Fall Guys

Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know”.  After reading last week’s report that Swiss bank UBS have found someone to blame for their two billion dollar losses, along with many an article lamenting the government’s tepid support of banking reform, I cannot help but reflect on the impact the cowardly fears of the greedy have had on the current economic crisis both at home and abroad.  Feeling aggrieved that regulatory bodies and governments alike prefer to leave ethics and moral obligation out of their investigations, I can only conclude their cowardly consent to banking malfeasance is set to continue while the perpetrators remain unchecked.

Not wishing to follow suit or suffer at the hands of HBOS in silence while believing that disobedience is the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, I have decided not only to disagree with the Financial Ombudsman Service’s recommendation to accept their findings, but also to insist they reply to the many unanswered questions they saw fit to neglect within my original compliant.

Fully aware that it seems to be common practise amongst regulators to leave out more than they put in when it comes to contentious banking issues, I have asked the Financial Ombudsman to address the following simple questions,

·        Why did HBOS choose not to inform me, at outset, of the arrears on my mortgage?

·        Why did HBOS neglect to offer me any form of debt counselling in an effort to explore the merits of alternative solutions other than forcing a sale on my home?

·        Why did HBOS refuse to allow me to secure a three year tenant whose rent was more than enough to pay my mortgage interest plus regular and substantial sums towards the arrears?

·        Why did HBOS choose to force me to sell my home and create a massive unrecoverable shortfall as opposed to follow their own guidelines which state they must secure the best return possible for their shareholders?

I await the Ombudsman’s reply.

In addition, I am delighted to report that sending my “All I need is you letter” to Antonio Horta Osorio and the HBOS company secretary Harry Baines (at Ian Fraser’s suggestion) has at last secured me a meaningful, albeit incomplete reply.

 It appears HBOS’s Mortgage Recoveries Team leader plans a full investigation into their appointed solicitor, Merrils Ede’s handling of my case.  Having been greatly relieved on receipt of the Ombudsman’s news that Merrils Ede are to be removed from my case, it didn’t occur to me that Merrils Ede might actually be the subject of an investigation themselves.  Remembering all too clearly the two years of verbal assaults I have endured at the hands of Merrils Ede’s resident Rottweiler, I cannot help but raise a smile as write these words.

So, with many things in hand but still awaiting the replies, I am all the more determined not to let regret for the past and fear of the future steal my life. To this end I am embarking on a number of  more domestic issues for next few days as I wait hopefully, but not very patiently, for some resolution on the debt fighting front.

This week I plan to,

·        Write “Friends of the school” letters of welcome to all parents letting them know of our numerous forthcoming fundraising events.

·        Escort my daughter, her two overseas school friends who board, and my mother to a local fashion show.

·        Take delivery of a kindly donated and much needed garden shed

And

·        Battle with our insurance company because we have no independent witnesses to the fact that we were stationary when another vehicle piled into the front of our car.

Hoping that my ongoing trials and tribulations at the hands of HBOS have not prevented me from learning more from looking for life’s answers rather than finding the answer itself, it has amused me to read that “democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame”. While, for the moment, my personal concerns rest with whether or not our insurance company will accept we are not to blame for the damage to our car, I cannot help but wonder who really believes, in the case of the UBS fraud or the HBOS Reading scandal that these examples of gross misconduct are truly the responsibility of a few misguided individuals rather than a greedy but cowardly corporate banking initiative.

Brave New World

In order to limit the distress my sixteen year old son foresaw if he had to endure a family holiday without teenage companionship, I suggested he invite a friend from school to come too.  It was during a conversation with his friend, who plans to do a law degree, I discovered the Inland Revenue spend vast sums of money on legal cases involving people who find their tax bills a distressing infringement of their human rights.  Having been a self-employed 40% tax payer for the much of my working life I can  most definitely relate to finding a tax bill distressing but have to admit I have never considered it a violation of my human rights but merely the bane of the fortunate.

In the same way it would not occur to me to take the Inland Revenue to court on an issue of this nature, it did not occur to me, to seek human rights or equal opportunities advice when HBOS told me it was too late to save my home in October 2008.  I believe HBOS profited from a naivety on my part and when they decided to forego scruples, morals and decency in favour of seizing an opportunity to rail-road me out of my home in an effort to replenish their under capitalised coffers.Until recently, I  did not understand why my mortgage paying proposals fell on deaf HBOS ears. I have Stop HBOS campaigner Nicolette Turner (and victim of the HBOS Reading scandal) together with Ed Milliband’s recent speech on the feral elite to thank for my Eureka moment.  Their words have helped me see not only did I borrow too little to register above the radar for help but they have also enabled me to see I fell into financial difficulties too early to enjoy the benefit of government recommendations to lenders that followed, via the Ministry of Justice Pre-action Protocol in early 2009.

While I was looking to work with HBOS to reach a solution which worked for both of us, the HBOS executive were busily shouting from the roof tops “ it wasn’t me” to every accusation which came their way.  I believe the capital within my home became part of their hurried re-capitalisation plan which was supposed to sweep their recklessness towards risk management under the carpet and save them face along with their jobs. I can think of no other reason why my home saving proposals got me nowhere at a time when the media were declaring help was on its way in the form of government funding and FSA guidelines aimed at helping those caught in the credit crunch crossfire.Regrettably for me, our meritocratic culture encourages the celebration of the good fortune of the early bird without giving a second thought to the bad luck of the early worm. When it came to the forced sale of my home I fell foul of being one of the very early worms which was consumed by unbridled HBOS self interest.

When Ed Milliband recently said, “The powerful are very good at talking about the responsibilities of the powerless but they aren’t very good at looking at their own responsibilities,” he could have easily been referring to HBOS and the way they have continued to expect me to pay the price of their mistakes. Unaware of Franklin Roosevelt observations, “In our personal ambitions we are individualists but in our seeking of economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people”, Lloyds and HBOS have continued to offer victims of their greed nothing but contempt for the stressful HBOS created predicaments they find themselves in.

I can only hope the newly launched Public Jury Campaign provides  a definitive step in the right direction towards a brave new world which limits the power of " the cosy elite" because, again in the words of Roosevelt, as a rule,"men are moved by two levers, fear and self interest” and while “we have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals: we now know that is bad economics.”

How much is enough?

Recently Ian Fraser, reporter and BBC journalist introduced me to William Hopper’s financial observation “The credit crunch is like an atomic bomb”.  My attention was immediately captured by his succinct explanation of how a shift in attitude over a four hundred year period has produced the unstable economy we have today.  In his article Hopper praises the legacy of the migrating East Anglian Puritans who, in the 1630s, moved to the USA with their “gift” of good management. This gift was an ethos grounded in the belief pursuit of an ideal society with a focus on the common good is paramount.

Hopper goes on to lament our current global trend which rewards hot-housed qualifications in favour of the hardworking endeavours of our economically sound ancestors.  In contrast to today’s executive, these fore bearers were prepared to work hard to make their way up the ladder of expertise to gain valuable shop floor experience before taking their place in the board room.

It appears the most significant shift in attitude came about in the 60s and 70s when managers became hired hands who no longer came up through the ranks but instead arrived with MBA’s from business schools who taught them to focus on deals and numbers. This new age administrative managerial authority entered the market place believing short term shareholder value was the executive’s number one goal and these values bred a culture which, at best, condoned individual self interest and in the case of the banks, whole heartedly embraced it. The move away from what was perceived as old fashioned Puritan ideologies led to “incompetence on an unprecedented scale that has extended over much of society” and is particularly rife in the banking industry today.

The worship of self interest was further fuelled by the expanding of a credit funded economy where ethical considerations within the banking fraternity were waived in favour of a promise of wealth creation for the masses. In reality this bubble of self-deception produced nothing of the sort and only widened the gap between rich and poor leaving the poor even poorer and high ranking banking executives with a taste for unprecidented riches. William Hopper says, “Banks that are seen as too big to fail are too big to regulate and therefore too big to live. I would add Lloyds and HBOS are also too big to know when they are flogging a dead horse or much less care about the impact their "double standard" acts of cruelty are having on my family.

No doubt it is also the reason HBOS were also too big to consider it worth their while to intervene and prevent the destruction of twenty two families lives when they learned, from the victims, long before the police made their arrests, of a long standing fraud which is now referred to as the HBOS Reading Scandal. I was once asked by a financially independent workaholic, “How much is enough?”It appears, for the powers that be within HBOS, the obscene multi million pound bonuses paid out year on year are still not enough to secure ethical policies, compassionate solutions and the forward thinking integrity of our Puritan forefathers. I can only wonder with trepidation, what it will actually take to affect the necessary shift in attitude when a credit crunch, which has been compared to an Atomic Bomb, has had little impact on how HBOS thinks and behaves.

It was Albert Einstein who once said "relativity applies to physics not ethics" and sadly  I can see this is precisely the case when it comes to the attitude of our casino  banksters who have without apology, brought this economy and my family to its knees.