How are you paying for Christmas this year?

I wish I could top your glass up, Duncan: it always seems to be half-empty. Have a great time.

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duncan lucas says:
I keep fighting for it even at this time of the year.
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DL
I think that YOUR glass is not, and never will be, ‘Half’ anything.
This contribution tells me that your Pint Pot is FULL to overflowing with the Best Brew of Human Kindness and Care.
Not just for this one day of the year – but every second of every day of every year.
LONG may it be so!
.

Definitely a conspiracy. Brave choice of festive family fun, though.

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Duncan. If you are as far north as makes it near dark or dark by afternoon then you are a little further up than I am. Given that you worked to British Telecom may you have traveled to the Islands during your duties and if so might you have been in the Polachar maybe 5 or little more years back.

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No I dont live there but spent time there working and whilst there I met a couple of gents who were BT workers but they were near retiring age. Barren place especially South Uist. No if I were moving I’d move the the North. Near anywhere up the East coast above the Black Isle or the far north

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A lot of Christmas food and drink spending probably carries the family through much of January or even the whole year in terms of liquor. Certainly we stock up before Christmas and hardly do any grocery shopping for the next two or three weeks other than for fresh produce.

In previous years we have left some drinks and foodstuffs in crates in the garage or outside the back door relying on the general low temperature to keep it cool or chilled, but with overnight temperatures at seven or eight degrees or more and daytime temperatures in the mid teens this Winter, this doesn’t work so there is more demand on the fridge and freezer.

I would like to see gambling adverts banned. The only winners are the gambling companies. You are quite right about the lure of easy money – but who actually gets that easy money? Do you know anyone? The problem is, how do you protect people from themselves? How much should we be responsible for our own actions – financial and otherwise – and if we are not to take responsibility then who should?

Education about the losses that gambling will incur, the actual amount of money you will repay when taking out a legalised shark company’s loan, could and should be made clear, but will many people take, or want to take, any notice?

Difficult questions, Malcolm. To the extent that people who ruin themselves and their loved ones due to gambling addiction usually end up as a cost to the overall community there is a case for more state-funded support and guidance. I have read so many articles in the local newspapers about people who allowed a gambling habit to overtake them and ended up stealing from their employer, or from their parish council for whom they were the clerk, or from a charity for whom they were the treasurer. They all got found out in the end but in most instances these cases were not about a consequence of or a reaction to poverty and being unable to put a meal on the table, they were about avarice. But the resort to gambling and punitive borrowing to fund day-to-day expenditure is in a different league and certainly needs psychological and supportive intervention as well as professional guidance on budget management. Loan sharking, as distinct from the legitimate but still dubious pay-day loans industry, is an evil form of exploitation with blackmail, menace, extortion and cruelty at its core. It preys on those who are totally bereft and leads them into crime and vice. It is underground and secretive with no records except the shark’s pocket book. Apparently there are possibly a quarter of a million people indebted to this form of loan shark in the UK. Incredibly given its appalling reputation, the term ‘loan shark’ has also attached itself to the licensed and high-visibility form of high-interest short term lending known usually as pay-day loans. This tends to discredit those operations [if that is possible] and to part-respectabilise the criminal form. While education is one approach, as you say – will many people take, or want to take, any notice? Even if you explained that somebody who routinely bets five pounds a week could do just as well – or at least no worse – if they saved up and bought 250 Premium Bonds since they would still have their stake available, they would say they wouldn’t enjoy it so much, they would have a much lower chance of the big jackpot, they would lose the impulsive thrill of the scratch-card or the race. Of course, they don’t actually need the big jackpot, just a few hundreds to get them out of a scrape perhaps, but the important part of the education process is about living within their means and this is where society does fail people through its commercial behaviour. I don’t have an answer for that and all further thoughts seem patronising.

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A lot of what is happening now is due to the swing of the pendulum. It was not so long ago that a form of dependency culture was allowed or encouraged to develop [according to one’s viewpoint] and there was little expectation in official circles that people would be self-motivated and find ways within their family and community of supporting themselves so the state would provide. Now we have an opposite attitude in certain sections of society that everybody regardless of circumstances should be able to stand on their own feet, and that they only have themselves to blame if they can’t, and therefore should not be a burden on the state. Getting the balance right is the tricky bit and, I am afraid to say, some rather base political, electorally-motivated, calculations on where best to allocate public welfare have come to the fore. I think the situation is not helped by the gross and conspicuous extravagance of the better-off which only sharpens the divide and intensifies the feelings of hardship and disadvantage. I have to say, however, taxing out that propensity to spend from the wealthier section of the community is not the way forward; I feel the answer lies in better moral and spiritual values as Duncan says. We seem to have thousands of charities, most with laudable aims but many duplicating or conflicting with each other, but very few seem to be doing the really hard work of tackling poverty and human misery and they don’t get the support they deserve. Our history and traditions mean that it will never be acceptable for the government to provide full relief so the role of the voluntary sector is vital. “Benevolence” and “mutuality” are not the right language for today but there must be some elements of those concepts that can be applied in a society that considers itself one of the world’s more caring examples.

A lot of the ‘pendulum’ effect is shamelessly fostered by the DFM and its ilk. I suspect press regulation might be a better course. Perhaps nominations for who should be publicly flogged – starting with tabloid editors…