Maltesers and Madmen

The Maltese physician, inventor, author of Six Thinking Hats and the man who coined the term “lateral thinking”, Edward de Bono, once said, “Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations” and this has certainly proved the case for me in my fruitless attempts to get the Bank of Scotland to write off a mortgage shortfall their irresponsible lending culture, their gross incompetence and their rapacious greed created.

Throughout the past six unhappy years I have spent countless hours explaining;

•  Neither my husband or I have anything more than a subsistence income with which to support our three children.
• Neither my husband or I have any capital with which to repay an alleged mortgage shortfall of £217,00,

And, as a result of my recent findings, further explained,

• Like me, HBOS has been a victim of broker mortgage fraud and, as a result of the falsifications which were submitted by the broker in an online application, their mortgage contract with my husband and I is not only void but cannot be enforced.

However, rather than respond to my repeated requests for documentary evidence to help support my case against the broker with the Cornish police, I have just returned from my much needed two week holiday with family to eight letters from the Bank of Scotland and their solicitors not only asking for payment in full but telling me;

•       “We understand that this account is not in dispute”
•    “There is no valid reason for it to remain unpaid”

And,

•        "We do not wish our request for payment “to have a detrimental impact on your personal finances”

Edward de Bono also said, “Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic” but after six years of flogging the HBOS dead horse I can only wonder...

WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE ON?

Adverse Effects

Former US Ambassador to Spain and nineteenth century author Washington Irving once said, “There is, in every true woman’s heart, a spark of heavenly fire which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity” and in the face of further obstacles of my own, kindling up and blazing with heavenly fire seems the only way forward.

During the past month I have been advised by our land lord,

• He wishes to carry out building works on a neighbouring property which will necessitate the decimation of our back garden throughout July and August.
• He is switching our central heating system to that of sustainable fuel in two months during which time he expects us to use up all the LPG and oil we have already purchased for next winter
• Our residential tenancy is in jeopardy because, not only have we enjoyed a very low rent for the past four years but, despite having been given permission to have lodgers at outset, we are technically in breach of our lease.

During the past fortnight I have been advised by the HBOS data subject access team,

• Their mortgage department is not responding to their requests for the information missing from my mortgage file
• Their in house solicitors are proving impossible to contact
• Their in house surveyors have ignored all their requests to communicate

And,

During the past week I have repeatedly advised my twelve year old dyslexic son,

• Being repeatedly punched, scratched and sworn at by two of his classmates while on their five day French trip is a serious offence.
• The cuts and bruises he has suffered will soon heal and neither show or hurt
• Reporting bullies is always the right thing to do despite the discomfort from the fallout.

Ancient Greek philosopher and teacher Epicurus once said, “You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day. You develop it by surviving difficult and challenging adversity” and it is at times like these I can only hope he is right!

Ridiculous Solutions

Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer Archimedes of Syracuse once said. “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world” and, despite an HBOS penchant for obstructiveness, I, like Archimedes I am still hoping a little leverage, along with the evidential support from my HBOS Data Subject Access Request will eventually produce some world moving success of my own.

The Liberty Guide to Human Rights states “if information about you is held by your doctor, by your bank, by a credit reference agency, by your employer or by the tax-man, the likelihood is that it will be [available to you under the rules of a Data Subject Access Request because it is deemed to be] your personal data”. This extends to “personal data where it is processed to learn or record something about that individual or where the processing of that information has impact on that individual”. However, much to my own consternation and that of my Financial Ombudsman Service adjudicator, it has proved extremely difficult to acquire all the HBOS documentation relating to my mortgage miss selling case.

Eleven weeks have passed since I was allocated an FOS adjudicator to investigate my complaint and I am still waiting for HBOS to provide me with the following information,

•           Full details of the valuation undertaken for mortgage purposes on 26.4.06 by Colley’s Surveyors.
•          Confirmation of who was responsible for overseeing the processing  of my mortgage (as the file notes I have received so far say my broker was removed from the panel during its underwriting).
•          The reason my broker was removed from the panel in the first place
•          Copies of all of  the HBOS and broker’s compliance check sheets associated with my mortgage application
• .      A full copy of the HBOS and broker Fact Find which supported my application.
• .      Copies of all documentary evidence supplied by our accountant
• .      An explanation as to why, according to my screen notes, my application was eligible for a maximum loan of £1,260,050 when my home supposedly enjoyed a risk assessment value of £925,000 and our application was for a remortgage amounting to £795,000.
• .      A full copy of HBOS’ contracted solicitors file for my conveyance

And

• .      The identity of the individual who was responsible for underwriting and signing off my remortgage in May 2006.

Anxious to expedite matters, I rang HBOS to solicit a more immediate reply.

I was told,

·         The incomplete copy of my file should not have been sent out without fully addressing my requests
·         My questions would be answered (or declined depending on whether or not they are deemed to be personal data) within 14 days

And, (seemingly totally unaware of the fact that the DSAR team have already ready sent me the names of at least three people who worked on the underwriting of my remortgage)

·         I will never be provided with the names of the individuals who underwrote my mortgage as this would constitute a breach of HBOS’ employee Duty of Care.

Keen to keep the Financial Ombudsman Service abreast of the situation in general I wrote to my adjudicator and was informed,

·         I have already had eleven weeks grace to provide additional evidence
·         The FOS must be fair to both parties at all times,
·         To provide me with a further extension to gather evidence would be unfair to HBOS and
·         If I have not received the evidence I am waiting for before 28 June, the FOS investigation into my complaint is likely to proceed without it.

Greatly disturbed by the dubious logic of my adjudicators comments, I replied with the following,

“Dear Financial Ombudsman Service Adjudicator,

Thank you for explaining to me how things work and I understand my case cannot drag on indefinitely and nor would I wish it to. 

In an effort to expedite matters, earlier today and before I received your email, I spoke to the DSAR team at HBOS who apologized for agreeing to send me information and then not acting on it. Today they have assured me, once again, they will reply within 14 days with regard to the information I have asked for. Thankfully they have also offered to help secure my files from their contracted surveyor Colley's and their contracted solicitors Pathways Residential Mortgages as they say this information should have been available to me in the first place. According to **** **** on the HBOS DSAR team, contracted surveyors and solicitors often misunderstand that the individual is entitled to have sight of their own files.

Although I appreciate you must make sure you are fair to both sides and 11 weeks is a long time to wait for me to supply additional evidence, I believe the fact that I have been unsuccessfully requesting this evidence from HBOS for much more than 11 weeks is in itself unfair. I am now very worried to hear you may well have to proceed with my case on the 28 June regardless of whether or not HBOS have fulfilled my request for valuation and conveyance information. I believe progressing your investigation without all the evidence will only serve to disadvantage my own case of complaint while actively encouraging HBOS to drag their feet in the future and this is not fair to me.

I would like to take this opportunity to reiterate that I am more than happy to collate and send the further evidence I spoke of as quickly I can, once I have received, it but sadly the time frame still rests firmly in the hands of the HBOS DSAR team.

I do very much appreciate where you are coming from but hope you won't mind me pointing this out.

Yours sincerely”

Life After Debt

The Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland once said, ““If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would” and,  if the results of last week’s communications with both HBOS and the Financial Ombudsman Service are a measure by which to assess them, it appears that in the world of the Financial Ombudsman Service and that of the HBOS Data Subject Access Request team, the logic is precisely the same.

Nevertheless, I have no alternative but to I await their replies.

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. 

Unlevel Playing Fields

Philosopher, lawyer and political theorist Marcus Tullius Cicero once said, “When government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent, it is a userer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honourable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself” and using austerity measures to redress the fraudulence of the banks and the greed of the corporate elite does precisely the same.

Those who would have us believe “we are all in this together” insisted,

• Bank bailouts would protect shareholders, help home owners and preserve jobs
• Bankers would use tax payers support to bolster the economy
• Official enquiries would hold those responsible to account
• Government guidelines and financial regulation would protect the vulnerable

However, during almost five years of economic crisis,

• Bailouts continue to save the bankers and not their customers or the economy
• Taxpayer investment provided funds for mis-selling reinbursement and rewards for failure
• FSA investigations held no-one to account bar a few insignificant fines
• Job losses and austerity measures reduced the incomes of the vulnerable and left them stripped of their homes

Before the crisis of 2008 those daring to suggest deregulated, reckless lending would come home to roost were labelled incompetents and lunatics. Four years later, as a direct result of bailout related austerity measures, cut backs dictate my eighty six year old mother cannot receive an attendance allowance unless she has been unable to manage her personal care for more than six months and her GP tells me he is unable to admit her to hospital unless he can secure funding for her treatment with ultra sound evidence for which the waiting list is six to eight weeks. Struggling to address her medical emergency along with her future care while unsuccessfully pressing HBOS to investigate my long overdue complaint, it beggars belief to find our banksters, who to date have remained largely unchallenged, are once again deliberating over how best to pocket obscene rewards for their gargantuan failures while the vulnerable and the innocent pay the price for years to come.

For the vast majority David Cameron’s “aspiration nation” is far from a shiny new goal for our economic future but instead a harsh and painful consequence of our bankers wicked past. After decades of unregulated pillaging, banks have bequeathed us a legacy of cut backs and cover ups and because of this, a few much loved but often fanciful aspirations are all a great many of us now have left. Marcus Tullius Cicero also said, “If the truth were self evident, eloquence would be unnecessary” and despite what some would have us believe, the playing field in this financial crisis is definitely not level however eloquently it is portrayed.