Truth and Understanding

Fourteenth century Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer and philosopher Galileo Galilei once said, "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered: the point is to discover them” and although discovering the truth about my Bank of Scotland mortgage has consumed my life for the best part of six years, understanding what the truth actually adds up to has only come to light during the past week.

Since the Bank of Scotland secured a court order to repossess my home in November 2008, disposed of it at a knockdown price in April 2009 leaving me with a £217,000 shortfall and then flatly refused to consider our circumstances or discuss their breaches in best practice, I have been kept  very busy.

I have;

• Written countless letters to the FSA, the SRA, the FOS, the ICO, the Bank of Scotland, their debt collectors and the Bank of Scotland's CEO's Eric Daniels and Antonio Horta Osorio.
• Scoured FB, twitter and the newspapers for both information and expertise
• Used my 180 Life after Debt blog posts to find other individuals who have suffered at the hands of HBOS and in doing so secured more expertise

And,

• Compiled five lever arch files of evidence and information to support my case of complaint

This week, armed with all of the above, I have finally presented my findings to the police and, as a result of three phone calls to and from Action Fraud and the hour long telephone interview I gave, I have now been told the following;

• The crime I have reported is to be taken forward as an “Abuse of a position of trust”
• My mortgage application, which was falsified by a third party, ticks every box for mortgage fraud

And,

• As a result of my report, I must contact the Bank of Scotland once again.

To this end I wrote the following;

Dear Mr *******,

Mortgage Account No. ********-*/***/***

Crime Reference No.XXXX**********

Although you expressly stated in your letter of 24 July, “Any attempt to contact the Bank Of Scotland Plc (Halifax Division) regarding the above account will result in you being referred straight back to drysdenfairfax solicitors” , I have been asked by the police to advise the Bank of Scotland of the crime reference number I have been given for the mortgage fraud  I have reported to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (see above) and make the bank aware that it has also been the victim of the same mortgage fraud so it can file a report with Action Fraud as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

LAD

In addition, I am reliably informed that having a crime number will encourage an altogether different reaction to the one the Bank of Scotland has seen fit to mete out to me in the past. Furthermore, my much valued FB friends and Twitter followers expertise, combined with a few legal opinions a little closer to home, suggest the unlawful repossession of an individual’s home and a comprehensive paper trail to boot is pretty solid ground from which to pursue compensation.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the twentieth century, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, once said, “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is,” and, after six arduous years of searching for the truth, the Bank of Scotland boot  finally appears to be on the other foot and what's more,

The foot appears to be mine!

Capitalism and Punishment

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

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

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

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

But,

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

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

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