Dragonlane Artisan Jewellery

I love AP for so many reasons…he is intelligent, he engages with his children, he listens to me (even when I complain a lot)  and he cares about society as a whole.  I love his priorities and values.

Recently our bank called him to tell him about some new “products” that they wanted to scalp us with introduce us to so that we could pay the bank interest on a personal loan or lose money on an ISA that they would gladly set up for us enhance our financial portfolio.

Ohhhhh the poor soul who made the call.  If there’s one thing that sticks in AP’s craw, it’s the “bloody banks” as they are called at Dragonlane.  So he began.  First there was a lecture on the financial collapse and a review of how the banks sold consumers high risk loans, bought insurance against those loans, and made a bundle of money on people’s misfortune and suffering.  And then the bailouts and what it cost the average UK citizen and the prosecutions — oh wait!  No.  There were no prosecutions of any of the scammers that sold us down the river.  So that was the third part of the lecture.  The grand finale of the phone call was the discussion of banker’s bonuses.

I just shook my head and sighed as I imagined the poor woman on the other end of the line who was probably being paid a very low wage to cold call households to try and garner more business for the banks.  She didn’t know what was coming when she dialed our number.  It’s a crying shame that AP didn’t end the call with, “and have you considered joining a union?” (I’ll put that under my hat for the next time unless our phone number has been flagged with a “do not call.”)

And that’s why, last night, I was shaking my head again when AP got our credit card bill and saw that a recent iTunes purchase that we made went through Luxemborg.  A long email exchange followed, first with Stephanie and then with John of Apple Corporation.  AP set them straight all right about the unethical practice of tax avoidance by corporations but it took four emails to do so.

Change is made one person at a time.  Do you think it’s worth the effort to fight corporate greed and government corruption?  I don’t know but I hope we never stop trying.