Duty of Care

US business school graduate, National Security Agency potential recruit, governmental consultant and author of The Economic Hitman, John Perkins, once said, “This Empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, though fraud...” and although he was speaking of the way in which the US miss sold debt to under developed countries to acquire political leverage and economic gain, endless investigations into the banking crisis would suggest the US  was not the only Empire to profit from economic manipulation, cheating and fraud.

However, despite revelations that widespread manipulation, cheating and fraud has been at home within the UK’s banking culture for many a year, not one high ranking executive or board member has faced criminal charges. Like the Economic Hit Men in Perkins book, highly-paid professionals have cheated the nation out of trillions while the Parliamentary Banking Commission’s outrage has endorsed the public face of our government. However, behind closed doors, evidence suggests the leverage of the all powerful banskters has neutralized political and regulatory muscle and in so doing created an untouchable elite who still enjoy the benefits of the obscene and exceptionally lucrative carrot without fear for the consequence of the stick.

 As a result of this unspoken rule of thumb it is clear a miss selling complaint such as mine represents little more than a minor irritant to the minions of the corporate con-men who remain practiced in the art of denial.

It has been,

• Five years since I first learned my mortgage was in arrears,
• Five months since I received HBOS' response to my claim that our mortgage was miss sold,
• Five weeks since I first asked for, and listed in detail, the information I require from HBOS to progress my complaint and
• Five days since I received what they tell me is their best attempt at providing me with all I have asked for.

After hours of wading through reams of screen prints and under writing notes, I have now learned (according to HBOS),

• My husband is a professional sportsman
• We are owner/occupiers of a large house without a mortgage

And,

• Neither HBOS or their surveyors owe a Duty of Care to customers with remortgages.

Knowing full well my husband has never been a sportsman (professional or otherwise) and the place I call home has not only been owned by our landlords family for decades but been rented to us for the past four and a half years, I was suspicious HBOS’s claims regarding their obligations to provide Duty of Care might prove equally fictitious.

Further investigations have revealed,

• My conveyance was carried out by HBOS’ in house solicitor as was my survey and this situtaion may well constitute a conflict of interest in both cases
•  A surveyor cannot produce a valuation inspection report without liability, as their code of conduct indemnity insurance does not permit an opinion to be given without responsibility.

And

• A fee free remortgage submitted by a broker does not permit a lender to abdicate from their responsibilities to provide a Duty of Care.

In 2011 Lloyds Banking Group “set out a new vision and strategy to be the best bank for customers...[and promised to be] a more transparent organisation that delivers”. However, if my own case is anything to go by, HBOS, who now reside under the umbrella of Lloyds, have demonstated no plans to deliver anything but hogwash to me and the only strategy they seem to have embraced has been to send me a constant stream of inaccuracies and denials for the past five years.

In the words of American foundling father, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, “The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system” and while this may well have been true of my perceptions before our financial demise, this particular citizen has certainly had her eyes opened to the unscrupulous and negligent business practices of HBOS now.

Here's hoping documenting my battle with HBOS and posting it via my blog on the internet helps open the eyes of a fair few more!

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. 

The Powerless and Corruption

George Bernard Shaw, Irish play wright and founder of the London School of Eoconomics once said, “Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power" and while I am repeatedly told by the Financial Ombudsman Service unprecedented numbers of complaints are the reason I have not yet received a ruling on whether my HBOS complaint can proceed, it is clear the fault actually lies with unprecedented incidents of banking fraud and not, as bankers would have us believe, the audacity of their victims.

While all eyes are on Barclays fraudulent actions following the US and UK regulators levy of a £290 million fine for Libor rate manipulation, it has become abundantly clear CEO Bob Diamond was not wrong when he said “how people behave when they think no one is watching” has been at the heart of his banks profitability and risk management policies for many a year. With  the news that vast funds have been repeatedly and systematically skimmed by Barclays from a plethora of global financial manoeuvres spanning as much as five years, civil suits are likely to far outstrip existing compensation payouts which are already run into billions making a regulatory fine of £290 million pale into insignificance.

By way of an explanation, our regulataors tell us a wave of Libor fiddling during the 2008 financial crisis resulted from “senior management’s” concerns that Barclays would be perceived as struggling.  Add into this mix a conversation Diamond had with Paul Tucker, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, after which at least two Barclay’s managers believed falsely adjusting Libor rates had been agreed, one can only wonder why anyone thinks Chairman Marcus Angius’ resignation along with the sacking of fourteen Barclay’s traders has resolved anything let alone emptied the Barclays barrel of its rotten apples.

With the regulatory finger finally pointing firmly in the direction of twelve other banks for similar Libor fixing crimes it is no surprise to discover Lloyds Banking Group and HBOS are amongst those within the US regulators and FSA’s sights. However, while I doubt previously exhausted Lloyds CEO Antonio Horta Osorio anticipated “bringing out their dead” in the summer of 2011would give rise to further billions being claimed in compensation for rate fixing, it is now clear it will not just be my own case which will continue to fester on HBOS and FOS desks for weeks to come while the fall out from this latest banking fraud discovery is laid to rest.

It is said corruption is authority, plus monopoly, minus transparency and while auditors have snoozed and the UK government remain complicit in their indifference to bankers crimes I, along with millions of other victims of banking avarice are left to suffer the consequences and despite public outrage both at home and abroad, unsurprisingly No. 10 are happy to announce there is to be no retrospective action taken with regard to the banks as “we can only use the law as it is and as it stands”.  Sadly, as is the case in so many instances, the law insists the loss of my financial future is too remote for there to be any recourse.

Thirty fifth US president John F. Kennedy said, “Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance” and despite the best efforts of the US and the UK regulators it is common knowledge that while nobody is above the law, power regularly makes people invisible.

It is for this reason banking crime continues pay.

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.

Posts, Mail and Shots

Franklin D Roosevelt once said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough for those who have little” and while reports continue to illustrate the extent to which bankers avarice for their obscene levels of remuneration have infected and disabled moves towards regulatory change across the globe, I have embarked on a campaign to increase my readership in a bid to raise awareness of the impact their actions have had on the individual. With little more than a years experience as a writer and next to no knowledge of the Internet, social media sites or forums, this decision has taken me way beyond my comfort zone.

Over the past two weeks I have,

·        Signed up to, commented on and posted my blog on numerous articles relating to the economic recession.

·        Sent 562 tweets on my hitherto unused twitter account to a variety of recipients together with a link to my blog.

·        Applied to several different sites inviting writers to post pieces with a view to linking them to my blog

·        Explored Avatars, Gravatars, badges along with all things Google in order to improve the access to my blog

·        Posted new threads and links to my blog on Mumsnet in an effort to acquire information about the ongoing issues I have with HBOS.

Throughout this two week period, I have been filled with trepidation at the potential for abusive responses to my unsolicited “mail shot”.

I am delighted to be able to report the following.

I have,

·        Been invited to write a piece for Women Writers for September 2012

·        Acquired twenty one new and communicative followers on twitter

·        Heard from three separate individuals who are also suffering at the hands of HBOS

·        Tripled the number of people who have read my blog in previous months

·        Received three very supportive comments and expressions of encouragement with respect to my posts on Mumsnet

However, I have also received,

·        My first block, ever, from a former banker for “sending her spam”.

·        Had a post deleted from the Mumsnet legal section for inadvertently posting it where I should not have

And

·        Been subject to eight outraged and unsympathetic comments proclaiming my attitude to shortfall debt is naive, self indulgent and irresponsible.

Sincerely hoping the mood of these Mumsnet readers is not a reflection of the thinking woman or the public in general, this venomous outburst has left me wondering how I, and those like me, can hope to succeed in bringing about change in the attitude of the government, the financial regulators, and the banking elite if so many individuals are of the opinion the blame rests squarely with the very people who are struggling to keep their heads above water during this economic crisis, instead of the reckless and fraudulent risk-management strategies of the too big to fail banks who put them there.

English born American poet and dramatist W H Auden once said, “We are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for I don’t know” and after a week of this kind I can empathise with his viewpoint entirely.

Brave Hearts

American journalist and author Mignon McLaughlin once said, “Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense” and yet for those locked in financial hardship as a result of the economic crisis, suspense has remained the regime of each and every day.  

For the individual, the cavalry never came and instead government talk has continued to prove cheap. Austerity measures have been relentless and the current penchant for saving the perpetrators of the financial crisis instead of the victims has left the very people who were responsible for economic pillaging obscenely rewarded and at liberty to defend their infinitely valuable contribution to a financial future they have completely obliterated for the rest of us.

Well versed in the unchecked practices of the banking fraternity at home in the UK, it is has proved unremarkable to discover the tentacles of corporate corruption have also been busy feathering elitist nests in Spain. However, with an estimated one hundred and twenty six billion dollar euro taxpayer funded bailout in the offing, the Catalan parliament has finally seen fit to set up a committee to investigate long standing allegations of banking malpractice. These claims in include multi million euro payoffs to senior banking executives just before their banks collapsed, “hundreds of millions of loans to executives, board members and their families” and 50% executive pay increases when profits were barely 7%. Arsenio Escolar, editor of 20 Minutos believes, “If we really knew the truth about Bankia and the other Cajas, the two big parties-the People’s party and the Socialists- would explode”.

Unsurprised to discover a great many actions under investigation are those of Bankia with whom I have held a now substantially underwater mortgage for the past eight years, I remain unsure if reported levels of financial fraud are pivotal to the  manner in which they have dealt with me or merely a product of it. Either way, I remained unable to fathom why Banca Caja which now trades as Bankia and is reputed to be desperately in need of funding, has made no effort to communicate with me for a very long time.

During the past four years they have:

• Refused to allocate the payments we made into our account to cover our mortgage 
• Ignored all my communications asking why
• Refused to allow me to sell our apartment to a very keen cash purchaser 
• Ignored all my purchasers efforts to progress this sale.  
• Refused to discuss interest only loan restructuring to make us tenanting our property viable in the long term
• Ignored all correspondence from all parties on the subject including solicitors 

In addition, I am reliably informed that not only will I not be pursued for the inevitable shortfall on the sale of our Spanish property when Bankia eventually get round to it, all outstanding bills relating to it (currently 12,000 euros and rising) will also be covered by the bank in accordance with Spanish property law.

While I am naturally delighted to enjoy one less instance of suspense about which I must be brave, I can only assume operating in this manner may well result in a one hundred and twenty six billion euro bailout proving vastly insufficient to secure the rescue of an economic money pit of this magnitude. Furthermore, despite widespread belief that money talks, I suspect the people of Spain are about to find out, as have those of us enduring the purgatory of the economic crisis elsewhere that no matter how large the bailout, all money will ever say to the individual is,

 “Good-bye.”

Blame and Circumstance

Jean Paul Getty once said, “If you owe the bank one hundred dollars that’s your problem, if you owe them a hundred million dollars then that is their problem” and while a global economic recession gives rise to worldwide fretting over trillions, democracy remains the process by which the "powers that be" choose to allocate the blame.

For  Antonio Horta Osario, chief executive officer of  41% tax payer owned banking giant Lloyds, it is over enthusiastic claims management companies swamping his administrators for PPI compensation who are getting his goat. Lloyds are expected to pay out an estimated five hundred million pounds to clients to whom they have miss-sold PPI. Mr Horta Osario says one in four claims submitted by these companies are for individuals who are not eligible for compensation nor have they been customers of the bank and says this blanket approach to the claims process is not only slowing it down but costing Lloyds money. His has publically stated “ it is fraud and it must stop”. However he has not felt the need to make such strong statements about Lloyds Banking Group’s own HBOS executives, despite the knowledge several are now facing criminal charges for alleged financial crimes which have cost the indivual and the economy billions.

Defence secretary, Philip Hammond, has also chosen to point his accusing finger this week declaring he is of the opinion it is the individual who “over borrowed in the economic boom who must now admit to their part in the financial crisis”. He says the banks had to lend to someone and these people should “accept responsibility for the consequences of their own choices” rather than conveniently cast the blame on the banks.  However, when speaking of the period in which he helped formulate David Cameron’s economic strategy in opposition he says, “We started living a lifestyle both in private consumption and in public consumption which could we not afford [and it] ran away with us” so unsurprisingly it appears the governments take on the financial is what is sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander.

In contrast, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, previously reluctant to lay the blame at anyone’s door, now tells us it is “the failure of a system” that is at fault and not the individual. Speaking of “a slow and steady recovery coming during the course of 2012” he admits the Bank of England must take a “share of the responsibility” for the financial crisis and “with benefit of hind sight should have shouted from the rooftops that a financial system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown too quickly and borrowed too much, and that so-called “ light-touch regulation hadn’t prevented any of this”.

It also seems HBOS auditors KPMG may well be shouldering some blame this week following reports an official investigation by the Financial Reporting Committee to investigate their conduct following HBOS whistle blower Paul Moore’s letter to the Treasury Select Committee sighting an inaccuracy in their forensic audit regarding his dismissal as global head of regulatory risk in 2005. Mr Moore was “let go” because he disagreed with the board’s attitude to risk and warned that HBOS’s lending strategy had become dangerously over heated. He believes KPMG’s decision to record this event as “a clash of personalities” was wholly misleading to the Lloyds takeover of 2008 and eventually cost the tax payer a further millions in government bailout support . Mr Moore blames the fact that, “money seems to be more important to KMPG’s strategy than integrity and professionalism”.

And

Stephen Hester, chief executive officer of 84% taxpayer own Royal Bank of Scotland is also casting the blame this week and its not, as one might expect on his predecessor Fred Goodwin who has already been stripped of his knighthood, is facing criminal charges for fraud and may well have past bonuses recalled to help fund PPI compensation. Instead Mr Hester’s eight gardeners on his 7 million pound, 350 acre Oxfordshire estate tell us rain has blighted attendance of the annual charitable opening of his twenty five acre gardens. It may not have crossed Mr Hester’s mind his infamous fight to keep his £963,000 bonus earlier this year despite a dip of 36% on its share price, a first quarter loss of 1.4 billion and further RBS job losses ,bringing the total to almost 50% of its pre- crisis work force, might well have had something to do with the public's disinterest in his garden.

Founder of the Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company, Harvey S Firestone once said, “A man with a surplus can control circumstance, but a man without a surplus is controlled by circumstance and often has no opportunity to exercise judgement”. However if this week is anything to go by, this rule seems seldom to apply and it is for this reason I live in hope that, despite a life now lived without surplus, I will have the opportunity to exercise my own judgement in my ongoing personal battle with HBOS and will, one day, enjoy a result as a consequence of public opinion insisting the banks ultimately accept the blame.

Unequal Shares

Thomas Jefferson, third president of the US, once said, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If [we] ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs,”  and if the 8,500 mortgage litigation cases against them are anything to go by, HBOS and Barclays are about to prove Jefferson’s words of warning  are correct.

A recent report warns banking giants Barclays and HBOS may well have to reimburse their customers for charges amounting to hundreds of millions. This is because HBOS’s and Barclays' shared appreciation mortgages, which offer an interest free capital sum in exchange for seventy-five percentage of the borrower’s equity, have harvested vast rewards for the bank at wholly excessive expense to the mortgagees. Some homes have appreciated by £300,000 in the 10 years since the loans were made meaning homeowners have had to pay more than £200,000 on loans as little as £25,000. These products were designed and targeted at low income customers who were quite often elderly and have proved doubly lucrative for the lenders because properties values were in the doldrums when many of these products were sold. This gave the banks the perfect window of opportunity to acquire a  substantial slice of an often vulnerable individual’s future equity for a minimal outlay throughout the depressed years of property growth during the 1990’s.

Hilary Messer of RWP solicitors is waiting for more people to come forward before she brings this proposed class action formally to the attention of HBOS, Barclays and the courts but it cannot have made it any easier for those Barclays shareholders aware of this pending lawsuit to know there could be a demand for a further 850 million pounds on top of the ongoing costs of the PPI claims and the impact of the government bailouts. Neither can it help to be made aware that less than half of Barclay’s chief executive Bob Diamond’s pay packet is to be growth related. Little wonder so many shareholders were vocal in their discontent to discover Bob Diamond is to enjoy a 2.7 million bonus on top of his 1.35 million salary in addition to the 5.7 million he has already received to cover his tax bill. However, it must have been nothing short of incendiary to find Barclays staff bonuses of 2.25 billion pounds in 2011 were triple the 730 million pounds paid out in dividends to share holders.

While David Cameron says the lack of economic recovery is, “very, very, disappointing” and Ed Milliband blames the present governments “catastrophic”  polices and lack of meaningful banking reform, it is clear from the actions of Barclays and HBOS they remain blissfully detached from the effect the first double dip recession we’ve had since the 1970’s and the impact it is having on the rest of us. Instead their executives continue to feather their own nests and, in the case of the Bank of Scotland, attempt to paper over the cracks with an advert created  by London-based advertising agency RKCR/Y&R and developed “to reassert traditional values”. It tells us, “You never know what is going to be round the corner, or what twists and turns life is going to take.” I beg to differ. I have always found past performance to be a reasonable indicator of what’s on the cards for the future and in the case of HBOS and Barclays it is clearly going to be more of the same. It is because of this my personal battle with LLoyds and HBOS is destined to be a long one as is, I suspect, any hope of economic recovery.

Thomas Jefferson also said, “It is error alone which needs the support of the government while truth can stand by itself” and sadly for us, it seems he’s right again.

New Year Bonus

Ancient Roman and Christian theologian, St Augustine (354-430 AD) said , “In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized crime?”  and six hundred years later,  not only does sovereignty continue to prove a lucrative pastime but twenty-first century organised crime is now being run by an elitist and untouchable group of bankers. This absence of justice has been the product of auditors who have endorsed rather than audit, governments who have promoted greed over governance and financial regulators who have condoned criminal behaviour rather than condemned it.

Knowing this only serves to make it nothing less than incendiary to discover 80% taxpayer owned Royal Bank of Scotland plans to pay (despite a 43% decrease in its share values resulting a loss of 11 billion pounds from it's market value and the culling of five thousand RBS jobs) 4.5 million pounds to its executives in contractual bonuses over the coming weeks and, with a waive of the auditory magic wand, the banking deities have been permitted to ride roughshod over fairplay and decency in order to harvest their legitimised, but nevertheless morally obscene, rewards for failure.

Unlike those who have failed us, my own efforts have been rewarded with not so much as a listening ear let alone any understanding. Instead financial hardship for my family continues and yet another response from the Financial Ombudsman’s adjudicator, this time in answer to my complaint against Lloyds, proves those who police and regulate the banksters have little interest in fairplay or justice. Once again, and in the same tone as her FOS colleague who investigated my HBOS complaint, I have been informed there is no merit in taking Lloyds to task over such minor issues as their,

• Fabrication of my consent to make a payment arrangement,
• Refusal to supply documentary evidence of this alleged payment arrangement
• Constant harassment of me for reneging on their fictitious agreement.
• Failure to reply any of my letters with a meaningfully explanation

In addition, my FOS adjudicator feels that it is inappropriate to ask Lloyds to consider my financial circumstances when assessing Lloyds behaviour towards me but instead states she is unable suggest Lloyds write off debt on compassionate grounds. Not only does her statement completely ignore the CAB's request made to Lloyds (on my behalf) to do precisely this but her sentiments are wholly at odds with regulatory guidelines encouraging lenders to show compassion and forgiveness to those who are impoverished and vulnerable. 

David Cameron regularly speaks of responsible capitalism but rewarding the bankers for their failures while ignoring the dire circumstances of their victims is nothing short of elitist capitalism and this falls a very long way short of responsible. In the words of Woodrow Wilson, “the government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses, their employers and their special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy” and if this is indeed the case, the victims of these untouchable banksters will need a New Year’s bonus of resolve and stamina because a fairer future is clearly going involve a fight.

Here's hoping 2012 is the year in which we will finally be heard.

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.

How much is enough?

Recently Ian Fraser, reporter and BBC journalist introduced me to William Hopper’s financial observation “The credit crunch is like an atomic bomb”.  My attention was immediately captured by his succinct explanation of how a shift in attitude over a four hundred year period has produced the unstable economy we have today.  In his article Hopper praises the legacy of the migrating East Anglian Puritans who, in the 1630s, moved to the USA with their “gift” of good management. This gift was an ethos grounded in the belief pursuit of an ideal society with a focus on the common good is paramount.

Hopper goes on to lament our current global trend which rewards hot-housed qualifications in favour of the hardworking endeavours of our economically sound ancestors.  In contrast to today’s executive, these fore bearers were prepared to work hard to make their way up the ladder of expertise to gain valuable shop floor experience before taking their place in the board room.

It appears the most significant shift in attitude came about in the 60s and 70s when managers became hired hands who no longer came up through the ranks but instead arrived with MBA’s from business schools who taught them to focus on deals and numbers. This new age administrative managerial authority entered the market place believing short term shareholder value was the executive’s number one goal and these values bred a culture which, at best, condoned individual self interest and in the case of the banks, whole heartedly embraced it. The move away from what was perceived as old fashioned Puritan ideologies led to “incompetence on an unprecedented scale that has extended over much of society” and is particularly rife in the banking industry today.

The worship of self interest was further fuelled by the expanding of a credit funded economy where ethical considerations within the banking fraternity were waived in favour of a promise of wealth creation for the masses. In reality this bubble of self-deception produced nothing of the sort and only widened the gap between rich and poor leaving the poor even poorer and high ranking banking executives with a taste for unprecidented riches. William Hopper says, “Banks that are seen as too big to fail are too big to regulate and therefore too big to live. I would add Lloyds and HBOS are also too big to know when they are flogging a dead horse or much less care about the impact their "double standard" acts of cruelty are having on my family.

No doubt it is also the reason HBOS were also too big to consider it worth their while to intervene and prevent the destruction of twenty two families lives when they learned, from the victims, long before the police made their arrests, of a long standing fraud which is now referred to as the HBOS Reading Scandal. I was once asked by a financially independent workaholic, “How much is enough?”It appears, for the powers that be within HBOS, the obscene multi million pound bonuses paid out year on year are still not enough to secure ethical policies, compassionate solutions and the forward thinking integrity of our Puritan forefathers. I can only wonder with trepidation, what it will actually take to affect the necessary shift in attitude when a credit crunch, which has been compared to an Atomic Bomb, has had little impact on how HBOS thinks and behaves.

It was Albert Einstein who once said "relativity applies to physics not ethics" and sadly  I can see this is precisely the case when it comes to the attitude of our casino  banksters who have without apology, brought this economy and my family to its knees.