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[npaconsultant-stuff-blog]

What is the process of one-time settlement in banking?

NPA Management Why do people take loans? It is a great way of helping your finance for various things. You may take a loan for completing your education, buying a new house, the wedding of your kids, to go abroad, or anything else.

If you are a company, then you will take a loan to diversify your business or launch a new project.

You make great planning and ensure that repayment of the loan is done in time. However, no matter how systematic your repayment plan may be, you cannot foresee all the possible bottlenecks. You may become a victim of unforeseen circumstances. There could be an unexpected loss in the business, or you lose your job due to an illness.

Such circumstances will seriously hamper the ability to repay your loan. You will miss the installment and get follow-up calls and reminders from the bank. It affects your credibility and market value.

When a bank or financial institution sanctions a loan, it expects that the loan will be repaid within the stipulated time. For a bank, a loan is an asset that generates income in the form of interest.

When the loan is not paid, it becomes an NPA or Non-Performing Asset. NPA is not desirable for any financial institution. When it goes beyond a threshold, it becomes a risk to the survival of the bank. Hence, it requires concrete npa management methods.

When a bank fails to recover the loan, it approaches the borrower with options like a one-time loan settlement. Though it looks like a simple offer, it may ruin the credit score of the borrower.

What is a One-Time Loan Settlement?

It is part of the overall npa management policy of a bank or financial institution. In this process, the bank or financial institute agrees to accept a smaller amount instead of the entire due amount. When it does so, the bank waives off the rest of the amount and makes repayment easier for the borrower. The option may be offered by the bank after six months of non-repayment.

The bank takes various measures to investigate the case before arriving at the conclusion. It will allow them to validate the reason for not paying the loan.

How Does the process of one-time settlement carry out?

First, the bank should believe that the reason for non-payment is legitimate. The bank offers a moratorium period. The option is for those borrowers who want to pay the amount in one go. After an agreement, the bank will waive off a part of the outstanding loan amount to make the repayment easy.

How much amount will be written off will depend on the gravity of the financial condition and the ability of the borrower to repay the loan. Since the borrower is agreed to settle the loan, its repayment status will be recorded as “settled” and not “closed”. The credit score of the borrower will be affected by the difference.

One-time settlement is considered an important tool of npa management policy.

Alternatives

It is quite obvious that opting for a one-time settlement is not advisable unless it is necessary. There are some other alternates to it.

The borrower should liquidate the savings instead of applying for a loan. Also, it should negotiate with the bank to request an extension for the repayment term. Or, it should ask for a restructured repayment plan.

The borrower can request the bank to hold off the interest rate or reduce it for some time.

One-time settlement is the last resort. For a bank also, it is not a profitable proposition. Therefore, it will use it only when there is no other solution.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

"If they divorce, Harry doesn’t have any money to give (or it’s all tied up in assets), but his daddy has money and that’s probably Meghan would target, since The Queen paid for Charles’s and Andrew’s settlements and she sees Harry being in the same position (the son of the monarch)."

I know it's hairsplitting because ultimately you might be right, but The Queen didn't pay Charles's divorce beyond giving him a loan which he had to pay back - source: his own lawyer who talked about it in an interview in 2004. The duchy of Cornwall was off limits as far as wealth assessments, so Charles had to come up wiyh money from his personal money.

Sidenote: considering his annual income from the duchy, Charles lifestyle must be so excessive that he struggled to settle the paltry £17M divorce bill. 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1467785/Diana-took-Charles-to-cleaners-in-divorce-says-his-banker.html

 Meanwhile, Andrew's settlement was unusual because on the one hand it was based on his personal fortune sans trusts and salary as a naval officer, but on the other, Andrew was favoured son AND the divorce was forced by The Queen against the wishes of Andrew and Sarah so i think her decision to pay the divorce bill by settling trusts on the 2 daughters and allowing Sarah to move back in with Andrew was from personal feeling. 

Markle is at the opposite end of the scale as far as familial affection from Charles OR William. Further, no one in the family knows or cares about the children. There are no emotive reasons to support them. 

Finally, in the past decade, it's been established innthe British courts that family wealth of royals can't be used as the basis for a divorce claim even where the kids are firmly inside the family circle. 

The best example of this is Tessy of Luxemborg who lived the ultra wealthy life as a royal wife for a decade, but upon her divorce, she was left with nothing and her kids were granted peanuts on the level of £3000 per month / kid. She tried to argue that her hubby might not have personal wealth, but he received an allowance in the millions from the family which was uber wealthy. 

The other example is Haya of Dubai. Superficially, her settlement is huge to the tune of half a billion pounds, but when you break it down, you realise that she also got peanuts and 90% of the settlement was to cover a lifetime of security for her and her kids because her ex-husband was deemed a clear and present danger to her and her kids for their lifetimes and she would need the kind of security that matched his own to keep them safe. 

***

Definitely give the Telegraph article a read. It has some good details about the Charles/Diana divorce.

(Anon included a big chunk of it in their submission that I removed for copyright reproduction concerns - I remember the early days around here when Sussex Squad was getting blogs shut down over reproducing copyrighted text.)

Here’s the archived link for anyone without a Telegraph subscription.

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Do you have any advice for someone who has most of an archaeology degree, but following some health problems during covid foricng me to withdraw from some classes, I didn't meet pace of progress and lost my financial aid and now owe my university $13k for the semester i didn't complete. I'm a 3.8gpa student and was deans list, but I have an enrolment and transcript hold until I pay them back. I will never have $13k at my disposal to pay that off without haivng my degree to make me employable, so I'm not sure how I can ever go back and finish my degree.

Do you have any advice for how someone in my position should proceed? I thought about merit based financial aid/scholarships with my high gpa, but I've never had any success finding those.

This is a tough one, since I don't really have any direct experience with a similar situation. If anyone has specific advice, please let me know.

Education loans/debt are special legal creatures, and perhaps the most important thing you can do is educate yourself on the legalities of your particular situation and what options are available to you. Here's a page I found that talks about the legal precedents for certain types of education loans. From what little I understand, the school is not looking for you to pay the $13k back all at once. There may be payment plans or settlements available to you.

The first thing that comes to mind is to contact your school's ombudsman. This is an office whose single purpose is to help students navigate institutional bureaucracy and pursue grievances against the institution. They are probably the best bet for finding ways to mitigate this debt, set up options for payment, etc.

Similarly, I would recommend making an appointment to talk with someone in the financial aid department if you haven't already. It might be painful and embarrassing, but I can guarantee you that you aren't the first person who has had this exact issue, and you won't be the last. They might also be able to help you navigate ways to deal with this debt.

Some schools have policies that if you have to withdraw for health reasons before X point in the semester, you can get your tuition refunded. This is what my family was able to do when I had to drop out during my sophomore year. Whether that would be an option for you depends 1) on your school, and 2) on if you have to apply for that forgiveness within a certain window. Still worth a shot though—this is something you can ask the ombudsman about.

If you were registered with your school's disability services (provided that you're in the US, which is where my experience comes from) before you had to withdraw, they may also be able to help you advocate for yourself based on having a disability. If this is something that applies to you, it's possible that you have some protections based on the ADA, although this will depend on the nature of your financial aid, and whether you were registered beforehand. Accommodations are not retroactive.

Finally, I hate to say it, but working in archaeology—with or without a college degree—is going to make it difficult to pay off these loans. Entry level archaeology jobs pay notoriously poorly, and other positions generally require some sort of postgraduate degree. You are employable without a degree, but it may not be in your chosen field. That's shitty news, I know, but it's something you need to consider in order to start dealing with this.

Best of luck, -Reid

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A few stories about the Tangerine Tyrant caught my eye today, and they all point to his increasing desperation - so I figured I’d go around the horn and celebrate his continuing dissipation.

First: Criminal Defendant and Adjudicated Rapist Donald Trump yesterday predicted a “bloodbath” if he didn’t get reelected, and the media quickly devolved into outlets condemning his use of violent rhetoric and others - Fox and Newsmax - concern trolling over how he was talking specifically about the automobile industry. So, whatever. If you’re interested in parsing the event along those lines, have at it - but I think there’s a more interesting, deeply indicative phenomenon just below the surface that speaks not just to Trump’s mentality but that of his whole bonkers cult.

If you’re looking for the atavistic pull of Donald Trump on his followers, it’s in his power to do whatever the hell he wants and face no consequences. NO ONE can tell him what to do. NO ONE can keep him from attacking whomever he wants. NO ONE can prevent him from sating his desires. NO ONE.

Now, we know that’s not true - as evidenced by his exile to Mar-a-Lago for the past three years, but it’s part of the mystique. In a lot of ways, it makes sense if you look at his cult following - people who are, by and large, deeply disempowered and enraged at a culture that is stripping away their traditional privileges and social entitlements. They WANT Trump to keep shitting the punch bowl as a sort of wish fulfillment of their own stifled rage. Maybe they can’t rape the woman they want to rape or kill the immigrants they hate for speaking Spanish or Hindi at the Gas-n-Sip – but they sure as hell can dream about it when Trump gives a cross-burner of a speech. That’s all standard form.

But what we saw last night - and in the fascist outrage-trolling today - was something new. It’s been creeping into the 2024 election cycle here and there, but yesterday, it entirely broke through, and it’s this: NOT EVEN TRUMP’S BRAIN IS ALLOWED TO CENSOR TRUMP’S MOUTH WHEN IT COMES TO RAGE AND ANGER.

Look, Trump KNOWS that using words like “bloodbath” is going to cost him non-MAGA voters. He knows that calling people “vermin” is going to hurt his chances of navigating the very narrow path ahead if he hopes to return to the White House. Yet, he can’t stop himself. Trump is unable to act in his own easily achieved best interest if it means not being a monster, and while it’s lamentable that he’s bringing such hatred to our national debate, I encourage him to keep it up.

You be you, Donald!

Every single time you let your id out of its box, it’s like sending America an unsolicited, mushroom-shaped dick-pic. Sure, your fans are going to love it, but the rest of us grossed the fuck out.

So, please! Rage on!

-----

Second:

Trump’s lawyers in the NYS civil fraud case settlement submitted a filing today that it is “a practical impossibility” for Trump to post a bond for the half-billion dollars he needs to cough up in order to appeal the decision. According to reports, he approached 30 different surety companies, and they all turned him down. Why they would do that might indicate what’s got him tuned to “bloodbath” and “vermin” levels of rage.

It might be a simple point, but it bears a paragraph of explanation.

Most folks who don’t work in the NYC real estate market – or any real estate market – might think, “Hey, he’s a rich guy. Why not just sell a few of those buildings he owns? They’ve gotta be worth a pretty penny.”

Or, alternatively, “Why won’t anyone take Trump Tower as collateral for a loan?”

The simple answer is he doesn’t really OWN any of that shit outright. It’s ALL mortgaged to the hilt. To get a clearer picture of this, let’s look at 40 Wall Street – one of Trump’s “prestige” properties.

The numbers are a bit hard to come by, but an hour of reading suggests that the building is presently worth about $200 million. Mind you, part of the fraud charges – now proven – included his valuation of the building in 2015 at over $750 million, but it’s just not worth that at all.

So, take the $200 million as a starting point and note that Trump’s mortgage on the property, according to a Bloomberg report in November of 2023, stands at $122 million. So, if Trump were to liquidate his stake in the property fully, he’d only net about $78 million – and that is BEFORE the capital gains taxes, NYS taxes, and NYC taxes on the sale. According to a few articles I’ve scanned this evening, that would be up to about 40% of his earnings. That means, even if he drops one of his most precious assets, he would only raise about $50 million.

He owes TEN TIMES that number by next week.

Play that out another round, and realize that if Trump tried to sell ten or twenty office buildings in NYC all at once, the price of ALL of them would plummet to fire-sale prices.

He’s fucked. Moreover, he knows it and is desperate to find a way out.

-----

This brings us to news item number three: The Return of Paul Manafort.

News leaked today that Trump is considering bringing convicted felon and former campaign manager Paul Manafort back into his 2024 bid for the White House. Manafort, primarily due to his complete lack of a moral center, would be a tremendous asset for Trump. He’s a solid political operative, but what he REALLY brings to the table is a direct line back to the Russian oligarchy and their money. That, obviously, is an enormous threat to national security, and I’ve got to hope that the intelligence services in DC and around the world will be on heightened alert for any covert – or overt – entreaties to Putin or his cronies for a loan. I’ve got to hope there are ways of making such entreaties known to the public through selective leaks if nothing else.

But that brings us back to observation number one.

Trump knows that going to Putin for help with his financial difficulties if it becomes known, would be a dagger to the heart for his chances of returning to the White House. Yet, if I’m right, he will be unable to stop himself when it comes to finding a fix for his hemorrhaging empire. His brain will tell him this is a terrible idea, but it won’t matter. NO ONE is allowed to stop Donald Trump from doing whatever the hell he wants to do – not even Donald Trump.

In 1776, James Otis, a thoughtful supporter of the Revolutionary War, noted about politics, “When the pot boils, the scum will rise.”

Trump is proving that to be true, even when there’s only one evil, arrogant, rapist bastard in the soup. He’s so screwed.

Love to you all.

Michael J. Tallon

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[5feet-of-anxiety]

I know it's pretty unhelpful to offer unsolicited advice to donation posts but for those in the US who are going through a hard time I do want to at least make sure people know some options they may have available to them that have helped me and friends out over the year.

Call everyone you pay bills to and ask about hardship plans or assistance options. Try and avoid any long term reduced payment plans but short term are generally fine. One or two month deferments are fine too. If it's a long term (1+ years) sudden situation then ask about settlement options. It's not the best for your credit but it's better than late payment reports ending up in a charge off.

Do not use a DSC unless you have a lot of stuff in collections/different accounts to pay and don't have the time or energy to deal with them yourself. Dsc's charge you to settle on accounts usually one by one as accounts fall more and more delinquent. You can do that yourself. If it's already charged off save it for later

Don't wait until savings are gone to ask for these assistance options. The minute you don't have income reduce your expenses as much as possible.

Unless it is an expense you are 95% you can pay off without issue do not take out a loan

Apply for unemployment the same day you lose a job and keep up with the paperwork. I've lost out on potential unemployment earnings 3 different times because of how confused I get from it so don't be afraid to call and ask for help or explanations.

Car auctions can be your friend for a vehicle . Police auctions are not great but see if there are any other auctions nearby and you can generally get a car for the same price as a down payment. If you have car knowledge great if not try and bring someone that does. Even if you don't check that it starts, pop the hood and make sure nothing's missing, and look up the car model for common issues.

Need a job fast and can't stand fast food? Call centers are always hiring. Like any job they do suck and some are worse than others but they tend to pay more than minimum wage and they're not physically demanding if that's an issue. Also try storage facilities as they tend to have benefits and may provide housing or at least a discount on a storage unit if your living situation demands one.

This isn't important financially but it's something that affected me for a long time. But if you're feeling lonely and looking for a community or even just someone to connect with then do participate in book clubs, low cost classes or social events, strike up conversation with others at the parades, bars/clubs, library, store wherever. Even if it's just a connection in passing it will enrich you. And if you don't put yourself out there those connections will be harder to come by.

Therapy isn't cheap and journaling isn't a replacement but it can cost less than 2 dollars and it at least helps to get the thoughts and feelings out somewhere.

Goodwill sucks. Look for smaller donation shops a lot of them do actual community outreach.

That's all I got and this is not a list of cure all solutions that will work for everyone or solve problems 100%. These are just things that have either helped me in the past or I wish I would've done differently. There's a lot of tips out there and it sucks to live in survival mode like that but always choose what's best for you.

[dlaprobably]

Servantember, Day 8: Captain James Misson (Pretender)

A salty sea dog to start the second week's worth of Servantember drawings, Captain James Misson! The legendary captain of the Victoire, Misson is best known as the founder of the fabled pirate utopia of Libertatia (or Libertalia), a democratic society that stood up for its people's freedoms and against authoritarian rule, distributing loot evenly amongst its population. Despite its sturdy fortifications and sprawling reach, its location has proven elusive, and while it lasted 25 years, far longer than most pirate outposts of its kind, there are few contemporaneous accounts of its existence. There are few records of Misson himself, for that matter, with many regarding him and Libertatia as nothing more than a story. And yet, here he stands, man, myth, and legend, as a Pretender Rider class Servant!

Fell down something of a research rabbit hole with this one it took me some time to climb out of, but it's my longest and most detailed profile yet, so I hope you enjoy it if you're reading this!

Lore Notes:

-On his initial summoning, Misson will appear a younger, more swashbuckling sort of man, the years having yet to take their toll on him, rather than the shabby-coated figure depicted above, who will typically only appear to Masters with whom a mutual trust has been established. He maintains the same unquenchable thirst for adventure and belief in his dream regardless of his age, and takes great delight in storytelling, relating tales of his own exploits and those of fellow rogues with equal pleasure.

-His ship, the Victoire, sails swiftly and silently, catching foes unaware and leaving no trace, an ephemeral vessel much like Misson's own unwritten voyages. It behaves much like a ghost ship, but appears the very picture of a dignified, undamaged warship when sighted. Its crew is invisible to enemy eyes while aboard, and consists of a motley assortment of lesser-known seafarers and long-forgotten names fearsome in their own time, many of them acquaintances of Misson himself in life. A skilled naval tactician well respected by his sailors, the good captain's Voyager of the Storm skill is at an A+ rank.

-Is as competent a duelist as he is at the helm, and a crack shot with pistols as well, with near supernaturally quick reflexes. He was known as a captain and a leader rather than a combatant, and loathed needless bloodshed, but claims to have taken a few pages out of the books of his piratical peers for this summoning. He'd still rather avoid direct confrontation, but needs must when the devil drives.

-Thomas Tew, Misson's contemporary and co-founder of Libertatia, is absent from the crew of pirates captaining the Victoire, having his own distinct Spirit Origin as the more well known pirate out of the two of them. Much as he would appreciate the help, Misson doesn't begrudge his absence, certain he has his own business to take care of.

-Misson's Noble Phantasm is Libertatia, a Reality Marble bringing forth the legendary settlement and its surrounding seas, allowing captain and Master alike to mount a strong defense while the Victoire remains on the offense. Raised forts forming an octagonal shape in the harbor, each armed with forty cannons, with the living spaces and the town proper below. Apart from its combat functionality, the town is as abuzz with activity as it was in its heyday. There's no shortage of resources to make withstanding a prolonged siege possible, but the firepower on hand and on loan should make short work of foes inexperienced at sea. Stray cannon fire from the fog enclosing the Reality Marble will hammer down on opponents, the hopes and dreams of captains throughout the ages who aspired to reach the place but never could, channeled into fighting on the captain's behalf. As well positioned and defended as the place is, it did eventually fall, and the fortifications do have their limits, and even in its empowered form as a Noble Phantasm. Dream or reality, Libertatia is as liable to fall as any fortress.

-In reality, there is no Captain James Misson. Attempts to find the location of Libertatia or other contemporary accounts of him have come up empty, and the most detailed account of him and his elusive Libertatia is a likely fictitious chapter in A General History of the Pyrates. A biographical tome published in 1724 about many of the Golden Age's most famous buccaneers, names such as Blackbeard, William Kidd, and Calico Jack Rackham among them, A General History helped solidify the modern idea of the era's pirates and their stories, and was a major inspiration for fictitious tales of piracy for over a century afterward, Treasure Island and Peter Pan being two notable examples. The Servant appearing in Misson's place is Captain Charles Johnson, A General History's mysterious author.

-Captain Charles Johnson is himself about as much of a ghost as Misson, with no records existing of a captain by his name, which is considered by most historians to be a pseudonym. Some theorize he was a genuine pirate or captain, others believe he was simply a particularly knowledgeable writer. A playwright by the name of Charles Johnson staged a play titled The Successful Pyrate about the career of Henry Every, but he seems to be entirely unrelated to the captain. Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe and hundreds of other works, is by far the most popular suspect, but a questionable one. Yet another candidate is printer Nathaniel Mist, who published some of Defoe's works, with the latter spying on the former on behalf of the British government. Johnson himself is keeping mum on who he is, and it hardly matters, given he's been summoned as Misson and Johnson rather than whoever he might really be.

-As a Servant, Johnson amounts to little more than the ideal of a pirate in the public consciousness, his appearance reflecting that. For what it's worth, he does seem to believe in the ideas he espouses, and thoroughly sympathizes with his subjects, which is why he saw fit to immortalize them in the written word. He might exaggerate with some, or dream up entirely fictional ones for the stories he couldn't justify ascribing to any existing ones, but every story gets somewhat out of hand after being passed on a few times, the wilder ones tending to be the more memorable ones.

-His Noble Phantasm as Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, allows him to invoke the skills and feats of the figures he wrote about, granting him the skills in direct combat that Misson was never attested to have but others were credited with, for one. Libertatia is an extension of this Noble Phantasm, but is treated as a separate one tied to the Misson aspect of this Spirit Origin, and can be used in conjunction with A General History's more... general effects. If a "true" Captain James Misson were ever summoned as a Servant, he would have Libertatia as his Noble Phantasm, but the odds of that are exceedingly low given the lack of evidence for him. Still, Johnson had to get the idea from somewhere, and he'd be the first to say not to dismiss the possibility. At full power, A General History can summon a mighty fleet of the famous pirates themselves and their ships, their chronicler calling upon their legends to do battle and make their names once more. Maintaining both A General History and Libertatia at their maximum potential simultaneously would expend a frankly ludicrous amount of magical energy, but the resulting tale of adventure that would come out of it would more than make up for it.

-All in all, Johnson changes little as a Servant with the revelation of his true name, remaining the same jolly salt as when he's known as Misson, just more honest about the nature of his existence. A figment kept alive by the figments he kept alive in a sort of equivalent exchange, as long as there's people to keep reading and telling the stories, he's satisfied with his accomplishments.

-Other pirate Servants seem to be aware of both Misson and Johnson as separate individuals but perceive him as either of them at different times, which suits him fine. He's never been summoned alongside Thomas Tew, but that would doubtless make matters even more confusing.

Design Notes:

Unsurprisingly, I was big into pirates as a kid and it never went away, so it was a matter of time before I wrote up a pirate fanservant. I've been incredibly disappointed with Fate's canon handling of pirate Servants thus far for the most part (Blackbeard's writing has been improving in recent years but I maintain that the foundation for FGO's version is so broken there's only so much fixing they can try to do, the less said about Bonny and Read and how badly they botched them the better, Bart has one of my favorite designs in the game but every time he opens his mouth I want to cry, Drake is the only one that's actually cool even though she has very little to do with her historical counterpart from what I've seen), and I wanted to try my hand at doing a proper one not bogged down in a single bad joke for a personality.

I hadn't actually read any of A General History of the Pyrates before working on him, but it had been on my reading list for a long time and I had been aware of Johnson as a figure. The idea of him as a Servant first came to me when I was trying to think of legendary or fictional pirates that could qualify as Servants in contrast to the thus far historical ones, and while Johnson definitely existed in some capacity as the author of the book, it interested me how little we know about the guy for how influential his book was. As I looked more into the book, I looked into Misson, and while I initially had Johnson in mind as a Caster, the ambiguity of his identity and of Misson as his fabrication felt perfect for the Pretender class. The rest as they say, was history. Design-wise he's an amalgamation of Captain Hook, Long John Silver, and various other fictional pirates I had on the mind at the time, including this post, fitting enough for how he takes form, with the patchwork on his coat being extremely subtle symbolism for the fact that he hasn't taken the time out to buy a new one (and that he's a patchwork himself, incidentally). I imagine he does have a proper walking cane, but he uses the sword sometimes when he wants to seem dramatic or look cool. With that, I'll leave you to your own adventures, and wish you safe travels and good days over the horizon!

[sideshow-tornado]

It’s a humbling experience, while also being somehow fortuitous, when you deposit a $26.48 check into your checking account which will just barely make sure your account is covered a day before a loan payment is due, and if you didn’t deposit the check you’d be overdrawn in that account when the payment processed, thereby causing your account to receive an overdraft fee making you further in the hole.

And you only received a check for the sum $26.48 because you occasionally get minuscule payments as part of a class action lawsuit for a terrible cryptocurrency investment you made that was fraudulent. And you’ve never fully recovered from losing that money, because the lawsuit settlement will not even pay you back 1% of your losses when it’s all said and done.

And since you’ve been struggling financially you’ve had to make some other tough decisions and not always the best ones, like living on credit cards periodically and having to take out high interest loans for a stopgap.

And you’ve just been on reduced hours and salary for three months which has added another new level of stress and difficulty.

But you are taking the most austere measures you can, staving off bankruptcy for over a year. Lucky that no matter how bad things get* you at least have a place to live and won’t starve. Most basic needs are met. Your hours have just returned to full time so there is slight bit of relief coming. At least the kind where you might not need a $26.48 check to show up when it does.

You put a lot of things on the back burner not because you should, but because you have to, until absolutely cannot.

You try to get out of your head and stop thinking about how your life insurance policy would easily cover your debts and give your family a little something to help. But if you’re dead your debts don’t need to be paid since you aren’t married anymore and don’t have any kids or anyone else responsible for your failures.

But you’re not dead, not that lucky, you’re fucking here. And you’re fucking here for a good long while. So keep going. Don’t nibble at the shit. Just bite, chew, swallow. Repeat. Until….who knows? Maybe forever, but hopefully not.

[georgefairbrother]

On September 7th, 1978, British Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan confirmed that he would not be calling an early election, despite the precarious stability of his minority government.

"…The government must and will continue to carry out policies that are consistent, determined, that don’t chop or change and that brought about the present recovery in our fortunes…We can see the way ahead…"

Opposition Leader Margaret Thatcher was not best pleased, referring to the government as chickens and stating;

"…The real reason he isn’t having an election is because he thinks he'll lose…"

Even Liberal leader David Steel, whose party had propped up the government through the Lib-Lab Pact, wasn’t happy, stating that the country was due for change and that an election was the only way to breathe life into the four-year-old parliament.

Callaghan had succeeded Harold Wilson in tricky circumstances in 1976. Inflation had peaked at 26% and unemployment was heading toward 1.5 million, a devastating figure in the context of the time although it would more than double by the mid 1980s under the Tories. Callaghan was forced to make unpopular cuts in government spending to comply with terms set out by the International Monetary Fund, after a financial crisis precipitated by the plunging Pound had necessitated an emergency loan. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, the balance of trade was improving on the back of growing revenue and production from North Sea Oil, which was expected to make the country self-sufficient by 1980.

In the autumn of 1978, the government proposed that trade unions moderate the following year’s pay claims to 5% as a key part of the ongoing fight against inflation, which was by then hovering at 8%. The unions, however, rejected any limits proposed by the Callaghan government and vowed to pursue their right to free and unrestrained collective bargaining. The first major employer to concede over and above the government’s proposed ceiling was Ford Motor Company, which granted an increase of 17% after an initial ambit claim of 25%.

That December, the government received an unwanted Christmas present, when a motion in the House of Commons was carried condemning;

"…the arbitrary use of economic sanctions against firms and workers who have negotiated pay settlements beyond a rigid limit which Parliament has not approved…"

The Civil Service unions, now isolated under government control while private sector companies were free to set their own wage negotiation benchmarks without risk of sanction, prepared for militant action. The ensuing Winter of Discontent strikes created shortages of a number of essential commodities. NHS hospitals, ambulance services, rubbish collection, schools and even funeral and burial services were caught up in transport and related stoppages that created nationwide chaos.

At one point 200 000 workers were temporarily laid off, and rubbish piled high in the streets. By the end of January 1979, the strike ended with employers conceding to almost all of the various unions’ demands.

Into this chaotic atmosphere returned the PM from a summit with US President Carter, French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and the West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The meeting had been held in the sunny Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe. Callaghan, looking relaxed and unconcerned according to some reports, rather unwisely stated,

"…I don’t think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos…"

He was rewarded by the famous What Crisis? headline in The Sun.

With an election looming, the government and Trades Union Congress finally made an attempt to publicly reconcile. The new Concordat, issued in February 1979, spelled out guidelines for a new cooperative approach toward dispute resolution, called for restraint in wage demands and set a joint ambition for an inflation rate of below 5% by 1982. It promised more measured picketing and more liberal union control over workforces. Callaghan called this a great step forward, while the Confederation of British Industry, unsurprisingly, said it was too little, too late.

Opposition Leader, Margaret Thatcher, soon seized a golden opportunity to take command of the agenda. She steamed in with motion of no confidence against the government on March 28th, 1979. The motion was passed by one vote, the first such successful motion since 1924. The subsequent general election paved the way for 18 years of Tory government.

Following the inevitable election loss, Jim Callaghan stayed on as Opposition Leader until 1980 when he was succeeded by Michael Foot. He subsequently served in the Lords as Baron Callaghan of Cardiff and passed away in 2005, aged 92.