It’s Buy Nothing Day this Saturday (25th November), but with £1,300,000,000,000 of consumer debt in the UK, it would appear that the zombies in the malls aren’t listening. And in the mad plunge to the tills that is Christmas, there’s plenty more stuff for us to buy with so called ‘interest free credit’ to help us get what we want straight away. All the talk of action to tackle climate change conveniently ignores the obvious solution: stop buying stuff! The churning out of all those consumer goodies is what’s killing the eco system. Air freighted broccoli; plastic-wrapped apples; solar powered wind chimes; patio heaters – is any of this stuff worth the price we’re paying?

Overdrafts, bank loans and credit cards are keeping the world economy bouncing along. The plasma telly might cost a grand, but if you chuck it on the plastic it’s yours right away (at no extra cost, of course). And how much unsolicited post have you thrown away (well, recycled) offering you instant access to consumerist heaven with an unsecured personal loan? Everyone from Tesco to the RAC is getting on in the act. And millions of families are using credit just to keep above the breadline.

Surrounded by multi-million pound advertising campaigns using the latest psychological gimmickry to persuade you to keep them cash registers ringing, no wonder so many people find themselves out of their depth. Personal lending is one of the few aspects of banks’ financial behaviour that isn’t rigorously controlled by law - instead it’s governed by a voluntary code of conduct. Banks and other loan sharks actively chase those with a history of not being able to handle their finances. Lower down the food chain some lending organisations trawl through court listings looking for those on the receiving end of county court judgements to make generous offers of the ‘turn all your little problems into one big problem’ variety.

The ‘Home Credit’ industry is booming and no wonder - it typically charges its unemployed borrowers interest rates of more than 400%! The main loan shark is Provident Personal Credit which is greedily pushing its way into recently de-regulated Eastern Europe.

Debt is a big, booming business, and those making the cash are the usual suspects based in London’s boardrooms. The ‘debt sale and purchase’ market in the UK has been mushrooming, as financial institutions buy up banks’ debts for a fraction of their value to then hassle the hell out of the debtors to pay up. Around £4.5billion worth of debt has been sold for a cut price £300million, and so far collectors have squeezed almost £500million out of people in debt. Nice little earner!

Apartheid profiteers Barclays are the real financial muscle behind companies like Cabot, which is hosting next week’s “debt collections conference.” Jointly organized with industry rag, ‘Credit Today’, the conference is a snip at 500 quid plus VAT (but don’t try sticking on yer card). Once you’ve been to the gripping workshop on ‘What every Debt Collections Manager wants for Christmas’’! you’ll no doubt be starving hungry for the evening meal (a networking bargain at £1,275). Meanwhile new powers for bailiffs to enter houses (see SchNEWS 565) will make ‘debt recovery’ that much easier and profits that much bigger.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The amount of consumer debt in the UK would be enough to buy you 236 years of food for the world’s starving children or keep the Iraq war going for 23 years. It could also buy you 4 billion of Ecotopia’s (www.ecotopia.co.uk) “panda friendly” bamboo flat screen computer monitors. Surely a better bet? Yep, they might look nice, but do you really need to replace your (albeit old fashioned) but perfectly working computer monitor and shove it’s remains into landfill?

Ethical consumption and Fairer Trade are increasingly been used to justify continued guilt-free consumption, so hey! why not stick those hemp trousers on your Greenpeace credit card?! But Fair Trade is becoming more about big business than small producers: “When Fair Trade roses came in,” says Paul Monaghan of the Co-operative Group, “Sainsbury’s got them first. We were all fighting over the roses!” Now, even Nestle is moving in on the Fair Trade game (see SchNEWS 515), animal testers L’Oreal have bought the Body Shop (see SchNEWS 542) and Bono Ltd launched ‘product RED’ this year (see SchNEWS 544). “It’s sugar coating on a bitter pill that can prevent us from focusing on the real issues” argues Indian activist Anuradha Mittal.

Sundays (thanks to the iron fist of organised religion) used to be a weekly buy nothing day, but now it’s much more a case of ‘what would Jesus buy?’ Reverend Billy from the Church of Stop Shopping has other ideas though, predicting a disastrous dash to the Shopocalypse if we don’t stop buying right now. Billy’s ‘Retail Interventions’ bring direct action to the shop front with sermons from the ‘Slow Down Your Consumption School of Divinity’, hitting big corporate brands like Starbucks and creating ‘Commercial Free Zones’ in city centres. You can read the Reverend’s sermons more fully at www.revbilly.com Billy’s also written a letter to Bono, asking him to ditch his RED card and start giving to, rather than profiting from, African poverty. Read more at www.dearbono.org There’s more info on UK based actions and related info at www.buynothingday.co.uk and you can find out more about Buy Nothing Christmas at www.adbusters.org

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

For the rest of this weeks issue including articles on G20 protests in Australia, loads of party and protest dates and more check out:  http://www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news570.htm