Government outsourcers

Not entirely sure what this question is getting at.

I've not been active on FC for a while, but when I was active there were quite a few small care home operators on there. I'm wary of the sector because the squeeze on local authority budgets means that many are struggling to get by. My default assumption is that this is why the banks won't lend to them.

I also saw quite a few small businesses in the counselling/training/education area. Equally wary of these - partly because of spendiing cuts but also because of regular press stories of incompetence and questionable practices in the sector.

The big counselling/training operators, and hospital builders, are far too big to borrow on FC, but some of their smaller sub-contractors will be there.

That companies funded through taxes stolen from other people tend to be clueless about profit-and-loss, since they don't have any, and that needing a loan is a sign they're failing to do what they promise to do at the price they promise to do it; a sign that next year by definition they'll have less money to repay than they do at present.



Shrinking or not, these are their funding stream, so any credit they use on top of that shows they can't cope on the local authority money, yet somehow next year they'll not only be able to cope, but will be able to pay back loans.


My pet theory is someone's telling them to seek p2p funding. I can't prove it but it just stands to reason. These are notoriously innumerate people who loathe money. It doesn't seem plausible to me that they suddenly all happened upon the idea of peer-to-peer finance independently. Someone sent a memo round: free money go get it!



Usually going bust at our expense. Sub-contractor or not, the money comes from taxes and is meted out from the top down. It's communism and we shouldn't have anything to do with it.

I won't be touching this platform. Many thanks for your information. This combined with the platform's use of government money to promote "lending alongside government" is enough to tell me it's doomed to failure and disaster. Just a personal opinion and everyone else must form their own for their own good reasons.





Agreed, that sector's regulated to the hilt, subject to operating licenses and is essentially state-run. It's interesting actually that the Thatcherian privatisations were such a mixed bag: some were genuine privatisations and have led to far lower prices, more variety and choice, better quality and innovation and so on, while others were sort of half measures with regulators acting as the true provider, setting rules for semi-independent licensed companies to follow. It's definitely a sliding scale from true privatisation to the kind of nonsense outsourcing we see today where there's no autonomy at all. Telecoms are better than hospitals, police and schools, but they're still very bad news. I wholeheartedly agree with you.

As to doing well from care homes, more or less everyone must initially assume that to be the case, and as it's working for you, great! Sadly I can't relate to that experience. There's been a huge betrayal from one such company on another platform and another in the pipeline is worryingly innumerate. As for refurbishment, unless they plan to hike their prices it's hard to see how they plan to pay anything back. It's not as if refurbishment actually increases productivity (again unless they plan to house more bodies or charge more) and it's not at all clear why their customers (the local authority) aren't paying for this.

It's all very worrying. Nevermind, many thanks to both of you for this input. It seems this platform is RIDDLED with shrinking State hand-outs. Call me old-fashioned but I tend not to feel very comfortable doing business with a partner that has guns and tanks and a reputation for incompetence, dishonesty and flights of fancy and whose principal occupation is theft, incarceration and killing.

And they shoot badgers! Though we have not seen a loan application for that yet.

Such a shame. We must wait very quietly for the nocturnal emergence of badgertodger3.

You just did.

That was a narrow escape, comrades. He drawing unwelcome attention to our sleeper cell of hard line p2p lending socialist workers. Brother elijay has no doubt liquidated him.

He has wasted the time of people who thought they were helping him, but is that a banning offence within the rules?

It must be the artistic temperament coming out. TB is quite an accomplished artist/composer and if you go to archive.org/details/UNHELPFUL and listen to the compositions there for free then you are invited to write the first review.