Things could get worse

While we have to face the unpalatable and sickening profits and bonuses being accepted by energy, fuel, food and, of course, our supporting financial arm, banks, there is a stark reality that the absolute mess this country is in could actually become worse.

Greed and profiteering are already major factors of a worsening situation that has sailed off the backs of Brexit, Covid and the war in Ukraine.

Those who could barely afford to live before all of this face an abyss of uncertainty. Those of us who thought we could afford to live now cannot. We can now take warmth from the fact that the number of homes being repossessed and homeowners in arrears jumped in the first quarter of this year, with a whopping 50% increase in the number of homeowner mortgaged properties being repossessed, compared with previous months. Banks trade very similarly to HMRC.

‘We want the money, in full now,’ is the popular demand. All those homeowners who have been repossessed, and are going to be repossessed, are now going to live where?

As well as their homes, will they lose their jobs as well? Does the problem, therefore, become much worse?

For years (at least the past 10) I have lobbied the government about a ‘halfway house’ for HMRC where accountants, not HMRC Officers, decide whether businesses can afford time-to-pay agreements and continue to trade (as long as there is no criminal activity) because, when you close a business you affect many, many more people, just in the same way if you repossess a house.

Why can’t the banks re-negotiate the mortgage,

extend it further to keep the payments the same, check all viable options before just grabbing at assets and destroying whole families?

Every single possible avenue should be explored by all parties before these actions are taken because, for many, there is no recovery.

This country, probably like most, runs purely on money and power and the farcical ‘in it together’ just needs to be erased from our vocabulary forever, because it doesn’t actually exist.

Dean Kimber

North Shore, Hayling Island