How to make money

I've often wished I'd been born with the gene for money-making.

Today I was talking to my library buddy Charles, telling him about my adventures in George Square on Saturday evening trying to get into a pub with friends for a 'quiet' drink. We tried 3 pubs before we found one that didn't have a queue outside. This was at 8pm. My friends have been away from Glasgow for 20 years and were quite surprised by what they saw. All the pubs seemed to be occupied in force by 20-somethings. How, I wondered, could these young people afford a night on the bevy in the middle of the month? And, believe me, they were on the bevy - big style. And I'm guessing this wasn't the only Saturday night in the month they were out there. Surely they don't use credit cards to buy a round of drinks? I asked.

I then got a lesson from Charles on how 'payday loans' - that's Wonga to me - work. The young person phones up, asks for a loan of £100 and, if they meet the requirements - basically, who is your employer and what is your employee number and bank account number? - the cash is in their ATM within 20 minutes. On payday, they pay back £118.

What a jolly wheeze. The loan company only needs to employ some people in a call centre to get the information and issue the money. They don't need to do security checks. If the young person doesn't pay up, they have the information they need to get the money back off them by seizing their wages. Destroying their credit rating in the process. Of course, the interest rate is extortionate. Of course, once people have started on this kind of easy borrowing, they'll continue, gradually become poorer and poorer and thus be forced to borrow more money and more often.

The payday loans people are in good company: other businesses sell poor people cheap furniture at extortionate a.p.r. rates. Still more offer 'cheque cashing' services for those without a bank account or just needing money fast - again at very high rates. Then there are the companies that buy gold at very low rates - again often from people too poor to argue about the price they are offered.

This all seems to be acceptable to government - and to the rest of us who are just idly standing by and watching the poor being exploited.

Charles pointed out to me something I hadn't noticed: that the voice-over for Wonga is spoken by Nicholas Parsons. I wish to point out also that the puppet characters are all old people. The young are not associated onscreen with this form of borrowing. Since old people are a bit of a joke on the telly, the whole business is meant to be seen as a bit of fun.

Second thoughts: if having the money-making gene means doing this, I won't worry about getting rich.