Bailiffs to be allowed to break and enter?

[Fruitloop]

Interesting article on the topic here:

http://money.independent.co.uk/personal_finance/loans_credit/article2347418.ece

Since last October, Citizens Advice has researched 500 cases involving bailiffs. It found that nearly two-thirds had harassed or intimidated clients, and a quarter had threatened debtors with imprisonment.

Personally I think that forced entry rights if they must exist should be restricted to the emergency services exclusively. They certainly should not cover the bunch of thugs and wide-boys that currently constitute the debt recovery industry.

 

[8ball]

Personally I think that forced entry rights if they must exist should be restricted to the emergency services exclusively. They certainly should not cover the bunch of thugs and wide-boys that currently constitute the debt recovery industry.

That's the bizarrest thing about this nonsense.

Forced entry rights, possibly justifiable sometimes, yadadadada.

Then the first extension beyond emergency services and the military (and someone else who I've surely missed out) turns out to be for this borderline-criminal-fraternity.

It's just so weird.

 

[Fruitloop]

It's preparation for the big debt-fuckup to come. Got to stop those proles defaulting on their credit card debts once the shit hits the fan, even if it means burglarizing the fuckers.

 

[Fruitloop]

Also, it helps that there's a semi-criminal fraternity on hand to whom the necessary thuggery can be out-sourced, because if the state had to do its own dirty work it would look too much like things actually are. This way plausable deniability can be maintained.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

i reckon i'd deal with the stabbing of an intruder to my place under the reasonable force section of the law and if it turns out they are baliffs for some one elses debt then they had no ight legal or other wise to be claiming property which was that of the debtors warrent or no warrent so it's still theift so a stabbing is warrented....

fuck em they are only baliffs it's not like they are usful human beings...

 

[TAE]

Also, it helps that there's a semi-criminal fraternity on hand to whom the necessary thuggery can be out-sourced, because if the state had to do its own dirty work it would look too much like things actually are. This way plausable deniability can be maintained.

I see a nasty cloud on the horizon.

 

[guinnessdrinker]

It's preparation for the big debt-fuckup to come. Got to stop those proles defaulting on their credit card debts once the shit hits the fan, even if it means burglarizing the fuckers.

I believe it is just for council debts, at least for the time being.

 

[8ball]

I believe it is just for council debts, at least for the time being.

Got the words "First they came for the chavs . . ." running through my head for some reason . .

 

[Fruitloop]

Are you sure? This is from the OP:

CITIZENS Advice warned on Sunday that bailiffs could soon break into homes to seize belongings simply to enforce credit-card debts.

The charity pointed out that vulnerable people will be at greater risk from thuggish enforcers as a result of new legislation that could lead to abuse of the system on an "unprecedented" scale.

Under the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill, which receives its second Commons reading on Monday, all bailiffs will be given the power to enter domestic premises and enforce consumer credit debts.

At present, only certain enforcement officers - notably, those enforcing magistrates' court fines - have such draconian powers.

 

[detective-boy]

i reckon i'd deal with the stabbing of an intruder to my place under the reasonable force section of the law and if it turns out they are baliffs for some one elses debt then they had no ight legal or other wise to be claiming property which was that of the debtors warrent or no warrent so it's still theift so a stabbing is warrented....

If you intend to rely on the law ... it would be a good idea to actuially know what it is first ...

 

[detective-boy]

Are you sure? This is from the OP:

The whole intention is to regularise the current variety of different powers. It would not apply simply to pre-court debt recovery though - the warrants would, so far as I can see, only apply once there was a court finding to enforce.

 

[guinnessdrinker]

Are you sure? This is from the OP:

I am only relying from what I read in a legal magazine, although it must have been a year ago.

 

[TAE]

Got the words "First they came for the chavs . . ." running through my head for some reason . .

 

[Fruitloop]

The whole intention is to regularise the current variety of different powers. It would not apply simply to pre-court debt recovery though - the warrants would, so far as I can see, only apply once there was a court finding to enforce.

Where are you finding that info?

One thing that I've noticed is that for many companies passing on the debt to a recovery agency is the first response, not something they do once a debt is clearly being withheld. For example, I was told by the Student Loans Company as I was setting up a direct debit that if the debit ever didn't go through then they would immediately transfer it to a collections agency. I was pretty shocked as I have no history of bad debt with them or anyone else, and most companies would at least give you a chance to rectify any mistakes first - the ridiculous thing is that the monthly amount is actually rather small, and in no way warrants such draconian behaviour on their part. However, I have found them to be utter fucking cunts in all my other dealings with them (and anecdotally everyone else's as well), so this kind of behaviour isn't really a surprise.

My feeling is that even if the rights of bailiffs aren't actually affected by the legislation, you can pretty much bet that their behaviour will be.

 

[detective-boy]

Where are you finding that info?

As far as I am aware there is no such law now and I could see nothing in my scan of the proposed legislation which would change it.#

A collections agency is not the same as bailiffs. Organisations "sell" debts all the time - the buyer badgers people into paying up but, unless there is some Court Order they can't just help themselves to your property just because they say you owe them something (with the exception of stautory bodies like councils and TfL who have statutory powers to reclaim unpaid charges). Bailiffs enforce court orders (or the statutory bodies rights) and at that stage they currently have a variety of powers depending on the nature of the proceedings - one of the ideas behind this act is to regularise that - one set of rules regardless of the type of proceedings.

 

[rorymac]

!

The last bailiff I spoke to told me he wasn't going to take my car away over the weekend .. well he understood what parking attendants can be like .. it happened to himself last week when he and the missus went to Ikea to get some curtains. He reckoned it'd only take 20 minutes cos he had the measurements of the patio doors written down on his hand but his missus only went and changed her mind about the colour and by the time they got back to the motor there was a ticket on the windscreen .. bosh just like that ! 3 minutes late mate. He said to her 'Fackin leave it out you're havin a laugh aint ya' but she was happy with the curtains so what could he say. Nah when he thought about it he'd just have to pay the fine cos at the end of the day he let the ticket run out. It wasn't the parking geezer's fault and there was no point telling her she;d have to pay it cos it's him that'd end up doing the overtime anyway aint it?
Fuckin hell I never ever saw it like that before but I told him I would definitely shoot him and that also I was going to murder the parking attendant that struck the tuicket on my windscreen when I had a fucking ticket on the dashboard that got fucking lost in the fracas that occured in and around the vehicle at 4:23 pm December the fucking 27th 2006. I was also going to strangle the Northern Irish bastard at Royal Mail.
THat's when he said he'd give it til monday and maybe I could borrow the £520 the ticket now cost me tsk tsk .. did I have any family at all that might help cos he just did not want to take away a man's motor but it wasn't down to him. I promised him he would die and make no mistake if he even knocked at my door. I told him I'd find out where he lived and I would torture him for ages before he'd snuff it. He said that he tried to be fair and it was up to myself but they would take my motor he was telling me now mate. I can't believe that was the end of the matter but it was. I'd never be able to torture even a bailiff and I definitely wouldn't pay someone to do it seeing as you get double bird for organising stuff.
If you give a wrongun in Oswestry say £400 to just murder a bailiff and for some reason the wrongun gives another wrongun £50 of that to shag the bailiff first while he gets some tinnies it'll be you that gets 17 years and not Nathan Wheeler. I don't want to have to deny having sex with any man for the rrest of my life and the fucking bastards deserve to die for putting me in that position. That's why I pretend I will extrude them in a huge computerised numerically controlled fuckin extrusion machine on the shop floor of a busy plastics and polymer manufacturing company. Boiling hot molten plastic .. even a tiny splatter burns like shite so imagine being inside in the fuckin machine itself being forced through tiny gaps and then flattened into thousands and thousands of little ornamental eggcups. Forget all that for now.
The fuckin scummy bastards can charge what they like almost to visit. They stick something in your letterbox and invoice the council and the fuckin council just pays them and askd them to go get that money back off you. At least there was a maximum of £40 IIRC in the poll tax days. I had about 23 visits in a year and a half and that's just me.
They're all going to die basically when enoughj folks become professional murderers and not amateurs like Richie and Nathan. I wouldn't use them again is all I'm saying.
The copper who said it's all the fault of the defaulters and the criminals .. he's gonna get it n all. It aint cos he's a copper so don't fuckin start that bollocks. You can't go round saying that when you are friends with narks. The public won't put up with it soon enough and you'll wish you'd just minded your own business and turned a blind eye to honest non nark non copper folks who try hard to provide for their families and secure some kind of future by providing things that folks fuckin want with their own hard graft. A decent copper would never think they were successful coppers just because they gave you a lift to a fuckin atm machine so even though I thanked him and the lady pc for not arresting me for swearing I knew that it wouldn't be long til they ended up in a bag of taytos. Never ever eat the ones they make in Northern Ireland .. same with Northern Ireland barm bracks .. they taste rank no matter what's in them. Finally never ever eat black pudding. Just say fuckin NO THANKS to pig's blood. Fuck off IRELAND simple as that!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

It's preparation for the big debt-fuckup to come. Got to stop those proles defaulting on their credit card debts once the shit hits the fan, even if it means burglarizing the fuckers.

Whether it's intentional or not, the likelihood of of a very great deal of work coming the bailiffs way when that happens is pretty high.

For some thoughts on what that might be all about in wider terms see e.g.

The New Enclosures - Midnight Notes (pdf)

 

[Fruitloop]

Well then I supposed the question is how perfunctory the process of applying for a court-order is for a creditor.

I notice that there will now be fixed repayment schedules rather than creditors being allowed to make their own plea in terms of what is affordable, which could come down hard on people with a variety of different debts.

Cheers for the link, Bernie.

 

[detective-boy]

Well then I supposed the question is how perfunctory the process of applying for a court-order is for a creditor.

There is a requirement to serve papers on the debtor. If that debtor has provided false details, or if that debtor fils to respond to the papers and file a defence, why should it not be perfunctory? Not all creditors are big, evil, multinationals - some (like the friend I am helping at the moment) are depending on the money being paid for work they have done. Why shouldn't they?

 

[Fruitloop]

Well, I don't think that you are looking at this in context. There is an absolutely vast quantity of personal debt in the UK at the moment - one and a quarter trillion pounds, and a very large number of people are in far more debt than they can really afford, leaving them highly exposed to any sort of macro-economic shocks which could leave them in a situation where far more debt is being recalled than they can possibly pay off. Companies that are already notoriously aggressive in terms of debt reclaim like credit card companies etc have allowed a large amount of pretty hazardous unsecured borrowing, and now there is something of an air of impending doom in the global financial position even in the short term, with a load more potential nastiness on the horizon.

It's true that people do withhold money that they can pay, although to be honest in my experience (in personal and corporate banking) the bulk of cases involve the big guy withholding from the small guy. Still, I'm sure it happens the other way round too. Clearly in all these cases there should be a means by which the creditor can get what they're owed in a reasonable time-frame, although sadly once again experience teaches that the personal creditor vs a large company is essentially fucked - person to person is tortuous but usually works out in the end.

The question is what is going to happen to all the people who are left out in the cold - many of whom will have dependents both young and old, and plenty of whom may well be retired or unemployed themselves. Bailiffs are known to use intimidation, harrassment, violence, idle threats of imprisonment etc in order to get people to sign up to crippling repayment schedules, and they are now being given powers to extend their field of operations into exactly that area of personal debt that is likely to see problems in the near future. I realise that in this more brutal society we seem to be creating that you might feel that it's just their tough luck, and sadly these days wouldn't be alone in that opinion, but personally I find both the immediate prospects and their wider implications pretty fucking worrying.

 

[Fruitloop]

arseing double posts.

 

[detective-boy]

Bailiffs are known to use intimidation, harrassment, violence, idle threats of imprisonment etc in order to get people to sign up to crippling repayment schedules, and they are now being given powers to extend their field of operations into exactly that area of personal debt that is likely to see problems in the near future.

I think you're mixing up bailiffs and credit collection agencies again.

 

[Fruitloop]

No, I don't think so.

 

[Fruitloop]

Specifically, I'm talking about collections agencies using private bailiffs on a warrant. Who as far as I'm aware may well be the same meatheads the collection agency would normally send round.

I also suspect that the people who are at their mercy might not be up on the fine distinctions, so an increase in the legal powers of one group may well have ramifications for the behaviour of the other.

 

[rorymac]

!

I think you're mixing up bailiffs and credit collection agencies again.

Not too many folks would push themselves to find out what we can only learn for our own good no matter how uninteresting so credit where it's due.
It's not worth a shite on this thread otherwise but well done anyway.
I can't imagine the mind of a poster who reads fruitloop's post and doesn't think it is a very true and sensible post, fuckin erudite and succinct .. all that lot to be fair .. a point very well made the end of the fuckin entire thread maybes! .. he thinks fruitloop is a clown and he is going to fucking show the boards why that is so .. it is because fruitloop is getting mixed up between debt collection agencies and bailiffs.
Everywhere you go is all incorrect these days. It's time folks started to get the wrong uns I feel.