PUBLISHED:  09:02 13 March 2019 |  UPDATED:  09:03 13 March 2019 Emma Bartholomew Ripon Ray: Picture: Rukya Khan ​Debt advisor and radio talk show host Ripon Ray tells Emma Bartholomew how he’s seeing more and more people who are unable to just pay the basic bills Ripon Ray: Picture: Nick De Marco Self-confessed “arty-farty creative” Ripon Ray originally set out to be a fashionista in life, when he “found his calling” and changed track to become an activist. He’d been studying at the London School of Fashion, but going on an anti-fascist protest “triggered a couple of things”. “I dumped my studies and went to Kingsley College where I was doing full-on activism, and organising protest marches,” he told the  Gazette . “I loved it but I got kicked out of there because I was too much of an activist and I wasn’t focusing on my studies.” He knuckled under, bagged a history degree and started out in the charity sector as a housing advi...

In 2016 in the United Kingdom, according to the National Crime Survey, you were 10 times more likely to be robbed at your computer by someone based in another country than be a victim of physical theft. Financial losses due to being a victim of fraud in such a scenario can be quantified and maybe refundable. Mental and emotional suffering caused by these perpetrators may be a life changing experience for so many vulnerable individuals. How can you avoid minimising devastating financial losses? What remedies do you have available if you have been a victim of such a horrific crime? Are you entitled to any form of support when you have been the victim of scammers? I know someone who refused to speak about being a victim of a scam in public due to the shame involved. He is a pensioner in his late 70s. He lives alone. He was a proud independent and self-sufficient man. He managed his money meticulously.  His life changed dramatically once he became a victim of a sophistic...

‘I have not been able to pay my council tax for last four years. Bailiffs have lied to me to get money from me. I still can’t afford it!’  says Joanna Robinson on Money Matters show on East London Radio in March 2018.   During the period 2016-17, bailiffs were used by councils on nearly 1.5 million occasions in order to attempt recovery of council tax arrears. As in Joanna's case, residents were summoned to court for being too poor to pay - accruing court costs, subjected to the ignominy and anxiety having to face enforcement agents, and already too poor to pay, further indebtedness.   As I hear the horror stories of bailiff’s knocking on debtors’ doors under the new Council Tax Reduction Scheme (CTRS), I am beginning to worry that the Scheme is really just a Poll Tax rehash. I was too young to remember what the Poll Tax was when it was first introduced in the late 1980s. My parents never spoke about it. In my work I started to notice ...