Don't forget to hate the banks.

I haven't been on here in ages. Mostly because I've had more important things to
do like getting my head around the various tasks in my new job.

I know I'm lucky and most of my ranting is not based on what I think I deserve or how I'm feeling the effects of what the government does, it's with the poorest and most vulnerable in mind.

But just for a few minutes I'm going to focus on something slightly less important to the worst off. 

I'm going to talk about all those people who got on the property ladder during the boom years. There are terrible cases of banks - who were quite happy to lend large sums in the good times - taking peoples' properties away who can't pay their mortgages; usually as a result of the problems they cause. But as I'm talking more from personal experience, I'm going to concentrate on those who were sensible and bought something that wasn't too over-priced that they could comfortably afford. Many of those people are now at a point in their lives where they need a bigger home. And they're stuffed. 

In the downfall from the boom, many many people lost their jobs and had to switch to interest-only mortgages whilst they got back on their feet (or took jobs paying them a lot less than their pre-recession ones did). The recession was NOT the fault of the poor; it was the fault of the banks - we should never forget this. 

The property market was unrealistic and could never continue like that and that was caused by the banks too. People could pay more for homes because the banks would lend more and prices kept on rising. Then all of a sudden, we found out. We found out what the banks had been up to and that the economy was on a knife-edge. They stopped lending; people stopped buying. Prices stagnated and in most areas, they fell.

Despite being bailed out by taxpayers and being given more "incentives" (hand-outs and tax breaks to you and me) by the government, banks are still not lending and the housing market continues to stagnate.

Bail-outs, forced mergers and various financial sector changes mean that some banks have been off-loading some of their mortgages. At the moment, many homeowners are temporarily paying over-the-odds to a bank who doesn't want them any more. But they can't get a new mortgage deal because they don't have permanent jobs; those are rare since the government forced these ever-tougher austerity measures on us all.

So because of the situation people have been in as a direct result of the recession, many have only paid a tiny amount of their mortgages and large numbers will be in negative equity. This being the case, moving to a larger property is impossible and people are going to either have to try and cope with their original small homes or cross their fingers that time will not get the better of them.

So to sum up:

The banks caused property prices to be very high
The banks caused the recession
The recession caused countless job losses

Job losses meant mortgages unpaid
The recession caused house prices to fall
The banks, despite having lots and lots of our money, are not lending
The banks reluctance to lend keeps property prices low
The weak market means many won't get what they paid for their properties and many in negative equity.

Societies should protect the most vulnerable. This shower of shits caused the mess we're in and yet the Government shields them from everything and even goes marching, all pig-headed to the EU to fight on their behalf. Meanwhile, the poorest and most vulnerable are losing jobs, having services taken away, benefits cut, being vilified for not having jobs that don't exist and basically, being turned into 'the problem'.

Instead of looking after the banks, we should be kicking them until they give us our money back.