Actor Michael Sheen has bought £1 million (C$1.86 million) of his neighbours’ debts and written them off using £100,000 (C$186,000) of his own money.
Sheen, best known for his roles in “The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Masters of Sex” and “Good Omens,” first embarked on his “debt heist” two years ago, with the twin aims of helping 900 people in his native South Wales and spotlighting the perils of a debt industry that demands sky-high interest rates on short-term loans.
“People’s debts get put into bundles and then debt-buying companies can buy those bundles and then they can sell it on to another debt-buying company at a lower price so … the people who own the debt can sell it for less and less money,” he explained in an interview on BBC TV’s “The One Show” last week.
“I was able to set up a company and for £100,000 of my own money, buy £1 million of debt because it had come down in value like that.”
So is Good Omens just a documentary?
No. This money could’ve gone to people who actually need it, instead it’s going to those who want it.
Not a single life is being saved from this nor is a single person being brought out of poverty.
But hey, that’s the point.
This is people living in a week-to-week manner, who’ve had to borrow £300 off a pay-day lender to cover a shortfall (sometimes an emergency or unexpected outgoing, sometimes there were just fewer hours of work available) because they literally have no other money.
They’ve then found out the predatory, scummy lender’s practices and interest rates mean that a few months later, despite paying back every spare penny they can afford, they now owe £2000 to that lender, pushing them deeper and deeper into a poverty they cannot ever escape from.
They didn’t ask for the debt to be paid off, but it’s definitely a need, not a want. There’s no need to be spreading that sort of victim-blaming nonsense.
Anyway, they now owe those scum £0.
Ideally, most of this situation wouldn’t even exist in the first place, and it’s a shame this is the only process currently available to help these people, but this is literally saving people’s lives and though perhaps not by itself lifting anyone out of poverty, it’s certainly keeping people out of more severe poverty.
Funny how much energy you people put into defending passing a bunch of money around at the top.
Can’t say I expect more at this point. That’s why the world is the way it is.
But hey, you should be glad rich people get to stay rich while the poor people whose lives could’ve been saved with this money perish.
Oh, and always remember to get mad at the people calling it out. That way you can do your part to slow down change as much as possible.
Never admit you’re wrong!
I’m not quite sure what you’re on about there, sorry.
I literally only spoke of the people who are caught in a debt-poverty trap, who you accused of being rich people that just wanted free money, rather than people who genuinely needed support.
I didn’t even comment on anything else you have referred to.
I said they were wealthy, and globally speaking they are.
I said the money was going to end up in the hands of rich people, which it did.
You don’t like these harsh realities because they go against what you and your peers been indoctrinated to believe. This is causing your cognitive dissonance to flare up.
It’s easier to fool ya’ll than to convince you that you’ve been fooled.
You are completely missing the fact that poverty is a relative concept. Using global parameters to decide that poor people in rich countries are rich is so out of touch that I cannot even describe it.
There are whole studies made on the effect of relative poverty, in case you want to expand your horizons.
Saving lives isn’t a “relative concept.” I said nobody will be brought out of poverty from this, which is true. I also said no lives would be saved from this, which is also true.
You only focused on the poverty aspect of my argument because it was easier to argue against, and you still failed to debunk it because nobody was brought out of poverty from this.
What are you going to say next to defend passing a bunch of money around at the top? Anything to avoid admitting you’re supporting the problem.
No it’s not.
The fact that you keep denying it, doesn’t mean I need to debunk jack. You are saying “you can’t be brought out of poverty, because in a global perspective if you earn more than 3$ a day, you are not poor”, or at least, I am paraphrasing. I am saying that’s bullshit, because poverty is a relative concept and you can absolutely be poor even if you are above what is globally considered the threshold of poverty.
I am focusing on this part because it is the basis of your argument. Also:
Calling poor people in the first world rich is again, dumb. Deal with this, no organization that focuses on poverty does it, and nobody would consider - say - a welfare check “keeping money on the top”.
I don’t know if you genuinely don’t get class divisions or if you just search for conflict online (I have seen you around…).
Can you explain to me - an uninvolved fellow fedditor - how helping working class people out of their debt traps is bad? I understand that this is just circling money around people who don’t need it as badly as the poorest of the poor globally speaking and that this is just combating the symptoms instead of the sickness but for the individuals supported that way, is there any specific catch associated that does make this support ring hollow?
Gonna block ya now. Arguing with you people is exhausting because you will never give up despite how much you’re proven wrong. If you don’t want to accept something is true, you never will.
That’s how cognitive dissonance works. You’re pretty much arguing with yourself.
Ah yes, the paragon of reasonableness over here. I’ll return the favor.
You are an obnoxious naval staring idiot who cannot argue or discuss properly if your life depended on it. Sad part of it all is that you truly believe you have “the knowledge” and others are poor saps who just cannot see the truth. You know, like the true cultish moron that you are.
Oh, and you are instant blocked, you colossal waste of precious oxygen.
Your paranoia seems lamentable as I take it that you confuse me with your interlocutor. I was hoping that you would expand on your position in a less heated side-conversation. Apparently that hope was in vain. Good luck on your crusade to educate the renitent.