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Courtesy of the OED:

[< Anglo-Norman and Middle French mortgage, mort gage (1283 in Old French; also as gage mort (1267); French mort-gage (now arch.)) < mort MORT a. + gage GAGE n.1, after post-classical Latin mortuum vadium (from 12th cent. in British sources) < mortuum, accusative of mortuus dead (see MORT a.) + vadium pledge (see INVADIATE v.). Middle French mort gage {goesto} post-classical Latin morgagium (from 14th cent. in British sources), mortgagium (a1564 in a British source).
Extended use (sense 1) is found slightly earlier in English than the technical legal sense (2); such extended use is app. not found in French, but may perh. have been developed in English directly from the legal use in Anglo-Norman and Middle French.
For the explanation of the etymological meaning of the term current among 17th-cent. lawyers, cf. the following:
1628 E. COKE First Pt. Inst. Lawes Eng. 205 It seemeth that the cause why it is called mortgage is, for that it is doubtful whether the Feoffor will pay at the day limited such summe or not, & if he doth not pay, then the Land which is put in pledge vpon condition for the payment of the money, is taken from him for euer, and so dead to him vpon condition, &c. And if he doth pay the money, then the pledge is dead as to the Tenant, &c.]

Parents to pass on mortgage debt:

A new mortgage allows parents to leave to their children not only their homes but their home loans as well.

Grip of Death, right enough.

I know - it's a week late. But I picked up a snippet the other day that tells you why Labour lost in Glasgow East...

Apparently voter contact had been absolutely zero for years. David Marshall had done virtually nothing for years (apart from perhaps collecting money from us for his carefully chosen constituency staff). He supposedly didn't even venture into the constituency much and held few if any surgeries. When they started the by-election campaign they were starting voter identification from scratch with no reliable previous data at all.

Utter bonkers. They absolutely deserve to have lost with the level of contempt towards the constituents that smug inactivity over the years demonstrates.

On the other hand, it puts the SNP victory in some context - were they any better than, say, the IWCA in Oxford whose only reason for existing as a force on the council was Labour's contemptuous attitude in their "safest" wards.

UPDATE: And I see from Dan Paskins that there is a motion in to conference saying much the same .

I've made quite a big thing about Chris's European Parliamentary experience both in writing to him when encouraging him to stand and to other people. It seems to me that, now that Blair's pretty lacklustre presidency is over and with the sceptic Brown on the horizon and with Cameron likely to pull the Tories even further away from Europe there is no longer any desire to champion Europe in the higher echelons of the other parties and that pro-Europe voters have nowhere to hang their hats.

Chris is just what Britain needs in a champion for the European cause. As an MEP he's been at the heart of the working of the EU and, perhaps more importantly, in the representative part of the EU where he has scrutinised and held the other arms of the EU to account. For too long the political discourse on Europe in the UK has focussed on the supposed excesses and lack of democracy of the Commission or the inter-state wrangling in the Council. In Chris we have an opportunity to explain and promote how a truly democratic Europe can be made to work for us, its citizens.

We all seem to agree that we want a distinctive agenda marking us out from the other parties. In the next few years, while they do their best to look embarrassedly apologetic about Europe on the one hand or downright anti-Europe on the other with Chris we can be positive about Europe and our place in it. And vastly strengthen our position as the only party for pro-Europeans in the UK.