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I am interested to know how the current depression is affecting Podiatry.
I have noticed a definate decline in patient numbers recently. Not just a decline in new patients but existing patients extending their return for routine treatment or only contacting when they can no longer manage.
Local industry (& I understand that nationally it is a similar picture) appears to be in dire straights. Corus (formally British steel) now owned by the Indian firm Tata, has dismised its contracted employees, placed an indefinate block on overtime & dictated Rotherham plant employees must take 3 weeks leave at Christmas due to a decline in orders.
Some of my patients have been laid off with 2 days notice!
A significant number of patients have been told they now have a shorter working week (3 days) due to 'the current financial climate'.
The local village has seen 5 shops close with a 2 week period (this includes only those located just on the high street, not considering smaller premises in more rural locations).
My questions: 'Is this just the beginning?
Has your practice noticed signifiant change?
Is the global picture similar?
__________________
:)
twirly
Mandy Brooks
Brooks Podiatry
S64 0DE
Suffering a fondness for odd things.
In my wifes clinic, they are getting even busier and she is looking for another Podiatrist to help with the extra work.
__________________
Craig Payne
Department of Podiatry
La Trobe University
Melbourne, Australia http://www.latrobe.edu.au/podiatry
__________________________________________________ ___________________________________ God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things - right now I am so far behind, I will never die.
The views expressed above are those of the author and not that of La Trobe University This is where I am, where are you?
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It is difficult to make direct comparisons between countries and regions for example in WA there is a mineral boom with a significant part of the population with money to burn. Now whether they seek out private podiatry is not too clear.
For Oz so far anyway there has not been so drastic measures as shortened working weeks or major industry closures. However the country is not immune from the downturn of the global ecomony and likely to face this full on in the coming year. The government keeps these things quiet meantime and fills our heads with what wonderful things they have done to avoid the inflation.
Difficult to say what will transpire but it is likely to affect disposable income groups and with the potential threat the government may remove non essential subsidies then we may see a different social picture emerge in the coming twelve months, I am sure of that. The number of free soup kitchens and roofless people is increasing alarmingly so if that is a litmus then we have not seen the worst, here.
In the UK it is probably better to compare to periods of sustained inflation in the past. From recollection established practice survived but it became more difficult to start practices from scratch when disposable incomes were directed to cover bare essentials. More pods stayed in the public sector for security (an option not so available in the land downunder).
The original podiatry schools in the UK and Australia started as free foot hospitals during the Depression.
Myself and other colleagues in my area have definitely found it quiet recently. This week has been abysmal. The hairdressers around the corner have also found it dead this week.
A colleague of mine was speaking to someone "who works for a major chiropody supplier" and was told that EVERYONE across the country is grumbling/feeling the pinch.
This last 12 months to 2 years has seen a significant change in the providers of footcare on the open market. We have seen the NHS engaging with Age Concern and Social Enterprises in developing services for low risk foot care and nail cutting.
We are seeing increased avaliability of appointments for more specialised services within primary care, particularly MSK.
GP's now offer increased inhouse services by non-podiatrists offering foot care and they themselves are ruling the roost with nail surgery.
We are also seeing increasing numbers of graduates who cannot obtain NHS posts having to start private practices or offering domiciliary services - therefore we are finding greater competition within the private sector.
All these changes impact significantly on private practice and now the downturn of the economy.
Yes our practice has been significantly quieter this year compared with last year - but more noticeably since September. Regionally we have always had a poor economy compared with the South. Industry and manufacturing has always come and gone, house prices remain one of the cheapest in the UK so perhaps we will fair better than some others. Only time will tell.
I think it crucial by now that we have all looked at our financial positions and trimmed off all the non-essentials. Do not rest on ones laurels either. Now is the time to up the marketing and PR.
Interestingly I thought it time to contact my Business Bank Manager to see what solutions she could offer. Diddly squat! Not even a small overdraft facility. But after a 10 minute critique of my business and outgoings she did give me the number for Merchant Banking Services so I could invest in a card reader and a prefilled, by her, credit card application arrived the next day awaiting my signature to be returned in a hand addressed envelope, by her, with two 1st class stamps attached to it. This has gone for shredding leaving me wondering what all the promises to small businesses by Gordon Brown were all about and why the banks are still pushing credit facilities?
"and they themselves are ruling the roost with nail surgery."
And what is they're regrowth rate???!!!
"We are also seeing increasing numbers of graduates who cannot obtain NHS posts having to start private practices or offering domiciliary services - therefore we are finding greater competition within the private sector."
The key here is to provide a unique selling point.
George, you said:
"We are also seeing increasing numbers of graduates who cannot obtain NHS posts having to start private practices or offering domiciliary services - therefore we are finding greater competition within the private sector."
Bill Liggins, myself, and some others predicted this would eventually happen three or four years ago on the ThatFootSite forum. The recession just speeded things up a little.
I believe that marketing an individual Practice (or indeed private Podiatry in the UK) will make very little difference to the overall situation.
"and they themselves are ruling the roost with nail surgery."
And what is they're regrowth rate???!!!
The thing is - no one is interested (until their nails start to grow again).
UK patients will not, in the main, be interested in paying for nail surgery if they can get the same job (you and I know it is not, but the patient has just been told by the nice Receptionist or Nurse that it is) done by the GP for nothing.
Even the number of insured patients has dropped in my clinics. In the UK we (as a profession) have just not prepared for this, and consequently are floundering big time.
"I believe that marketing an individual Practice (or indeed private Podiatry in the UK) will make very little difference to the overall situation."
I do agree. I think there is a general misunderstanding about the macro-miracle of marketing which costs a lot and achieves remarkably little. Time and circumstances will preclude financial encouragement from the banks for the foreseeable future so it would appear prudent for small business to consolidate and pay off debt. Niche care is driven by consumer demand and when disposable income is short demand drops leaving only the bread and butter stuff i.e cut and come again (or clip and chip as they say downunder)
The tide will turn but it is likely to take a couple of very lean years. The only consolation being everyone is doing it tough.
I treated a medical specialist this week. We spoke of the woes of the economy, and he happly stated, "yes, but medicine is recession proof!".
And in most countries this is true. The medical profession generally holds the key to the golden goose of public health funding, and no matter the position of the economic cycle, they do well.
As Cameron has said, and I agree, I think PR, marketing and all of that has limited bang for buck.
The best thing the UK, NZ and Australian professions could do is fund some prominent political lobbyists, donate to the political parties in power, and argue for equity in payment for the provision of services that medicine provides with generous taypayer funds.
If the government pays a GP to do a nail surgery, but not a podiatrist - they why the heck should this be the case? Change the rules and we can prosper. Hell, even propose that we undercut the going rate for a GP to do it! At least we get "on the books".
LL
__________________
***************************************** Remember, it's just a foot.
The Following User Says Thank You to LuckyLisfranc For This Useful Post:
Hi Twirly 1) Interestingly I thought it time to contact my Business Bank Manager to see what solutions she could offer. Diddly squat! Not even a small overdraft facility. 2) But after a 10 minute critique of my business and outgoings she did give me the number for Merchant Banking Services so I could invest in a card reader and a prefilled, by her, credit card application arrived the next day awaiting my signature to be returned in a hand addressed envelope, by her, with two 1st class stamps attached to it. This has gone for shredding leaving me wondering what all the promises to small businesses by Gordon Brown were all about and why the banks are still pushing credit facilities? 3) Chin up and keep smiling,
GB
I appreciate all of your replies. In response to Georges' points: 1). My bank (HSBC) offered to increase my £200.00 overdraft facility at my request to £400.00 for an arrangement fee of £100.00!!! I declined, & in reality I think it has confirmed my lack of loyalty to that particular organisation & as a member of the Federation for Small Business I will be taking my account to the Co op. for free business banking. (This is an action I should have taken some time ago! my fault entirely for putting it off until tomorrow!). I understand from an article I read some time ago that an individual is more likely to divorce, move house or change career than change banks. Time to rethink my financial future methinks.
2). I too was offered a card reading machine, for a pre-agreed fee, a 2 year minimum contract & a charge on each transaction. The banks prefer 'wired' money as cheques & cash take more time/staff to input. I also understand that the staff member who procures the initial contract receives commission. Again I declined ( I also declined the credit card).
3). I will try to remain calm. (This is set to become my mantra for the forseeable future).
Again, many thanks to all who responded.
Mandy
__________________
:)
twirly
Mandy Brooks
Brooks Podiatry
S64 0DE
Suffering a fondness for odd things.
George, you said:
"We are also seeing increasing numbers of graduates who cannot obtain NHS posts having to start private practices or offering domiciliary services - therefore we are finding greater competition within the private sector."
Bill Liggins, myself, and some others predicted this would eventually happen three or four years ago on the ThatFootSite forum. The recession just speeded things up a little.
I believe that marketing an individual Practice (or indeed private Podiatry in the UK) will make very little difference to the overall situation.
David, I don't understand why you think the recession speeded things up a bit?
Podiatrists employed within the NHS has been steadily reducing over the last 5 or 6 years so predicting an influx into the private sector was hardly a difficult thing to do.
Sadly, and again as both you and Bill have no doubt predicted, the Strategic Health Authorities have commissioned the development of an Assistant Practitioner to fill unmet need. There is a once again a point of NHS saturation before the technician grade is readily available.
With increasing referral from social enterprises (Age Concern et al) plus an ability in most PCT's for patients to self refer to Podiatry, waiting lists for new patient contact with the NHS Podiatrist is once again increasing. The wait for contact locally has increased from 18 weeks to 12 months.
So with no marketing -cost effective fly leafleting in those rumbling moments of epmty appoints throughout the day - how does one propose to promote oneself to those who lose patience with the free system?
George,
You asked:
"David, I don't understand why you think the recession speeded things up a bit?"
Bad choice of words. I suppose what I meant was that the recession has highlighted the situation for us.
Clearly, every Practice has to do what it feels is right for it to survive. However it is an unfortunate fact that if there is no money around (and in some areas this is indeed the case) then patients are not going to seek treatment as often, or even at all if (for example) they can buy an inexpensive home remedy.
"and when disposable income is short demand drops leaving only the bread and butter stuff i.e cut and come again (or clip and chip as they say downunder) "
I think this is the crux of the matter. Many Pods have proclaimed that they dont do 'cut and come again' as if it was a dirty word, and that they "didnt do all that training" just to cut toenails" .
Well, its wake up and smell the coffee guys- That is where your income will be coming from for the next year or so, but if you have turned the work away in the past it may not come knocking at your door.
If you want to sit back and see it out without making any effort to get work your way, so be it, but GB is right in my opinion, a little marketing cant hurt as there will still be newcomers requiring podiatry regardless of the economic crisis.
For economic purposes I would divide the UK footcare market into 3 sectors:-
1.Those specialist practices that sell mainly high-priced units eg: orthotics/podiatric surgery. They rely on the Pareto factor where 80% of their income comes from 20% of the clientelle.
2. Those generalist practitioers who have a good range of services available at varying costs, from simple nail cuts to nail surgery/ mid range orthotics.
3. Those practices at the bottom of the footcare market who sell low price units and rely on high turmover ie; the "pile 'em high sell 'em cheap" philosophy.
These use very small profit margins to keep the price low. Most of the unregulated fall into this category.
In a recession, 1 & 3 are most likely to fail.
1. has put "all their eggs in one basket" and should have diversified 6 months ago to stop an acute cash flow problem.
3. cannot trim their profit margins any more. The cost per unit may be only £12 for a nail cut but the mainly elderly clientelle will no longer be prepared to pay it every 6 weeks. If the practitioner is locked in to a 6-week trading cycle, then without new customers the operation will fail. With profit margins so low there will be little spare cash for marketing.
In a profession where the generalist private practitioner is often treated as second class by the "specialist" I can see a reversal of fortunes occuring.
Dido
Last edited by Dido : 29th November 2008 at 04:10 AM.
Reason: grammar
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An interesting scenario, but I'm not too sure I agree. I certainly do not agree with the great GB (Gordon not George).
So.
1) the specialist, well in this recession are the high earners really going to be hit? Is their 'disposable' income not so massive 21.5 million bonus going to be affected? Sadly somehow I think not. So is the Pareto effect going to cushion this group?
3) 'Pile em high and sell em cheap' well what exactly do these 'merchants' have to achieve to 'break even'? Costs + an hourly rate better than benefit or minimum wage?
So No 2 interesting, IMO those long established practices, which have minimum debts and another income stream may 'sit it out'. Those that rely on 'Practice income' will find it hard and I suspect eventually revert to 'price war tactics'. That IMO would be disastrous.
Marketing - well possibly it's worth a try, but if there is no market you can spend a lot of 'ineffective money'?
I suggest that in the climate we find ourselves in we listen very carefully to out clients, and learn from what they are saying .
In the meantime I have a very good recipe for Spam stuffed with pigs live in Bovril gravy for Xmas dinner.
Last edited by R.E.G : 30th November 2008 at 07:06 AM.
Reason: spelling
The Following User Says Thank You to R.E.G For This Useful Post:
I am interested to know how the current depression is affecting Podiatry.
I have noticed a definate decline in patient numbers recently. Not just a decline in new patients but existing patients extending their return for routine treatment or only contacting when they can no longer manage.
Local industry (& I understand that nationally it is a similar picture) appears to be in dire straights. Corus (formally British steel) now owned by the Indian firm Tata, has dismised its contracted employees, placed an indefinate block on overtime & dictated Rotherham plant employees must take 3 weeks leave at Christmas due to a decline in orders.
Some of my patients have been laid off with 2 days notice!
A significant number of patients have been told they now have a shorter working week (3 days) due to 'the current financial climate'.
The local village has seen 5 shops close with a 2 week period (this includes only those located just on the high street, not considering smaller premises in more rural locations).
My questions: 'Is this just the beginning?
Has your practice noticed signifiant change?
Is the global picture similar?
Mandy:
Business is still very good for me here in Northern California in my full time practice where I specialize in musculoskeletal disorders of the foot and lower extremity. One of my favorite sayings when people ask me how I'm doing in the current poor financial climate:
"As long as there is obesity and gravity, my practice will always be busy."
__________________
Sincerely,
Kevin
**************************************************
Kevin A. Kirby, DPM
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Applied Biomechanics
California School of Podiatric Medicine at Samuel Merritt College
It was during the Great Depression that promoters profited by staging endurance events and contests of every torturous sort. One pinnacle of endurance madness was the 1928 transcontinental foot race across North America. This was a 3,400 mile race from Los Angeles to New York. The purse $25000 for the winner and $23500 to be split among nine runners up. These were quite considerable monies for that time. The marathon attracted 421 competitors and each had to pay $100 entrance fee. The event was the brainchild of a professional promoter CC Pyle and was supported by Dr William Scholl, a shoemaker turned foot physician. The press dubbed the event the Bunion Derby because of the punishment to the feet of the competitors. At the beginning of the race reporters nicknamed Pyle, Cash and Carry and by the end he had earned the dubious title of Corn and Callus Pyle. Everything that could go wrong with this event did. The feat (excuse the terrible pun), was well enough organised and Pyle had taken the precaution of contacting manufacturers of shoes, foot salves and pads, sun tan oil, and many of the local towns on route associations, but otherwise disaster be dogged the event. Sponsorship monies salvaged some the disaster but the 'event of the decade' was destined to go the same way as the Titanic. By the first day 222 runners had dropped out from heat exhaustion and one poor fellow was the victim of a hit and run accident. Race aids engaged to give the runners vital water as they crossed Mojave Desert did not turn up and more competitors dehydrated. Host towns backed out as the field dwindled and disasters mounted as the runner made groun towards the finishing point. Needless to say expected crowds failed to materialise along the way and the event went belly up. 573 hours 4 minutes and 34 seconds after the starting pistol was sounded, Andy Payne, a 19 year old Cherokee won the race. He collapsed from exhaustion after receiving his prize money. There were only four thousand people in the eighteen thousand seated arena to welcome the 55 runners who eventually completed the race. The Bunion Derby lost CC Pyle a pile of money and the only consolation the promoter could take was self credit for introducing mega marathon runs. Dr William Scholl on the other hand (or should it be foot) came out a winner. As he had done before with his National Cinderella Foot Contest, a country wide search to find the most beautiful female foot in America, he took no time to tie in his product range of corn, callus and bunion pads to the runners and general public that followed the race. The 1920's saw other forms of endurance marathons namely dance-athons. The simple principle was for couples to outdance all others. The craze lasted well into the thirties where record numbers of unemployed men and women desperately danced as much for the modest prize money as to lose themselves in the obliviation of fatigue. The dance marathon did not display humanity at its best. Hallucinations were frequent with dancers fighting imaginary foes or leaving the dance floor pursued by imaginary villains. The last couple on the floor, won the enddurance contest. The prize monies were poor but what drove people to these excesses was faddishness and the half promise of a brief moment of fame. Often at the larger dancathons there were shioe salesmen on the sidelines purveying their wears as well as other vendors selling food, drink and foot care salves. Breaks were taken hourly, so couples could be quickly revitalised by side line masseurs. There were numerous reported deaths and in 1933 the Governor of New York signed a bill that made dancing beyond a reasonable eight hours a criminal offence.
It is likely that the full impact from the banking crisis will take some time to filter through to the general economy - with the real prospect of fiscal and econonomic collapse a reality for many countries. In the UK, the banks are being propped up with taxpayer's monies and from funds borrowed by HMG via Treasury bonds. Interesting to see other industries now asking for government bailouts - car manufacturing, charities & etc. Only petrochemicals and utilities seem to be profitable in the current climate. Wouldn't it be nice to see government money being made available to support private podiatric practice??
Unfortunately it looks likely that all podiatrists in the private sector will be affected to some degree or another - and those with practice loans and other debt will be facing much uncertainty in the months to come. There is an excellent online resource with the Consumer Action Group which gives superb advice on dealing with everything from bank charges, debt collectors, bailiffs, utility companies and other unpleasant low-life. http://www.consumerforums.com/index.php
The following extract is from a BBC report into the debt collection industry - well worth a read if you are facing problems with finance...
Quote:
British institutions use criminal thugs called 'bailifs' to take money and property from poor people
At debt's door
It's a booming business but even some "respectable" bailiffs are conning people, lying and ripping them off. BBC reporter Jim Wheble went undercover for nine months to expose how some debt collectors cheat the public.
Their job is to collect unpaid fines which are issued by magistrates' courts, local authorities and landlords. Sometimes they work directly for companies seeking to recover everything from council tax and parking fines to unpaid bills.
They are supposed to be Officers of the Court enforcing the law on behalf of the public. Instead I saw bailiffs cheat, lie and dissemble. I saw them illegally breaking and entering and I saw them fraudulently conning members of the public out of hundreds of pounds.
I'm not saying people shouldn't pay their debts and I'm certainly not criticising the companies who are owed money, but I saw bailiffs make people pay debts they didn't even owe and illegally inflate existing fines to more than they were supposed to be.
Undercover, I was employed as a bailiff by two companies - Drakes Group and CCS Enforcement Services Limited. To my new colleagues I was an ex-salesman who fancied a change of direction.
Humanity
The first company I worked for was the Drakes Group, one of the largest bailiff companies in the country. They have just won the lion's share of contracts issued to bailiff companies to collect magistrates' courts fines. They are seen as a market leader and possibly the most image conscious.
Another company I also worked for was CCS Enforcement Services Limited, a smaller business whose focus is on collecting unpaid parking fines. Their head office is in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, but I was based at a regional office in Croydon, south London.
They seemed a lot less glossy than Drakes, almost having a family feel about them. But like all the best families, they definitely had a few well kept secrets.
On my first day of training at Drakes the course tutor told us: "You are going to see things and hear things that are going to take you to the core of your humanity. The core of your idea of what society out there really is like."
He was right but it wasn't the behaviour of society that shocked me, it was the behaviour of the bailiffs. To be fair, most of the training stressed our responsibilities. I almost began to believe them. But then I started on the job, and one of my fellow bailiffs immediately told me in the bluntest language what he thought of the training.
"The **** they tell you at the school, it's a load of bollocks - trust me," one of the my fellow bailiffs told me as soon as I started. And so it was. My very first job with Drakes set the tone. I was sent with another more experienced bailiff to recover a �400 driving fine owed by a young man.
When we knocked on the door his mum explained he didn't live there. The law is quite clear, if he doesn't live at the address there is nothing we can do. I know that, I've been trained. But my bailiff colleague has different ideas.
Panic
"See the problem is at the moment madam, the court has issued a warrant against him at this address," he tells her. He goes on to explain to the terrified woman that we are "court enforcement officers". He adds: "Unless we can gain �400 this morning... we do have a warrant to remove goods."
I know this is simply not true - and so does my colleague. We have no right to remove this woman's possessions and no right to pressurise her into paying her son's debts. But that doesn't stop my colleague.
He begins to walk round the woman's home, deliberately listing her possessions as though preparing to take them. He stops by her washing machine and carefully notes down its make.
"I haven't done anything," pleads the woman, adding that she is a retired pensioner. But what my fellow bailiff is doing has nothing to do with the law either, as he freely admits to me while the woman is out of hearing.
"We're not allowed to take washing machines any more either but I list them anyway cos it pisses people off," he says. "The washing machine is the main thing in their household, especially a lady's household. Their washing machine is like the business."
It works. The mother panics and phones her daughter. My colleague takes the phone. "Right what I will do," he says. "I will do your mum a favour. We will leave this morning, but if it's not paid by... this afternoon we will come back with a locksmith if necessary to remove the property."
Again that is completely untrue, he can do no such thing. But it works. The fine gets paid.
I had expected to find rogue bailiffs. I had been told by one whistleblower - a bailiff for 20 years - that the business was riddled with illegal practices. What I found was more pervasive, more systematic, than I could ever have imagined.
Fear is the key weapon in the bailiff's armoury. But that doesn't mean that all bailiffs are shaven-headed hard men. At CCS Enforcement Services Limited I was sent out to work with another bailiff who looks like a gentleman. He wears a tweed jacket and has a polite deferential manner. I am little prepared for what happens next.
Unnecessary fear
We've been sent to visit the home of debtor's former wife. We know he's probably not living there, but it's decided we should pay her and her children a visit anyway. Instead of making for her front door, this "gentleman bailiff" decides on another approach. As I look on in astonishment he takes a ladder from the back of the van.
"I've done this many times actually," he says as he climbs up to a first floor window where he comes face to face with the debtor's former wife. I can see no conceivable justification for terrifying this entirely innocent woman, alone at home with her two small children.
The poor woman screams hysterically at what she believes is an intruder. Absurdly, what he's doing isn't illegal - an ancient bailiff law means he can actually do this. It achieves absolutely nothing apart from causing unnecessary fear and alarm.
He tells me about another little trick he had up his sleeve - bumping up charges. It's completely illegal but, as I discovered, it happens all the time.
Although the original debt a bailiff may be trying to recover might only be �100 the bailiff can significantly increase the money the debtor has to pay by adding extra fees for every visit he has to make. Only one visit can take the bill to �300. Add three visits and the bill can go up to �700.
He explained to me that these "extra visits" may not be quite what they appear. What he does is collect thousands of pounds in extra fees by charging debtors for visits he never made. They're called "phantom visits" in the trade. I watched him do it.
We call on a man whose parking fine has gone up to �300. The man is anxious not to be clamped and offered to pay right away. But my colleague says the fine is now �700 when our current visit is added on.
Complaints
That was much more than the amount the man really owed, but I couldn't say anything. I was undercover and I just had to remain in frustrated silence. The bailiff offers to take the cost of today's visit off and drops �100 from the bill. The man paid up the �600 remaining.
This was not a lone occurrence, the practice appears to me to be endemic in the industry. Many of the bailiffs at Drakes were no exception. While I was working for them I got a call from head office. They'd received a cheque from a debtor but I still had to go round and enforce a warrant. I couldn't understand this, so I brought it up at the morning meeting.
"Technically, we can't remove any goods or remove his car because he's paid the fine," I say. But one of the more experienced bailiffs at Drakes didn't seem worried about that.
"Has the office cashed the cheque yet?" he asks. I tell him that they hadn't. "Oh you can enforce the warrant then," he said.
That is precisely what we did. The couple who owned the car had sent in a cheque to cover the �175 fine, but we went round and demanded �381.75. And the couple - with two burly bailiffs standing at their door - paid up.
It wasn't only a few rogue bailiffs who did this. My manager at Drakes, appeared to make it clear that this was to be general practice. "Every trip you've got at the moment, you just have to add the second and third visits straight away, so that's your extra hundred pounds added on already," he says.
There is little, I discovered, that can stand in the way of a determined bailiff - certainly not the law. Another bailiff there put it succinctly: "You are a legal thief," he says.
Ruthless
And like thieves, many bailiffs quickly learn a basic skill - breaking and entering. After all, checking out the goods - even if they are not the debtors - is a lot easier when no-one is in.
The best I met was an ex-cop, now working for Drakes. He showed me how to break into a house in a few seconds, using a special gadget that left not a trace.
Another bailiff explained to me, they have no real fear of being caught breaking the law. After all it is usually simply the bailiff's word against the debtors. "I'm a court officer," he says. "Why shouldn't they believe me."
The fact is that most people don't complain. Most people have no idea what a bailiff can and can't do. All too often it is that ignorance which the ruthless bailiff will exploit.
But the end of the road came for me when I saw real damage being done. At Drakes, I was shadowing a bailiff known for going to any lengths to get paid. We were pursuing a fine that had been issued by the courts for an unpaid TV licence.
The debtor wasn't in and nobody else at the house spoke English apart from the debtor's kids. The bailiff told the young girls that when people don't pay fines they can go to prison, and that was what could happen to their mother. The crying girls got the message. This was more than I could take.
In a statement Drakes Group told us it had taken the lead in improving enforcement standards across the industry and did not condone, or knowingly allow, any of the alleged offences. It pledged to investigate any allegation of impropriety or poor practice and take appropriate action as necessary.
CCS Enforcement Services Limited said it had launched a full internal investigation and would take disciplinary action against any person found to have acted inappropriately. It also announced an independent review of CCS Enforcement Services Limited policies and procedures, to ensure that all employees operate at the very highest ethical and professional standards.
__________________
"citing an indisposition due to special circumstances"
15 industry insiders answer questions on new issues you may be facing in this tumultuous economic time and offer advice on what you can do to still be profitable.
Not a blip on the screen here everything is traveling smooth as, we are a little on the recession proof side l guess.
Diabetics require regular shoes and orthosis as do many of my CP and arthritic clients, at this stage the government is still paying well, as for the privately funded clients...pain rules, so we are busy no matter what.
Interesting as Newsbots posting was it is a little out of date, quoting expectations for November.
I suggest things have moved rapidly on.
Only yesterday the top bosses of the 3 US auto giants offered to work for a $ next year, and this is yesterdays news from a relative over the pond.
So they had a big company meeting yesterday to explain the Layoffs and talk about the recession. They asked for money saving ideas etc.
Just said that the bottom had fallen out of the market and potential jobs had gone up in smoke, and even signed contracts had been voided or placed on indefinite hold.
The company said from what they could gather this was across the board in the US and the world cited layoffs at one of the biggest and most diverse Arch. firms in the world HSK.
*** had always told me that Arch. gets hit hard during recession and are often some of the worst effected.
When architecture stops it says investment has stopped and all the 'belts' are being tightened.
Today it is expected that the bank of England will lower interest rates to the lowest level EVER, even before the US and Oz were invented.
So it may not have hit yet but it will, pain or no payne.
What is lamentable is the failure of the professional bodies - SoCaP in particular - in developing and promoting a comprehensive strategy for practice growth in the private sector. The resistance to establishing a Faculty of Private Practice or a dedicated business development unit/commercial division within the Society in recent years was, in my opinion, a lost opportunity which may in the coming months be something all sectors of the profession will come to regret. Much has been written on the level of unmet need within the foot health market at the inability of the NHS to provide a comprehensive care system for the whole population, indeed limited resources have necessitated a reduction of care to only those with high risk conditions - something that has forced many vulnerable patients into the private sector - to which many of those cannot afford. Given the prevailing economic conditions, this will place many patients - and private practitioners in an unenviable position in the coming months and years. Where is the use of the private sector in augmenting NHS care as proposed by the government a few years ago? The Society has a golden opportunity in promoting the use of its private practitioners in this area but has singularly failed in doing so. Instead of advocating the use of charities and voluntary groups in delivering low-cost footcare, NHS managers and DoH advisors - many of whom are Society members - have by their actions, denied those practitioners in private practice the ability to access NHS work which could have provided a guaranteed income in these troubled times.
A failure of leadership, vision and professional direction.
__________________
"citing an indisposition due to special circumstances"
My understanding is that mortgages in Australia have been doled out at 5-7 times earnings as much as they were in the UK = the average aussie is in pretty deep debt. Property has boomed and everyone is a property developer.
The unravelling of the financial system has yet to hit but it will and when it does its very easy to feel the squeeze under the weight of a large home loan. Given the weakening of the Aussie dollar I think that the financial markets are already planning on a significant
weaknening in the economy. Even the commodity rich states will suffer in a deflationary world economy.
I am interested to know how the current depression is affecting Podiatry.
My questions: 'Is this just the beginning?
Has your practice noticed signifiant change?
Is the global picture similar?
My business is actually successful most likely in part because of the recession, but I need to work out the details with the admins before I discuss it too much. Per capita, however, most of my customers are either stagnant in terms of growth over the past couple of years, and many have suffered losses of volume of as much as 20% directly due to the recession we're now officially in. In the past 6 months, my client base has increased by 50%, with the only real bottleneck being having time to train my new customers and the manpower to run my machines to produce components. At a guess, I see this period of our economy as a time where the big businesses will suffer mostly of their own weight, and the smaller non-corporate companies with lower overhead will continue to grow and thrive because of the low overhead advantage. My own goals involve taking the bottom out of the market of one product, while not sacrificing in any way in terms of quality, and from the looks of my backlog already, I've succeeded.
Those afficianados of doom and despair will particularly enjoy the tantalising vision of the future by the BBC's Robert Preston writing in The Times today. Roll on the revolution.
Quote:
The New Capitalism
There's next year, and then there's the next decade. Economic conditions in 2009 will be treacherous. There'll be a formal recession in most developed economies, and the economic contraction is highly likely to be more severe in the UK than almost anywhere else.
Companies and consumers will continue to tighten their belts. There'll be a sharp rise in unemployment. The extraordinary volatility we've experienced in the price of sterling, commodities, energy, shares and capital - which makes it so hard for businesses and investors to plan - is unlikely to dissipate.
Many businesses, especially big ones, will become unviable - and will present the Government with an appalling dilemma of which ones to put on life support.
So it’s understandable that most of us, including ministers, central bankers and regulators, are planning for the next few months. We're building the economic equivalent of bomb shelters and mobile hospitals.
But this is no downturn like any we've seen since the Second World War, for two reasons: it's global; and its primary cause is the pricking of a massive debt bubble.
We borrowed too much, especially in the US and the UK. And the process of paying the money back is not only leading to a fall in living standards but is also precipitating very significant changes in how the global financial economy operates.
Capitalism is changing in fundamental ways. For many years to come, what's happening will affect the relationship between business and government, between taxpayers and the private sector, between employers and employees, between investors and companies.
Arguably the global economic crisis will turn out to be more significant for us and other developed economies than the collapse of communism.
A New Capitalism is likely to emerge from the rubble. And although it’s impossible to be precise about how the reconstructed economy will operate, parts of its outline are taking shape. What lies ahead can be determined from an understanding of what’s gone wrong with the existing model.
This, in itself, is no reason for gloom or despair. For many, the New Capitalism may well seem fairer and less alienating than the model of the past 30 years, in that the system's salvation may require it to be kinder, gentler, less divisive, less of a casino in which the winner takes all.
Here are some of the numbers that tell us what’s gone wrong. For the UK, if you aggregate together consumer, corporate and public-sector debt, the ratio of our borrowings to our annual economic output is a bit over 300%, or over £4000bn. That’s a similar ratio of debt to GDP as that of the US, and it’s a record. Over the past decade, we borrowed and we borrowed and we borrowed: we assumed that the day when we had to pay it back would never arrive, that there would always be an opportunity to roll over the debt.
Households borrowed too much, £1200bn on mortgages alone. Big companies borrowed too much, especially those taken off the stock market in private equity deals. Note however that for all the political fuss about the need for banks to maintain lines of credit to small companies, they're the unsung heroes of our tale of monumental financial folly: even today, the aggregated savings of small companies exceed their debt.
One of the best ways of understanding how all our debts were accumulated is to look at the gross foreign current liabilities of our banks. These rose from £1,100bn in 1997 to £4,400bn this year (again, about three times the size of our annual economic output). This trend tells two stories. It shows the massive and unsustainable growth in the City of London and our financial services industry - which is now shrinking with a vengeance, at the cost of massive job losses and evaporating tax revenues (perhaps £30bn to £40bn of income for the Exchequer gone forever). But it also shows that our debts are, to a large extent, the recycled savings of other countries, notably the massive savings and surpluses of China, other Asian economies and the Middle East (one note of caution here: a sizeable proportion of these foreign currency liabilities, but by no means all, were used to buy foreign currency assets). To put it in crude terms, for much of the past decade, millions of Chinese slaved away on near subsistence wages and still managed to save, both as a nation (China swanks £1,400bn in foreign exchange reserves) and as individuals. And to a large extent they were working to improve our living standards, because they made more and more of the stuff we wanted at cheaper and cheaper prices - and clever bankers took their savings and lent the cash to us, so that we could buy the houses we cherished, the cars we desired, the flat-screen TVs.
This imbalance - between the savings of China, India, Japan and Saudi and our indebtedness, between their massive trade surpluses and our deficits - was never sustainable. At some point, the Chinese were bound to say, “we’d like some of the cake now please, which means you’ll have to have a bit less”.
Tragically, they toiled for our prosperity – or we lived high on the hog while they fattened the pigs for us – for too long. Which is partly why the return to equilibrium, to a more balanced global economy, is happening in a horribly painful way that's impoverishing millions of people.
For me, therefore, the most important event of the past week was the chastising of the US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, by Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the Chinese central bank. Zhou said that "over-consumption and a high reliance on credit is the cause of the US financial crisis" and "as the largest and most important economy in the world, the US should take the initiative to adjust its policies, raise its savings ratio appropriately and reduce its trade and fiscal deficits."
This seemed a pretty unambiguous statement by the Chinese that they're no longer prepared to finance the spendthrift ways of the US and UK: they don't want to lend more and they want to be confident that what they have lent won't disappear in a puff of bad debts and inflation.
So the big question is how much debt will we have to repay until our economy is returned to some kind of stability.
This is tricky to calculate.
One important number, which gives us a clue, is the difference between what our banks have lent and what they've borrowed from British households, businesses and institutions that are too small to be players in global financial markets. It's what the Bank of England calls the customer funding gap. And it matters because it's a guide to the dependence of British banks on funds from overseas that are diminishing and could well, over time, drop to zero.
This customer funding gap was nil in 2001. But by the end of June this year, according to the Bank of England, the gap had soared to £740bn. To be more specific, a typical British bank has been raising the funds for 40% of all the loans it makes to you and me from big financial institutions, money managers, giant companies and other so-called wholesale sources.
The problem for British banks (and for those in many other countries) is that this source of funds dried up in August 2007 and it’s not at all clear that the tap will ever be turned on again in the way that it was. The trigger of the closing down of wholesale markets was the horrifying realisation by financial institutions in every country that hundreds of billions of dollars lent to US homeowners in the form of low quality subprime loans – and repackaged into putatively high quality investments as collateralised debt obligations – were going bad. This undermined trust within the financial system, in that none of the players could be confident which of them had been poisoned beyond rehabilitation by subprime. And this trust disappeared altogether in September of this year, when the US Treasury chose not to rescue one of the world’s biggest investment banks, Lehman Brothers.
This malfunctioning of money markets has also been the trigger for the end of the recycling of the surpluses from China, or others parts of Asia or the Middle East, into loans to us. Over the longer term, it would be a very good thing if these great exporting nations were to consume more of the wealth they generate. That would, for example, create great opportunities for our trading companies. But in the transitional period it’s something of disaster for our financial system, because there’s a progressive and painful withdrawal of funds from our banks (although this withdrawal of overseas funding from our banks happens in an indirect way, via assorted financial institutions, since China – for example – rarely lends directly to them).
Our banks have been forced to reduce their dependence on these diminishing sources of wholesale funds, which is why they’ve been lending less to us. And it’s also why they’ve had to turn to taxpayers for financial succour on an unprecedented scale.
Since the summer, as an ever increasing number of money managers, huge companies and financial institutions demanded their money back from our banks, the entire banking system came perilously close to collapse. Our banks didn't and don't have the readies, for the obvious reason that the cash had all been lent out in the form of mortgages and loans to companies and consumers.
So you and I, as taxpayers, came to the rescue and filled the gap. Over just the past few months, British taxpayers have provided loans, commitments, guarantees and capital to our banks in excess of £600bn (in the US, the equivalent figure for taxpayer support is around £5,500bn). Which is probably just the beginning. In the UK, taxpayer funding for our banks is very likely to rise, probably to more than £1000bn, perhaps more still. And the reason is that many of our banks are still some way from equilibrium between the borrowing needs of British companies and households and the deposits and loans they receive from British companies and households.
Here it’s necessary to take a detour into the way that credit was created in the boom years and is in the process of being destroyed.
The recycling of Asian and Middle Eastern surpluses to the UK, Europe and the US in the form of loans wasn't a simple conversion of a pot of savings into an identical pot of debt. When loans were used to buy houses, or to support property developments, or to finance hedge funds that trade in every imaginable security and commodity, or to fund the buyouts of companies by private equity firms, these loans pushed up the value of assets. This rise in the value of assets sparked yet more lending, often at higher ratios of the loan to the value of the asset, to do more deals – which in turn pushed up asset prices further.
As we entered 2007, whether you were borrowing several billion pounds to buy a company or £250,000 to buy a house, lenders were prepared to lend you almost 100% of the purchase price with few strings attached.
There's a subtle but important point here. There were twin connected bubbles in assets and credit. Both of those bubbles have burst. Falling asset prices are leading to losses for those who borrowed to buy those assets (hedge funds, private equity firms, billionaire corporate raiders, banks, homeowners). And as they struggle to pay their debts, they sell other assets, driving down the price of those assets and causing losses for other borrowers. And when they can’t repay banks, the resources of banks are depleted, which means there's less credit available – and no 100% mortgages or other loans – which drives down asset prices further, which leads to a further contraction of lending, and so on in vicious cycle of decline.
So it is unrealistic to expect our banks to cease the insidious process of contracting the volume of credit they'll provide - whatever the coaxing and bullying of politicians - unless and until the price of property, shares, commodities and other assets stops falling. Or to put it another way, asset prices have to find a floor – and they haven’t found the floor yet – before the financial economy can rebuild itself and the real economy can receive the necessary finance that will allow the recovery to begin.
As for alleviating the burden of all that debt, history would suggest that’ll necessitate the printing of money on a colossal scale, a revival of inflation, to reduce the real value of the debt. But as a deliberate strategy, that would be fraught with risks for the Government, since the influential babyboomer generation is now old enough to consist mainly of savers rather than borrowers – who would be the victims of spiralling prices rather than the beneficiaries.
A couple of questions follow. Who's to blame? And where will all this taxpayer support for banks - and probably, before long, for real companies and the real economy too - lead us? It takes a whole book to assign culpability. But the short answer is that we’re all at fault to varying degrees.
The authorities in the US and the UK were aware of the dangers of allowing the financial and trade deficits with China and other exporting nations to persist. They could have corrected these deficits by using tax and interest rate policies to reduce our rampant consumption. But they chose not to do so, because it all looked too difficult. Our own Government turned a blind eye to all the evidence that a rampant lending binge was taking place, because the Exchequer was receiving all those lovely tax revenues from the housing and City bubbles – and because there was kudos to be had from the world renown of our financial services industry.
In 2006 and 2007, I had long conversations with ministers, officials and regulators about how the hedge-fund and private-equity booms – the mind-bogglingly huge rewards available to the stars of these industries - were symptomatic of a malfunctioning in markets. I saw the frenetic activity of these young financial firms as a manifestation that too much debt was available on ludicrously cheap terms that didn’t remotely reflect the risks – and this seemed to me to be worrying. The standard response from those who now know better was that it would all come out in the wash in a painless way, that these new firms were a great asset to the UK, and I was fussing about nothing.
A corollary of precisely this complacency was that central banks, such as the Bank of England, were hopelessly wrong in believing that the explosive growth of credit and the surge in the price of assets such as houses was somehow hermetically sealed from the rest of the economy, such that it wouldn’t damage everything when the bubble was finally popped. That said, most would say that Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, was the most benighted of all about how the global economy had become safer and sounder.
Also regulators were negligent in allowing the creation of what’s become known as a shadow banking system, in which trillions of pounds of long term loans in the western economies were financed with credit that could be withdrawn far too quickly.
As for the media, we certainly could have shouted louder about the risks of all that debt being accumulated – but perhaps the volume control was set a little too low because of all the splendid advertising revenue that was generated by the property boom.
And, to repeat, most of us were prone to forget that if you borrow £100, or indeed £4000bn, you have to pay it back one day.
But it’s quite hard to hard to mount a convincing argument against the notion that most at fault were the banks and bankers – because they systematically failed to do what they were handsomely remunerated to do, which was to properly assess the risks of all that lending.
Their survival as institutions now wholly depends on the goodwill of governments and taxpayers around the world. From Australia, to South Korea, to Germany, France, the UK and the US – inter alia – taxpayers financial support for the banking system is now equivalent to more than one quarter of global GDP, or more than £9bn.
There are reasons to believe that credit from taxpayers can’t and won’t be repaid for many years, in that this credit is financing the correction of huge financial and trading imbalances between the western and eastern economies. So if we’ve witnessed a semi-permanent nationalisation of the banking system and will soon see significant taxpayer support for real companies in the real economy, then our banks and private-sector companies will have to work much harder to sustain the goodwill of those who are keeping them alive: millions and millions of taxpayers.
That means, I think, that those running our biggest commercial businesses will have to be more visible. They’ll have to manifest a genuine understanding not only of the anxieties of their employees but of all taxpayers. Those chief executives who succeed will be those who imbue in their businesses very simple, commonsense standards of decency. And they’ll almost certainly be paid less for doing more, because the pricking of the debt bubble has undermined the institutions – the private-equity firms, hedge funds and investment banks – that were ratcheting up the pay of all business leaders.
But the biggest lesson of all is that we are a million miles from having created the political and regulatory institutions to help us contain the risks of globalisation. We and most of the world may well have been beneficiaries of the open global economy. But as millions lose their jobs in Europe and the US in the coming year, the benefits will be forgotten.
If the unfettered movement of capital, goods and services is going to survive, if there’s not going to be a retreat into national fortresses that could impoverish all of us over the longer term, we’ll have to find a far better way of monitoring global risks and of bringing governments together to deal with these risks.
Some may see this as a threat to national sovereignty, as the thin end of an anti-democratic wedge that’ll see the world ruled by unaccountable bureaucrats. Reconciling our political traditions with the imperative of making safe the globalised world will be a challenge, to put it mildly.
But it’s not a challenge we can shirk.
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"citing an indisposition due to special circumstances"
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