Thursday, November 09, 2006

Farepak

Oh dear, the presenters on TV are certainly a bunch of liberal lefty disconnected-from-reality tossers. This morning there was stuff about the Farepak collapse in which people lost their savings. One person highlighted was a single mother of five living in a rather nice house. Um, let me think, how does she pay for it all? Oh yeah – she doesn’t. They showed her on the phone listening to a Farepak recorded message. Apparently she knew there was compensation but did not know how to get her hands on it. There is no compensation. If your savings company goes bust you lose your savings. The money that is being made available is being donated by supermarkets as a publicity stunt. The GMTV presenters were then getting aeriated with some minister and asking why the government can’t put its hand in its pocket. FUCK OFF! The government doesn’t put its hand in ITS pocket; it puts its hand in OUR pockets! When are tossers like this going to realise that every single penny the government spends has been screwed out of the working population of this country? It’s not a bottomless fund of free money. If these GMTV presenters feel so strongly about all this then maybe they can dip into their own bulging pockets? Anyway, I look forward to hearing of Gordon Brown coming to the rescue, since he is always so generous with other people’s cash.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

I heard yesterday on Radio 4 that Rochdale MP Paul Rowen has called for all MPs to donate a days wages, which seems a start. Though I guess since their wages come from our taxes it's us paying for it.

I do feel sorry for people who have lost money, but i can't help thinking back to a decades old Eastenders plot were Arthur stole the Christmas club money to pay off his own debts... some people obviously have short memories.

Anonymous said...

Oooohhhhh.....

Shocked and stunned.

If people are saving then use a frigging bank. Thats what they are for.

If a bank like HSBC or HBOS goes bust then the christmas fund is the least of worries..

My only concern here - if the politcos donate a days wages they are just going to increase thier expenses by that amount.

Enough of my money already goes to stupid munters in council houses with thier 5 kids..

David.

Anonymous said...

Well, aren't our MPs voting themselves another £10,000 a year in expenses and public funding for political parties? This is working on the theory that if you give a bank robber everything in the bank, he won't commit the crime of bank robbery.

Anonymous said...

I've done a quick google but can't work out how much money that would actually be. I can't remember what the radio said, but my faulty memory says The figure given was about about 50K. So divided by number of MPs(646) means £77.40 each which time 365 work out that an MP earns 28k a year. Anther 10K a year is almost a 30% increase.

Is that right? or are my sums wrong somewhere?

Anonymous said...

Paul, take a look here http://www.pukiemon.com/pensions_story.htm -- the 10K is an addition to their incidental expenses.

Anonymous said...

well what can I say to that... fuck! My sums were well off.

I fancy some of this gravy train for, I myself think I might stand as an MP. When's the next election 2009? Better start saving up my deposit now, if by time I've paid all my enviroment taxes I can afford to save that is.

Anonymous said...

I feel sorry for those who have been ripped off by Farepak, even when commissions to agents are taken off there should be at least 80% of the funds available. But those of us who are prudent should not be penalised, when debts are written off or creditors pacified it's those of us who go without to stay out of debt who pay through increased premiums and charges. I'm a single parent, the only debt I have is my mortgage, the only benefits I receive are 25% reduction for Council Tax (as a single adult occupant) and child benefit for one child. I refuse to be out of work, I economise to stay out of debt.

Anonymous said...

Is it scary that I hadnt even head of Farepak. Just had to do some research on it after hearing the news again today.

Over £4,000,000 has been donated. OMG! For what? People that trusted a very dodgy company for even dodgier goods?

I can think of hundreds of thousands of better ways that money could have been spent! £4,000,000 - OMG!

This article in the Telegraph I think sums it up well:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/11/11/do1102.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/11/11/ixopinion.html

Anonymous said...

Gavin, you know nothing about tbis. There were no reasons to suspect Farepak were in trouble, otherwise I would not have used it. BTW 90% of orders were for ordinary high street vouchers not "dodgy goods". I work, the overall assumption is that we are all on benefits eh?

Anonymous "Use a bank", over 150,000 chose not to, mainly because it was good that temptation was out of the way and you couldnt use the money until Christmas.

The company kept taking money from customers long after they knew they would go bust, this is why the DTI have instigated an investigation into them. This is theft of peoples money, Farepak used customers savings to prop up other parts of the parent company which were sold on the day Farepak went into liquidation.

Anonymous said...

I see, I'm getting some snarly comments about this which add nothing more than to say, "Neal you're a cunt and I hope you die."

Yes, it's a shame. Yes, those running Farepak are dodgy thieving scum. But y'know it ain't my fault, nor is it the fault of numerous other tax payers with the sense to put their savings in some big building society or bank savings scheme. Why should we put our hands in our pockets because you loused?

I'll tell you why you think so: because you're a product of the blame culture. You feel that if anything goes wrong in your life that it's not your fault, it's not your responsibility, and someone should DO something.

Caveat emptor - go look it up.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and just remember that when a company goes into liquidation the last to be paid are its customers. After the liquidation costs have been extracted, preferentail creditors are next: one of those being the Inland Revenue - in full - so you can be sure that Brown has had his pound of flesh.
Employees are also preferential creditors, and they probably include the high-salaried tossers running Farepak.

Y'know, when I stuck some money in a 5-year savings scheme many years ago, just before black Monday (Wednesday, Thursday or whatever it was) and saw that money halve, resulting in me getting about 70% of it back after those five years, I didn't immediately start yelling for compensation. I just made sure I was a damned sight more careful ever afterwards.

Anonymous said...

I dont understand how the company went bust. People are sending them money in advance- they dont get the hampers or vouchers till the end of the year-So how the hell can the company go bankrupt?? where did the money go? Dosent make any sense.
I see there competitors 'Park hampers 'have adverts on tv for next year already !!!!!!LOL

Anonymous said...

Neal, you hit the nail on the head earlier: if those GMTV presenters were so worried, why didn't you see Fat Arse Eammon (or whatever the new presenter is called) rummaging in his six-figure salary live on air for some change?

What's the latest regarding the Olympics Committee going cap in hand to Gordon for the VAT to be waived on the bid?

Anonymous said...

Did that article say that the vouchers cost more than they're worth? Because they didnt, if you gave them £600 through the year they gave you £600 worth of vouchers.

Anyway, my mum is a single parent (despite all of your prejudices, we do NOT live on benifits, she has a full-time job and works her ass off to make ends meet). She has been saving vouchers with farepak for the last few years, and it's a lifesaver, becase i) you aren't tempted to spend the money during the year, and ii)because they can be only redeemed in gift-type shops (Argos, Woolies), it encourages you to actually spend the money on gifts, rather that waste it on crap.

I don't want government money (although money donated by shops etc is perfectly fine), but I just want the people behind this to be banged up. They waited 'til the last payment was in to announce they were bust. They are loaded, they should rot in jail.

Anonymous said...

As Nelson from the Simpsons would say, "Ah hah!"

Anonymous said...

"it's a lifesaver, becase i) you aren't tempted to spend the money during the year, and ii)because they can be only redeemed in gift-type shops (Argos, Woolies), it encourages you to actually spend the money on gifts, rather that waste it on crap."

Temptation out of the way? Fuck off. If you can't even control your need to spend, it's your own problem.

Christmas savings are a bloody awful idea anyway - spending that much money on Christmas so that you have to scrimp and save for the rest of the year destroys the idea of Christmas. Buying gifts that you can't really afford IS crap.

Anonymous said...

bit harsh isnt it? Everything they say is scripted n theyd b lk hitler if they sed nasty thngs , yes they shud have just saved in a bank , but people are stupid.

Anonymous said...

bit harsh isn't it , evrything they say on tv is scripted dummy and they have top be nice to look good.

yes they shud have put the money in a bank , but people are stupid afterall we invented napalm.

Anonymous said...

Despite all the criticism there are an awful lot of people who work full time and have lost money in the farepak fiasco. Yes, I could save in a bank and indeed I do, but the person I save with is a single parent with three jobs and tries hard not to ask for hand outs and on top of her jobs runs these sort of clubs to add a little extra to her small income. I saved with her so that she could have the commission. At the end of the day the only money I was losing was a small amount of interest (to me) but the commission to her was great fully received. So before you criticise people and assuming those who lost money are all out of work scroungers, they are not, there are alot of people like me who save to help others.