The Political Thread

[The Legendary Shark]

...owe about 280K on the mortgage, plus have 5-figure personal debt inherited from my failed business and absolutely no savings,  negotiating  the least bad way/stage to declare personal bankruptcy, our only 'asset' is the wife's job which we would obviously lose after a move.

Beat the Banks, Credit Cards and the Debt Collectors totally Lawfully and Get out of Debt for Free...

[Professor Bear]

What's the actual monetary value of an asset that you can't monetise?

This is why we invented insurance fraud: suddenly that imaginary value becomes cold hard cash.  As long as your insurance provider doesn't try to act the gipe, obviously, but that's why you earmark a few grand for a local kneebreaker to make sure your adjuster is enthusiastic to see you get your payout.
Alternatively, rent the house to illegal immigrants with factory jobs.  They're usually family men not keen to be deported back to a shithole like Portugal or wherever, so they know to keep their head down and the chances of their turning your house into a brothel are much lower than you might expect.
I might have suggested pimping once upon a time, but drugs have ruined that for most honest people.  Fucking economy.

[The Legendary Shark]

Seriously, visit www.getoutofdebtfree.org  -  you're not as powerless as you think.

For example, ask your bank if you can see the original mortgage papers you signed. There is a strong chance that they sold those papers in some complicated internal money making scheme and, if they have done this, then your debt has been sold and legally discharged leaving you owing nothing.

Same when a debt collector turns up at your door (or more likely telephones or writes to you) - they have in all probability purchased that debt from the original creditor - essentially discharging your debt and your obligation to pay it. The Golden Rule for debt collectors is to treat them like vampires - they can't enter your home unless you invite them in, which they'll try to trick you into doing. Also, agree to nothing - all they have to back up their speculative claims is empty threats.

[Professor Bear]

I am serious.  Profiting from crime is not just for the upper classes.

[TordelBack]

Seriously, visit www.getoutofdebtfree.org  -  you're not as powerless as you think.

Aye, it's a route I've actively looked at, possibly even on the strength of your previous advice.  My former leech business partner is apparently trying it (despite having several houses and boats and given to renting villas in Venice for a month, and suchlike), and if he pulled it off I'd be stuck with the full company debt (I should tell you the true story of how that debt doesn't actually exist, but somehow we still owe it, it'd be right up your street!).  However, I ran the specifics of their programme by my solicitor (an old family friend and all-round daecent skin) and he laughed until I was sick.  That said, nothing ventured...

I'm an old hand at dealing with debt collectors and sheriffs, unfortunately, as for the last year-or-so of the company's active run that was basically my life, morning, noon and night.  The level of paper-thin faux-thuggery and implicit threat employed is almost funny. 

TBH, the core problem is that I am basically unwilling to walk away from my debts, and while some of them exist solely as an accounting fiction, some are to actual people, and all were incurred due to my own failings as a manager.  Prolonged reflection has revealed that my primary responsibility is to my family, overriding my responsibility to my own ideas of morality, but it doesn't stop me wishing it was different

Anyway, this is now far from political.

...the chances of their turning your house into a brothel are much lower than you might expect.

Not so, we had a brothel run out of the house just across the road on exactly this basis, so one imagines there's even an unserviced demand in the locality.  The missus doesn't look too bad in a dim light, might be worth a shot.

[maryanddavid]

primary responsibility is to my family

This.

[Trout]

primary responsibility is to my family

This.

Yes, that. Stay focused on the good things, mate. Best wishes to you from us all.

[TordelBack]

primary responsibility is to my family

This.

Yes, that. Stay focused on the good things, mate. Best wishes to you from us all.

Bah, no need for any good wishes*, I'm not really complaining beyond observing the abstract shape of how these debt things work, I'm living a very good life at the moment, in many ways much better than the one I had before when I was a 60-80 hour type - spending proper time with the kids while they're still young enough to appreciate it and seeing more of my parents while they're still around, finally getting a handle on decent cooking, sl-o-o-o-wly working through my enormous backlog of reports, articles and archiving by night, keeping my hand in with the odd tiny job when I can get it and endlessly applying for big ones: a true gentleman of leisure, and not feeling too guilty about it since they stopped paying me jobseekers, and since my wife started enjoying her job again.  If I can only stop feeling terrible about the past and fearful of the future, all would be well, as the present is grand.

And nothing lasts, so I plan to enjoy it even as I scheme a way out of it.



*Although appreciated nonetheless.

[The Legendary Shark]

Ah, you're a grand man, Tordels, and I have every confidence in you and your future.

[Professor Bear]

You have best wishes regardless, TB.  My brother in law is in much the same boat as yourself, it seems, though his ex business partner gave up on surreptitiousness and instead one day landed in the floundering office he'd bled dry and then buggered off from taking all the cash with him (and then set up an identical business right across the street from the BiL's) with a solicitor in tow asking BiL to sign a document accepting all his partner's debts so he could "apply for loans".  I am convinced he thought that his sheer balls in asking was the reason he'd get what he wanted, never mind out of the building alive.

There are plenty of crime-related solutions to financial woes even if you're not keen on drugs, pimping or selling babies - thanks to a well-fucked tax system, diesel runs across the border are practically a public service.  Alternatively, apply for EU grants, as there are art grants on the go so you could conceivably apply for one by claiming to do an arty graphic novel about archeology or other boffiny heritage stuff.  A mate got a grant to do a graphic novel about the history of my home town and ended up just turning in a bunch of landscape paintings and paid another mate a few hundred quid to write poems for each one.
Just think, TB, you could have the distinction of being the only unemployed person in Ireland to claim to be an artist.

[MercZ]

I didn't want to clog up the RIP thread with this, and I wasn't sure if I should make a new thread about it. I figure here is as good as any place to do it.

When I woke up yesterday, my phone was clogged with updates from my different news sources about the Connecticut school shooting. It was rather sad to wake up to, worse to see how the toll went up and up as it often happens. It's been a rather bad year as far as shootings go in the United States, just off the top my head,

-Oregon mall shooting
-Oikos University shooting
-Workplace shooting in Minnesota
-Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting
-Seattle Cafe shooting
-Aurora movie theater shooting

Those are the ones that come from the top of my head. I don't know about coverage outside of the US but here it's of course been filling up airwaves. I think the whole of today it's been completely focused on the event, as well as yesterday. Knowing the media this'll probably continue into most of next week too as more information comes out about the shooter and they go onto why he did it. Was it a personal problem? Were the weapons too easy to access? Some psychological/mental illness? Or some sort of unknown factors? It's rather difficult in cases like this, because while they can identify patterns, it's impractical to construct a 'profile' to analyze this better.

There's always the bit about having a conversation about these shootings, why the happened. Access to weapons, social problems, psychological issues, etc etc but they rarely stick around. People find something else to focus on. Just looking at my neighbors there'll not be much of a stomach to try and get changes. Gun control especially is such a third rail that people don't talk about it, especially politicians because it's not good for image. There's been some calls though they should push for the renewal of the assault rifle ban that lapsed back in 2004. Others have been talking about ways to overhaul school "security" and ways to keep people out.

Still, I don't think there's a surefire solution to all this. I think the impact of this particular shooting was more due to the age of the children, I don't recall this kind of vibe even after the Virginia Tech shootings. People felt bad after the Norway shootings here too, though since it didn't happen in the United States it of course didn't prompt any discussions on these problems.

[Modern Panther]

Its certainly been big news on this side of the water.  News channels here seem to be in the slightly odd position of not just reporting on the event, but reporting on the coverage of the event by US media, who seem to go into overdrive following a tragedy like this.

Watching CNN interview a child shortly after the fact was incredibly disturbing.  Why any journalist would think it appropriate to point a camera at a seven year old and ask her if she was scared is completely beyond me.

[MercZ]

The media reaction to events generally take this direction. Farming and digging for what ever thing to broadcast or publish online, no matter how pointless or insensitive it might be. The big problem here though is with the way news spreads now, the rush to be the first with some tidbit of information is even more pronounced.

For most people I think this was evident with the way many media outlets released the name of the shooter as "Ryan Lanza", the brother of the shooter, before the police did so themselves. This, of course, illicited the expected response on the internet and caused a great deal of mess for him. There was a good summary of this written by a political cartoon guy who happened to be facebook friends with this guy (presumambly a fan of his work).

http://www.mattbors.com/blog/2012/12/16/i-am-facebook-friends-with-ryan-lanza-which-became-a-problem/

Problem is, as far as I see it, media do this to farm for page hits, ratings, what ever. And that's driven by people watching and browsing, so they're merely farming to this kind of person (intersecting with those that view the moral outrage-type sensational articles...).

As these things often go though, it'll be beat over for a week or so until another big event comes up, and people move on to stressing out over that. So even with all these statements that come up a discussion or dialog needs to start, people have lost their interest.

[Ancient Otter]

Adrian Bamforth posted in the RIP thread how irksome facebook activism can be even when he agrees with the cause. This got me thinking about a recent incident in China, where a man went on a stabbing spree in a school, 22 children injured, none killed (China has had a rash of stabbing sprees in recent years). People are looking at this, saying this is an example of how a tragedy like what recently happened in America can be prevented with tighter gun control. 22 children got stabbed, two seriously injured and that's just physical injury, don't think they should be using this as a example.

[blackmocco]

They weren't shot in the head by an assault rifle, is the point. Very clear to me what the point of the comparison is.