Brave New World

In order to limit the distress my sixteen year old son foresaw if he had to endure a family holiday without teenage companionship, I suggested he invite a friend from school to come too.  It was during a conversation with his friend, who plans to do a law degree, I discovered the Inland Revenue spend vast sums of money on legal cases involving people who find their tax bills a distressing infringement of their human rights.  Having been a self-employed 40% tax payer for the much of my working life I can  most definitely relate to finding a tax bill distressing but have to admit I have never considered it a violation of my human rights but merely the bane of the fortunate.

In the same way it would not occur to me to take the Inland Revenue to court on an issue of this nature, it did not occur to me, to seek human rights or equal opportunities advice when HBOS told me it was too late to save my home in October 2008.  I believe HBOS profited from a naivety on my part and when they decided to forego scruples, morals and decency in favour of seizing an opportunity to rail-road me out of my home in an effort to replenish their under capitalised coffers.Until recently, I  did not understand why my mortgage paying proposals fell on deaf HBOS ears. I have Stop HBOS campaigner Nicolette Turner (and victim of the HBOS Reading scandal) together with Ed Milliband’s recent speech on the feral elite to thank for my Eureka moment.  Their words have helped me see not only did I borrow too little to register above the radar for help but they have also enabled me to see I fell into financial difficulties too early to enjoy the benefit of government recommendations to lenders that followed, via the Ministry of Justice Pre-action Protocol in early 2009.

While I was looking to work with HBOS to reach a solution which worked for both of us, the HBOS executive were busily shouting from the roof tops “ it wasn’t me” to every accusation which came their way.  I believe the capital within my home became part of their hurried re-capitalisation plan which was supposed to sweep their recklessness towards risk management under the carpet and save them face along with their jobs. I can think of no other reason why my home saving proposals got me nowhere at a time when the media were declaring help was on its way in the form of government funding and FSA guidelines aimed at helping those caught in the credit crunch crossfire.Regrettably for me, our meritocratic culture encourages the celebration of the good fortune of the early bird without giving a second thought to the bad luck of the early worm. When it came to the forced sale of my home I fell foul of being one of the very early worms which was consumed by unbridled HBOS self interest.

When Ed Milliband recently said, “The powerful are very good at talking about the responsibilities of the powerless but they aren’t very good at looking at their own responsibilities,” he could have easily been referring to HBOS and the way they have continued to expect me to pay the price of their mistakes. Unaware of Franklin Roosevelt observations, “In our personal ambitions we are individualists but in our seeking of economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people”, Lloyds and HBOS have continued to offer victims of their greed nothing but contempt for the stressful HBOS created predicaments they find themselves in.

I can only hope the newly launched Public Jury Campaign provides  a definitive step in the right direction towards a brave new world which limits the power of " the cosy elite" because, again in the words of Roosevelt, as a rule,"men are moved by two levers, fear and self interest” and while “we have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals: we now know that is bad economics.”

Guilty Secrets

One hundred years ago Theodore Roosevelt said, “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people” and as I catch up on my reading with the blogs of journalist Ian Fraser and Stop HBOS campaigner Nicolette Turner, I am provided with yet more evidence to support Roosevelt’s statement.

It appears that Thames Valley Police’s plan to limit their enquiries into the HBOS Reading scandal means they will not be investigating any high level corporate involvement of former HBOS executives despite ongoing allegations of in house fraud at board level. While victims of the HBOS Reading scandal are naturally up in arms about this decision, ex- HBOS risk management executive and whistle-blower Paul Moore has expressed additional concerns at the way LLoyds Bank is responding to this investigation.

Moore said,” I have even been told by very reliable sources that Lloyds Banking Group is not voluntarily offering to help the police with their enquiries. If this is so, it is scandalous. This alleged fraud is a matter of extreme public importance and interest and it is vital that parliament keeps very close eye on how the police and the FSA are doing their jobs and working together with what is going on, through the Treasury Select Committee and the Justice Committee.”

As ever, when it comes to power and money, smoke and mirrors seem to be the first line of defense.  Learning that at least fifty five people have lost their livelihoods along with their companies, as a result of the dishonesty within HBOS, I can’t help wondering how I am ever going to harvest any success in my battle with Lloyds and HBOS myself.  Nicolette Turner and her fellow victims of the HBOS Reading fraud have fought for years with very little success in spite of police involvement and repeatedly lobbying both past and present governments for help.

Today I took two of my children for an eye test and when my ten year old son, always ready with an impromptu question, asked the optician,” What is the most disgusting thing you have ever seen?”  I found myself searching for a subject that would sit at the top of my own “most disgusting” leader board.  I concluded the following,

·        Self-indulgence to the detriment of others

·        Absence of integrity

·        Not taking responsibility for ones actions

In the words of Theodore Roosevelt’s niece Eleanor, “In the long run we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends and the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” As the wife of an individual whose business failed due to the economic climate and the simultaneous demise of both Heritable Bank and the property development market I am, according to HBOS, supposed to accept that I am jointly and severely liable for the choices my husband made even though HBOS aided my husband’s decision to keep me financially in the dark.

However, when it comes to Lloyds and HBOS executives, it is evident that they are totally unprepared to embrace their responsibilities with integrity and are pleading that they shouldn’t be held responsible because, allegedly, they were, like me, kept in the dark and unaware of what was going on within their bank. Even though this outrageous double standard is both elitist and downright unfair, there appears to be no governing body prepared to make these "untouchables" accountable. Because of this, social justice is unlikely ever to be attained and the greater good is destined to remain second place to the indulgences of the high ranking corporate individual.

      This I find truly disgusting.