The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

John F Kennedy once said, “The enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic” and, after five ineffectual years of mythical post crisis reform and regulation of the UK’s banking sector, the truth has not only failed to set me free but it has also failed to spark the Financial Ombudsman Service’s interest or ruffled a single untouchable HBOS  or Lloyds Banking Group feather.

In a last ditch attempt to persuade the dismissive and the disinterested of my sincerity, I have, over the past two weeks, implemented the following;

• Prepared, sworn under oath and sent a statutory declaration to the FOS reiterating my claim that the mortgage application my broker submitted on line in 2006 contained false information which I did not supply.
• Sent HBOS’ customer services department my eight page letter of complaint because, contrary to my expectations, the FOS declined to ask HBOS to comment on its contents as part of the complaints process
• Simultaneously written to Lloyds Banking Group customer services, Lloyds Group Chief Executive Officer Antonia Horta Osario and Lloyds Group Chief Risk Officer Executive Juan Colombas, stating,

“Following the final decision from the FOS on 10 February 2014 it is now my opinion that the contract entered into in 2006 with the Bank of Scotland by myself and my husband is null and void. This is because it did not conform to due process and it was granted on false information which was supplied fraudulently by [a broker] and then negligently verified by HBOS’s underwriters M**** ******, S** ****** and J** ******.

As a result of the Ombudsman’s findings, together with information gleaned from a Data Subject Access Request, I am now of the opinion that I need to make a new complaint.

Yours faithfully”

Life After Debt

And,

• In an effort to understand the consequences a regulated  lender might suffer if they were found not to have complied with FCA rules, spoken at length with the FCA consumer helpline about my case.

As a result of my endeavours I have been advised;

• The FOS have received my “letter” and attached it to my file. There is no mention of them changing their plans to publish the ombudsman’s ruling on my case on their website
• HBOS’ Customer Services are unprepared to discuss my case any further and can only refer me back to the FOS’s recent ruling
• HBOS’ Executive team are in receipt of my letter of complaint, it is very important to them and they will be responding to it shortly 

And the Financial Conduct Authority informs me;

• The FOS are not empowered to rule or comment on cases of fraud
• HBOS are duty bound by FCA rules to prove beyond reasonable doubt they took adequate measures during the underwriting of my mortgage to verify the information contained in my application was true
• FCA rules run parallel to the law but, as guidelines, are not legally binding. Lenders are not required to keep compliance documentation for more than a year and the FCA, having asked for full details of the alleged perpetrators, strongly recommend I report my findings to Action Fraud or the police.

Thankfully, the tireless support, diligence and expertise of my FB friends has now put the latter very much in hand. 

Nineteenth century German born philosopher and author Arthur Schopenhauer believed, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed and third, it is accepted as being self-evident”. All I can now hope for is that, after six excruciating years of ridicule and violent opposition, the truth may finally become self evident in the hands of the Serious Fraud Office.

After all, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi;

 “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” 

Shocks and Horrors

Founder of the Johnson Publishing Company, grandson of slaves and the first African American to appear on the Forbes 400 list, John Harold Johnson, once said, “Dream small dreams. If you make them too big, you get overwhelmed and you don’t do anything. If you make small goals and accomplish them, it gives you the confidence to go on to higher goals” and, as a victim of the banking crisis, I have been left with no alternative but to face our family’s problems in much the same way.

Still reeling from the loss of my home, my livelihood and my financial future, I have spent the past five years piecing together a life which was shattered as a consequence of the fraudulent behaviour of the banks. Initially my goals were as small as I could make them but at times it was impossible not to be daunted by objectives I was regularly told were insurmountable because of our circumstances.

•      Unable to stay in our home, I left no stone unturned in my search for a house.
•     Unable to produce a satisfactory credit reference I located landlords who were prepared to accept character references
•     Unable to cover the heating costs of the only house available to me I obtained permission to take lodgers
•     Unable to fund my children’s school fees I swallowed my pride and went cap in hand to ask for bursaries

 And,

•          Unable to arrest HBOS’s relentless pursuit of my massive £217,000 mortgage shortfall, I approached the Financial Ombudsman Service to make a complaint.

As a result of my efforts,

•     My husband, my children and I have had five uninterrupted years in a vast, crumbling, family friendly farmhouse.
•     My landlord has, for the first time ever, enjoyed five years of uninterrupted rental income safe in the knowledge we would care for and make minor repairs to his crumbling pile.
•     My lodgers have enjoyed the comforts of living in a family home at a price they could afford.
•      My children have benefited from an independent education at a school which was struggling to maintain its numbers

And,

•      The Financial Ombudsman Service agreed, on two separate occasion, to adjudicate my case against HBOS

However, after five years of painstakingly working to rebuild our life, I have watched in horror as much of what I initially achieved has unravelled over the past six months;

•     A hand delivered Section 13 notice from our landlord’s solicitor dictates a 50%  increase in rent will be effective from 5 Dec and as a result of our inability to pay my family and I are facing homelessness again.
•     Finding any property via letting agents has proved hopeless as, five years on, they remain unable to put us forward without a satisfactory credit check
•     Full bursary funded independent education for my dyslexic son’s secondary education is unlikely to be forthcoming as it is improbable he will achieve the required 55% grade in his common entrance exam.

And,

•     After ten months of rebuilding my second HBOS case of complaint when the Financial Ombudsman Service mishandled my first submission, my adjudicator has finally replied. I have had to waited twelve whole weeks to hear;

“I would like to apologise for not responding to the previous emails you sent across or keeping you updated on your complaint...[but HBOS] has confirmed that it is unable to get hold of [their in house conveyance solicitors] Pathway Residential Property Lawyers. It has confirmed it has called the contact numbers it holds which have a recorded message stating the service is no longer in use. It has also been unable to find a direct website in relation to the business. It has written to them but it would appear that it is unlikely a response will be received. As such I am unconvinced that any further information will be able to be obtained to add as evidence to your complaint...[therefore] I feel it would be right for me to start my consideration of your complaint as it would appear that there is little further information that can be obtained” .

As a result of this experience I can only conclude exoneration for HBOS is the normal result of toothless regulatory apathy while negligent record keeping along with obstructive behaviour appear to be banking business practices intentionally designed to impair complaint. If this is indeed the case, it is little wonder Lloyds Bank and HBOS’ CEO Antonio Horta Osorio, against a back drop of wide spread public hardship, is happy to publicly proclaim they are “back to being a normal company” safe in the knowledge that those of us who are still suffering from the shocks and horrors of  the fallout from their actions continue to be overwhelmed however much we manage our expectations and tailor our goals.

Many of us are still;

•     Unable to stay in our homes.
•     Unable to produce satisfactory financial credit references
•     Unable to find adequately paid employment
•     Unable to cover our heating costs

    And,

•     Unable to arrest the relentless pursuit of fraudulent creditors by making a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

     American writer, associate editor of Fortune magazine and futurist Alvin Toffler once said, “Man 

     has a  limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is over whelmed, the capacity for the 

     future is shock” and having ridden and survived a five year holocaust of  brutal and unsolicited change            only to find myself no further forward, leaves me shocked, overwhelmed and a seemingly

     insurmountable distance from Antonio Horta Osorio’s “back to being normal”.

     This is too is simply unjust.

Duty of Care

US business school graduate, National Security Agency potential recruit, governmental consultant and author of The Economic Hitman, John Perkins, once said, “This Empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, though fraud...” and although he was speaking of the way in which the US miss sold debt to under developed countries to acquire political leverage and economic gain, endless investigations into the banking crisis would suggest the US  was not the only Empire to profit from economic manipulation, cheating and fraud.

However, despite revelations that widespread manipulation, cheating and fraud has been at home within the UK’s banking culture for many a year, not one high ranking executive or board member has faced criminal charges. Like the Economic Hit Men in Perkins book, highly-paid professionals have cheated the nation out of trillions while the Parliamentary Banking Commission’s outrage has endorsed the public face of our government. However, behind closed doors, evidence suggests the leverage of the all powerful banskters has neutralized political and regulatory muscle and in so doing created an untouchable elite who still enjoy the benefits of the obscene and exceptionally lucrative carrot without fear for the consequence of the stick.

 As a result of this unspoken rule of thumb it is clear a miss selling complaint such as mine represents little more than a minor irritant to the minions of the corporate con-men who remain practiced in the art of denial.

It has been,

• Five years since I first learned my mortgage was in arrears,
• Five months since I received HBOS' response to my claim that our mortgage was miss sold,
• Five weeks since I first asked for, and listed in detail, the information I require from HBOS to progress my complaint and
• Five days since I received what they tell me is their best attempt at providing me with all I have asked for.

After hours of wading through reams of screen prints and under writing notes, I have now learned (according to HBOS),

• My husband is a professional sportsman
• We are owner/occupiers of a large house without a mortgage

And,

• Neither HBOS or their surveyors owe a Duty of Care to customers with remortgages.

Knowing full well my husband has never been a sportsman (professional or otherwise) and the place I call home has not only been owned by our landlords family for decades but been rented to us for the past four and a half years, I was suspicious HBOS’s claims regarding their obligations to provide Duty of Care might prove equally fictitious.

Further investigations have revealed,

• My conveyance was carried out by HBOS’ in house solicitor as was my survey and this situtaion may well constitute a conflict of interest in both cases
•  A surveyor cannot produce a valuation inspection report without liability, as their code of conduct indemnity insurance does not permit an opinion to be given without responsibility.

And

• A fee free remortgage submitted by a broker does not permit a lender to abdicate from their responsibilities to provide a Duty of Care.

In 2011 Lloyds Banking Group “set out a new vision and strategy to be the best bank for customers...[and promised to be] a more transparent organisation that delivers”. However, if my own case is anything to go by, HBOS, who now reside under the umbrella of Lloyds, have demonstated no plans to deliver anything but hogwash to me and the only strategy they seem to have embraced has been to send me a constant stream of inaccuracies and denials for the past five years.

In the words of American foundling father, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, “The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system” and while this may well have been true of my perceptions before our financial demise, this particular citizen has certainly had her eyes opened to the unscrupulous and negligent business practices of HBOS now.

Here's hoping documenting my battle with HBOS and posting it via my blog on the internet helps open the eyes of a fair few more!

Learning Difficulties

First Viscount Saint Alban, philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist and author, Francis bacon once said," It's not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong: not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich: not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned: and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity" and although I have drawn strength from words such as these throughout each and every excruciating year spent in the ruthless jaws of the Halifax Bank of Scotland, I suspect for the vast majority of those I am forced to deal with, strength of resolve, fair practice and  integrity occupy a negligible space among their tasks in hand  and  this week’s correspondence has offered  little opportunity to think otherwise.

Following receipt of  the Financial Ombudsman Service’s confirmation  that my miss selling case has been accepted  and  is now awaiting allocation  to an adjudicator, I have  requested a copy of  every single document relating to my Bank of Scotland  mortgage from the following organisations.

• The solicitor who conveyed my mortgage
• The Bank of Scotland archive
• The surveyors  instructed to value my property
• The mortgage broker who introduced our application to HBOS

Excited in anticipation of the information my actions might afford me, I was delighted to find my solicitor happily agreed to put the matter in hand immediately and, in spite of a history of reluctance to assist in my compliant,  I am equally pleased to report HBOS have agreed  to furnish me with the information I require by 1 April.

Both the surveyors and the broker have not.

Much to my astonishment, not only have I discovered the surveyors instructed to value my home were salaried HBOS employees, but because of a specific instruction by the Bank of Scotland at the time of application  stating I should not be supplied with the valuation, these same HBOS employees remain unwilling to part with any information  now. Furthermore, the broker who placed our £790,000 mortgage with HBOS in 2006, and by so doing earned himself a healthy £4,000 fee, now regrets they are unable to supply copies of documents relating to my mortgage application because their regulators do not require them to keep records for this length of time.

As my recently acquired advocate and I smell a rat, I have written to the Financial Services Authority to ask for their comments on the mortgage brokers letter. I now wait with interest to learn the outcome.

American novelist and author Lloyd Alexander said, “We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and  not finding it than from  learning the answer itself” and  while some continue to  seek answers which negate bonus caps and others prefer profits to serve the greater good, I plan to practice the art of asking questions of HBOS because I am convinced  it is as organisation where fraud  has come naturally and because of this I am now paying the price.

The Powerless and Corruption

George Bernard Shaw, Irish play wright and founder of the London School of Eoconomics once said, “Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power" and while I am repeatedly told by the Financial Ombudsman Service unprecedented numbers of complaints are the reason I have not yet received a ruling on whether my HBOS complaint can proceed, it is clear the fault actually lies with unprecedented incidents of banking fraud and not, as bankers would have us believe, the audacity of their victims.

While all eyes are on Barclays fraudulent actions following the US and UK regulators levy of a £290 million fine for Libor rate manipulation, it has become abundantly clear CEO Bob Diamond was not wrong when he said “how people behave when they think no one is watching” has been at the heart of his banks profitability and risk management policies for many a year. With  the news that vast funds have been repeatedly and systematically skimmed by Barclays from a plethora of global financial manoeuvres spanning as much as five years, civil suits are likely to far outstrip existing compensation payouts which are already run into billions making a regulatory fine of £290 million pale into insignificance.

By way of an explanation, our regulataors tell us a wave of Libor fiddling during the 2008 financial crisis resulted from “senior management’s” concerns that Barclays would be perceived as struggling.  Add into this mix a conversation Diamond had with Paul Tucker, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, after which at least two Barclay’s managers believed falsely adjusting Libor rates had been agreed, one can only wonder why anyone thinks Chairman Marcus Angius’ resignation along with the sacking of fourteen Barclay’s traders has resolved anything let alone emptied the Barclays barrel of its rotten apples.

With the regulatory finger finally pointing firmly in the direction of twelve other banks for similar Libor fixing crimes it is no surprise to discover Lloyds Banking Group and HBOS are amongst those within the US regulators and FSA’s sights. However, while I doubt previously exhausted Lloyds CEO Antonio Horta Osorio anticipated “bringing out their dead” in the summer of 2011would give rise to further billions being claimed in compensation for rate fixing, it is now clear it will not just be my own case which will continue to fester on HBOS and FOS desks for weeks to come while the fall out from this latest banking fraud discovery is laid to rest.

It is said corruption is authority, plus monopoly, minus transparency and while auditors have snoozed and the UK government remain complicit in their indifference to bankers crimes I, along with millions of other victims of banking avarice are left to suffer the consequences and despite public outrage both at home and abroad, unsurprisingly No. 10 are happy to announce there is to be no retrospective action taken with regard to the banks as “we can only use the law as it is and as it stands”.  Sadly, as is the case in so many instances, the law insists the loss of my financial future is too remote for there to be any recourse.

Thirty fifth US president John F. Kennedy said, “Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance” and despite the best efforts of the US and the UK regulators it is common knowledge that while nobody is above the law, power regularly makes people invisible.

It is for this reason banking crime continues pay.

Conscientious Objections

American president Thomas Jefferson said, “All tyranny needs in order to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent” and while I wait, without patience, for a reply from the Halifax Bank of Scotland with regard to the overvaluation of my home, I continue to smart from the knowledge there are many people of good conscience who would prefer to accuse me of irresponsible borrowing rather than consider the unpalatable possibility their banks are participating in a reign of financial tyranny to feed elitist avarice from the modest means of the least fortunate.

While banking sins of the past continue to surface in the public domain and CEO’s like Stephen Hester of RBS admit their parents believe they already earn too much, recent reports reveal the world’s top bankers are set to enjoy a double digit increase to their remuneration this year, excluding bonuses.  Despite banking profits and share prices plummeting, the top fifteen anticipate as much as 12% will be added to their personal bottom line and Barclay’s Bob Diamond and Lloyds banking Group’s Antonio Horta Osario are but two of the lucky chief executives set to benefit. As this award comes hot on the tail of an unprecedented number of customer complaints, the huge toll of PPI compensation payouts, a well documented hard line approach to both in house redundancies and debt forgiveness for the vulnerable, one could easily say for many banking executives, there remains good reason to fiddle while the economy continues to burn.

In contrast, the impact of this hard nosed, self serving banking culture on the individual has been further revealed during an open high court hearing into the collapse of Christmas savings company Farepak.  However, this investigation has only served to illustrate there is little the law can to do to arrest banking tyranny at any level  as HBOS’s penchant for lining their own pockets at the expense of others has not only left the Farepak’s directors and their customers to suffer the consequences of HBOS's actions, but also proved that HBOS is adept at remaining beyond the grasp of the strong arm of the law.

In the case of Farepak the court was told “for a year, 116,400 of the country’s poorest families had been putting aside a little bit of cash, saving up for Christmas” only to be left with nothing because, rather than putting together a rescue plan to save the company from collapse or cutting their losses when the writing was on wall, HBOS insisted Farepak directors continue to collect customer’s monthly subscriptions in an effort to eliminate the bank’s exposure. While Mr Justice Peter Smith, not unlike FSA investigators earlier this year, condemned the actions of HBOS, he also “implored” them to redress the situation for Farepak’s customers on moral grounds as he was unable to find the transferring of HBOS losses onto the shoulder’s of Farepak’s customers in this way, illegal. Needless to say HBOS, who infamously referred to the revenue the Farepak customers were providing them as "Doris money", insist they made “entirely reasonable decisions” based on the information they had at the time.

Italian writer, statesmen and Florentine patriot Niccolo Machiavelli once said, “Good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals” yet despite the ongoing distress of those caught up in a global economic crisis some five hundred years later, there remains little evidence of morality or the law playing its part in bringing errant banking practises to heel. Left endlessly waiting in purgatory and with little hope of the law or morality coming to my rescue, if the Farepak case is anything to go by, it is my plan, with good conscience,

Never to remain silent on the matter.

Blame and Circumstance

Jean Paul Getty once said, “If you owe the bank one hundred dollars that’s your problem, if you owe them a hundred million dollars then that is their problem” and while a global economic recession gives rise to worldwide fretting over trillions, democracy remains the process by which the "powers that be" choose to allocate the blame.

For  Antonio Horta Osario, chief executive officer of  41% tax payer owned banking giant Lloyds, it is over enthusiastic claims management companies swamping his administrators for PPI compensation who are getting his goat. Lloyds are expected to pay out an estimated five hundred million pounds to clients to whom they have miss-sold PPI. Mr Horta Osario says one in four claims submitted by these companies are for individuals who are not eligible for compensation nor have they been customers of the bank and says this blanket approach to the claims process is not only slowing it down but costing Lloyds money. His has publically stated “ it is fraud and it must stop”. However he has not felt the need to make such strong statements about Lloyds Banking Group’s own HBOS executives, despite the knowledge several are now facing criminal charges for alleged financial crimes which have cost the indivual and the economy billions.

Defence secretary, Philip Hammond, has also chosen to point his accusing finger this week declaring he is of the opinion it is the individual who “over borrowed in the economic boom who must now admit to their part in the financial crisis”. He says the banks had to lend to someone and these people should “accept responsibility for the consequences of their own choices” rather than conveniently cast the blame on the banks.  However, when speaking of the period in which he helped formulate David Cameron’s economic strategy in opposition he says, “We started living a lifestyle both in private consumption and in public consumption which could we not afford [and it] ran away with us” so unsurprisingly it appears the governments take on the financial is what is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander.

In contrast, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, previously reluctant to lay the blame at anyone’s door, now tells us it is “the failure of a system” that is at fault and not the individual. Speaking of “a slow and steady recovery coming during the course of 2012” he admits the Bank of England must take a “share of the responsibility” for the financial crisis and “with benefit of hind sight should have shouted from the rooftops that a financial system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown too quickly and borrowed too much, and that so-called “ light-touch regulation hadn’t prevented any of this”.

It also seems HBOS auditors KPMG may well be shouldering some blame this week following reports an official investigation by the Financial Reporting Committee to investigate their conduct following HBOS whistle blower Paul Moore’s letter to the Treasury Select Committee sighting an inaccuracy in their forensic audit regarding his dismissal as global head of regulatory risk in 2005. Mr Moore was “let go” because he disagreed with the board’s attitude to risk and warned that HBOS’s lending strategy had become dangerously over heated. He believes KPMG’s decision to record this event as “a clash of personalities” was wholly misleading to the Lloyds takeover of 2008 and eventually cost the tax payer a further millions in government bailout support . Mr Moore blames the fact that, “money seems to be more important to KMPG’s strategy than integrity and professionalism”.

And

Stephen Hester, chief executive officer of 84% taxpayer own Royal Bank of Scotland is also casting the blame this week and its not, as one might expect on his predecessor Fred Goodwin who has already been stripped of his knighthood, is facing criminal charges for fraud and may well have past bonuses recalled to help fund PPI compensation. Instead Mr Hester’s eight gardeners on his 7 million pound, 350 acre Oxfordshire estate tell us rain has blighted attendance of the annual charitable opening of his twenty five acre gardens. It may not have crossed Mr Hester’s mind his infamous fight to keep his £963,000 bonus earlier this year despite a dip of 36% on its share price, a first quarter loss of 1.4 billion and further RBS job losses ,bringing the total to almost 50% of its pre- crisis work force, might well have had something to do with the public's disinterest in his garden.

Founder of the Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company, Harvey S Firestone once said, “A man with a surplus can control circumstance, but a man without a surplus is controlled by circumstance and often has no opportunity to exercise judgement”. However if this week is anything to go by, this rule seems seldom to apply and it is for this reason I live in hope that, despite a life now lived without surplus, I will have the opportunity to exercise my own judgement in my ongoing personal battle with HBOS and will, one day, enjoy a result as a consequence of public opinion insisting the banks ultimately accept the blame.

Capitalism and Punishment

Winston Churchill once said, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings: the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries” and, despite more than a fifty year interval, capitalist principals continue to force feed financial misery to the masses while our corporate and banking elite remain free to enjoy, and retain, the blessings of bailouts, rescue packages and sweet heart tax deals designed exclusively for their benefit. 
 
One might have thought embracing capitalism would provide the freedom to fail as well as the freedom to suceed but it appears the favoured few have remained remarkably unhampered by their failures and their bad decisions have instead achieved freedom from consequence via the government supported socialising of their losses.  In contrast I, not unlike the banks, but an individual with an unrecoverable deficit void of asset backing, continue to be on the receiving end of a “holier than thou” attitude towards a hand I have been dealt as a direct result of flawed banking risk management policies which saw many of the world’s largest banks run out of money in 2008.

Since then, with only the aid a few charitable hours of CAB time and the help of my trusty friend Christine, I have endeavoured to explain my impoverished circumstances to all our creditors. I have explained over and over again my husband’s vulnerable state of mind has resulted in a low paid job which leaves us nothing to offer towards the repayment of our million pound deficit and repeatedly described the enormous strain constant requests for money have had on our health, our marriage and our children’s family life. Our creditors should be in no doubt that their balances are unrecoverable, not least, because each and every letter has been supported with both financial and medical evidence.

For the past three and a half years I have borne the anxiety of our ordeals alone. I have done this in the knowledge that suicide was never far from my husband’s mind when the burden was his.  Compelled to do everything within my power to prevent my youngest three children enduring the loss of a father in an identical manner to that which their older sisters suffered more than twenty years ago I have, inch by inch, with the help of family, friends and nothing short of huge personal resolve, pieced together a modest lifestyle and a supportive family environment against all the odds.

Year in and year out I have dutifully and covertly prepared financial statements and medical reports for our creditor’s perusal far from sight of my husband’s glancing eye. With each creditors update I always enclose an appeal for a compassionate write off in the light of our unchanged circumstances. This year, however, there has been one fundamental difference to the content of this message of misery because, to my immense joy, not to mention unbridled relief, our most recent medical report states my husband is no longer contemplating taking his own life.

But,

Despite the obvious benefits of this news to me and my children, the Financial Ombudsman’s Service now tell me it is precisely because of the improvement in my husband’s health that Lloyds TSB are now unwilling to consider debt forgiveness at all. After three long years of living with the fear of an intolerable outcome, I am now told Lloyds TSB are looking for a less uplifting change in my husband’s health to be able to reconsidered my family and I for a share in the blessings that came only their way in recent years and not mine.

Unlike Lloyds TSB’s own chief executive, Antonio Horta Osorio, it appears I am destined to enjoy no respite from debt fighting stress. There will be no government bailouts for me nor will there be time off to catch up on my disturbed and troubled sleep. It appears the only hope of freedom from the misery of capitalism’s failures for me is in the unpalatable event of my husband’s demise.

American philosopher Henry David Thoreau once said, “The price of anything is the amount of life you are prepared to exchange for it”, and I was recently shocked to hear that in China a seventeen year old boy’s kidney was the going rate of exchange for an ipad and an iphone.  I am, however, nothing short of astounded to discover that in the UK, the going rate of exchange for £25,000 of unsecured Lloyds credit card debt is no less than the life of a forty six year old family man. Sadly, I cannot see any amount of tightening of the regulatory screws will ever address this.

Waste alot, Want alot

America’s Ethel Grodzin Romm once said, “What could our worst enemy do to damage this strong and beautiful country? He could do no better than to get us to squander our human and natural resources on dubious missions and then trick us into plugging our ears against the howls of those who object” and when Ken Costa openly said, "Anyone familiar with banking and finance will know that it is completely impossible to legislate out bad practise" it is difficult not to assume his condoning words are designed to encourage us to plug our ears to the public outcry at proposals to pay bonuses for failure and persuade us to discard the messy process of bringing the criminal actions of errant executive bankers to account.

Thankfully Lloyds banking groups CEO Antonio Horta Osorio and, after much media attention, RBS CEO Stephen Hester, have both seen fit to decline the proposed million pound bonuses which were heading their way from their largely tax payer owned employers. Their actions may well be the first chink of light at the end of a well established self serving banking tunnel of personal reward which not only highlights the importance of moral accountability within our corporations but clearly illustrates responsible capitalism can never be responsible if the people at the top are not. Although the banks remain an easy target when it comes to double standards, remuneration excesses and the squandering of tax payers money, I can’t help but find myself equally outraged at the news brought home by my husband regarding a recent Marks and Spencer’s initiative.

While I do not pretend to know the ins and outs of all things retail, I cannot begin to understand how M & S can, against a back drop of real hardship for many individuals caught up in the fall out of an ongoing global recession and in spite of their staff's willingness to run it for free, truly believe it is best practise to terminate the nightly waste sale of unsold food to their employees. Instead they now insist these very same people render unsold produce inedible before assigning it to land fill, or at best animal feed and compost. The impact of being unable to purchase discounted produce for their families will undoubtedly be hugely detrimental to every M & S employee but, above all else, it is immoral to squander food in this way.

With mounting evidence that irresponsible capitalism lives on in the majority of our banks as well as in retail giant Marks and Spencer’s too, it is no surprise to discover M&S executives remain deaf to protests of those of us who object. It appears English writer Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) was correct in his belief that written words are “the only riches our posterity cannot squander” because it seems, as a race, we are collectively doing pretty well when it comes to the squandering of everything else.

Off Limits

I have heard it said that limitations live only in our minds and if we use our imaginations, the possibilities become limitless. This point was illustrated to perfection today by my ten year old son when expressing, yet again, his desire to keep chickens.  On this occasion he did not attempt to seek permission to own a chicken but merely stoked a lively discussion as to how many chickens would be required to fulfil his ambition to keep our family in eggs.  Changing tack like this has smoothly shifted the debate from if to when he can have chickens and has made me wonder if taking a leaf out of his book in my dealings with Lloyds and HBOS’s might render me greater success.

Over the last week I have;

·        Received another demand from Lloyds debt collectors

·        Received no reply from Antonio Horta Osorio to my original letter of 4 August

·        Received no reply from Antonio Horta Osorio to my ”chase up” letter of 19 August

This leaves the Irish and the Elite continuing to enjoy preferential treatment for mortgage shortfall forgiveness and me continuing to suffer in purgatory purely because I live in England and do not have a high enough profile to be heard.

I have, however, received another letter this week. The Financial Ombudsman has given me two remarkably good but unexplained piece of news.

The henchwoman at Merrels Ede Solicitors has been called off as a direct result of my compliant and HBOS have, at last, agreed “not to pursue” for the time being, namely eighteen months.  This has come as a complete surprise to me because, in their last letter, my caseworker informed me they could not proceed without seeking agreement from HBOS to investigate my complaint leaving me under the impression the Financial Ombudsman's Service was about to prove completely toothless yet again.

So where does this leave me now?

It leaves me with eighteen months of limitless possibilities.  I don’t know what they are yet but it will be a relief to be able to put my case to whomever I wish without continually having to deal with the bully boy and brow beating tactics of HBOS’s Rottweiler, Merrils Ede solicitor’s. It also leaves me some unencumbered time to consider the merits of a ten year old boy keeping chickens.

Will and Power

Some would say watching people reveal their cynicism makes it possible to identify what it is they lack in life and I suspect it would be easy to assume that someone in my position would be cynical about their reduced circumstances and the paralysis it can sometimes bring about in everyday life. Today, for example, my children had their feet measured to establish if they need new school shoes.  In the past, if their feet had grown I would have simply bought them new shoes immediately, but current circumstances demand I defer the decision to spend money until I have checked the month’s outgoings. I cannot, however, say I am at all unhappy about this situation having always believed Mr Micawber’s recipe for happiness, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and sixpence, result misery,” is a very valuable lesson for my children to learn.

Nevertheless I have little doubt those who choose observe me would definitely see immense frustration rather than cynicism as a result of the lack of progress I am making in all I am attempt to achieve.

In the last ten days I have,

• Sent my “All I need is you” letter to Antonio Horta Osorio and, as yet, received no acknowledgement or reply.
• Sent my blog “All I need is you” to the Financial Times and James Quinn editor of the Telegraph and, although in the case of Mr Quinn it has been acknowledged, again there has been no further communication.
• Sent my blog link and a synopsis of my writing to a literary editor who specialises in Misery Memoirs only to receive a sympathetic but disappointing reply, “I fear I don’t see this making a book.”

Thankfully, I have also,

• Been sent an article from the Times about people in similar circumstances to me in an effort to help me feel less alone in my endeavours.
• Received an invitation to spend a weekend in a beautiful coastal hotel in celebration of a friend’s birthday, all expenses paid.
• Had a phone call from my eldest daughter praising “Beaches and Blessings” as a wonderful piece of writing and , in her opinion, my best so far.
• Received an email from a lady who worked on my case for the CAB in which she praised my writing and said I am an inspiration to others.
• Had my blog sent to the CAB's Social Policies coordinator along with my original case worker.

In an addition to these much valued signs of support I have also been repeatedly told by my good friend Christine during my frequent crisis' of confidence,

• Lloyds Banking Group will eventually be exposed for fabricating correspondence about fictitious payment arrangements and be forced to address my situation rather than continue to persecute me.
• Their is a slim chance the Financial Ombudsman may well rule in my favour and not HBOS’s (as I fear) with regard to my mortgage shortfall complaint and for this reason I should be patient

She also insists,

• My writing is not drivel.

I am only too aware it is the fate of many people to fail in their endeavours, not because they lack strength, but purely because they lack will. Bolstered and strengthened by the support and generosity of others I am left with renewed vigour to persist with the making of fresh plans to take the place of those that have so far failed. Thankfully for me, HBOS and Lloyds Banking Group will never be at liberty to repossess either my will or the camaraderie of others.