In the news

At their interest rates, £220,000,000 in customer debt may only be £20,000,000 in actual loans paid out.

But they probably get to claim the entire £220,000,000 in losses for tax purposes.

So silver linings.

I'm not sure if this is a step in the right direction from the FCA, or if it is a half-arsed compromise, designed to avoid a longer, more protracted, fight around the whole concept of pay day loans and the outrageously large effective interest rates that they charge.

Here's my tip on how to make millions (or a few hundred, if you're lucky)

1. Take out payday loan
   
2. Don't pay it back
   
3. Wait until you're taken to court, and then slap the fuckers in the face with the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts, and the Consumer Credit Act.
   
4. Profit
   

sorry i can't hear you over the sound of my own gnawing regret at not getting that 5000 note loan to spend on hookers, blow and haribo.

Kids and grown ups love it so, pay day loans with @greenhell

Should have gotten myself a loan when I had the chance...

Your weekends are very different from mine. I hate haribo.

They've signed up to a compromise agreement to avoid a class action suit. They're trumpeting round the City that it'll only be a loss of £35m, which goes to show how stacked their interest rates are.

debt recovery costs < debt write-off + positive media exposure

...and the FCA gets to pretend it isn't a paper tigger for a few days

Wonga will be dead in the water within a year.

The Idler in response to a recent Cameron speech,

"I have a boring dream: Britons shall be slaves"

pleasantly rousing, :-)

Probably been covered elsewhere, but yikes.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-appeal-after-man-attacked-cyclists-with-metal-bar-in-north-london-9767894.html

^ Blimey.

Safer to just use 2 tonnes of metal/glass/plastic to attack cyclists, Police tend to do fuck all about that.

Trudat

warning. may haunt your soul for all eternity.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-29458666

i did warn you.

wtf

Another good reason to RLJ....

Or cyclist stopped at red light....trollolololol

Reported....NSFW or H or anywhere....

fucking coffee-table book peddling vandal. fuck him!

Exactly this.

Jealous...much

Yeah. Would have been nice to make a fortune off a gimmick. Sadly I lack the concentration span or patience to repeat myself that many times.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/402988/Terrifying-plague-of-black-eyed-GHOST-children-around-the-world

Amazing

dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-n­ews/402988/Terrifying-plague-of-black-ey­ed-GHOST-children-around-the-world

Amazing

I'll tell you what, I've done quite a bit of reading up on this because I think it's fascinating as an urban legend.

The initial seed story is traceable to a specific guy, a journalist, called Brian Bethel. He reported the first ever story way back in 1998. Now he did this on a newsgroup, alt.folklore.ghost-stories, (as you would have done at the time), and the bit that's interesting is that around the same time he was discussing on other news groups whether it'd be possible to create some kind of supernatural entity just by creating a story about it and then leaving it to run. Bethel had a strong interest in occult practice, so he would have been all over the concept of Tulpas and egregores and all that jazz, and it would seem that the whole black eyed kids thing is effectively a kind of experiment in the propagation of an urban myth and also an attempt to create a real magical entity that's turned out to be really popular.

I suppose the format and the description is quite compelling and arresting, written as it is by a man who writes for a living, which is why its gained so much ground in the last 5 years or so through assorted confirmation biases and hoaxes and media scare stories.

I love this one because it's a juicy and very modern supernatural legend. And because it's in the Daily Star, obvs.

see also: