Voices, Mental Health Practice, November 2007:

This is the article I submitted to Mental Health Practice on Friday, 28th September 2007. The next day we all read the news about Mrs Beryl Brazier. This must not be allowed to happen again. Ever.

I’ve been given a book to write.
For a time, we lost control of our finances.
So creditors ‘passed us’ to Debt Collection Agencies, and their ‘communications’ with us will form the body of the story.

There will be heroes and villains. Double-dealing, duplicitous companies.
Misinformation, misrepresentation, a swamp of alligators and assorted miscellaneous rats, slugs, and subterranean mud suckers.

Sounds a bit crazy, doesn’t it? Surely life’s not like that?
The prescribed ideal would be that I wake from a harrowing dream, to discover that Dorothy hadn’t left Kansas after all. Because otherwise…
Am I paranoid? Is this a ‘conspiracy theory’?
No. Neither. And as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

Banks form an elite, operating above and behind us, making deals as impossible to understand as the stars in the night sky.
In all other walks of life, ‘credit’ is an affirmation. In banking, ‘credit’ is debt.
Banks sell products. Former ‘Friendly Societies’ are filled with rottweilers. Former ‘Mutual Trusts’ are no longer mutual, and there is nothing to trust.
Banks are now filled with salesmen, keen for people to buy products, equally keen to drop customers who fall behind. Drop them like hot potatoes, sacks from a hot air balloon.

‘Agencies’ buy debt, like lucky bags at the corner shop. They’re worth very little, although they cost much more to you. To a Debt Collector, they’re Santa Bags from Never-Never Land.
What these Agencies want, above all, is a pliable, unquestioning customer. One who is at the very edge of reason, deeply distressed, anxious, sleepless, out of their minds with worry, convinced they are worthless, deeply ashamed of their debts. Then they only need a small push.
The Law’s an interesting thing. We wouldn’t have known without seeing it ourselves, that there are people in offices working to produce letters inferring the most appalling consequences should you fail to comply in any way they deem acceptable. Truth is malleable, apparently.

We have been given an insight into the underbelly of the financial world. It’s a ‘tricksy’ place, as Gollum might say, fuelled by hostility and greed, spite, invective, harassment and naked aggression. A war of attrition, fought by ‘breaking down’ the victim. And the true savagery is saved not for people like us, but for those who are least able to defend themselves. Pensioners, living alone. Single parents, the disabled, the mentally ill.

You must understand that there are malefactors in the financial community who will treat a person as less than human. Somehow they convince themselves that their actions are morally just. They are not.
They dehumanise first, then they intimidate. They claim to work best on the phone. This is because they bully and threaten more easily that way. They seek reactions from their victims – some even laugh down the phone at people in tears. Their calls never stop.
These Agencies pride themselves in overtly legitimate presentation, but covertly destroy human lives. Their aim is to devalue and demean. Close to suicide from their harassment? Job done. Time to cash cheques on their bullying, and quite possibly your sanity.

Most ordinary members of society tend to want to trust. But half-truths and inferences are used to hurt vulnerable people. And one other miserable truth works amongst us: that some people like to abuse trust.
Decency is something they remove at the office doors. Compassion can be ‘used’ to achieve their goals.
But it’s a cold compassion, like the wind on a bare mountain.

Society, now more than ever, has several tiers. And there is another level below poverty. Oblique poverty, hiding behind skewed statistics.
Be aware of it. Understand the depth of distress it causes. Never underestimate its power. Depression wears a dark cloak. It often walks disguised. Debt is one of society’s darkest secrets. It holds the hand of illness. ‘Credit’ – in its base financial form – is a broken crutch, simultaneously appeasing and causing terrible despair.
You are whiskers away from knowing it yourself.
This isn’t fiction. It isn’t fantasy. It isn’t mental illness. It is the flipside of life. sold on credit. And it is very, very real.
***

Alison Anthony