Incessant phone calls. Nonstop worrying leading to chronic anxiety and shame, and ultimately, for one man
A debt-ridden father doused himself in petrol and turned himself into a human fireball after being harassed for money by payday loan firms.
A good samaritan tried and failed to save his life, seriously burning himself in the process. The man, a Mr. Tunnah, later said
I asked him what had happened and he said, "I've had enough. I'm in debt and poured petrol over myself."
A terrible tragedy. So what did the loan firms that he had owed money to do?
The inquest in Bolton heard that loan firms then wrote to his father asking for his debts to be repaid.
Corporations are not people, my friend. Not in the United States, and not in the United Kingdom, where this particular horror story took place. People try to save other people who are attempting to commit suicide. Corporations send letters to grieving relatives demanding pounds - not of flesh,, perhaps - but of equal horridness.
According to a Daily Mail insert accompanying the story, loan companies are as bad or worse in the United Kingdom as they are in the United States.
The death of Antony Breeze comes at a time of intense criticism of the payday loans industry.
The OFT said that it is also currently investigating three more payday loans firms for bad business practices and they too could be shut down.
Last month the consumer body sent letters to 50 leading payday lenders asking them to take immediate action to overhaul their businesses. The OFT accused firms of failing to conduct adequate assessments to see if applicants can afford loans, failing to explain how payments will be collected, aggressive debt collection techniques and not treating borrowers with sensitivity and patience.
The Citizens Advice Bureau has also accused lenders of pushing people into debt by failing to check that borrowers can afford to repay loan.
I just read Matt Taibbi's article
"Everything is Rigged." And it is. From the smallest pay day lenders and collection agencies squeezing you to pay up, to the biggest banks fucking over interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars so that we all pay a little more and a few make billions, it's rotten to the the core.
And the sad truth is that it's going to remain rotten, regardless of how many Antony Breeze's are casualties, because that's the way the financial industry likes it.