Bailiffs and debt: the big rip-off

Lorne Spicer's excellent TV series Beat The Bailiffs (daytime, BBC1) has highlighted a legal rip-off that is making the plight of people in serious debt immeasurably and unnecessarily worse.

It is a scandal and an approach reminiscent of the days of workhouses and prison treadmills, rather than the early years of the 21st Century.

As a journalist and consumer campaigner, I thought it an issue that The Times might consider to be worth a letter, but it never saw the light of day.

Here then, for anyone who is interested, is why I believe the system is unfair, outdated, and an infringement of individuals' human rights.

Sir,

Is the Lord Chancellor aware that he is presiding over a rip-off?

I refer to the seizure of debtors' goods by bailiffs and the sale of those goods at public auction for a tiny fraction of their actual worth.

While some debtors may be feckless and have only themselves to blame, surely it is unjust to seize their goods and sell them using a method that ensures such unrealistically low returns that once the bailiffs and the auctioneer have deducted their fees, the debtors can end up oweing more than they did before being deprived of their goods?

For example, bailiffs might seize goods that the debtor paid £6,000 for. The auctioneer only sells them for £600. The auctioneer's and the bailiff's fees come to £750, so the debtor now owes £150 more than he did before the seizure, and has seen his goods sold for peanuts.

Apart from the bailiff and the auctioneer who have pocketed their fees, who else benefits from the seizure and sale? Certainly not the creditors, who now have even less chance of being repaid.

This is nothing short of a rip-off, as the system itself is benefitting at the expense of both the debtor and the creditors by forcing a seizure and sale that will inevitably make the situation worse.

Perhaps the Lord Chancellor might wish to consider banning seizures of goods where a sale would increase
the debt owed, and offering debtors a fixed period of, say, a month, in which to sell the goods themselves.

Feckless as they might hitherto have been, most debtors would be able to raise much more for their goods by selling them on eBay, through a small ad in the local paper, or to friends, colleagues or relations.

They would still lose the goods, but at least the creditors would have a greater chance of recovering the money than they do at present by leaving it to "the professionals".

Yours solvently

Jon McKnight

If the Lord Chancellor or anyone involved in imposing this system would like a right of reply, please e-mail me and I'll be only too happy to publish it.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

No need for the Congestion Charge

Had the Times had the foresight to print my suggestion in a letter to the editor in 1999, Londoners might have been spared the Congestion Charge.

3 October 1999

Sir,

If all the car drivers who clog London were to swap their vehicles for a Mercedes-Benz Smart car which, at 98.5 inches long, takes up less than half the road space needed for most conventional models, the capital’s traffic jams would be reduced by 50 per cent at a stroke.

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

A Royal first?

I'd wondered for many years what would happen if the Queen Mother made it to her 100th birthday, but The Times didn't, for some reason, wish to share in the speculation. This letter never appeared.

11 May 1999

Sir,

If the Queen Mother reaches her hundredth birthday, will she receive a telegram from her daughter?

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Killer Queen

The Queen, fortunately, does not take after so many of her ancestors - including Henry VIII - who despatched their enemies with a bloodthirsty decree or a cry of "Off with her head!".

Instead, the Queen (so far as we know) confines her killing to smaller creatures less likely to cause a constitutional crisis if her part in their demise becomes known.

Perhaps through fear of losing their chance of a knighthood, rather than their heads, the editors who deal with the Letters page on The Times declined to use the following.

19 November 2000

Sir,

One hopes that the Queen’s actions in wringing the neck of a game-bird at Sandringham do not lead to a pheasants’ revolt.

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

No-one p-p-p-picked up on this

Ever since the Falklands War, rumours had persisted that penguins were so fascinated by RAF jets flying overhead that they stared at them until they eventually lost their balance and toppled over backwards, much to the merriment of pilots.

I saw no evidence of this during my visit to the Falklands in 1985 (having made sure it was safe to go there first, of course).

But years later, the Goverment funded a scientific study to determine, once and for all, whether the phenomenon existed.

The Times didn't see fit to publish my contribution to the debate.

2 February 2001

Sir,

Have the scientists who insist that penguins do not topple over while watching RAF jets flying above them in the Falklands excluded the possibility that the pilot’s claims were true but that the novelty has worn off so that even penguins now regard one jet as very much like another and hardly worth swooning over?

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Topical for a spell

Dispirited by the number of people who seemed unable to spell the name of the occasion they were celebrating in the lead-up to the year 2000, I wrote the following letter to The Times. It never saw the light of day.

2 May 1999

Sir,

Some people will never be able to spell “Millennium” in a thousand years.

Jon McKnight

Incidentally, I spent the dawning moments of the Millennium in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and flew back to the UK the following day.

My flight was diverted to Bristol instead of London and my domestic flight back to Plymouth was replaced by a rather less glamorous drive in a people-carrier.

I complained to BA and assured them I would never, ever, travel with them on a Millennium again.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Just a minute, Mr Parsons...

As an avid listener to Radio 4's Just A Minute, in which panelists attempt to speak for one minute on a given subject without hesitation, deviation or repetition, I was delighted to hear a remarkable lapse by the host.

The Times, to which I wrote the following letter, clearly didn't share my delight.

24 January 1999

Sir,

I have just heard the host of Radio 4’s Just A Minute introduce the new series with the phrase: “My name is… um… Nicholas Parsons.” Hesitation, I’d say.

Jon McKnight

I did bump into Nicholas Parsons at the 2002 TV Moments awards show at BBC Television Centre and tried to tackle him about this, but he couldn't spare me a minute to talk on the subject, unfortunately.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Foot-and-mouth

As if poor sheep didn't have enough to worry about during the recent foot-and-mouth outbreak, someone in officialdom came up with the bright idea of setting hunstmen on to them.

The Times didn't print the following letter.

28 March 2001

Sir,

I trust that whoever invited huntsmen to participate in the mass slaughter of sheep in Cumbria has checked that they do not intend to chase the poor little things round the airfield before encouraging a pack of dogs to rip them apart while still alive.

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

The first cuckoo?

The Times newspaper is famous for many things (apart from printing so few of my letters). One of those things is the tradition of readers writing to the editor claiming that they have heard the first cuckoo of Spring.

However, my attempt to start a new tradition ended up in the waste-bin instead of the Letters page.

22 April 2001

Sir,

I have just heard the first cuckoo of Spring, albeit in the omnibus edition of The Archers. Does this count?

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Is Elvis alive on Amazon?

Large sections of the world's population refuse to believe that Elvis is dead. As for me, I tend to believe it, because Reggie Bosanquet told us so on News At Ten.

But I'm surprised that The Times didn't bite when I offered them a letter suggesting evidence to the contrary.

16 May 2001

Sir,

Those who would have us believe that Elvis Presley is still alive, though keeping a somewhat lower profile than he used to, can only be helped in their self-delusion by an invitation on the website of the music retailer Amazon.co.uk.

Underneath a series of customers’ reviews of his work is the following option: “I am the Artist, and I want to comment on my recording.”

Similar invitations appear for other dead artists, including Kirsty MacColl, who contributed to the rumours herself with her song “There’s a guy works down our chip shop swears he’s Elvis”.

I trust Amazon will inform the world should the bona fides of anyone pressing the “I am the Artist” button on Mr Presley’s page turn out to be genuine.

Jon McKnight

Perhaps The Times knows something that we don't...

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

A capital offence?

E E Cummings, the poet and shunner of capital letters, would have loved these days of lowercase e-mail addresses and text messages.

Perhaps he still has sympathisers on The Times, which declined to print the following letter:

9 August 1999

Sir,

If I ruled the world, I would make the persistent and ignorant use of lower-case letters in lieu of majuscules, as highlighted by Tim Reid (August 7), a capital offence.

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Killers' privilege

The Times failed to print this letter, though I felt it raised a point that needed debate.

22 June 2001

Sir,

The Home Secretary’s decision to supply the killers of James Bulger with new identities, including new birth certificates, is all the more remarkable because of the Government’s refusal to extend the same facility to those who have undergone a sex change and want their birth certificates to reflect their new gender.

While totally content with the gender I was allocated at birth, I do feel some sympathy for those who have undergone the most unthinkable medical processes in order to become the man or woman they always felt they should have been.

How galling it must be for them to be told that they cannot have their birth certificates altered for any reason at all, yet, had they decided to do unspeakable things to a toddler instead of living law-abiding lives, the Home Office would be more than happy to oblige.

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

How old, Mr Rowson?

We can only speculate on why The Times didn't print this letter.

16 March 2001

Sir,

Does Martin Rowson think his readers were born yesterday? In his otherwise splendid article about cartoonists (Media, 16 March) he initially mentions his 40th birthday “a couple of years ago”, then refers to the suicide of Vicky “in 1966, seven days after my 70th birthday”. If the latter is correct, Mr Rowson is surely Britain’s oldest working cartoonist and must have cost the Queen a small fortune already in birthday greetings.

Jon McKnight

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

A question of freedom

The Times no doubt had its reasons for not printing this letter, written at a time when Myra Hindley was bleating on about wanting to be freed - a wish that a reaper, greater than her, eventually denied her.

16 December 1994

Sir,

Myra Hindley’s frustration at the Home Secretary’s refusal to free her is shared by relatives of her victims and many other seekers of justice who would like nothing better than the opportunity to meet her outside the protective custody she is so anxious to leave behind.

Therefore, the Home Secretary might make millions of people happy (and save the considerable cost to taxpayers of cooping the murderer up for the rest of her life) by the simple expedient of announcing that Myra Hindley will be freed, say, at half-past three next Friday afternoon at the gates of such-and-such a prison.

Yours sincerely

Jon McKnight

I sent several versions of this sentiment, each time she made a fuss about being released, but The Times failed to use any of them.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Postman Prat

Another letter to The Times that The Times wouldn't print....

12 July 2002

Sir,

I'm e-mailing you this letter rather than posting it, for reasons that will become obvious.

The Royal Mail, with no consultation at all, has just informed me that I am part of a pilot scheme and will no longer receive my mail first thing in the morning.

It will now turn up around midday, though it might even arrive as late as 3pm if they're having a tough day.

As if this were not outrageous enough, I'm told I can carry on having my traditional early morning deliveries if I agree to pay the Royal Mail a mere £62.50 a month for what is now, apparently, the privilege.

The cheek of it is simply breathtaking - a con-trick of almost admirable proportions.

For a start, I am not clairvoyant; therefore, I have no idea how much mail - if any at all - people might decide to send me. What if I pay the £62.50 a month and no-one sends me any mail, apart from double-glazing firms?

Secondly (and I trust I'm not the only person to notice this), the Royal Mail is attempting to be paid twice - and handsomely - for doing a single job.

People have never had to pay to receive their mail before because the Royal Mail had a policy of charging the person who posted the mail, via an old-fashioned device called a postage stamp.

Now they want to charge once for posting it, then again for receiving it!

If the Royal Mail is as hard up as it seems, then it should increase the price of postage, not charge extra to those who need their mail at a civilised hour.

The Government is supposed to be encouraging people to work from home to reduce traffic and pollution, and these home-based workers need to have their mail first thing in the morning.

The Royal Mail knows this, and that is why it's hit on this wheeze of charging people who will have no option but to pay up, however unreasonable the demand.

As a marketing consultant, I have to take my hat off to the Royal Mail for dreaming this one up.

For sheer effrontery, it comes second only to manufacturers who expect consumers to take out warranties to insure against the manufacturers' own incompetence and shortcomings.

I trust the nation will not take this sitting down. Today's pilot scheme will be your reality tomorrow.

Jon McKnight

Update: the nation did take this sitting down, and mail very rarely arrives before most of us go to work. We were warned.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

For better, or worse?

Getting married isn't quite as easy as we might think. Although we can now marry in a myriad of interesting places instead of merely in a church or a register office, both the religious and the secular authorities have strong views on what we can and cannot say during a marriage service.

Many of us will choose a church for aesthetic or sentimental reasons rather than any deep religious convictions - a situation that while widespread might be viewed by some as hypocritical.

The problem could be solved by re-opening splendid but otherwise redundant churches as film sets licensed for civil ceremonies. Welcome to The Church Of St Mary The Video Backdrop.

The fly in the ointment is that the civil authorities won't let us use religious words during the ceremony, which is a pity as the traditional vows still have a resonance that many of us can identify with, even if we are not religious.

Here, described in a letter to The Times published on 20 December 2004, the morning after my wedding at The Ritz in London, is what happened to me:

Marrriage lines

From Mr Jon McKnight

Sir,

I am about to be married at The Ritz and wrote a script for the ceremony, complying with the legal requirement that civil marriage ceremonies in England must not contain any religious elements. I based the second half on the traditional wedding service from the Book Of Common Prayer, but secularised it by removing all mentions of God, spirituality, and everlasting life, etc. This left the beautiful promises "to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer", and so on.

However, my script was rejected by Westminster Register Office on the grounds that it was still religious.

If I were to take the secularised script to a church and ask for it to be used in a marriage ceremony, I imagine it would be rejected on the ground that it contains no religious elements.

I pursued the matter as far as the office of the Registrar General, but the authorities insist that although the words may not have any religious content, people might still identify them as words they might have previously heard in a church, and this would make the marriage invalid.

I have therefore had to write alternative vows. However, if someone sneezes during my wedding and a fellow guest says "Bless you", will the ceremony be declared null and void because of the unintended religous content?

Yours
Jon McKnight
16 December 2004

As it happened, no-one did sneeze, so we'll never know.

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!

Happy times

Unless we happen to be the Archbishop Of Canterbury - and we can't all be - it's not as easy as we'd think to have a letter published in The Times.

They're pretty fussy about what they'll use, so it's always a thrill when they accept one for publication.

I've written so many over the years but only three have made it into print, though one of them did end up being immortalised in hardback in The Times Brief Letters To The Editor (Times Books 2002).

Here is is:

An everyday tale...

Sir,

Is the plan to sacrifice children's Radio 4 in favour of an extra episode of The Archers the first example of the dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dumbing-down of the BBC?

Yours, etc
JON McKNIGHT

20 November 1997

Wonder if there'd be any call for a book called Letters to The Times That The Times Wouldn't Print?

Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!