Mean and self-righteous

My father was a mean and self-righteous man. He always thought he knew better than me and knew what was good for me. If I tried to put him right he got very annoyed.

When I'd been seeing Jenny for a while, I gathered he didn't approve of the relationship and thought I was "exploiting" Jenny.

He never explained what he meant by that. If he meant financially, that was nonsense because Jenny had a hefty credit card debt and I had some savings. If he meant I was leaning on her in some way, that was also nonsense because we were leaning on each other.

In any case he never met her and knew nothing about her so he just had a load of preconceptions about her and about our relationship. Jenny never had a chance to straighten him out.

If I was really exploiting Jenny, as a strong feminist she would have got shot of me at top speed. But we've been together now for 42 years so I must be doing something right.

Jenny would love to have had the chance to confront my father and tell him exactly what she thought of his disparaging attitude, but it wasn't to be. He died seven years after Jenny and I met, still refusing to talk to me because of the numerous grudges he held against me.

To accuse his own son of exploiting someone and not giving me the opportunity to defend myself is pretty low. But it wasn't the first time he had just jumped to conclusions and run with them.

Pic: Not my father, I have no online photos of him.

A tragic decline

I'm fascinated by those celebrities who seem set for a glittering career and then fall into a steady decline, eaten away by addictions, self-doubt, destructive friends and spouses, and the relentless pressures of fame.

I was reading about the new documentary on Whitney Houston, and the recollections of her bodyguard, David Roberts, who thinks she could have survived if those around her had been less intent on exploiting her fame and more concerned with her personal health and well-being.

As soon as he met her new boyfriend, the rapper Bobby Brown, on her 26th birthday, he suspected Brown would be a bad influence on her. He soon discovered he was verbally and physically abusive, jealous of her success, an attention-seeker, a trouble-maker, a heavy drug-user, and a womaniser.

He couldn't understand why she always indulged him and overlooked his immature behaviour, why she crushed her own personality to make him feel comfortable, why she was besotted with someone who was obviously no good for her.

In particular, he's disgusted with all the people in her entourage who were more interested in her profitability than protecting her health and keeping her from self-destruction.

"She became a commodity, a possession, a tool for making money" he says. When he wrote to her lawyers outlining his concerns, he was sacked, and never spoke to her again.

Her story has many similarities with the life of Amy Winehouse, whose promising career was also undermined by an equally unsuitable boyfriend, Blake Fielder-Civil, a growing drugs habit, the stresses of fame, and a money-obsessed entourage.

On February 11, 2012, at the age of 48, Whitney Houston was found dead, the result of drowning, heart disease and cocaine use. "So many people could have done so much to avoid that" says David Roberts. "They didn't. They abdicated responsibility in favour of greed."

Pic: David Roberts

Slumming it

The rise and rise of slum tourism - tourists visiting the poorest neighbourhoods to see how the worst-off survive rather than heading for the well-known sights - attracts mixed reactions. Some see it as positive, others as cynical exploitation.

It's nothing new of course. The trend was well under way in Victorian London over 130 years ago, when the upper class wanted to see for themselves the poverty in the East End. It took off again when Nelson Mandela was freed from jail in South Africa and tourists flocked to the townships and places linked to apartheid.

Now it's big business in cities like Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing and even New York City, home of the Tenement Museum.

There's a similar trend in Belfast. Not so much slum tourism as conflict tourism. More and more tourists are curious about the areas that suffered heavily during the Troubles, as well as all the paramilitary murals and peace walls.

But opinions are divided over whether this fashion is good or bad. Those in favour say that as well as bringing money into desperately poor areas, it opens the eyes of people who may have lived in comfortable conditions all their lives and know nothing of serious hardship except what they see on TV.

Those against point out that a lot of the money raised doesn't go to the locals at all but to outsiders who've never set foot in the areas visited. And people's eyes may be opened for a few days but when they return to their normal privileged lives they soon forget what they've seen.

At its worst it's a voyeuristic search for cheap thrills and titillating squalor, taking away the dignity and privacy of those they're gawping at and not leaving them with any long-term benefit.

I'm of two minds about it all myself. Yes, there's little financial gain for the places the tourists visit, and little change to the prevailing poverty and degradation. But then again, I think many of those tourists are quite sincere in wanting to know about the wretched lives some people have to endure, and they return home genuinely enlightened and humbled.

The more people experience the grim reality of those forced to exist on the crumbs falling from the millionaires' well-stuffed mouths, the better.

My thanks to James Melik of the BBC for his article on the subject

Circling sharks

If you think you've got money problems, spare a thought for those with REAL money problems - the victims of ruthless loan sharks charging up to 450% interest.

With the recession and the rocketing cost of living leaving ever more people in chronic debt, the shady loan outfits are having a field day pulling thousands more victims into their net.

There are already 7 million Britons shut out of the high-street banks because they're too poor or they have dodgy credit records.

Maverick loan companies are happy to fill the gap by lending money to these desperate souls at extortionate interest rates - anything from 272% to 444%.

Predictably enough, the victims commonly default and get sucked into a permanent spiral of debt, interest on debt, late payment charges and interest on late payment charges.

The loan companies - all quite legal - are making a fortune out of the destitute while the government turns a blind eye and pretends it's not happening.

When they were in opposition, senior members of the current government pledged to stop these loan crooks from creating so much misery. They said they would cap the cost of credit for all borrowers at an affordable level.

Now they're in government, surprise surprise, they've forgotten their promise and done precisely nothing to cap credit costs. All they'll commit themselves to is "considering introducing" caps - politician-speak for "doing fuck-all."

Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow in East London, whose surgeries are chock-a-block with distraught loan-shark victims, is campaigning to get a credit cap introduced without delay. I sincerely hope she succeeds. This legalised skinning of the penniless is a national disgrace.

Excellent article about people drowning in debt here