The Archbishop and Wonga

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Image representing Wonga as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase
Have to say I was initially chuffed to see the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby laying down a challenge to Wonga and others of their ilk. The AoC communicated that he wanted to see the payday loan industry driven out of business by promoting the use of credit unions.

The payday loan industry is involved in outright usury which is condemned by many faiths such as Islam and Christianity and others. Usury we can look upon as the lending of money at exorbitant rates of interest.

But then I thought what was the AoC actually saying? He wanted to replace excessive usury with not so excessive usury. Is that what we should be aiming for? Plus the architects of our current austerity are backing the AoC!

I would love to see all of the credit industry driven out of business but it will only be done by paying workers a decent wage, sharing in the profit of their labour and making capitalism history.

At the end of the day this sort of initiative is just a sideshow, the real work to get a free and just society and world remains.

Pay a living and just wage so people don't have to borrow.

Authored by Chris Hall

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Comments

  1. Steve Hayes29 July 2013 at 09:26

    Even on a living wage it is very hard for most people to buy their own homes for cash. That is why I liked building societies, and was sorry to see them bamboozling their members to go commercial during the free enterprise craze of the 1980s. The Archbishop proposes credit unions, which are a variation on the same idea, and I say bully for him. BTW try using the #socialism #hashtag on Twitter, it sometimes produces interesting retweets.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris Hall29 July 2013 at 10:33

    I remember well the carrot of a cash payout for members to vote yes for building societies to transfer to banks. I voted no with my building society which is still a building society so missed out on the dollars.

    However, what difference to the man in the street is there twixt a building society and a bank? Nothing as far as I can see.

    Will try the #socialism tag and see if anything happens other than @redscarebot appearing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Steve Hayes1 September 2013 at 22:26

    The difference between a building society and a bank was that you could buy shares in a building society, and it was owned by its members. Banks are owned by outside shareholders. Also, banks have huge charges, building societies had none. The dollars you missed out on were your own money.

    ReplyDelete

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