Isn’t this just disgusting? We know, know very well, that the National Health Service is the very Wonder of the World. Danny Boyle told us so and it’s so damn great that no one has tried to copy it, realising that they could never measure up to its perfection. And yet what is this? NHS workers are the largest customer base for the blood sucking leeches of the payday loans industry? But, but, surely we are paying the angels enough that they need not consort with usurers?
The figures released on Wednesday by the Cash Lady comparison website showed that NHS workers applied for more payday loans than any other workers in London, Cardiff and Bristol and applied for more loans nationally than any other organisation’s workers. The website collates loans issued by companies including Quick Quid, The Money Shop, Sunny and 118 118 Money. Cash Lady said the lenders charge interest rates between 68.7% and 1,325%.
This is, of course, straight from the Annals of the Bleedin’ Obvious. The NHS is the largest employer in the UK by a very large margin. At a rough eyeball, some 5% of the entire working population, no one else is even close to this. Actually, the NHS is among the ten largest employers on the planet.
If the propensity to use payday loans were evenly distributed across the population then the NHS would have more workers using them than any other employer. Equally, a survey of those using them would reveal more with the NHS as their employer than any other. Simply because the NHS is the country’s largest employer.
We could take it further in fact. Another such survey tells us that:
According to the research, payday loans now average £328 compared with £294 in 2016.
While the NHS, which includes junior doctors and healthcare assistants, topped the loans league, supermarket workers, fast food restaurant staff and couriers were amongst the ten types of jobs with the biggest shortfall between pay days.
I think a comparison between those users and the portion of the workforce in those jobs would be instructive, no? By the way, yes, that is the same survey, from the same source, just last year’s version.
The country’s largest employer has more employees who bump uglies than any other employer and the country’s largest employer has more employees who use payday loans than any other employer are statements equally true, equally useful and equally surprising. Suitable entries for the Annals of the Bleedin’ Obvious
Where are the screams of horror at the gross gender imbalance that photo reveals? Something Must Be Done!
Stale, pale and female?
Unless we’re talking about porters and traditionally low-paid admin menials, I don’t understand this business – nurses using food banks, etc. I count a fair number of NHS bods among the larger Gudgeon family and all have done pretty well for themselves, not least the nurse contingent – own homes, prestige cars and sailing vessels…