Growth now fettered

I've just looked back and it was November last year when I blogged with a plea for sustainability to overtake the greed and unsustainable growth that the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, was championing.

Now the chickens have come very firmly home to roost. I'm not one of those who feel aggrieved that we, the tax payers, have to foot the bill for all the borrowing. I'm content that government has done what is necessary to stop confidence pouring out of the economy. The alternative was unthinkable, so I won't even contemplate it.

But now that we're once again on an even keel - well, I hope we are - we shouldn't be talking about economics in terms of where we were because where we were was a very dangerous precipice. We need to be considering our future from a position well back from the edge of that particular cliff.

The middle classes, who will no doubt gripe about the reduction in their foreign holidays and the cost of taxing their cars, are not really hard up. They don't really have a clue what it's like counting the pennies - they have only ever counted tenners. The pensioners, God bless them, who spent their teens during WWII, will no doubt make do and mend, as they did then and consequently fare much better than those of use who have lived in more fortunate times.

Then there's a whole load of people who will have to come to terms, for the first time in their life, that when they want something they cannot necessarily just go out and buy it. They are going to have to start living within their means, taking some account of the value of their existing possessions. They will not be able to buy a new three piece suite for Christmas with payment deferred into eternity on a buy now, regret at leisure scheme. And thank goodness for it.

I long for the day when the whole high street is full of charity and used goods shops, and when builders take back to a builders' merchant all the excess that's left on site on the completion of a job. I actually want to have to meet my neighbours and enjoy their company rather than sit in my own house watching yet more TV. I want to live frugally and in harmony with the planet.

We've had a near miss with the banking crisis so please, let's learn some lessons. Let's have some real clear leadership on those matters that are of real importance and let's face up to the fact that our good fortune comes at a price for the planet and we squander it at our peril. Otherwise our next brush with disaster may be terminal and irreversible.

Everlasting cheque clearance

I had the misfortune recently to take an action in the small claims court against someone who owed me a significant amount of money. By a chance of fate – into which I won’t go here – the action is already complicated, having been lodged in one court, then transferred to one halfway across the country, and now probably residing halfway between that court and yet another.

My delight at having received a cheque for the full amount owing, was tinged with caution. I didn’t want to call off the case too early in case the cheque were to bounce. I waited the four working day period after paying it into the NatWest. Because of the Christmas break I was advised to give it a little longer “in case of postal delays”. So I have given it 10 working days – but still the bank refuses to give me a guarantee that the money is irrefutably mine. In other words, at any time in the future, should the debtor’s cheque be returned unpaid, my account could be debited the amount.

What about all those lost letters, the ones that people said they've sent and never arrive, the tales of correspondence that turns up weeks, months - sometimes even years - later? Mistakes happen (we've heard a great deal things getting lost recently). What happens I wonder when returned cheques from ages of yore manifest themselves in rediscovered banking postal bags?

There appears to be no specific time after which a cheque is “safe”. I should have paid it in as a “special”. What’s a “special” I hear you ask? Well a “special” clearance is a service that would have cost me £15, paid to my bank the NatWest, but which would have guaranteed that the cheque had been “cleared”.

We live and learn. What I’ve learnt from this episode is that the cheque clearance system appears still to be dependent upon the banking postal service. Here’s to the digital age – may it not be too long in arriving at UK banks.