Astonishments

Yorkshire born Canadian serviceman Harry Banks and reputedly “the crucified soldier” of the First World War once said, "If at first you don't succeed-try to hide your astonishment" and although the events of recent weeks have provided me countless opportunities to follow this advice, hiding my astonishment has been nothing short of impossible.

• I have been astonished to discover my now severely disabled eighty seven year old mother has been required to stay in hospital for two whole weeks as a result of the mismanaged administration of her medication and a shortage of mobility assessment appointments with the community physiotherapist.

• I have been astonished to discover my Incapacity Benefit assessment is subject to an appointment system which not only allows operators to cancel my designated time slot after I have already left home but then puts my benefit in jeopardy if I am unable to attend on a computer generated date which is allocated without consultation.                                                                    

And once again facing homelessness as a result of an unreasonable and violent landlord,

• I have been astonished to discover our neighbours not only own an additional house in which my family and I can be accommodated but, having had five years to observe us care for our current home, would (as of 1 December) like us to become their tenants in a very attractive property in a neighboring village.

However, despite feeling exceptionally relieved to find I no longer face the prospect of  being without a roof over our heads for Christmas, I remain astonished to find ,

• Eleven months have passed since I initiated my second attempt at lodging a complaint against HBOS with the Financial Ombudsman Service,

• Nine months have passed since I originally requested all records held by HBOS pertaining to my mortgage be sent to me via my Data Subject Access Request

• Fourteen weeks have passed since my FOS adjudicator declined to answer my emails for a period of almost three months,

• One month has passed since I reported said adjudicator to his line manager and

• Two weeks have passed since I placed an official complaint with the ICO as the result of HBOS’ non compliance in respect of my Data Subject Access Request.

I am further astonished and nothing short of astounded to learn that, without warning and ahead of the timescales previously agreed by the FOS themselves (and in the absence of the further evidence I have been waiting for the above mentioned nine long months for HBOS to produce) the FOS have now reviewed my mortgage miss selling case and, in the interests of "being fair" to HBOS, have ruled there is insufficient evidence to support my claim that HBOS have been guilty of miss selling my mortgage! 

Famed for his ridicule of the most banal of situations for European based Theatre of the Absurd in the late 1950's, contemporary Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco once said is it "explanation [which] separates us from astonishment". However, still reeling from both shock and astonishment at the way in which I continue to be dealt with by both HBOS and the Financial Ombudsman Service, it is "explanation" which now separates me in unadulterated astonishment from any understanding of a regulatory culture which prefers to permit the infamous HBOS to with hold evidence and use repeated delays to obliterate my case of complaint rather than take the time to investigate!  

Fines and Punishment

Psychiatrist, social critic of moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, author and academic, Thomas Szasz, once said, “Punishment is now unfashionable...[instead] we prefer a meaningless collective guilt to meaningful individual responsibility” and little illustrates this more effectively than the regulatory approach to the fraudulent actions of the banks.

Over the past three decades, a fraternity of banksters have systematically condoned, endorsed and turned a blind eye to illegal activities which have made them multi-millionaires but, to date, not one of them has personally paid their dues for crimes which include;

•  Money laundering for drug cartels
•  Money laundering for terrorists
•  Mortgage fraud when initiating loans
•  Repackaging toxic loans and selling them as low risk investments
•  Betting against these investments to make themselves money
•  Engaging in insider trading and market manipulation
•  Misrepresenting their losses and their loan books
•  Miss selling vast numbers of financial products
• Rigging Libor ratings

As a result of their actions, a culture of criminality has permeated the core of what was once a service industry and when the consequences of banking avarice rendered too big to fail institutions insolvent, the UK was faced with the prospect of economic collapse and public anarchy or picking up the pieces with tax payers money.

Told we had no reasonable alternative but elect the latter we,

• Committed to spending up to 1.162 trillion pounds on bailing out the banks,
• Allocated 10 billion pounds to banking reform,

And,

• Were promised those responsible would be taken to task

As a result of investigations into the skulduggery of the banking crisis both the UK and the US regulators have levied the following fines;

      HSBC (2012). Fine: £1.1 billion. Reason: Money laundering

      JP Morgan (2013). Fine: £572 million. Reason: 'London Whale' trading scandal 
      

     UBS (2009). Fine: £485 million. Reason: Tax evasion

     Standard Chartered (2012). Fine: £415 million. Reason: Anti-sanctions

       ING (2012). Fine: £385 million. Reason: Anti-sanctions

       Goldman Sachs (2010). Fine: £359 million. Reason: Misleading investors

        Credit Suisse (2009). Fine: £333 million. Reason: Anti-sanctions

        ABN Amro (2010). Fine: £311 million. Reason: Anti-sanctions

        Barclays (2010). Fine: £280 million. Reason: Libor manipulation

        Lloyds Bank (2009). Fine: £218 million. Reason: Anti-sanctions

But opting for a meaningless collective punishment funded wholly from banking profits and not the pockets of perpetrators has done nothing to arrest the greed which has driven us to a banking crisis and has instead allowed those responsible to;

• Keep their jobs
• Keep their ill gotten gains
• Avoid prosecution
•  Enlist George Osborne to fight the EU bonus caps in court.

And this year,

• Share a bonus pool of nearly £4 billion which amounts to a shade less than all the larger fines of the US and UK banks put together and gives the recipients an estimated 82.2% rise on the bonus pool  of last year.

In complete contrast to the collective luck of the UK’s banksters, over the past five years,

•  3.7 million UK jobs have been lost
•  35,000 to 50,000 people in the UK have lost their homes each and every year
•  Debt fueled suicide has increased and in some areas has risen by as much as 64% 

And,

•  It has become all too evident that there is no incentive for either the Financial Ombudsman Service or Halifax Bank of Scotland (now disguised as Lloyds) to give my five year old mortgage "miss selling" complaint the attention it deserves.

Ancient Greek philosopher, author, teacher and polymath, Aristotle once said, “The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear than reverence, and they refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness” but if the penchant for collective and meaningless punishment continues to leave those responsible for the banking crisis unaccountable for their crimes, then fear and foulness may well be all we, the victims of the banking crisis, can anticipate.

This is quite simply unjust.

Lest We Forget

Canadian born writer and theologian William Paul Young once said, “Forgiving is not about forgetting but it is about letting go of another persons’ throat” and having spent the past five years within the strangle hold of our creditors, I am thankful the vast majority of them have chosen to forgive.  However, I have returned home from a very welcome break with my family to be greeted by some correspondence which clearly  illustrates letting go of our throats is the last thing the Halifax Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group have in mind.

It has been six months since the Financial Ombudsman Service both ruled in my favour and awarded compensation for the distress and inconvenience that Lloyds Banking Group’s miss-handling of my husband’s credit card debt caused. Since then Lloyds have not only sold the debt twice but ignored both the income and expenditure form I completed as well the offer of settlement I made.  I am now faced with compiling yet another Financial Ombudsman Service Complaint at further cost to both myself and the tax payer.

I had hoped, as a result of my four letters to the HBOS Data Subject Access team, I would be returning to the missing documents pertaining to my miss sold mortgage.  Instead, I have received a letter which the reveals  the following:

       HBOS’s internal credit check document does not list the extent of the borrowing which was outstanding at the time of my mortgage application

       HBOS do not hold any accountants evidence to support my mortgage application

       HBOS do not hold a financial fact find of our circumstances in support our mortgage application

       HBOS continue to be unsuccessful in their endeavours to obtain information from their in house solicitor or surveyor

       HBOS are unprepared to disclose the reasons why my broker was removed from their panel during the underwriting of my mortgage

       HBOS are unprepared to send me their compliance check list on grounds it is not my personal information

This was my response;

Dear HBOS Data Subject Access Team,

Ref: *******

Thank for your letter dated 23 July 2013 and the further copies of information I requested along with your comments.

However, I have some further requests.

1.     Please may I ask you to confirm the credit reference summary is an external credit check document carried out to establish the level of financial commitment a customer already has at the time of application and not just an in house list of HBOS borrowings based on internal information and details supplied by the broker. If it is not, please supply me with copies of the external credit check carried out at the time of underwriting my mortgage.

2.     Please may I ask you to supply me with copies of the letters the DSAR team have sent to both Colleys Surveyors and Pathway Residential Lawyers requesting complete copies of my files.

3.     I would like to draw your attention to the Liberty Guide to the Human Rights Act 1998 in which it 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”. In the light that removing my broker from your panel may have had an adverse effect on the underwriting of my mortgage and your internal compliance checklist may well prove inadequate checks at the underwriting stage of my mortgage application have impacted on me personally, I would like to, once again, request that you supply me with the following;

•        Documentation which explains to the reasons my broker was removed from your panel.
•        The name of the department or the person responsible for overseeing my mortgage in the light that my broker was no longer at liberty to oversee it.
•       The internal regulatory checklist which complies with the FSA rules for the responsible underwriting of residential re-mortgages.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Yours sincerely

LAD

Soon after I sent this letter I was asked the following two questions by an Associated Press journalist. In the light of my ongoing battle and my recently received communications from both the Lloyds Banking Group and Halifax Bank of Scotland, I stand by the following answers.

Q. Do I feel the banks can now be trusted?

A. I have never enjoyed blind faith in the banking industry but, coming from a financial services background myself, I expected the banking fraternity to abide by the law, operate within regulatory guidelines and, as professionals, exercise a duty of care towards their clients in all their transaction. I believed they would follow a strict regime of client fact finding to establish which loans, investments and life policies were appropriate for their customers and I assumed them would pursue a responsible and ethical approach to the underwriting of anything they sold. I now know, as a result of my own experience, this has been far from the case and because of this I no longer trust them in any shape of form. Neither do I believe they possess the integrity or the incentives to address the cultural issues which have supported their long standing penchant for profiting from their customers by miss selling and manipulation. Despite the economic crisis and widespread hardship their actions have caused, they have suffered little consequence for their fraudulent behavior. No heads have rolled (other than those of their victims) and fines which bare little relation to the amount they have successfully procured and kept by way of ill gotten gains, only pay lip service to their empty promises of change. 

 Q.Would I consider taking out a mortgage or investing with them again?

 Because of a banking system which continues to reward dishonesty and avarice, I and my family lost our home, our livelihood and our financial future so there is little chance I will ever secure another mortgage and I no longer enjoy a level of remuneration which allows me to save. However, should I, by some wild stretch of the imagination one day be eligible for a mortgage, I would never agree to using a lenders in-house solicitor to convey my mortgage nor would I allow their in- house surveyors to value my property. I shall never ever again permit a mortgage broker to submit an online mortgage application in my name. Furthermore, I would not take out a joint and severally liable mortgage without written agreement from the lender confirming they would contact me separately from my co borrower (even if he is my husband) about every aspect of my mortgage application, its underwriting and its administration throughout its term. In the unlikely event I might one day have money to invest, I would not touch the banks with a barge pole.

William Paul Young also said, “Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible” and although I hope one day I might be able to forgive those bankers who have chosen to keep their hands firmly around my throat for the past five long years, I most definitely will not be forgetting their names.

Fates and Futility

Democratic US senator and noted civil rights activist Robert F. Kennedy once said, “ First is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills-against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements... have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protest Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World and a 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal so, with these commendable achievements already in the bag, how hard can it be to bring a few bankers to task?

Deemed “woefully unsound” by MP Andrew Tyrie and the parliamentary commission on banking standards, one might easily assume shirking ones fiduciary duty, turning a blind eye to money laundering, manipulating Libor rates, hard selling inappropriate toxic products and cooking the books to maximise their remunerations  might prove sufficient to bring about the sternest of criminal charges. However, for a gang of HBOS untouchables, the consequence of wreaking havoc with the UK economy and leaving widespread hardship in their wake have been nothing if not “alternative” in their nature.

Indentified by the FSA as far back as 2003 as an“accident waiting to happen” and led by just a few high ranking individuals who chose to use ineffectual financial regulation, a gullible government and the most malleable of auditors to promote “growth at any price", the HBOS three road rough shod over all who stood in their way for many a year. Blinded by greed and self importance they chose to ignore reports of fraud and warnings of dangerously high levels of risk and instead bullied, threatened and dismissed those who spoke out. As a result their “colossal failures” have cost 921 million in fallen share values, 20 billion in tax payer bailouts, 35,000 in in-house job losses and the repossession of countless homes and small businesses.

To date the personal cost to those responsible has been nothing more than a smattering of token fines, some nominal sessions of naming and shaming and a sprinkling of bad press.

HBOS chairman Lord Dennis “cuckoo land” Stevenson, who enjoyed more than £815,000 per anum for a role he viewed as part time, was indignant he should be required to step down from his chairmanly duties despite being found to be either “deluded or dishonest” for the part he played in concealing HBOS’s imminent collapse. However, he has continued to enjoy a variety of roles in well remunerated employment within the financial services industry by miraculously side stepping a ban from holding a directorship or working in the city and does not currently face any criminal proceedings.

Former HBOS chief executive James Crosby (2004-2006), who infamously bred a culture of dismissal for those who opposed his risk management views, chose to return his knighthood for services to banking and, after much pressure, volunteered a reduction of 30% to his £572,000 indexed annual pension. However, the millions he reaped in HBOS share options (two thirds of which he sold just before the bank’s collapse) along with his equally sizable bonuses have remain unencumbered. After his HBOS departure, he was not only offered, and accepted, the deputy chairmanship of the FSA but took up a number of lucrative positions on various boards because, despite widespread public outrage, he too faced no ban or criminal charges.

Boardroom brawling HBOS Chief executive Andy Hornby (2006-2009), who may well have found “the die was cast and it was too late for him to make any significant change" to avoid disaster, not only managed to avoid financial forfeiture for concealing (with the help of his KPMG auditors) 47 billion in HBOS losses before their LLoyds takeover but also managed to benefit from a “change of control payment” on his departure. Paid for by the tax payers bailout, he took £251,000 in cash and 2051 shares on top of his salary, his pension contributions, his awards in lieu of pension and his redundancy payments. Since then he has enjoyed the most senior of roles with both Boots and Coral, without a whisper of prosecution over his HBOS conduct.

Gordon Brown confessed, "I should have done more to prevent the banking crisis," and David Cameron assures us he "will make sure the banking crisis will not happen again”. However, while Downing Street continues to allow the bankster conscience to dictate their fates rather than their crimes, it is little wonder I who have battled with the untouchable Halifax Bank of Scotland for almost five years, have been unable to acquire an un-redacted version of each and every piece of information held on my HBOS file in order to progress my Financial Ombudsman Service case of complaint.

  

US novelist and former financial trader, Philipp Meyer once said, “"Give a small number of people the power to enrich themselves beyond everyone's wildest dreams, a philosophical rationale to explain all the damage they're causing, and they will not stop until they've run the world economy off a cliff" and while our government and their regulators prefer to endorse the calculation of capital as a solution to the banking crisis instead of prosecuting the banksters grossly inappropriate corporate conduct, all we can expect globally, nationally and individually is...

A whole lot more of the same. 

Right and Wrong

Leading romantic poet, army officer and popular spokesman for Roman Emperor Augustus Quintus Horatius Flaccus once said, “A portion of mankind takes pride in their vices and pursues their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong” and little illustrates this more effectively than the current relationship between the government, the banks, their regulators and their victims.

Paralysed by potential for further unfavourable economic consequence, our government remains malleable in the hands of our unprosecutable banksters.  Discretely exploring “The Bank Confiscation Scheme for UK and US Depositors” to cover future bank bailouts, their mantra is forgive and forget in the name of economic recovery and their course is set for redirecting both the blame and the costs of the crisis onto the shoulders of the most vulnerable. Insisting the bankers lucrative history of over-zealous incentivising is merely misguided rather than criminal , our politcians and regulators have used smoke and mirrors to conceal the full extent of the banksters crimes (many of which have yet to immerge) hoping they will pass unnoticed by the silent and unsuspecting majority.

Before taking up office, David Cameron famously said, "We all know, in our hearts, that as long as there is deep poverty living systematically side by side with great riches, we all remain the poorer for it" yet this week, as a direct result of banker bailouts, “an avalanche of benefit cuts will hit the same households over and over, with no official assessment of how far this £18bn reduction will send those who are already poor, into beggary”. In contrast, financial regulators repeatedly excusing corporate criminality on the governments instruction have failed to persuade those who reaped their illicit rewards, without prosecution, to employ moral fiber to tailor their future. As a result, a culture of entitlement for failure lives on amongst the very people whose avarice sentenced millions to a lifetime of hardship.

• Libor rigging at Barclays has not thwarted the 39 million pounds received in bonuses this year, 17.5 million of which is to be received by just nine individuals.
• The money laundering of 881 million dollars for the drug trade has not resulted in a single prosecution at HSBC or at any other bank for that matter.
• Neither has sleeping at the Financial Services Authority wheel cost chief executive officer Hector Sants his knighthood.

And nor have

• HBOS, the worst bank in the world, who have refused to answer all further correspondence from me, seen fit to furnish me with the information I ask of them via my Data Subject Access Request.

I have, however received word from my newly appointed Financial Ombudsman Service adjudicator who informs he is (at long last I might add) looking forward to securing a response to my HBOS miss selling case from...

Santander!?

Quintus Horatius Flaccus also said, “It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement” and if lip service to banking reform and the reams of meaningless correspondence I have regularly had the misfortune to receive from both Halifax Bank of Scotland and the Financial Ombudsman Service is anything to go by, 

I find that Quintus Horatius Flaccus is definitely not wrong!! 

Unjust Desserts

American clergyman, activist and leader in the African civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Junior once said, “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” However, waiting for history to take a favourable course in the wake of the unquenchable avarice of our unprosecuted banksters has frequently proved beyond the capacity of some to face alone. For us, the determined spirit of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau has been invaluable.

First formulated in 1924 as result a of the Betterton Report on Public Assistance and launched fifteen years later on the day after the break out of the Second World War, this government funded service quickly found debt advice was a key issue for those who sought the expertise of its trained volunteers. After seventy successful years offering free consultations to those in need, their initial two hundred offices had expanded to three and a half thousand UK locations and its 21,500 volunteer staff had assisted some of the UK’s most vulnerable negotiate homelessness, asylum, state benefits, employment law, tenancy rights as well as two major recessions and the onset of the banking crisis.

The CAB now prides itself on being able to assist more than 14.2 million individuals a year. They are supported over the phone and the internet as well as provided with face to face advice from the bureau or visits to their homes. In 2003 following a review of its practices by the Office for Public Management, it was concluded, “the CAB service provides excellent value in return for the public funding it receives. It makes a significant contribution to individuals and communities, as well as to the process of policy-making and service delivery. Its holistic approach, national coverage and independence are to be cherished.”

Ten years have passed since this commendable observation was made and the CAB is currently busier than ever assisting those who have fallen foul of an economic crisis caused by criminality within the banking sector. With only the top 10% of wage earners in the UK continuing to prosper, it goes without saying many of the victims of debt and banking fraud would struggle to find refuge from their assailants without the CAB’s help. Yet despite increasing demand, the CAB has recntly been forced to turn hundreds of thousands of people away because their funding has been axed by 45%.  As a result of these governmental and local authority cut backs they have no alternative but to close offices which are still playing a vital role in the community. Sadly the CAB office which rescued my own sanity is to be one of them.

In contrast to the invaluable contribution being made by the CAB, the delusional and unrepentant bankers armed themselves with weapons of financial mass destruction, used the window of opportunity created by financial deregulation to approach their business activities without moral hindrance plundered the reserves of their banks, their customers and the economy.  Furthermore, by obtaining tax payer funded bailouts to preserve their jobs and their “modest” remunerations, they have cunningly redirected funding formerly earmarked for the auspicious community serving CA B and deftly removed the only means by which many of their victims have been able to fight back.

Roman economist, lawyer and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero once said,” There is no sanctuary so holy that money cannot profane it, no fortress so strong that money cannot take it by storm” and recent history clearly illustrates that a small group of inauspicious bankers have used money to both profane and to storm and it is the Citizen's Advice Bureau and it's service users who are now being forced to pay the price. 

Truth and Punishment

Mahatma Gandhi, preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India once said, "Many people, especially ignorant people, punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you are right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth" and after receiving not one, but two heartless letters of HBOS hogwash this week it is clear that ignorance and a complete disregard for the truth is not just the prerogative of Gandhi’s British-ruled India.

It is now four and a half years since the sale fell though on our home and I was prompted to discuss with Halifax Bank of Scotland how best to avoid repossession. Deaf to my proposals to create a tenancy to cover mortgage payments, I embarked upon another fruitless year of communication with HBOS after they forced its sale. During this highly stressful period I enlisted the help of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau’s but, despite their best efforts, no amount of explanation could satisfy this infamous bank that we were in extreme financial difficulties or persuade them to arrest their pursuit of us. It is was only after I consulted a government funded debt management organisation in desperation that I discovered the mortgage on my home may well have been miss sold in the first place.

It has taken me a further three years, via the Financial Ombudsman Service, to persuade HBOS to investigate my complaint only to find their original offer of mortgage was based on both a fictitious purchase price and a fictitious date of purchase at the application stage. I was sure making HBOS aware of this discovery would illustrate, without question, that not only did my compliant have substance but both HBOS’s surveyor and the broker to whom they paid more than £4,000 for placing the mortgage with them, had over-valued my home at outset. Convinced I had finally secured HBOS’s attention, I was relieved to have taken my first, albeit small, step forward after so many unsuccessful years of trying to communicate. Here follows their reply and sadly nothing could have been further from the truth.

In HBOS’s first letter they state,

“The information that was provided in this [mortgage application form] was what was entered into our systems. We took this as being accurate in good faith, and based upon the valuation that took place during the application process, there was never any reason to think this was wrong...Having viewed your comments and our response, my previous letter...has provided you with our final conclusions...As you have reached the end of our internal complaints procedure, any further correspondence received will be placed on file as we do not feel that further communication with you will help resolve your complaint.”

In HBOS’s second letter (which arrived by the very same post) I am told “this matter” has now been put in the hands of their debt collectors.

Because of the scandalous actions of banks such as HBOS, the taxpayer has been saddled with,

•         An £850 billion bill to bail them out,
•     £1.1 trillion of potential liabilities
•     £560 billion of quantitative easing to rebuild balance sheets

Yet I who have lost my home, my livelihood and my financial future at their hands can not only expect to be pursued by them for a £217,000 shortfall for the foreseeable future, while they, in the face of evidence which clearly illustrates there has been serious wrong doing, choose to remain ignorant of the truth and punish me for having the audacity to speak out.

Harvey Fierstein, American actor, playwright, author and champion for gay civil rights once said, “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim and accept no one’s definition of your life,” and because of the way in which HBOS have continued to treat me, it is my plan to turn this day along with each and every other one into an opportunity to follow, without deviation, every single word of Mr Fierstein’s advice.

Costs of Living

Joseph Franklin Rutherford, US trial lawyer, prosecutor and key developer of the Jehovah’s Witnesses doctrines, once said, “ False riches consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons” and allowing those who created a culture of banking fraud (a crime the industry and its regulators would prefer to call miss selling and manipulation) escape accountability, retain the proceeds of their ill gotten gains and position themselves beyond the long arm of the law, clearly illustrates how little has changed since Rutherford first made his observation.

In 2009 the National Audit office stated 850 billion pounds had been spent on saving the UK’s banks from the consequences of their fraudulent actions. This equates to something in the region of £3,500 to £27,500 per capita, depending on whether losses in share values are included in the calculation, and the obligation to fund this sum has been laid firmly on the shoulders of each and every individual in the UK. Furthermore, in Ireland current estimates indicate the cost of the economic crisis will quadruple that which the UK has so far endured. However, four full years since the first distasteful load of banksters dirty washing was aired in public, the tawdry truth has had little effect on those who masterminded this calculated redistribution of wealth.  Their houses and their lands along with their money remain intact and the fines levied by regulators (and perceived by the majority as punishment) have been, for the most part, funded from company coffers which were previously filled from the pockets of the long suffering British taxpayer.

Crime has clearly paid in the banking sector but for their victims the story is a very different one. Increased unemployment and reduced benefits have left many people struggling to make ends meet and 1.4 million families in the UK are currently facing homelessness because crisis driven austerity measures and job shortages have left them without sufficient income to meet rent and mortgage payments. Despite the Bank of England’s governor Mervyn King saying something has gone “very wrong” with Britain’s banks and “it’s time to do something about [it]”, little has changed. Speaking as one who has suffered insurmountable loses as a result of the banking crisis, I believe reform has not been forthcoming because those causing the problems have not been required to pick up the bill.

Natalie Ceeney, the Chief Financial Ombudsman recently told a Parliamentary Inquiry investigating bank miss-selling, “Evidence given by the banks was "factually untrue [and] implausible"  and further states "I have never trusted any CEO who says ‘I didn’t know'”. However, Parliamentary inquiries, independent investigations and harsh words have still not held the culprits to account and leniency of this nature allows infamous organisations like HBOS to remain untroubled by regulatory requirements and positively blasé about the complaints process.

As I have found to my detriment, making a financial service complaint is fraught with pitfalls and if my own case is anything to go by, it is not a journey to be undertaken by the fainthearted. I have spent years negotiating its tricky intricacies and despite my best efforts, I am still to be found waiting, under the less than watchful eye of the Financial Ombudsman Service, for a further two fruitless weeks for the Halifax Bank of Scotland to provide me with the thorough and timely investigation they personally promised me in November 2012.

In the meantime I have requested they supply me with the following,

• A copy of my original mortgage application form
• A copy of the Bank of Scotland’s underwriting compliance documents
• Acknowledgement from the Halifax Bank of Scotland ( by return) of my 24 Jan response to their letter dated 17 Jan 2013
• A revised response from the Halifax Bank of Scotland (within 14 days) concerning my over valuation complaint using actual figures rather than fictitious ones.

Needless to say I have heard nothing.

Joseph Franklin Rutherford also said, “If you are kept in ignorance of the true way and permit yourself to rely upon and be guided by the opinion of imperfect man, you can never gain the riches that bring you peace and lasting happiness”.  Likewise if both I and the general public continue to be kept in ignorance by the "factually untrue" and "implausible inaccuracies" of the banksters, I can see that not only will my imperfect Halifax Bank of Scotland customer services man be unable to furnish me with my rightful fair share of peace and lasting happiness, but the riches which were supplied to the banks by the British tax payer will remain in the pockets of the unscrupulous indefinitely.

Unlevel Playing Fields

Philosopher, lawyer and political theorist Marcus Tullius Cicero once said, “When government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent, it is a userer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honourable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself” and using austerity measures to redress the fraudulence of the banks and the greed of the corporate elite does precisely the same.

Those who would have us believe “we are all in this together” insisted,

• Bank bailouts would protect shareholders, help home owners and preserve jobs
• Bankers would use tax payers support to bolster the economy
• Official enquiries would hold those responsible to account
• Government guidelines and financial regulation would protect the vulnerable

However, during almost five years of economic crisis,

• Bailouts continue to save the bankers and not their customers or the economy
• Taxpayer investment provided funds for mis-selling reinbursement and rewards for failure
• FSA investigations held no-one to account bar a few insignificant fines
• Job losses and austerity measures reduced the incomes of the vulnerable and left them stripped of their homes

Before the crisis of 2008 those daring to suggest deregulated, reckless lending would come home to roost were labelled incompetents and lunatics. Four years later, as a direct result of bailout related austerity measures, cut backs dictate my eighty six year old mother cannot receive an attendance allowance unless she has been unable to manage her personal care for more than six months and her GP tells me he is unable to admit her to hospital unless he can secure funding for her treatment with ultra sound evidence for which the waiting list is six to eight weeks. Struggling to address her medical emergency along with her future care while unsuccessfully pressing HBOS to investigate my long overdue complaint, it beggars belief to find our banksters, who to date have remained largely unchallenged, are once again deliberating over how best to pocket obscene rewards for their gargantuan failures while the vulnerable and the innocent pay the price for years to come.

For the vast majority David Cameron’s “aspiration nation” is far from a shiny new goal for our economic future but instead a harsh and painful consequence of our bankers wicked past. After decades of unregulated pillaging, banks have bequeathed us a legacy of cut backs and cover ups and because of this, a few much loved but often fanciful aspirations are all a great many of us now have left. Marcus Tullius Cicero also said, “If the truth were self evident, eloquence would be unnecessary” and despite what some would have us believe, the playing field in this financial crisis is definitely not level however eloquently it is portrayed.

Shams and Shambles

American inventor and businessman, Thomas A. Edison, once said, “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence and honest purpose as well as perspiration” and throughout the difficulties of keeping my family afloat while dealing with the aftermath of our financial demise I have, not unlike Edison, remained convinced that a satisfactory resolution to my Halifax Bank of Scotland complaint will only be forthcoming if I remain sufficiently focused on all that is necessary to accomplish the task at hand.

Committed to the pursuit of an intelligent solution to our predicament following the collapse of our property business (2008) and the forced sale of our home (2009) I have diligently, trawled for news of government rescue packages together with banking reforms and financial regulation which might aid my endeavours. With each and every letter I have written, I have increased my understanding of the ways in which huge organisations like the FSA, the FOS and HBOS are expected to operate and familiarised myself with the guidelines by which they are supposed to abide. The by product of this has been a much broader knowledge and a substantial helping of increased confidence.

Entering the beginning of my fifth year of battle, I remain hopeful that media interest, public outrage and my own refusal to be fobbed off by bully boy banksters and their regulators will eventually combine to affect a change which alters the way in which banks have so far been permitted to treat their victims. However, despite my best efforts and the pre Christmas promises of both HBOS and the FOS with regard to my over valuation complaint, I have to concede to date I have accomplished very little and even the past few weeks spent in hot pursuit of a hearing for my HBOS complaint have done nothing to change this.

Tempered in expectation as a result of HBOS’s past performance but, nonetheless, hopeful my long overdue request of almost year might have come to fruition by 2 January 2013 (as per the deadline HBOS set for themselves) I still remain with without word or any sign of progress. Resigned to chalking up this absence of outcome to an all too predictable lack of HBOS inertia in the face of any investigation, I am doubly disappointed to find the FOS, after admitting they miss handled and delayed the investigation into my HBOS compliant early last year, have once again reneged on their assurances to affect investigative compliance from this too big to fail 41% taxpayer owned bank by not insisting they respond to my accusations within the time frame specified.  It is my belief this lack of momentum only goes to prove, despite what the government, the bankers and their regulators would have us believe;

• Rescue packages were designed to rescue the bankers and not those who are having their homes repossessed or their investments devalued
• Fines and settlements have allowed the bankers to move on but not their victims
• Banking fraud has proved a lucrative and prosecutionless pass time which has shown no moral regard for the (estimated) hundred million people it has driven into destitution and suicide
• FSA remuneration codes and EU directives do nothing to encourage banker’s to cap their earnings or persuade them to behave responsibly in the future.

And, when it comes to providing a fair and efficient method by which the individual can seek restitution in the light of these findings,

• The UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service is at best a shambles and at worst a complete sham.

Thomas Edison also said, “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways which do not work” and despite a seemingly unproductive year which includes 44 blog post, 1538 tweets, 16,000 page views together with a fair amount of fruitless endeavours in the hands of the FOS, I remain hopeful I will not discover 10,000 ways which do not work for me before I finally achieve a much needed and long awaited way forward with HBOS.