It took its time but it has happened. After all, it is surprising that there has been such a delay in troubles being identified. However, the Stockholm-listed TrustBuddy a P2P lender has emerged as having advanced £238m where £29m of this has not been lent to “legitimate borrowers”. Until it is shown otherwise this £29m should be regarded as not merely irresponsibly lent but quite possibly lent to interests of the managers.
The next question is whether P2P operators in this country (none are quoted) have been developing the same practices. Needless to add, I do not know. That said, traditional bankers must be smiling inwardly since they have been criticised by investors for offering such low returns. The reason that what is offered is so low is that the traditional bankers can get away with it. But the fact is that investors are now sharply reminded of the risks faced when going through a P2P operator.
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Globo (GBO) keeps dribbling down despite increased holdings declared by prominent shareholders. I do not think it makes any difference. The downward dribblers are on the right tack. Now 38p.
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Susan Crosland, an American journalist, was shown in his room at The Savoy the manhood of Porfirio Rubirosa (apparently it was remarkable). She fled, preferring instead the arms of Tony Crosland. (I only mention this to prove the sheer breadth of coverage in this column.) Anyway, Rubirosa was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1965. So Tony Crosland’s destruction (working with Shirley Williams) of this country’s grammar schools came after Rubirosa’s death (Labour came to power in 1964).
I myself failed entrance at 11+ into a local grammar school and therefore would have undergone the comprehensive education system had it not been for the fact that my parents had a few bob to allow for entrance into a public school. Put another way, I am no expert on secondary education as offered by the state. However, those who criticised Crosland and Williams have always seemed sensible to me: the fact is that some children are innately intellectually able and yet never benefit by being streamed into the company of other able children since their parents have not got the money. This seems foolish and uneconomic from the country’s point of view as well.
Crosland and Williams were concerned to stop one section of schoolchildren looking down on another. This, they claimed, would be a dividing factor in society. I do not think that this is sensible since in my experience people adjust with time through forces of nature which are completely, because they cannot be otherwise, uncontrolled by the state into adjusting to their contemporaries.
Anyway, this Crosland/Williams mad socialist theory looks to have run its course. As one letter in today’s Times requests: let us have more annexes to grammar schools.