WHILE the nation’s public debt has been uppermost in many people’s minds this week, individual personal debt remains one of the most pressing problems.

We trust, then, that North Yorkshire County Council looks favourably on the request for funds to pump-prime the extension of the York Credit Union to the whole of the county.

Hitherto, credit unions have been looked upon as crude rather unsophisticated lending and savings institutions designed for that sector of the population which has difficulty dealing with High Street banks.

Now, however, their time may have come. People are suspicious of many of our financial institutions and the mutual status of a credit union – it lends what its members have saved – has a purity and simplicity which seems particularly attractive in a world which, in part at least, has been brought to its economic knees bya financial wizardry which lost any link with the fundamentals of money.

We would suggest that the £200,000 the council’s executive is being asked to loan to help the North Yorkshire Credit Union make a start is money well spent. It will help keep many residents out of the clutches of loan sharks who tend to thrive in difficult times like the present.