Why The Halifax Bank Should Be Worried About Its Mortgage Policy And The Royal Navy About Mutinies

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

There are currently two ads that are bothering me on British television at the moment. The first involves much loved cartoon character Top Cat, as he applies for and gets a mortgage from the Halifax Bank.

Now please paws before you accuse me of being catty. I'm not bothered that a talking feline is able to get a mortgage. Nor that an American talking feline is able to obtain a mortgage from a British bank to build a new abode from scratch back in the USA (though I'm curious how he was able to do that).

No what bothers me is that we have a talking American cat able to obtain a mortgage from a British bank to build a new abode from scratch in the USA even though (as I recall the cartoons as a child) he had no fixed income.

A cat, with no fixed income, unable to pass any credit checks and even in the olden days when I watched it was subject to constant checks from the American security services in the form of Officer Dibble was able to go through all those obstacles and still receive a mortgage. Are the Halifax Bank's mortgage checks lax? Are we going back to to the bad old days of the property bubble before the last financial crisis?

Halifax bank. We as a nation and indeed a globe need to know how Top Cat got his mortgage and need to be calmed that you're not giving out high risk financial products to every Tom Cat,Dick or Harry. I think we should be told.

Let's come now to the Royal Navy.

They are running a series of ads which basically show someone with low prospects, living in a dreary place and little hope of progressing in life until they join the navy. The tagline is "Born in.....Made in the Royal Navy".

Now of course these adverts would have normally no interest for me. Given that I'm short of size,long of age and short of the ability to swim. Still I was disturbed by it.

Now the first place to receive that treatment was Carlisle. Now I've never been there. But leaving aside it's recent issues with heavy flooding it seems a perfectly decent place to live in. It has the Lake District, immortalised by the books of Wainwright and is the birthplace to one of my favourite writers Hunter Davies.

But it was the second ad that jolted me. For the area concerned here was Bridgend.

Now those regular readers of this blog will know how I've bemoaned the state of Bridgend Town. Brought to a state of decay I would argue mainly by the Labour council's policy of sleep apnoea (I would talk to the leader about this but Rip Van Winkle was otherwise engaged). However there are other parts of Bridgend that are perfectly fine places to live in spite of I would argue,rather than because of the council.

And pity poor Stockport also now locked into this "dreary place" category and without even the TV production values to support it instead it's only on radio.

Anyway the point being that the ad suggests should you stay in Bridgend/Carlisle/Stockport etc you will become a fat drunken lump of skin and you will only be "made" if you join the Navy. A recruitment ploy of subliminally trashing a potential recruit's home area that is novel to say the least.

Of course these areas are picked because of the young working class that they want to recruit. But then many members of the Royal Family have been in the seaforce that bares it's job description. Still you don't hear an ad that goes "Born in Kensington and Chelsea but made in the Royal Navy" now do you?

These ads could, you've read it hear first, also endanger the security of Britain. For if I was a high ranking official in (insert foreign power here) I would try to first find out which ship has the highest proportion of Bridgendians,Carlisians and Stockpordians in it. Once that's discovered I would send an agent provocateur into the ship and slowly agitate against Britain.

"Look how they think of our towns " the agent would say. "I'm sure (insert foreign power here) would treat them with respect".

And eventually such gradual but constant propaganda would have an effect. So that when (insert foreign power here) does invade this group would disable the ship making it venerable to (insert foreign power here) attack and takeover.

So Royal Navy. Stop bringing out ads doing down areas of the four nations you should be defending and do what you do best. Protecting our nations from (insert foreign power here).

Until the next time.