Any other business

Elliot Wilson explores how investors can back ventures that lend to the world’s poorest entrepreneurs Prathminda Kaur is the modern version of the Little Match Girl, only with a twist: instead of perishing in a Victorian winter, she’s making a nice living for herself selling red onions and bell peppers in a Mumbai market. Kaur arrived in the Indian coastal city eight years ago. To start with she slept on the street, borrowing money from a loan shark at dawn, handing him more than 90 per cent of her profits at dusk. On an average day, the interest on her loans worked out to an annual rate of 10,000 per cent. But two years ago a friend introduced her to SKS Microfinance, an Indian lender that makes millions of tiny loans to local entrepreneurs like Kaur.

Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning  It has been shown conclusively that people who listen to the news or read a newspaper at breakfast are more miserable than those who wisely maintain themselves in ignorance. Unfortunately, help for the former is not at hand: one of the main stories in the newspapers recently was that antidepressants do not work for the vast majority of people. Of course, I always knew this: misery is the natural and inescapable condition of man. That is why the American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz once wrote a paper in the Lancet proposing that happiness be classified as a disease. Not only is it statistically aberrant, but it leads to disastrous consequences (proposals of marriage, for example) and is grossly inappropriate to man’s true situation.

There are certain words, carrying overtones of money and privilege, which stir up strong emotions. One is ‘private income’. ‘What’s held me back,’ says Uncle Giles in The Music of Time, ‘is that I’ve never had a private income.’ J.B. Priestley used to say, disdainfully, ‘He’s got a private income voice.’ There were various euphemisms used by the squeamish to whom talking about money was indelicate. About 1870, someone noting a list of clergymen at Lambeth Palace inquired what was the significance of the letters ‘W.H.M.’ after the names of some of them. He was told they stood for ‘wife has means’. Another such emotive phrase is ‘expense account’.

Imagine the scene at around 10 p.m. last Thursday night in the private apartments at Buckingham Palace. It could well have been past normal bedtime for the Queen and Prince Philip, but they were sitting up — perhaps aided by a scotch and water or some camomile tea — waiting so that Her Majesty could give gracious assent to the Banking (Special Provisions) Bill, then being rushed through the Commons. The Queen no longer actually signs Acts of Parliament. Instead she puts her ‘sign manual’ on Letters Patent, which serves the same legal purpose of transforming a Bill into law. Even so, one cannot help feeling that this truncated ceremony was still a sort of rebuke to the Prime Minister.

Next month I will break the habit of a lifetime and wait until the red reminder before paying my telephone bill. I will do so because BT has decided to charge me £33 a year for the audacity of paying my bill by cheque. BT is penalising people who pay by cheque because it wants us all to pay by direct debit. As it happens, I’m happy enough to pay by direct debit for some things: namely bills which are for a fixed amount of money every month. I would be perfectly happy to pay my telephone bill online, too, so long as I was in control of the transaction. What I refuse to do is to open my bank account to BT and say: ‘Here, take what you like.

My chocolate chip cookies have arrived at the farm shop. Caroline apologises as I walk in: ‘I’m afraid they’re Fairtrade.’ ‘All the better,’ I reply. ‘Why on earth would that be a problem?’ ‘They’re a little dearer. Some people don’t want to pay the extra pennies.’ Eleven packets equals a few extra pounds, but I’m happy to spread a little ethical largesse, particularly since we’re going to sell them for £1 each (including a cup of tea) at the big badger debate. Organic Fairtrade would have been even better. I wonder whether 99 biscuits is enough, and almost turn back for more. But I can’t quite believe that we’re going to get the numbers that Mark’s hoping for.