When London radio news is being sponsored by a firm of bailiffs, you know something bad is happening. ‘Helping landlords get what they’re owed’ runs the cheery slogan at the end of the bulletins. As bad as the financial headlines are, this tells a bigger story than anything captured in the headlines — proof that the credit crunch is not an abstraction confined to the financial markets, but a bitter reality, already claiming victims and leaving tens of thousands to wonder if they will be next. All over the country, the borrowed penny is dropping.
It dropped on me about 3.30 a.m. on the day my wife and I exchanged on our first house — the very day, as it happens, that Mervyn King first announced that the winged horsemen of the financial apocalypse would be galloping towards us. I slept for about 20 minutes that night, mulling the consequences.
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