There are many places where I would expect to see an advert for a personal loan, but when my partner, who is training to become a teacher, came home waving a flyer that had fallen out of his payslip, I was more than a little taken aback. Particularly as the last envelope he had received from Haringey council contained a letter explaining why it was unable to offer teachers pay rises.
Why would the council think it was a good idea to put a loan advert in someone's pay packet? When you open your pay packet it is usually at the end of the month, when your bank account is barren and you're desperate to find out how much you have to live on for the coming month. If it doesn't look like enough, you may be tempted to get on the phone and apply for a loan. Or, if you are feeling wealthy, you might decide to go for that big purchase, for which you still need some extra financial help.
A splash on the flyer, from the Cooperative Bank, boasts of "smashing loans, going fast" - language designed to persuade people to act quickly, when a decision to borrow money should be taken with a cool head. Particularly when we are talking about sums of between £7,500 and £25,000. Particularly at a time when many teachers are struggling to get on the property ladder, and those at the beginning of their careers are trying to clear student loans and overdrafts.
So was this a tacit acknowledgment that, yes, it might be hard to get by on a trainee teacher's salary, and a personal loan could come in handy? Or just a thoughtless bit of selling, which made the council look at best naive and at worst downright insensitive?
Haringey council says that like other local authorities it accepts "suitable private advertising" on publications, including payslips. It adds that the money goes into the council's budget, and offers "good value for money for our taxpayers".
It could have been worse, I guess - Co-op bank is widely regarded as one of the most ethical financial firms around, and the interest rate it quoted was a not-uncompetitive 7.9% - but is a pay packet really a suitable place to find such an ad? If so, what next - loans for sub-prime mortgages, or bargain term-time breaks in Barbados?
Surely there are many companies that would like to reach teachers and flog them goods and services they may still be paying for in 10 years time.
