2:24pm Friday 5th February 2010
SPECTATOR was one of those left holding worthless shares in Northern Rock, thankfully only a handful, at the moment the bank and the world’s economy went belly up.
So his blood boiled over when he received a press release last week from the Northern Rock Foundation, which distributes a portion of the profits of the taxpayerowned bank to good causes.
To be fair to the Foundation, they are utterly independent and are doing a good job in trying times. But their latest grant will pay for 15 Citizens’ Advice Bureau debt counsellors, offering advice to the growing number of people left struggling by the recession.
No matter how bad their debt gets, it is likely to pale into insignificance next to the £100bn of debt that Northern Rock found itself in.
That debt, it would seem, was partly down to its own reckless lending – recklessness which played a part in its own downfall and brought the entire banking system to the brink of collapse, and provoked the recession.
As if the irony of that was not enough – the Foundation has chosen to name its new programme of help for people in debt Managing Money.
Perhaps if the advice had been handed out a little closer to home we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in now.
DURING all the fuss about abolishing Durham City Council, many claims and counter-claims were made about the remoteness of the new unitary authority.
It hardly counts as evidence one way of the other, but twice in the past week Spectator received press releases from County Hall referring to events in Usher Moor.
Perhaps council staff should know better, but just days later a press notice arrived from Police HQ, just across the grass in Aykley Heads, informing reporters of a burglary at Ushaw Moor, Consett.
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