Dark Knights and Hoods

Evangelist Billy Graham said, “There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men” and hearing that former HBOS executive Peter Cumming’s corporate lending portfolio was something of an Aladdin’s cave, I can see how tantalising the promise of such riches must have been; especially to those who were ignorant of the fraudulent methods employed to achieve them. For those who agreed to practise the dark art of perpetuating “the get rich quick” myth on the balance sheets, I have no doubt the power that accompanied such lucrative returns was both all consuming and intoxicating.

Still victimised by the consequences of the ongoing banking gluttony, I often speculate as to how HBOS originally portrayed my own residential mortgage in April 2006 when an £790,000 advance was secured against my home based on what I now believe was a grossly inflated valuation of £925,000. It  has been no surprise to find HBOS' continued nonchalant attitude has persisted and precluded me from all discussions regarding this mortgage from the outset until the moment I contacted them about our financial circumstances in October 2008. Now I am even more curious to know how my unrecoverable £217,000 shortfall is being recorded in their loan book and explained considering it represents a nose dive of approximately 30% against their in house valuation only three years earlier and remains completely unrecoverable.

However, with all eyes currently on who will or won’t take a slice of the millions set aside for bankers bonuses this year and increasing public interest in who should be next to follow Fred Goodwin into his Knighthood free status, I cannot imagine anyone within HBOS or the FOS are wondering if the vast amount of HBOS debt that continues to be written off every day by Lloyds TSB might ever include a residential shortfall which has left me standing on a financial precipice for years. Nor do I delude myself any consideration by the FSA has been given as to whether or not my unrecoverable loan is still propping up HBOS balance sheets as a fictitious asset on which to pay executive bonuses or instead it is being used to perpetuate another boardroom driven myth that lurks in shady recesses supported by negative accountability for financial crimes against everyone but the HBOS executives themselves.

Forever presented with antidotes to our economic health which continue to favour the corporate along with solutions limited to toothless acts of regulation designed to placate rather than resolve, I cannot comprehend why, to date, no government initiative or banking reform has focused on a reprieve for the individual victims who, like me, remain in purgatory as a direct result of the well documented fraudulence, unadulterated greed and widespread corporate dishonesty of sociopathic CEOs, Banksters and their Hoods.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution” however, despite an economic crisis of global proportions, those who cruelly perverted the course of both my financial and family life, along with the lives of thousands of others like me, are not only at liberty to bully and persecute their victims without restraint but, thanks to David Cameron’s Christian principals of forgiveness and the captured policies of his regulators, they remain free to pervert any chance of a morally sound outcome for the individual.

Try, try and try again

Abraham Lincoln said, "Whatever you are, make sure you are a good one" and in an effort to step up to the wearing of my somewhat dusty housewifely hat, I made a light lunch for my husband and I to enjoy without our children. During the course of this interlude of domestic bliss my husband looked up from his lunch and, observing my watering eyes, enquired if I had had an allergic reaction to something.

I explained that I had been choking.

However, despite sitting inches away from me across our table, he had been so lost in thought he completey missed my distress and there was a look of incredulous surprise across his face as it dawned on him he had, despite his proximaty, no recollection of what had happened to me.
Basking in the security of the past weeks "warmer glow", I decided, with some misgivings, to use the opportunity to tell him this "moment of absence" was not an isolated incident.

I was totally unprepared for what followed.

Whereas I saw my kindly and carefully voiced disclosure as a way of opening a dialogue from which we might find our way back, my husband saw it as an accusation which required defending.  No amount of explaining  the frequency of these "absent episodes" was not a judgement but merely an observation, would deter him from his argument.  Despite the fact he had acquired, for himself, proof they were a reality, he could not accept his opinion on their frequency was simply invalid.  I thought our objective should be not to query their existence, but to lovingly discuss how best for us both to live with them.

Overwhelmingly tired of the life I could see stetching ahead for me yet desperate to ensure my children do not grow up without a father, I visualised the coming years with a husband constantly in denial of all circumstances and all attributes which displeased him. I was destined be struggling silently to provide family stabilty at the cost of any personal expectations of happiness and retired to bed early with a very heavy heart.

Waking early, I crept out of bed to make a start on my plans for a future without him, only to notice his clothes on the floor discarded from the night before.  They lay carefully and childishly folded in a pile which was too small for their volume and I knew this unsolicited task had been undertaken in an effort to seek my approval.  With my resolve still intact, I made my way to the bedroom door imagining it to be the portal between me and the rest of my life.  My husband stirred with the noise of  my opening the latch the and it was then I heard his muffled words,

"Come back to bed so I can make you a cup of tea".

"Alright then", was my well practised reply,"if you are sure you don't mind"

Whatever I am, be it lover of my family, lover of my husband or just a lover of tea,  I have always endeavoured, like Abraham Lincoln suggests "to be a good one".  I have tried to do the right thing and in this instance I am sure of one thing and one thing only, I am definitely good at trying again and again and again.