Disproportionate benefits

"Voltaire once said, “The art of the government is to make two thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can for the benefit of the other third” and it is clear from Simon Duke’s Mail On line piece  that Eric Daniels has benefited immensely from an initiative of this kind.

While the government led and tax payer fed bale out for LLoyds Banking Group remains 9.3bn in the red, largely due to the gross misconduct of HBOS's risk mismanagement strategy, ousted Daniels former HBOS CEO has succeeded in adding to last year’s total remuneration package of 2.57 million pounds by securing a further £561,000 over the last nine months for doing absolutely nothing. With a pension fund of 5.03million pounds to look forward and an income of £210,000 per anum set aside for Daniels' retirement, it is clearly very "nice work if you can get it".

In contrast, I , along with many other HBOS victims, have repeatedly been told by Eric Daniels’ Executive office to face up to financial responsibilities and repay shortfalls created as a direct result HBOS's flawed business strategy because legal and contractual rights are all that counts and a duty of care to a customer is irrelevant. Beyond legally enforcable morally obligations, HBOS are at liberty to pursue not only me but many other trusting individuals who have fallen foul of a unique and detrimental interpretation of their fair business practises while HBOS's 
bureaucracy and red tape continue to be this errant banker's customers whipping boy. Discharged HBOS Chief Executive, Eric Daniels on the other hand has not only remained cushioned from the economic recession by the obscene bonuses of the past but until recently he has continued to be financially rewarded for his part in bringing both HBOS and Lloyds bank to near destruction.

Incensed by the unaccountability of the untouchable HBOS Executives who wish to inflict the consequences of their actions on their customers, I have,

·        Fine tuned my Ombudsman’s reply of eight pages in the hope they may support my arguments and bare its teeth on my behalf.

·        Submitted another complaint to the Solicitor’s Regulatory Authority informing them of further misdemeanours on the part of HBOS agents, Merrils Ede Solicitors.

Ever hopeful there is someone of consequence left at HBOS who believes,“True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers and not the enrichment of the leaders” I, along with unprecedented numbers of other FOS complainants now wait for an outcome which favours us for a change and not just the banking fat cats. In reality I can't help thinking.....fat chance.

Pennies from heaven

While one random act of kindness can supposedly change the world, I am delighted to report three random acts of kindness have amounted to a much needed holiday for our family.

When Christmas  2008 came only eight weeks after the Grand Opening, every penny I received in gifts from my family went towards heat, light, food and fuel. We had weekly benefits of £300 a week and nothing to spare for presents let alone luxuries. Our life remained like this for many months leaving me trapped in my beautiful,  but expensive to heat, country home with creditors shouting abuse at my door, debt collection agencies constantly telephoning, baliff visits looming  and no idea where the tunnel was let alone where the light at the end of it might be.

A year later when Christmas came around again we had lost our home but had managed to secure a roof over our head in the form of a drafty, leaky old farmhouse which had stood empty for nearly a year. By this time my husband was working at M & S but we had to use the Christmas money sent to us as gifts to finance the purchase of presents for our children and grandchildren.

This year was completely different.

With rental income from lodgers bridging the gap between torturously cold and bearably comfortable, I felt able, for the first time in three years, to spend the three hundred pounds my father sent us, on a luxury. So, on New Year’s Eve, I paid £321 for five return flights to Spain thanks to my Dad and his wife’s generousity.

Three years ago, within days of discovering our predicament, my father- in -law urged me to take my children away from the continual harassment and verbal abuse which went hand in hand with the demise of our business by moving to his apartment on the Costa del Sol. Not wishing to hide from our financial responsibilites I decided to stay and face the consequences so declined his kind offer to use his well appointed Spanish home complete with car and a full larder. Three years on he was only too happy to make the same offer again but this time for ten days in July.

Hearing the prohibitively expensive transfers from the airport were going to cost nearly as much as our flights, some Spanish resident ex-patriot friends of my father in law, whom we have never meet, offered to bring two cars to Malaga airport to collect us at a fraction of the cost of the commercial transfers available.

Because of these three independent acts of kindness, I, my husband and my children will fly to Spain for a ten day holiday of sun, sand and sea for which we have not paid one penny.  For me, this is a clear indication the “everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines”.

I do not doubt ex Lloyds Chief Executive Eric Daniel’s holiday plans, along with a fair few other HBOS and Lloyd’s executives, will have used tax-payer paid bonuses to finance much more extravagant and exotic summer breaks for their families than mine. I cannot, however, believe it possible for any of them to be looking forward to their vacation more than I am.

This feeling is priceless.

Beat and retreat

During the past two years it has been difficult to remember happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but instead emerges from the recognition and appreciation what we do but these days, when anyone asks why I remained at my husband's side in the light of such adverse circumstances, I always say with conviction, “Because I am not prepared to lose any more than I already have”.Fully aware my life is far from perfect, I am regularly able to rejoice in the knowledge that, despite the constant prevailing and ill wind from HBOS I have succeeded in keeping my family together but it does not allow me to ignore ever emerging evidence of greed, irresponsible behaviour and double standards employed by Lloyds and HBOS

Annoyed it has proved necessary for Steve Baker to campaign for a parliamentary bill to force banks to prepare accounts reflecting a true and accurate illustration of their previous years trading, which have on occasion been as much twenty five million adrift, I have been nothing short of incensed to discover, despite insisting to me they never write off debt, HBOS have been doing precisiely this for the last two years for debts in Ireland amounting  to 7.2 billion. Yet still Eric Daniels, who has recently declared his remaining Irish loan book 54% impaired, has continued to see fit to ignore my personally addressed letters to him asking for debt forgiveness and instead, sanctioned Merrils Ede to crank up their persecution of me. While I am left crushed under a residential shortfall of £217,000, Eric Daniels has, in contrast, cunningly escaped from under Lloyds and HBOS’s own 289 billion shortfall, happily clutching his 1.45 million pound reward for failure on the back of scurrolous accounts and his “very good year” remark.

If HBOS had not forced the sale on our 16^th century tithe barn during our period of crisis in 2008, we too could have had a retirement to look forward to. Assuming we  sold up when my husband reached age 65 (twenty years hence), its anticipated value would be 3.2 million assuming an average annual compound growth of 7% and a current value of £800,000.  Even with a £795,000 mortgage to deduct and £27,000 of arrears we too could have been looking forward to a substantial lump sum to support us in our old dotage.

Some people may well be enjoying the benefit of HBOS and Lloyds “pray and delay” or “extend and pretend” policies while others appear to have experienced the relief of a “forgive and forget” write offs. For me however, it remains HBOS’s policy only to “beat and retreat” behind their Rottweilers at Merrils Ede Solicitors

And 

At present I am at a complete loss to fathom how I can ever change this.