International Happiness Day

Self improvement guru, lecturer, and author of How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Brekenridge Carnegi once said, “It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it” and today, on International Happiness Day, I could not agree more.

Once devastated to the point of ill health I am relieved to say I am no longer the woman who could once be found underweight, completely bald from stress and cowering in her soon to be repossessed home. Police officers from the Armed Response Unit do not now frequent my drive to discourage angry tradesmen from laying siege and the threat of a claw hammer to my husband’s head is not what I think of when I hear a knock at my door. No more do I endure the involuntary stomach flips which used to go hand in hand with a glimpse of the postman approaching my house and neither do I answer each and every phone call with the trepidation of a woman braced for the onslaught of hard line debt collectors and their verbal abuse.

It has taken almost five years, upwards of three hundred and fifty letters, forty or more debt counselling consultations, three full blown Financial Ombudsman Service investigations, one hundred and fifty five blog posts, twenty thousand two hundred and ninety four page views,  one thousand nine hundred and ninety six tweets,  an inordinate amount of political and economic reading,  numerous phone calls, countless comments on facebook together with thousands and thousands of man hours to discover that although happiness is not dependent on what I have, where I am or what I am doing, happiness is definitely about having something to hope for.

American author and essayist Elizabeth Gilbert once said, “Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it” and although financially our circumstances have remained unchanged, I am very pleased to report that by fighting, striving and insisting I have not only discovered that I have been a victim of mortgage fraud but I have also found someone who investigates financial fraud on behalf of clients trapped by the wrongdoing of lenders and their associates who is prepared to take my case.

Because of this I now most definitely have hope and it is for this reason, today on International Happiness Day, I feel truly happy!

Malice, Manipulation and Aforethought

American business magnet, investor and philanthropist Warren Buffet once said, “Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects” and, as is the case with so many victims of the current global economic crisis, it seems unwelcome after-effects are precisely what those of us who have suffered at the hands of fraudulent banksters are expected to endure.

It is now fast approaching three weeks that I have been waiting for a response to my letter accusing the Financial Ombudsman Service of favoring Halifax Bank of Scotland in their investigative practices. It seems I am, along with numerous other victims of banking malfeasance, not only expected to swallow said "economic medicine" by the barrel but feel heartily reassured in the knowledge that the very same people who stripped us of our livelihoods and our homes have now, under the watchful eye of our regulators, kicked their culture of greed into touch and will henceforth be operating with our well being at the very core of their corporations.  Now pious and reformed after inadvertently relieving their customers and the global economy of trillions we, the voiceless general public, are urged to believe the following.

     ·        Rewriting the banking codes of conduct will protect us

     ·        Prosecuting banking fraud is neither desirable, practical or good for the economy

 and,

·        New legislation along with revised incentive packages will thwart any bankster’s fraudulent inclinations in the future.

However, if my personal experience of battling with the banks for the past four years is anything to go by, nothing could be further from the truth. In the real world customer well-being is definitely not paramount and irresponsible banking is unlikely to be a thing of the past when I am regularly told by financial regulators,

    ·        Flaunting banking codes of conduct are perfectly permissible as adherence to      them is optional

    ·        Prosecuting a bank is nigh on impossible because it is too difficult to prove intent

    ·        Duty of customer care is not a requirement in law

In the real world, a far off place banksters and their puppet regulators rarely visit,

·        Anglo Irish Bank’s “insane recklessness” not only contaminated the underwriting policy of fellow lenders but was pivotal to a property crash which lost millions of people their homes, their livelihoods, their pensions and in some cases their lives. Needless to say not one iota of reform or regulation has provided restitution for those who paid the price of a calculated manipulation of the property market for elitist personal gain.

In the real world,

·        Loyal Royal Bank of Scotland's commercial borrowers continue to fall victim of “knavish manoeuvres” expressly designed to hijack their assets. By shifting billions in commercial debt and concealing losses via balance sheet manipulation, RBS's bad loans and liabilities have been miraculously transformed into the assets CEO Stephen Hester so desperately needs to successfully implement his recovery programme.

In the real world,

Libor manipulation is not just inappropriate conduct which the banking industry and their regulators have been fully aware of from as early as 1990's , but a manipulative rouse to steal people's hard earned cash and escape unpunished to bask in the profits.

·   And, in the real world,   

·        HBOS are perfectly at liberty to willfully neglect their duty of care, over-sell a discounted, interest only mortgage secured against a family home they vastly overvalued, exclude me from all discussions from the outset, start repossession proceedings without making me aware the loan was in distress, ignore my offer of rental income to service the interest, force a sale which created a £217,000 shortfall and hound me for the re-imbursement of a deficit which came about as a direct result of their highly dubious business ethics and wanton recklessness.

Nineteenth century Civil war veteran and American political leader Robert Green Ingersol once said, “Happiness is not a reward-it is a consequence and suffering is not a punishment but a result” however, if those whose greed resulted in our suffering remains unpunished and regulators are increasingly happy to repackage captured reforms as a solution to an economic crisis which has left millions in financial purgatory, I suspect suffering is destined to be both the consequence and the result for a great many victims of banking criminality for the foreseeable future.

I sincerely hope I am wrong.

The air that I breath

The Duke of Wellington once said, "All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do” and I find his words wholly descriptive of the process I have endured throughout my three year mission to obtain a meaningful dialogue with HBOS.

Grateful of knowledge gleaned of the lending industry via a career in financial services combined with a hundred years of financial expertise within my immediate family gave me the impression I would be well positioned to communicate with HBOS about our financial difficulties and effect a solution. Initially I hoped to avoid the forced sale of my home in 2008 by letting it for a three year period to a long term tenant. When this failed I believed an understanding of money might stand me in good stead when requesting debt forgiveness.  Instead, I discovered nothing could have been further from the truth when it came to dealing with the too big to fail bank, HBOS.

Over the past three years I have,

·        Fully explained our financial circumstances and supplied supporting evidence to HBOS

·        Enlisted the help of a many of charitable organisations to verify my circumstances to HBOS

·        Researched and quoted the guidelines for the FSA, FOS and CCS to illustrate my point to HBOS

·        Scrutinised and quoted from a plethora of literature on government guidelines and the Mortgage Code of Conduct to support my case against  HBOS

·        Absorbed the expertise of any number of insolvency experts, tax investigators, accountants and bankruptcy courts to quote to HBOS in an effort to make our position understood

And

·        Written hundreds of letters to HBOS, their agents and their regulatory authorities initially calling on the use of logic, then begging for empathy and compassion, and finally demanding a formal complaint.

Armed with the aforementioned industry insight, I had hoped for a practical and dignified resolution to our unrecoverable position would eventually be negotiated. Sadly my endeavours have resulted in nothing more than a vast accumulation of knowledge in areas where I formerly had little or no expertise.

On the other hand I have learned a great deal about debt, and am especially well informed on debt with HBOS. From three long years at the HBOS coal face I have discovered,

·        HBOS are neither interested in the truth nor are they motivated to reach a cost effective resolution to an individual’s financial problems

·        Charitable debt handling organisations regularly feel impotent when  battling the banks on behalf on their vulnerable clients and have little in their armoury to offer other than sympathy and bankruptcy

·        Regulatory guidelines for the financial services industry are rarely enforced and their in-house adjudicators are often, at best, subjective and at worst derogatory and unsympathetic

·        Individuals employed in debt collection on behalf of HBOS are often superior in attitude and extremely judgmental.

·        Bankruptcy and insolvency arrangements are a luxury many, including myself, cannot afford

·        No one really believes that debt forgiveness for the individual actually exists in spite of evidence I have supplied to the contrary

·        Letters of logic, compassion and complaint are rarely read by those who have the wherewithal to understand them

And,

·        A little bit of knowledge on the part of the individual can pose a very lucrative commodity when it comes to establishing HBOS’s culpability in the financial downfall of one of the 99%.

This week, I am to meet with the senior partner of a large and established law firm to ascertain if, after three years of pleading for debt mercy, it is I who has grounds to pursue a legal case against HBOS for causing my financial demise in the first place.

It is said there is no point complaining about the air if it’s all you have to breath. And for this reason I have previously looked only for solutions, and later compassion, from my HBOS oppressors. I had hoped our deficit would be forgiven and in so doing allow me to consider my family’s future in a life free from tormentors we could not satisfy.  Now there is the smallest of chances to enjoy a completely different out-look, I can only imagine the joy of breathing air which is no longer contaminated by debt. However, despite this somewhat over-whelming possibility for some good news....

I still won’t be holding my breath!

Long John No Silver

At times I feel like I have a faithful parrot sat upon my shoulder in observation of my Long John No Silver-like limping around while endeavouring to piece together a life which remains is in both financial and emotional tatters.  Every now and then I look up from my task to find he is still there, on his now familiar perch, waiting to see where I plan to lead him next. On occasion, I wonder how many parrots have single handedly sunk their loved ones ship and still kept their lofty perch, but there lies another story.

It was to parents evening I took him last night. As ever, he sat patiently waiting for an opportunity to impart some of his beautifully memorised knowledge.  Only the Head, his wife and, of course I, are aware of the devastating effects that a reckless life on stormy waters has had on me in this role as parrot keeper.  To the rest of the world, and certainly everyone else at parents evening, I am, without a doubt everything one would expect to see in a fellow parent.  I wait patiently in line hoping to hear my children are happy and untouched by the wreckage which is now all that remains of our lives.

To almost everyone present there is no evidence to lead anyone to believe that I am anything other than the woman with a knowledgeable husband faithfully perched at her shoulder waiting for an opportunity to speak.  

A declaration of independence

While sitting in my aga heated kitchen on a dull debt clouded spring day I learned  from a very good friend that posting my thoughts on Blogger might bring me one step closer to writing a book. Armed with her encouraging words and a short lesson in how to publish a post, I now plan to tell my story in the hope it may reach those who wish to listen.

Today is the day on which I declare there is more to me than mere stay at home wife and mother. One day very soon I shall tell my tale and in doing so reveal precisely what has happened.