Last updated 20:13, Thursday, 23 October 2008

I DON’T claim to know anything about high finance – or low finance for that matter.

But I do know the difference between right and wrong and good and evil, and what is happening in this country and the world today is pure evil!

I am referring to predictions that the number of homes repossessed by banks this year is likely to rise to 45,000 – a 50 per cent increase on last year.

That means a minimum of 45,000 people will have their homes taken from them and, of course, when you add partners and families, the number is two, three or four times greater than that.

Who are the people who will lose their homes and who are the ones who will take them?

The answer to the second is very easy to answer.

Those who will be doing the repossessing are the fat cat banks who threatened to destabilise the world economy rather than face any loss or risk to themselves. They are the banks that have held governments over a barrel and warned them that, without billion-pound payouts, they would fold, taking the economy with them.

And who are the people who will lose their homes? Well, they are people who are honest, dishonest, rich, poor, black, white, greedy, generous – they are you and me and all of us.

But they are also people who have been able to go into the banks in the first place and get mortgages of up to 125 per cent – more than their property was worth. Maybe they were silly, but for many it was the only way to get on to the property ladder. And, let’s face it, when the going was good the bankers were there cooing and wooing and inviting us in.

People were lulled into a false sense of security. Low interest rates made it possible for them to meet the repayments even if it was going to be a long time before they owned the houses.

We sat back and watched as people at the lower end of the market started to worry about ever being able to afford a property at all. We adopted a new phrase, “affordable housing”, and developers were required to include an element of cheaper homes in new estates.

But even affordable housing was growing beyond the means of many and those of us ignorant of high finance wondered where it would all end – because end it must.

And eventually it did end. The banks and the finance companies realised that they were taking a risk by lending all this money. People were putting back so much into mortgage repayments that there was little money left for anything else and the economy was starting to stagnate.

In the world of shipping the tradition is that when a ship goes down, it is women and children first into the lifeboats.

The opposite appears to be true in the world of finance. When the economy begins to sink, it is captain and crew to the lifeboats and the ordinary people are left to sink or swim.

And it would seem to me, uninitiated as I am, that those left swimming are now being hit over the head with the lifeboat oars as the big banks fight to scrabble back as much money as they can.

We, the taxpayers, have seen our billions used to refloat the sinking banks.

The first to go was Northern Rock; it was going, anyway, until the Government stepped and saved it.

How has it shown its gratitude? Well, according to the homeless charity Shelter, it is “aggressively repossessing properties”.

And there, right there, is the difference between right and wrong and good and evil.

The banks and bankers have been saved but they have no intention of offering the same kind of helping hand to others.

People will be turfed out of their homes and their properties sold at a fraction of their value. There are other ways around it, but cash in hand is all these bankers care about.

The Government needed to bail out the banks. But maybe there was another way to do it.

I think every pound paid out to the banks should have been paid in the name of the country’s mortgagees. Every pound paid should have reduced the debt owed by property owners in Great Britain.

Some of us would not have benefited. Some don’t own houses and some are already mortgage free. But I don’t care. The solution would have been a lot fairer than funding banks to rise again and kick people out of their homes.