Homes and Gardens

 

Knowing “a house is made of walls and beams” while “a home is made with love and dreams”, I guarantee our sixteenth century grade two listed barn most definitely fell into the latter.  From the moment we saw its derelict shell towering over unobstructed views of the countryside towards the river Severn, we knew it would make the perfect family home.

Over a ten year period we were diligent in our search for reclaimed materials to maintain its character and used locally grown green oak to restore its magnificent vaulted ceiling complete with mistral’s gallery.  With an enormous log burner at its heart to ensure our family was always warm, this lovingly crafted restoration project was my husband’s pride and joy and regularly left visitors gasping at both its beauty and location.

As my children grew old enough to enjoy their surroundings, they discovered our home made a wonderful back drop to the freedom that two acres of land and an abundance of local friends afforded them.  I, in turn, was delighted to finally have a home from which we could put down roots which also allowed us to bring up and school our children in a village community.  Being a developer’s wife had meant numerous house moves throughout the years as a means of growing my husband’s business so I happily embraced a more settled outlook and threw myself wholeheartedly into country life. Quickly making many friends led to our home becoming the venue for many wonderful gatherings and  it was often filled with the camaraderie and laughter of our guests.  

In October 2008 my perspective completely changed.

Discovering we were to be faced with repossession, I soon realised everything I had once considered my own fell into two categories neither of which had anything to do with whether one's property is merely a house or a wonderful family home. A threat of this nature instantly dictates that everything must be viewed either as items against which a mortgage is secured or items against which a mortgage is not. 

As the forced sale of our home gathered momentum, repossession became HBOS’s “hangman’s noose” in the eevnt we be tempted not to co-operate.  During this period I watched my husband carefully strip each and every mortgage free fixture from our home in the hope the harvested items could be sold or reused for our families benefit.  When it came to dismantling our children's enormous wooden climbing frame (which he had designed and built in our field) he endured the sub zero temperatures of one of the coldest Januarys on record. In spite of the adverse weather conditions he carefully removed each and every part of this structure and, piece by piece, transported it to our newly rented home. 

For nearly three years the pile of wooden planks representing all that remained of our beautiful sixteenth century masterpiece was left discarded and ignored. Grass and weeds grew up amongst what appeared to be nothing of value and our children all but forgot about their much loved climbing frame's very existence. Believing its presence was only an unpleasant reminder of “old oak beams and thwarted dreams” I accepted it was unlikely ever to be resurrected again.  

However this week, to the astonishment and delight of everyone, my husband announced his intention was to build a tree house. With a spring in his step and  a renewed vigour I have not witnessed in some time; he resurrected and transformed the remnants of our old climbing frame. Three full days and nearly four hundred screws later it has become a formidable play structure in the enormous sycamore tree at the bottom of our garden and all three of our children have been in excited attendance for every step of its construction. Having now completed this project I believe my husband has not only created another masterpiece but has also laid one last ghost to rest. 

I am told there is no ghost so difficult to lay as the ghost of an injury and the forced sale of our home along with the simultaneous demise of our business, our livelihood and our financial future is most definitely an injury from which recovery has proved extremely difficult. Nevertheless, a tree house rising from the ashes of our lost life has been a very therapeutic start on the road to recovery for us all.

 

The Emperor's New Clothes

On occasion I am asked why I exchanged a lucrative career in the Financial Services Industry for the life of a housewife and mother. I am uncomfortable when I am faced with no alternative but to explain as failure on any level does not sit well with me. Admitting that my health failed, albeit in a non life threatening way, when undiagnosed Hypothyroidism, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, twice weekly migraines, high blood pressure and Alopecia Totalis finally caught up with me at the age of forty is no exception. 

In 1998, on my GP's instructions, I walked away from a job which provided substantial returns in exchange for an unsustainable pace and instead I chose to spend the past twelve years living an "alternative" lifestyle in an effort to accommodate my physical shortcomings by way of a less stressful life. As a result my hair grew back, my blood pressure settled, I no longer fell asleep the moment I sat down and I was much happier knowing I had time to surcombe to bouts of ill health when they occurred.

In October 2008 this changed.

Forced by circumstance to once again endure unhealthily high levels of stress when I become a one woman debt fighting machine immediately highlighted my inadequacies. Within a matter of days it plunged me back into a regime of daily migraine, sudden weight loss, insomnia, panic attacks and chronic Alopecia. Managing these health issues while simultaneously trying acquire up to date knowledge of the financial services industry guidelines and regulations has made it all the more arduous to access my own rusty knowledge of the industry let alone retain it but despite the shackles of these infuriating limitations, I  remained committed to saving my family from the ongoing persecution of HBOS. To this end I have been exploring the world of finance via archived newspaper articles. During my research I came across the words of ex- HBOS risk management executive and whistleblower Paul Moore and was nothing short of astounded to discover just what HBOS had been up to.

Having already lost his job as a result of his attempts to warn the HBOS board their lending strategy was critically flawed, Mr Moore bravely ignored a gagging order to expose the relentlessly irresponsible behavior of his HBOS colleagues.  His revelations provided me with an extremely enlightening insight into how my husband was able secure the levels of borrowing he did and also explained the short-term financial motivation behind the board's endorsement of these economically dangerous lending policies. Coupled with the shockingly inadequate aspects of corporate and regulatory governance which permitted an HBOS sales culture specifically designed to harvest short term gain regardless of the cost to customers and shareholders to go unchecked, it became clear from what Moore was saying, it was not just our home and our financial future which had been steered towards the rocks by HBOS, but that of the economy as a whole.

Convinced even non bankers with no risk management expertise would recognize the pitfalls of lending “money to people who have no jobs, no provable income and no assets” Paul Moore firmly believes the current financial crisis has come about as a direct result of "an Emperor’s New Clothes attitude within HBOS”. He says anyone “not blinded by money, power and pride felt unable to speak up for fear of stepping out of line with the rest of the lemmings who were busy organizing themselves to run over the cliff edge” behind their sweet talking CEO. 

This was a complete revelation to me.

However, despite this newly acquired insight and amid widespread reports Lloyds/HBOS' new CEO Antonio Horta Osorio plans for "a new beginning", I am still left completely unable to comprehend why HBOS, now publicly exposed for their recklessness and under official investigation, has seen fit to instruct both their collections and their legal departments to hound my family for a £217,000 shortfall which they created, risking further scrutiny and investigation and yet more bad press.

An ancient Arabian proverb suggests, "There are many ways to recognize foolish behavior, anger without cause; speech without profit; change without progress; inquiry without object" and because HBOS and their henchmen continue to employ each and every one of these traits to hound and harass their victims for no logical reason, I can only conclude they remain committed to seeking counsel from fools in preference to heeding the wise words of their former head of corporate risk management, Paul Moore. 

This does not bode at all well for any of us.

Loveless letters

Another letter from Merrils Ede solicitors has landed on my doorstep and my stomach does an involuntary flip when I spot the corporate frank declaring its origins. Even though I know this letter has arrived as a result of one I sent to them last week, it still sends my adrenalin rushing into overdrive as I prepare myself for yet another round of vindictive abuse from this HBOS appointed henchwoman and her colleagues.

Today these Rottweilers have written to refuse an answer to my enquiry as to whether the Bank of Scotland has instructed them to issue bankruptcy proceedings “without further notice”  as intimated in their last letter. Although I explained I require this information for my Ombudsman complaint,  I have been denied the answer, yet again, on the grounds my request is merely repetitive delaying tactics.   I believe this accusation can only be a Freudian slip on the part of Merrils Ede as it is they who are employing delaying tactics when it comes to making it clear to HBOS we are genuinely without funds. Why resolve this unpleasant situation for me when, by dragging their feet and making repeated demands for money they know we have not got, gives them an infinite number of opportunities to milk their extremely lucrative HBOS cash cow to the tune of £180 per letter?

No doubt Merrils Ede are further frustrated by the fact the Ombudsman has now taken my case and in so doing rendered my file non income producing for them. However, what I find frustrating is, because of a legislative loop-hole, Merrils Edes are unanswerable to anyone for their blatant flaunting of FSA, Office of Fair Trading and government guidelines because they are solicitors. The Solicitors Regulatory Association agrees what they are doing is unpleasant but not illegal and so, in the name of HBOS, they have carte blanche to employ whatever tactics they wish without fear of losing their licence to practice. Little wonder they are happy to say on their website they collect money for their clients irrespective of whether the individuals are “can’t pays” or "won't pays”.

I understand Confucius said, “To see what is right, and not do it is want of courage or of principle.”  And it seems to me the Bank of Scotland has decided to set its stall out with people who have neither. All I can hope for is my courage and principles, along with the Ombudsman sense of what is right, will ultimately win the day.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Eighteenth century Irish statesman, author orator and political theorist Edmund Burke once said, "Bad things happen when good men do nothing" and I cannot help but wonder if over the last seventeen years of marriage my “doing nothing” was pivotal to our subsequent financial demise.  

When I retired from the financial services industry on grounds of ill health in 1998 I handed the bread-winning reins over to my husband, confident my financial reputation was safe in his hands.  At the time, I was half way through my pregnancy with our second child and suffering from exhaustion and chronic migraine brought on by over work, along with hypothyroidism and something which was later diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

At the age of forty and on the recommendation of my very supportive GP, I moved from a business life in the fast lane to one with my family and home at its center.  For the first two years we were supported by my accruals from the insurance industry and an income protection policy which paid out in the event of my ill health.  My husband was confident he could use the time provided by this short-term financial safety net to build a business using the capital we already had and in so doing take over the responsibility of providing for our family.  He showed me his figures for a ten year plan which involved selling our seven bedroom house together with my former matrimonial home to fund a “buy to let” portfolio which was to replace my income.  The balance from the sale was to provide seed money for a property development business he planned to run alongside the lettings business.  His research was extensive and his figures were both realistic and plausible. This supporting evidence, together with his track record for the successful refurbishment of two previous properties led me to believe I could relax into my role of housewife and mother for the first time in my adult life.  
  
Ten years on I was still basking in the knowledge my husband’s carefully constructed business plan had proved to be a successful one.  I was further encouraged to buy into the illusion of affluence when it was suggested we pay school fees well in advance so as to enjoy a discount. We enjoyed regular visits to our beautifully appointed apartment on the Costa Del Sol and commissioned a high quality finish for our sixteenth century grade two listed barn conversion which was to become our home. The sad and untimely demise my mother-in-law from Motor Neurone disease left my husband with additional capital of £200,000 in the summer of 2007 providing me with no reason to think we had any financial problems.

Within a year I discovered my husband was contemplating taking his own life with his shotgun and we were one million pounds in the red with not a single asset to our name.

When I exchanged my status as a business woman of integrity for the role of house wife and mother I had no reason to believe that, along with my financial integrity, I was giving up my right to make informed decisions about borrowings in my name.  Now, nearly three years on from the “Grand Opening,” I realize my husband made a permanently life changing decision when he risked my much valued reputation along without our home, our livelihood and our financial future and chose to withhold information from me about our joint borrowings. It is my belief he was suffering from mental health issues resulting from his unresolved grief following the long period of illness and the loss of two of his closest family members. Circumstances of which our lender and mortgage broker were both fully aware of at the time.

However, the Bank of Scotland had no such  excuse and they chose to remove my right to the information which could have saved my home and my financial reputation because I was married to the co- borrower. Instead, through unadulterated negligence, they joined forces with my unstable, grief stricken husband and set in motion a course of events which  I continue to pay the consequences of today.

Having made this enormous contribution to our financial demise the Bank of Scotland  now tell me it is I should who pick up the cost of their mistake. Before this act of gross negligence, I had a good reputation which was threatened by my husband’s bad judgement.  However, the ugly business practices of the Bank of Scotland have not only turned my family’s difficult circumstances into impossible ones, they have also relieved me of my financial reputation along with home and financial future and while it may well be true  bad things happen when good men do nothing, I have learned many things since finding myself in such unfortunate circumstances.  One of them is I am not, and never have been, comfortable with doing nothing.

These days I now find myself wondering what the going rate is for a reputation. To me it was priceless but it is almost certainly worth a lot more than a £217,000 shortfall.