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.” 

Truth and Truman

Christof, the fictional allegory of the omnipotent programme maker in TheTruman  Show once said, “If his was more than just a vague ambition, if [Truman] was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there’s no way we could prevent him” and as I enter my sixth year of battling  with HBOS over my miss sold mortgage and its resulting £217,000 shortfall, I can not help but wonder  if  I too have unwittingly secured a  leading role in my own real life reality show. If only a little more effort and absolute determination was all it would take to unearth the truth and nothing but the whole truth about the underwriting of my HBOS mortgage.

To date, despite my best efforts, I am still without copies of  the mandatory compliance documents which should have accompanied the sale of my HBOS mortgage and all I have to show for my endeavours is yet another notch on my FOS complaints file as a result of the second complaint I have lodged, and won, against yet another biased and incompetent Financial Ombudsman adjudicator.  However, I am delighted to report that my absolute determination to confront and overturn the FOS’s unfair ruling has rewarded me with the following:

·         An investigation into the actions of the adjudicator who made the ruling in favour of HBOS without allowing me to submit further evidence

·         An apology from the FOS adjudicator for repeatedly ignoring my emails over a period of three months

·         A  retraction of the unfair FOS ruling of  November 2013

·         An extension until  31 January 2014  to allow me time to submit my additional evidence

With a traumatic year and an unwelcome house move firmly behind me it appears absolute determination in 2014 has afforded  me some more very welcome news. I am now in receipt of a very apologetic letter from HBOS stating a copy of my mortgage conveyance file  is finally on its way as well as notification from the Information Commissioner's Office advising me HBOS is to be investigated for failing to supply me with the compliance documentation  I requested under my DSAR a year ago.

Christof also said,  “I am The Creator - of a television show that gives hope and joy and inspiration to millions” and while I can hardly describe my blog posts or my life as providing hope, joy or inspiration to millions, I, like the viewers of The Truman Show can’t help but be continually wondering, “How [and when] is it going to end?”

Here’s hoping 2014 turns out to be a happy and peaceful one for us all.

Ridiculous Solutions

Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer Archimedes of Syracuse once said. “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world” and, despite an HBOS penchant for obstructiveness, I, like Archimedes I am still hoping a little leverage, along with the evidential support from my HBOS Data Subject Access Request will eventually produce some world moving success of my own.

The Liberty Guide to Human Rights states “if information about you is held by your doctor, by your bank, by a credit reference agency, by your employer or by the tax-man, the likelihood is that it will be [available to you under the rules of a Data Subject Access Request because it is deemed to be] your personal data”. This extends to “personal data where it is processed to learn or record something about that individual or where the processing of that information has impact on that individual”. However, much to my own consternation and that of my Financial Ombudsman Service adjudicator, it has proved extremely difficult to acquire all the HBOS documentation relating to my mortgage miss selling case.

Eleven weeks have passed since I was allocated an FOS adjudicator to investigate my complaint and I am still waiting for HBOS to provide me with the following information,

•           Full details of the valuation undertaken for mortgage purposes on 26.4.06 by Colley’s Surveyors.
•          Confirmation of who was responsible for overseeing the processing  of my mortgage (as the file notes I have received so far say my broker was removed from the panel during its underwriting).
•          The reason my broker was removed from the panel in the first place
•          Copies of all of  the HBOS and broker’s compliance check sheets associated with my mortgage application
• .      A full copy of the HBOS and broker Fact Find which supported my application.
• .      Copies of all documentary evidence supplied by our accountant
• .      An explanation as to why, according to my screen notes, my application was eligible for a maximum loan of £1,260,050 when my home supposedly enjoyed a risk assessment value of £925,000 and our application was for a remortgage amounting to £795,000.
• .      A full copy of HBOS’ contracted solicitors file for my conveyance

And

• .      The identity of the individual who was responsible for underwriting and signing off my remortgage in May 2006.

Anxious to expedite matters, I rang HBOS to solicit a more immediate reply.

I was told,

·         The incomplete copy of my file should not have been sent out without fully addressing my requests
·         My questions would be answered (or declined depending on whether or not they are deemed to be personal data) within 14 days

And, (seemingly totally unaware of the fact that the DSAR team have already ready sent me the names of at least three people who worked on the underwriting of my remortgage)

·         I will never be provided with the names of the individuals who underwrote my mortgage as this would constitute a breach of HBOS’ employee Duty of Care.

Keen to keep the Financial Ombudsman Service abreast of the situation in general I wrote to my adjudicator and was informed,

·         I have already had eleven weeks grace to provide additional evidence
·         The FOS must be fair to both parties at all times,
·         To provide me with a further extension to gather evidence would be unfair to HBOS and
·         If I have not received the evidence I am waiting for before 28 June, the FOS investigation into my complaint is likely to proceed without it.

Greatly disturbed by the dubious logic of my adjudicators comments, I replied with the following,

“Dear Financial Ombudsman Service Adjudicator,

Thank you for explaining to me how things work and I understand my case cannot drag on indefinitely and nor would I wish it to. 

In an effort to expedite matters, earlier today and before I received your email, I spoke to the DSAR team at HBOS who apologized for agreeing to send me information and then not acting on it. Today they have assured me, once again, they will reply within 14 days with regard to the information I have asked for. Thankfully they have also offered to help secure my files from their contracted surveyor Colley's and their contracted solicitors Pathways Residential Mortgages as they say this information should have been available to me in the first place. According to **** **** on the HBOS DSAR team, contracted surveyors and solicitors often misunderstand that the individual is entitled to have sight of their own files.

Although I appreciate you must make sure you are fair to both sides and 11 weeks is a long time to wait for me to supply additional evidence, I believe the fact that I have been unsuccessfully requesting this evidence from HBOS for much more than 11 weeks is in itself unfair. I am now very worried to hear you may well have to proceed with my case on the 28 June regardless of whether or not HBOS have fulfilled my request for valuation and conveyance information. I believe progressing your investigation without all the evidence will only serve to disadvantage my own case of complaint while actively encouraging HBOS to drag their feet in the future and this is not fair to me.

I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that I am more than happy to collate and send the further evidence I spoke of as quickly I can, once I have received, it but sadly the time frame still rests firmly in the hands of the HBOS DSAR team.

I do very much appreciate where you are coming from but hope you won't mind me pointing this out.

Yours sincerely”

Life After Debt

The Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland once said, ““If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would” and,  if the results of last week’s communications with both HBOS and the Financial Ombudsman Service are a measure by which to assess them, it appears that in the world of the Financial Ombudsman Service and that of the HBOS Data Subject Access Request team, the logic is precisely the same.

Nevertheless, I have no alternative but to I await their replies.

Discovery of Truth

Nineteenth century philosopher and critical thinker Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance of things present which then mislead into error, nor by weakness of the reasoning powers, but instead by preconceived opinion, by prejudice” and there is little doubt in my mind that preconceived opinion played a major role in keeping the extent of banking criminality and its capture of our government from the wider audience for many a year.

Even now, after countless government inquiries, regulatory investigations and whistle blower revelations the “company line”  along with that of outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, is to refer to banking crimes as system errors or mistakes and in so doing allow the culprits to remain at liberty while a molecular level of banking criminality continues to contaminate far and wide. Common sense and history tell us rewarding illegal behavior only encourages more of it yet in the absence of any deterrent or moral restraint, banksters have been permitted to wreak economic carnage while their regulators have refused to use the law to affect redress.

Invisible to the naked eye of regulatory enforcement and further aided by the preconception derived from a misplaced belief that banking integrity must still be inherent in the City, the light touch of deregulation has served only to pave the way for tantalizingly lucrative but nonetheless entirely illegal pastimes for those with sufficient power with which to implement them.

In the last decade alone banks have;

•  Laundered money for drug cartels
•  Laundered money for terrorists
•  Sold toxic mortgage products
•  Miss sold insurance products
•  Misrepresented the nature of their loan books
•  Disguised volatile investment products as low risk to off load their exposure
•  Misrepresented their exposure to risk.
•  Engaged in insider trading
•  Manipulated markets, LIBOR and anything else they could lay their hands on.
• Participated in various Ponzi schemes and,
• Cooked their books to mislead the government, their regulators, their investors, their shareholders and the general public alike.

As a direct result of these crimes many people have lost their homes, their livelihoods and their financial futures. Prejudged by the banks and their henchmen to be scoundrels and wasters who are not prepared to face up to their responsibilities (rather than being acknowledged as victims of banking criminality) we have been left with only two options.

• To accept ruin at the hands of these scurrilous banksters and withdraw, with our families, to wait for the relentless persecution of their henchman.

•  Fight for our futures with the assistance of the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Having chosen the latter I have, over the past five years, become well versed in each and every guideline set down for the behavior of creditors during the complaints process. However, being privy to this information has made it no less distressing to discover the Halifax Bank of Scotland have chosen to instruct their debt collectors to initiate recovery proceedings for my disputed mortgage shortfall during the complaints process. Deeply troubled by actions which blatantly flaunt both regulatory and mortgage code guidelines, I have been nothing short of astounded to receive the Financial Ombudsman Service’s response to my request that they ask  HBOS to suspend recovery action until my case has secured a Financial Ombudsman Service ruling.

This was their reply,

Dear [Life after Debt]...

“I have spoken with Bank of Scotland regarding the letters you provided and your statement that you are finding them distressing [however,] I must manage your expectations at this time ...  to ensure you are fully aware of what we at this service can ask a business to do.

We are able to ask a business to suspend any litigation activity that it has started or intends to start while we investigate a complaint. However while we can ask the business to do this, there is no obligation for it to agree.

Yours sincerely,”

Financial Ombudsman Service Adjudicator

The executives of big banks invariably pretend wrong doing is only ever committed by one or two low level employees while both their personal and corporate objective is always to comply with financial regulators, financial guidelines and the law. However, when the truth reveals a bureaucracy such as the Financial Ombudsman Service has insufficient power to insist a lender comply with their own code of conduct and guidelines, I can only conclude there is little chance they will defy longstanding prejudice and preconception to flex their  feeble musculature in support my over valuation and mortgage miss selling case. 

Tennessee born Republican politician Ric Keller once said, "You can lead a bureaucrat to water but you can't make him think" and, if my own predicamnet is anything to go by, I can only assume this is precisely what our untouchable banksters have been counting on.

Loss and Losses

Best known for his ironic and well plotted novels examining class, turn of the twentieth century English novelist Edward Morgan Forster once said, “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” and in October 2008 this is precisely what my family and I were forced to do.

• I let go of my home when HBOS forced its sale
• I let go of our livelihood when my husband’s business bank went into administration,

And,

• I let go of my financial future when I discovered a million pounds worth of unsecured debt.

As a result of this,

• I let go of my pride in always having paid my way,
• I let go of the friends who could not endure the knowledge of our indebtedness and
• I let go of any hope of ever affecting a recovery.

In the years that followed I lost, my financial reputation, my hair and my confidence and the life which was waiting for me definitely was not the one I would ever have chosen.

Over the past three months alone I have also let go of,

• My car under the terms of voluntary surrender
• Our Spanish apartment now it has been seized by the bank and,
• A fair amount of my time now my eighty six year old mother has become increasingly dependent on me.

However, while “letting go” has naturally been fraught with grief for I life I no longer have, the life which was waiting for me has also delivered some unexpected rewards.

• The kindness shown by those who continue to come to my aid has been nothing short of astounding
• The written word in the form of my comments and my blog has not only given me access to expertise but provided me with the voice I longed for and,
• The product of my hard work, focus and bloody minded determination has not only encouraged infamous banking giants and their regulators to sit up and take notice but from time to time it has even made them squirm!

Retired four star general and American statesman Colin Luther Powell once said, “A dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work” and although I continue to wait, without patience, for my un-redacted HBOS file there are I now days when I dare to dream all that will be required of me to let go of in the future is the mortgage shortfall debt these infamous banksters chose to create and saddle me with over the past five excruciating years.

This is the life I have planned for and this is the life I sincerely hope is waiting for me.

Officials and Enforcements

Economist philosopher and author Friedrich August von Hayek once said, “Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality” and while evidence both at home and abroad continues to support widespread belief regulators will go to any lengths to uphold light touch enforcement in the financial sector, it has been no surprise to discover, after nineteen arduous months of corresponding, officially enforced inequality has also been the outcome of my Financial Ombudsman’s Service investigation.

When, in February 2011, the FSA originally advised me it was not within their remit to investigate individual reports of banking malpractice, it did not occur to me I would unsuccessfully struggle, for almost two years, to solicit the attention of the Financial Ombudsman Service. After repeated attempts to sweep my mortgage shortfall complaint under an HBOS favoring carpet via an "informal" investigation, I was encouraged by the FOS to "carefully consider" an HBOS offer of short term respite from debt collection pursuit. Had I agreed this would have permanently crippled any hope of my ever building a legal case.  It was at this stage it became abundantly clear the FOS's objective had very little to do with restitution for the individual and far more to do with damage limitation for HBOS.

After further investigation on my part it has now come to light that not only has my appointed Ombudsman upheld HBOS's claim that my case cannot proceed on the basis of jurisdiction, but to top it all I have also discovered the FOS have absolutely done nothing to progress the HBOS over valuation complaint I submitted to them more than eight months ago. Incensed at their blatant disregard for my numerous requests for their assistance, I sent the following letter to the Financial Ombudsman Service hoping it might galvanize them into action.

“Thank you for your letter dated 14 September 2012.

While I understand that this is your final decision on the issue of jurisdiction and am dismayed with the outcome, I am also very disappointed with the way in which I have been misled.  For over a year I have been led to believe that I had successfully established the exceptional circumstances as to why this complaint should go ahead.  Instead, I have been placed under the misapprehension that the jurisdiction issue was settled and my complaint ongoing.

I approached the FOS in March 2011 to initiate my complaint and was made aware of a possible jurisdiction issue in April 2011. However, on the 9 June 2011 I received acknowledgement from the FOS stating my case was to progress and replied, on the 16 June, saying how delighted I was that the jurisdiction issues had been resolved.  During the following months, and at your request, I spent an inordinate amount of time preparing my case and supplied you with detailed accounts of what happened.  I am now, 15 months later, quite frankly astounded to find the jurisdiction issue has not only come up again but been upheld in favour of the Bank of Scotland.  

I would very much appreciate an explanation as to how and why I was misled.

Secondly, I am more than a little confused about your statement:

“This final decision does not relate to the new issues raised by Mr and Mrs [Life After Debt] about an overvaluation of their property in May 2006.  They will need to raise this complaint with the bank first, before the FOS is able to consider it.”  

As no doubt you are aware from the file, I raised this complaint via [the FOS adjudicator] in February 2012, only to be notified two months later that the Bank of Scotland had insisted they had not received my complaint from [my FOS adjudicator].  [My FOS adjudicator] subsequently advised me in June 2012 she was submitting my complaint to the Bank of Scotland again. She told me she would pursue them for acknowledgement but I would have to wait at least another 6-8 weeks before they would deal with it.  I have, as instructed, continued to wait for a response from both yourselves and the Bank of Scotland only to receive your recommendation stating I need to raise this matter with the Bank of Scotland. This leaves me very perturbed once again. 

I would very much like an explanation.

I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that I have been told repeatedly, and on occasion, aggressively that it is unfair to expect the Bank of Scotland to wait for more than two weeks while I prepare my case despite the fact that I am doing the work while fulfilling my role as a mother of three children and have neither assistance and or expertise to call on to aid me.  However, the Bank of Scotland have repeatedly been given excessive amounts of time, amounting to a number of months on several occasions, to formulate their replies.  I do not understand why it is just the individual complainant that is pursued aggressively by the FOS for their replies and not the Bank of Scotland.  It feels very much like favoritism and I would like an explanation for this unequal treatment.

Yours sincerely

Mrs [Life After Debt]”

Thankfully this time my letter was immediately acknowledged but nevertheless I remain, as I have done for the past two years, perched uncomfortably on the edge of my debt fighting precipice waiting, once again, for the Financial Ombudsman Service to respond. While historian, author, media critic and blogger Eric Alterman says the "ability of the one percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new [and] inequality [is] a permanent part of our economic system" I know from past experience  the best I can expect for my endeavors is yet another substantial helping of officially enforced inequality cunningly disguised as a Financial Ombudmans Service reply. 

 

Great Expectations

When American novelist Nicholas Sparks said, “I’ve often over-estimated what I could accomplish in a day [but] under-estimated what I could accomplish in a year” he portrayed my own expectations in the role of a one woman debt fighting machine precisely and it did not occur to I would still engaged in a battle for the facts behind my families financial demise four whole years later.

Despite a background in financial services and one hundred and thirty six years of industry experience amongst my immediate relatives, I was unable to comprehend the logic of the way HBOS chose to deal with the suffering and hardship of my family during the banking crisis of 2008. This only made me all the more determined to embark on a quest for as much information about HBOS as I could possibly lay my hands on.

At first I believed I was alone in my distress; my research soon revealed nothing could have been further from the truth. While I had been consumed by the shock of our financial demise and the effect it was having on my children, the media had been awash with the devastation bankster's criminal avarice had reaped on the global economy. Initially hoping government promised rescue packages, interest rate cuts and lenders forbearance combined with a substantial offer of rental income to service our mortgage would begin to ease our difficulties, it soon became clear HBOS had no intention of behaving with compassion or forbearance and were instead intent on recapitalising their coffers with the forced sale and repossession of many people’s residences including our own.

Once my home was no longer mine, I was convinced HBOS would, like 80% of the other banks my husband owed, write off the £217,000 shortfall created by their fire sale when I and the CAB reminded them of our dire financial circumstances. Sadly, instead relentless pursuit at the hands of their debt collectors was the route HBOS chose so, with nothing further to lose and much to the delight of the CAB, my solicitor, several good friends and some very sympathetic bankers, I decided to go public by posting my story on the Internet.

A complete newcomer to blogging little more than a year ago and now the proud recipient of 10,000 page views, I originally embarked on my social media journey to expose HBOS’ brutish behaviour. However, during my subsequent voyage of economic discovery, I realised my suffering as a result of HBOS avarice was far from an isolated incident. Endemic of a light tough regulatory banking system which rewards greed, criminality and failure with untold wealth, the list of those on the receiving end of the bankster’s big stick was all but never ending.

Disillusioned with the reluctance of the FSA, FOS and the government to get to grips with widespread banking fraud I have, over the last year, documented every irrational and often sexist remark I have encountered from Lloyds, HBOS and their regulators during my campaign for a financial future. In the process I have learned the following.

·        Resolving the banking crisis will require radical surgery and quiet determination

·        Britain ignores this wave of financial crime at its peril

And we must all,

·        Emancipate ourselves from slavery

Now, almost eighteen months since I first started writing about banking skulduggery, I am nothing short of delighted to hear the New Wilberforce Alliance has been launched to instigate change. Brain child of whistle blower Paul Moore, former head of HBOS risk management, this organisation promises to campaign for radical reform in our banking sector and a return to corporate values which embrace ecologically sound motives as well as moral ones. I wish every success to the honourable endeavours of the New Wilberforce Alliance and hope, with the help of its growing number of supporters, the volume is raised on the public’s repeated demands for a brighter and ethical future.

It is said, “When the world whispers, give up, when hope whispers, try one more time” and because I remain hopeful of a better future, not only for my family but for generations to come, Paul Moore has my whole hearted support.

Real Life Revisted

American writer EB White once said, “If the world were merely seductive that would be easy. If it were merely challenging that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy it. This makes it hard to plan the day” and, having returned refreshed from a very welcome family holiday to the demanding tasks of the real world, I fully understand White's sentiments.

Torn between getting back to blogging, revisiting my duties of domestic goddess and taking up my role of debt fighter extraordinaire or simply enjoying more time with my family I have,

·        Washed, dried and relocated nothing short of eight loads of washing

·        Unpacked four suitcases and distributed the contents to their rightful owners.

·        Opened and replied to ten pieces of correspondence as well as sent four birthday cards complete with presents.

·        Read, answered, deleted or blocked 340 emails lurking in my inbox.

And,

·        Taken my soon to be eighty six year old mother to the garden centre, assessed a leak in her roof, chosen an outfit for her to wear at a christening and ordered a mirror she has need of from the internet.

In addition I have,

·        Expressed my discontent to our external decorators, who, while we were away, saw fit to remove our tower scaffolding from where it was stored, assemble it at the front of the house and leave it there unattended for two weeks, to provide both aid to potential intruders as well as a tempting acquisition for a passing thief.

·        Told my landlord I did not take kindly to having his finger wagged at me in fury when informing him it was his tradesmen who had seen fit to appropriate equipment belonging to us without permission.

·        Advised my seventeen year old son it is not only unacceptable to allow his friends to take and damage the prized possessions of his eleven year old brother in our absence but it is nothing short of outrageous to believe he can use my Amazon account (and my card details) to fund his purchase of six computer games without asking me.

·        Confiscated my new tenant’s electric fire because he saw fit to leave it on unattended in temperatures of 25 degrees and insisted he remove the tortoise I found roaming, free range in his bedroom, using my cream fitted carpet as its litter tray.

·        Secured a very apologetic response from the Spanish legal administrators for our apartment’s community for the cyber bullying I endured at the hands of their volunteer community president.

And,

·        Ignored yet another letter from Lloyds Banking Group which, after enquiring yet again if I wish all future correspondence to be in Braille, insists I settle the balance forthwith and completely ignores the fact that the account remains the subject of an ongoing Financial Ombudsman’s Complaint.

EB White also says, “One of the most consuming things in life is to have an enemy” and while I am determined not to let family life be consumed by my ongoing battle with the banks, now that domestic, administrative and family obligations are suitably attended to, I am, at last, at liberty to dedicate some time to improving the world.

Lloyds Banking Group, along with the infamous Halifax Bank of Scotland who continue to hide amongst the sumptuous skirt's of LLoyds executive elite, remains firmly in my sights!

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.

Rainy Days and Lost Luggage

Self help writer Maya Angelou says, “You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle rainy days, lost luggage and tangled Christmas lights” so I am pleased to disclose rainy days are a weather condition to which thirty four years of continuous parenting has not only supplied a ring side seat for many hours of wet suited, watery fun but they have also been the backdrop for numerous convivial gatherings in front of a roaring fire while inclement weather fills reservoirs in a single down pour.  Lost luggage has also been an integral part of my life and although I have not endured its inconvenience whilst in transit, five children, six grandchildren and a husband with short-term memory loss has meant I am never more than a whisper away from a panic filled enquiry as to the whereabouts of something vital. I find an un-flustered approach to the retracing of steps seldom disappoints but on the rare occasions it fails a plentiful supply of spares usually saves the day.

However, the task of tackling tangled Christmas lights could easily be a euphemism for my increasingly complicated battle with HBOS via the Financial Ombudsman’s Service. Not unlike its namesake, an inordinate amount of time is required along with a steely determination and an excellent pair of glasses with which to spot the intricacies of the task at hand. With this in mind I recently allocated my first child free day since the Easter holidays for the preparation of a response to the Financial Ombudsman Services latest letter in which they claim my HBOS complaint is outside their jurisdiction on the grounds of timescale.

 I have asked my adjudicator to consider the following points;

·        HBOS have neglected to provide a full and final response to any of my letters of complaint and for this reason should not be left to decide when my six month window of opportunity to complain commences.

·        When jurisdiction issues were raised by HBOS at outset (March 2011) I was invited to respond to their argument. On 27 April 2011 I replied with my defence (which the FOS acknowledged on 5 May) and I was then invited by the FOS on 15 May to proceed with the completion and return of their complaint form.

·        In the FOS’s letter of 15 March 2012 upholding HBOS’s jurisdiction objections, no mention is made of my correspondence of 27 April 2011or my subsequent letter of 16 June 2011 in which I thank the FOS for supporting my jurisdiction appeal.

·        When the jurisdiction issue was raised once again by the FOS on 21 July 2011, I wrote on 25 July 2011 to explain I believed it had already been dealt with in my letter of 17 April 2011. No further mention was made of jurisdiction issues until 14 December 2011despite three further FOS letters to me in the meantime.

·        Stating I was unaware of the six month deadline to complain is simply not true. I was only unaware that HBOS had already started the six month clock ticking because of the ambiguous nature of their letters.

And,

·        Withdrawing eligibility to an extension of time for my future responses to the FOS gives HBOS a huge and unfair advantage over me as lone complainant.

Safe in the knowledge my five page letter will be rocking several boats before the week is out, I am left to ponder the content of another HBOS response. My additional and separate FOS complaint sights HBOS’s over valuation of my home in May 2006 as pivotal to my family’s financial down fall and entirely responsible for the shortfall arising from the forced sale of my home in April 2009.  Having already waited two months for a reply to a letter HBOS claim they have never received, I have now discovered HBOS are to enjoy an additional two months in which to formulate their reply.

Sadly I have no reason to believe I will be hearing HBOS offer me anything like the words of Bank of America Chief Executive Officer, Brian T Moynihan who recently said,

“It's time to acknowledge that our Bank isn't working anymore—not just for the market, but for people, our real customers. We've paid $8.58 billion in relief to borrowers and $3.24 billion in fines. We face lawsuits and claims from citizens, companies, and state and local governments. There is even a petition with the Federal Reserve to break up our bank, adding yet more uncertainty to our position. Finally, we've found ourselves front-and-centre in the national foreclosure crisis, and deep in unpopular investments like coal, at a time when climate change is a growing societal concern.”

Instead, I am in no doubt that despite damning FSA reports, HBOS will be making no confessions nor will they have plans to shelter the individual from the economic down pour their actions have caused.  In contrast I suspect many of us will be losing much more than our luggage as a direct result of their “terrible corporate governance” and it will not only be me left untangling far in  excess of a few Christmas lights this year. It will be business as usual for HBOS as there is no incentive for them to behave otherwise and the Financial Ombudsman’s Service will remain characteristically ineffective in the wake of the ever increasing demand for justice through a complaints process that constantly creaks in protest to the unprecedented rise in the number of complaints.

Maya Angelou also said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story”... [and while]... “I can be changed by it I refuse to be reduced by it.” I am pleased to report that regardless of the rain, the lost luggage and the tangled Christmas lights, these remain my sentiments precisely!