1,645 of taxpayers money being spent on a duck island is sickening.
Since we’ve paid for it, I suppose Duck Island now belongs to us. So perhaps we can all go and live there and escape the recession, and leave our debt problems behind us.
No. Oh well, it was just a thought.