MONEY MATTERS

British comedian, Kit Hesketh-Harvey says, I’ve a healthy mistrust of anything that requires a hard shell. No hawkers shriek as shrilly as the credit – card vendors. Their supplications clog my letter box and they interrupt lunch with cold –calls of “can I interest you in……?” They even strong – arm you in supermarket checkout counter.

And honestly look at that advertising! Macho City – boy scenarios, sports cars, doe-eyed, adoring women. It’s all too clear what these are a substitute for. How I hate the male (and it is predominantly male) ritual of the Displaying of the Card. That sudden tense silence of ritual veneration. That glance around, before the “Just get a load of this” thwack on to the counter. (How I rejoice when it all crashes and burns with, “I’m sorry, sir, it appears to have been rejected.”) It comes down to simple arithmetic. Nothing comes from nothing. All that advertising costs a fortune. Our use of cards supports an army of ad execs on fat salaries. Who is paying for it all? Well we are! Why do these people deserve a living?

How have we allowed ourselves to be painted into a corner in which we cannot buy petrol, stay at a hotel or buy off the internet without surrendering our precious and dangerously accessible personal banking details to a shower of ruthless strangers?

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