If you have read the headline then I think it is fair to say that this doesn’t quite have the same ring about it as the version we all know and love today.

In fact, had it not been for the plague rampaging through London, thereby causing the opening of Parliament to be delayed to 5th November, then we could easily have been singing this around a blistering bonfire amid a sweltering summer heatwave.

Guy Fawkes was an interesting character and I suspect he had no idea that 400 years after he was hanged we would all be stood in a muddy field oohing and aaahing at the thought of setting fire to some hard-earned cash.

AM I BOTHERED?

In hindsight, he may have thought we were trivialising his endeavours and just not bothered turning up for work that day.

But to him his cause was noble and as a result his legacy in English history is enshrined. Given the current state of UK politics he might even be happy to know he is considered  “the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions.”

MILITARY DICTATOR

Now, Oliver Cromwell.

To some, a blood thirsty military dictator with a penchant for Regicide.

To others he is a hero, a liberator, a founding father of modern-day democracy.

And as is often the way, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Suffice to say he is considered one of the most important historical figures in English history.

Although given he had nine kids, I’m amazed he had the energy to get out of bed some days.

BELIEVE IN SOMETHING

I find these characters from the past fascinating. They had no inkling that Wikipedia would one day be a thing, they just believed in something and you cannot deny that someone with a belief is better than someone with none.

Whether your surname is Fawkes or Cromwell, it must be a wonderful feeling to know your time has come to shake things up.

Which leads me tenuously on to Mortgage Soup.

RABBIT HOLE

If you go down the rabbit hole of what causes revolutions you might be there for some time.

But whatever the granular causes for specific revolutions (religion for Fawkes and Monarchy for Cromwell) they can all be defined in their most simplistic terms – they are organised movements aimed at effecting change.

MUCH-NEEDED CHANGE

No pressure Mortgage Soup but I am putting you on a pedestal very early on as being a catalyst to bring about some much-needed change in an industry that still has all the feels of the late 1990’s.

PLODDING ALONG

My thoughts on this are well documented.

I still feel we are plodding along with the same people in the same old positions, talking the same tired narratives to the same bored and listless ears.

I have tried to upset the applecart on a number of occasions and manged to fail miserably each time.

Maybe the ideas were right but the timing was wrong?

ALL ABOUT TO CHANGE

But now perhaps all that is about to change as a new media savvy type of broker begins to emerge.

They have new ideas, new approaches and they know that only real change, carved out of left field thinking, can help propel the sector into a new fit-for-purpose era.

So I am absolutely delighted to see the launch of two much-needed new trade publications led by Robyn Hall and Kevin Rose who are both experienced enough, and certainly old enough, to dig beneath a headline and find out what the real story is.

GET IN LINE

I am not suggesting Kevin will one day end up hiding out in Epping Forest like a modern-day Che Guevara [wouldn’t bet on that – ed] or that tourists will one day queue up outside a mausoleum in Stratford to gawp at that Robyn’s carefully preserved brain [wouldn’t bet on that either – ed].

But the pen is mightier than the sword and revolutions have to start somewhere.

I am hopeful that Mortgage Soup will offer a platform for those new voices and help avoid the lazy trade journalism currently hell bent on copy and pasting press releases (including the shpelling mistakes) [See what you did there – ed].

SHIFT FACED

I firmly believe if you shift the thinking, you can shift the power.

I will die on the hill that says that power should always have been in one place and one place only – and that’s in the hands of mortgage brokers themselves.

Martin Stewart is Founder and Director of London Money