Less money, mo' problems

British people don't like discussing money.

Bill Bryson pointed this out in his book, Notes from a Small Island. Bryson noted that Brits will rarely offer details about their wealth, even to their best mates, and will be deeply offended if asked. On the other hand, Americans will be happy to tell you their annual salary and investment portfolio before you've even offered your name.

My outlook is more closely aligned with the American view than with the British view. Although I would not post my annual salary on a blog, for instance, I would be happy to tell people, particularly friends and family, if they asked.

I am always quite surprised, therefore, when the media in Britain quite ruthlessly condemn anyone who discusses money in an open way. Brits, in my view, need to lighten up on this subject. After all, individuals in Britain have, on average, more debt than other Europeans -- and it's easier to come to terms with dealing with debt if you're able to talk about it.

Last year, a seemingly innocent story, which would not have registered in North America, created a flurry of condemnation, because it involved talking -- well, in this case, complaining -- about personal money problems. The writer, Rosie Millard -- a former arts correspondent for the BBC, had written that she and her husband, were, despite her once high salary, in debt.

Unfortunately, I suppose, for Ms Millard, this resulted in several column inches being devoted to exposing her so-called "property empire", which included a flat in London reputed to be worth more than £2.5million, and another flat in a nice area of Paris.

In one newspaper, according to an article on the ROSIE MILLARD DEBT FREE APPEAL website (not a real appeal), she told how her property dream turned into a nightmare. Spiralling debt (she was apparently about £40,000 in the black) forced the couple to put the family car, a Skoda, up for sale as the mortgage on the French apartment was "permanently in arrears".

Her story did not inspire sympathy. People berated her for moaning about her debt when it was clear she was far better off than the average person.

While I agree she made a bit of a mockery out of people with real debt problems (in reality, she could have simply sold off one of her flats and lived comfortably for years) I applaud her for writing about her money trouble. There are a lot of people who find it difficult to make ends meet, even if they're high earners.

Many young people, I believe, have been brain-washed into a life of rampant consumerism. If you're a kid who grows up watching advertisements about the best toys, you're going to probably crave the best toys. And those cravings won't go away when you're a teenager or when you leave school. So just about everyone in my generation, from ambitious city workers to young, single mums, is likely to be a rampant consumer -- spending the same amount, or more, money than they make.

If you're a (relatively) high-income city worker, that means you might buy the car that other people in the office have, or splash out on a designer dress or handbag every once in a while. All of a sudden, you find yourself relying on credit cards, loans and overdrafts to pay your way. At the other end of the scale, single mums have to survive on money from the government and part-time jobs and can barely make ends meet. Yet their kids will still have birthdays and Christmas (or another religious holiday) is always around the corner, and it's easy to think that buying your kids the best stuff will make them happy. So if they have to buy a birthday present in the same month their car breaks down or they need a new washing machine, then the debt starts to pile up.

Yet, very little is said about money trouble in the media. The media report the facts and figures about debt problems in Britain, but rarely do people stand up and voice their personal concerns.

But I think Brits are beginning to see that the problem is getting out of control and they are starting to tackle it.

Television shows like Pay Off Your Mortgage in 2 Years, and a new show from Channel 4, Your Money or Your Wife, highlight individuals with debt problems (or more debt than they would like) and how these individuals can work with an advisor to help them curb their spending and perhaps increase their income, with happy endings all around.

I think these programmes are great -- people need to feel free to discuss debt problems, like any other problem, openly.

The only thing is, the shows often highlight individuals who have a fairly large source of income, assets and extravagant spending habits. This means that, with a little shove in the right direction, it is nearly impossible for the individual to fail to take control of their debt.

I think the far more common situation is a situation like mine -- where 90 per cent of my income goes on bills and (student loan) debt repayment. The rest goes on newspapers, coffee and beer. I don't have a car, I take a lunch to work on most days and I don't go clothes shopping unless an event demands it. If one of these television presenters tried to help me sort out my debt, I guarantee you they'd feel just as helpless as I do.

When the British media begin to address the millions of cases like mine, that's when I'll know that true progress is being made.

In a spin over dual-citizenship review

The Canadian government will begin a review of dual-citizenship which could lead to the decision to scrap it. This may force immigrants and Canadians living abroad to choose between the passports they carry.

I’ve just finished reading Petti Fong’s article in the Globe and Mail under the headline: Immigrant groups fear dual-citizenship review.

The story explains that the review was ordered after the government spent $85-million to evacuate 15,000 Lebanese residents, Canadian passport-holders and dual citizens from the region during the war with Israel in August. Since 1977, Canada has allowed citizens to live and maintain citizenship in other countries without losing their passport. An estimated 500,000 Canadians living in Canada have dual citizenship, according to Statistics Canada, but there are no figures of how many Canadians with dual citizenship live outside of the country.

Many people who responded to the story were unsympathetic to immigrants (the people most likely to have dual citizenship), expressing the view that if the immigrants have been lucky enough to move to Canada, they should be loyal to Canada and Canada only. "One country, one loyalty" was how one poster described it.

There are two reasons why I don't support the government's decision to begin this review. For one, I do not, in any way, believe in the "one country, one loyalty" idea. For some people, that is just not possible. I also dislike the way the government is grumbling about the cost of saving people's lives in Lebanon, when, at the same time, they are arguing that more should be done in Afghanistan to save lives.

The reason I don't believe in the "one country, one loyalty" idea is that I am a Canadian living in the UK -- I was able to move here because my grandmother was born in Wales. At first I'd only planned to stay for a year, but I met a nice, British chap, and he convinced me to marry him. At the moment, neither of us has dual-citizenship. My story is not unusual.

If my partner and I want to move to Canada, it would be unfortunate for him to be treated as a second-class citizen, with no right to vote in Canadian elections, run for elected office, hold a Canadian passport, or work in certain government jobs.

Likewise, I should be allowed to remain a Canadian citizen while I live in Britain, but I shouldn't be treated as an outsider. I am as much a part of this country as other young people who have lived here their whole lives. I live here, I work here, I pay taxes here, and while I continue to do that, it would be nice to have the same rights as the people who were born here. I wouldn't demand it, but I would appreciate it. Yet, I will not give up my Canadian citizenship for this right. So if the government decides to do away with dual-citizenship, I too will be forced to live as a second-class citizen.

How can a married couple who grew up in two different countries have one country and one loyalty? It's simply not possible.

It's difficult not to be cynical about this situation. Clearly, the Conservatives -- and indeed many Canadians -- are upset that they had to pay for thousands of Lebanese dual citizens to be evacuated from Lebanon, when many of them rarely, if ever, spent time in Canada.

If the Conservatives' only concern was cost, though, they would have called for a ceasefire when the bombing started so that the evacuation need not have happened in the first place. Instead, they sided with the Bush administration, which wanted to allow it to continue.

Here's a thought for the Canadian government: If you want to cut costs, why not pull troops out of Afghanistan? You say you won't do that because we're in Afghanistan to help the poor people there return their country to democracy. Well, if the government was really that kind and generous, if there wasn't an ulterior motive (cosying up to America), then you'd be equally concerned about helping the poor people of Lebanon, whether they were Canadian or not. And you wouldn't be complaining about saving their lives.

Clearly, the Conservatives simply consider immigrants (the people most likely to be dual citizens) to be Liberal Party-supporters and therefore disposable Canadians.

It scares me how easily the government's spin can be ripped apart. Surely we should have elected, at the very least, people who can put together more intelligent lies?

Putting the fear and fun back into Halloween

One of my favourite holidays is upon us and I’m probably one of only a handful of people in England who is looking forward to it.

Halloween, you see, is not terribly popular with the British. But it’s not just because the British have overly developed senses of superiority over anything deemed too American --it’s because Halloween is actually pretty awful here.

Like most holidays celebrated in Western society, Halloween combines pagan and Christian elements.

The History Channel’s website says Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in).

The Celts celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

It continues:

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

Since the 1800s, Halloween has gone in one direction in North America, and a different direction in England.

So although Halloween is not actually American, the images that a lot of people associate with Halloween are from North America, where the day has become a day to dress up in fun costumes -- whether you’re a rock star, a ghost or a fairy princess -- to eat too much candy and chocolate, and to say hello to your neighbours before relieving them of treats. For the most part, it’s harmless fun.

In England, the day has retained its sinister edge. If anyone dresses up, it’s usually as something dead, or nearly dead -- men smear blood on their clothes and women dress in fish-net stockings and wear a lot of black make-up. Kids don't go trick-or-treating because nobody stocks a bowl of sweets by the door. I’ve heard that some kids knock on doors and ask for money, rather than sweets, and then if they don’t get money, they vandalise the person’s property. I’m not surprised the day is unpopular.

It's too bad that Halloween hasn't developed into something a bit more enjoyable in England.

Of course, it's not all innocent fun in North America either. Having kids run from door to door in the dark, often wearing masks that prevent them from seeing properly, when there's traffic is just asking for trouble. I'm sure the ambulance services and police departments despise Halloween. And I can remember, as a child, we were always warned never to eat home-made sweets from strangers because it was said they could be poisoned. Other kids told you stories about razor blades in your caramels. And then, every Halloween, you always had older siblings, either yours or your friend's, jumping out from behind trees or dragging you into the graveyard to scare the wits out of you.

But then, Halloween wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without an element of fear. Trouble is, now that I'm an adult, I can't really drag my British friends into graveyards or spook them with stories about the crazy old lady with the deadly candied apples.

I could, however, throw a scary party. I could serve caramels, miniature Mars bars and green JELL-O, and then put The Monster Mash on the stereo. And then when everyone is enjoying themselves, I will scare the wits out of them. Since there's nothing scarier to British people than the words "housing development" and "falling house prices", I’ll arrange to plant a couple of Daily Mail journalists and some members of the Countryside Alliance in the crowd to stir up trouble. They could say things like: "Oh you live beside that greenbelt? Isn't it a shame that that's up for sale? The massive housing development is sure to ruin your view and drive down the price of your house. You know, local authorities should take advantage of the provision in Planning Policy Statement 7, which allows for land unsuitable for commercial development to be used for affordable housing." The Daily Mail journalists can then go: "Oh yes, I heard that John Prescott can just snap his fingers and wherever he says, they build 10,000 homes. It could be anywhere. It could be right beside your house."

Oh, it’s brilliant. I can see everyone’s horrified faces already.

This week, I will mostly be a press-imist

I read the article in today’s (October 6) Independent celebrating the paper’s 20th anniversary. Stephen Glover, one of the paper’s founders, recounted how journalists, mostly from The Daily Telegraph and The Times, became so fed up with what they saw as the declining quality of journalism, that they upped stakes and started their own newspaper. The article was a very good account of what must have been an exciting time.

This is thoroughly embarrassing, but I have to admit, the story made my eyes water. Glover writes: The Independent, beyond our wildest hopes, became the newspaper of the liberal establishment. It starts to appear (unpaid for by us) in television advertisements and posters because retailers and businessmen want to be associated with it. Young people carry the paper as a kind of badge, the beautiful chiselled masthead with its eagle angled outwards so that everyone can see they are Independent readers, that they too have rallied to the cause.

It is sickeningly sentimental, but, because I’ve been engrossed in journalism all my adult life, I found it touching.

But the tears welling up in the corners of my eyes were, I think at least in part, tears of disappointment. Because I read the story with the sinking feeling that I will probably never have the opportunity to be a part of something like what Stephen Glover, Andreas Whittam Smith, Simon Kelner et al were part of.

I live in the UK where, on one hand, the media are thriving. You can’t go anywhere without seeing people reading, listening to or watching the news. It is great to see such widespread enthusiasm for current affairs.

On the other hand, journalistic standards are hugely varied. “Red top” papers seem to invent stories. If the stories themselves aren’t invented, then certainly the quotes within the stories are. (The Quick Quotes Quill in Harry Potter is a brilliant take on this). The UK press also has a tendency to build people up for a number of months, and then, for no apparent reason, rip them apart with a ferocity that always surprises me. As a result, people don’t hold journalists in high regard.

What’s more, many young people don’t read the quality newspapers because they can get free alternatives -- alternatives which are under-funded and which do not do add anything to the national debate.

Still, at least people care about the quality of journalism here. If it's poor, people talk about it -- instead of just accepting it, they work to change it. It's pretty safe to say that journalism in Britain will always be important, whether it’s on TV, on the radio, in newspapers or online.

But my mind turns to Canada, where I’d like to one day return.

I was on Vancouver Island for three weeks this summer, and I was thoroughly disappointed with the quality of journalism. To be fair, I visited in August, which is the so-called silly season, so I was perhaps seeing a stripped down version of the newspapers, but I was still distraught over what I saw.

In a prominent paper, I saw what appeared to be a re-hashed press release about a Jamaican rum company. It wasn’t marked as an advertisement, but I couldn’t see that it was anything but. Have newspapers in Canada always been this bad and I’ve simply forgotten because I’ve lived in the UK, where there’s more editorial diversity?

The thing that worried me most was that it wasn’t just print journalism. My first afternoon there, I flipped on the CBC, hoping to see Canada Now or The National and ended up watching newsreaders waffle on about the PNE for half-an-hour before we got to any news. I think my British in-laws were appalled.

Yet, I don’t think there would be enough interest, advertising dollars, or journalists willing to risk their jobs to launch something like The Independent in Canada. Even though something like the Indy would be a great addition to the Canadian cultural landscape.

Perhaps I’m being far too pessimistic. Perhaps Canadians will get fed up with stripped down versions of what newspapers should be. Perhaps the demand for good journalism will increase. I do hope so -- but I’m not holding my breath.