MSE News: Dodgy credit firms face OFT crackdown

Based just on what MSE has published, this looks a bit like environmental health officers being able to close a restaurant, immediately, because it has rotten food or mouse droppings in the kitchen. I like this.

The difference, of course, is the definition of unscrupulous, which itself is probably not a usable descriptor in financial legalese. I suspect some of the wrangling will come from the 'moral' aspect of lending practice.

Many of us might agree that beating people up for non-payment is morally wrong, and would be happy to transcribe that to a legal status. I would.

But, at what point does charging high interest become fraud, or illegal, or immoral?

Personally, I think the government taking income tax, national insurance, fuel tax, property tax, sales tax, numerous other taxes from me over my working life is far more worthy of the attribution of 'theft' than these various doorstep lenders!


ETA - I don't mean I like mouse droppings in the kitchen, despite my heritage