I can recommend the excellent BBC series “The Gold”, which tells the story of the Brinks Mat gold bullion robbery in the 1980s. It’s not the robbery which is the story, rather the laundering of the proceeds, most of which have never been recovered. Most extraordinary was the ease with which £ms were paid into, and withdrawn as cash from a small branch of Barclays in a suburb of Bristol. ‘I reported it to head office’, said the manager in the follow-up documentary, ‘but they told me the commission was too good and to turn a blind eye”. Things have changed over here now, and you’d probably need to at least produce some ID to get away with it. But there’s always someone, somewhere, willing to look in another direction in the right circumstances. And even in our big internet world, cash, it seems, can still be sultan.
“How can lifelong renting be made more compatible with retirement saving?”
Here’s a future problem that will doubtless be kicked down the road until it becomes a crisis. There’s a whole generation who may never be able to afford to buy their own homes.
