Questions and No Answers

Over the last seven days, I have battled a cold, battled with the Friends Committee over our imminent Ball and battled with HBOS's appointed debt collectors Merrils Ede Solicitors. Feeling the need to take a couple of paces back from the coal face I decided to make use of the good weather to do some errands. It was while driving around it sprung to mind I have been in a difficult spot with the Halifax once before.

In 1987, soon after joining the financial services industry, I remortgage my home with the Halifax so I could finance it's renovation.  As mortgage rates were relatively low at the time, a £165,000 mortgage against a £210,000 valuation was easily affordable.The stock market crash of Black Monday October 1987 changed this situation changed.

While I was kept busy talking to clients about their investments, the chancellor was equally busy pushing base rates up in an effort to curb spending. Before long, mortgage rates had topped 15.4% which almost tripled the mortgage interest payments I had signed up to at outset.  Before long my beautifully refurbished home had also lost 30% in value and it had become clear to me, although I could no longer afford the interest payments, a sale would not cover the outstanding mortgage either.  Even if I had secured a purchaser I had to means with which to cover the anticipated shortfall with either monthly payments or capital.

To help me save my house and avoid mortgage shortfall debt, my local Halifax branch manager agreed to me letting my home  and making partial mortgage interest payments until the economic crisis improved and interested rates dropped. This solution enabled me to meet the majority of my interest payments while riding out the recession. When, as expected interest rates dropped, the Halifax suggested they capitalise the £11,000 of arrears which had accumulated. I did this in1992. I continued to cover the whole mortgage interest payment for years to come and  when I eventually moved back into the house, I sold it and made a sizable profit in April 2000.

The actions I took in 1988 provided a perfect solution for both the Halifax and I throughout the late eighties and early nineties and led to an outcome where neither party lost out. Why, twenty years later, was it so impossible for them to cut me a similar deal in the economic recession of 2008? I can not for the life of me understand why this time it has been better for them to hound me to distraction

Although I know this question is one for which I am unlikely ever to secure an answer, I would certainly appreciate the opportunity to watch somebody from Lloyds, HBOS or the Bank Scotland attempt to provide me a logical reply.

Passionate beliefs

I am told to believe in something passionately is the way in which to make it a reality and conceptualising in this way has been the driving force for my continued attempts to piece our lives back together. While frequently advised to throw the bankruptcy towel into the arena by those without the constitution for tumultuous seas, I have refused to allow lending sharks to pick over the bones HBOS have already stripped bare because,

• I believe passionately financial institutions should not lend residential mortgage   money to those with £446,000 outstanding on credit cards.
• I believe passionately banks should not advance £3,500,000 in commercial mortgages without evidence of taxable income and assets.
• I believe passionately it is negligent for lenders to ask wive's to sign away a family home to support a husband's business without illustrating how they have assessed payment affordability.
• I believe passionately it is irresponsible for a bank to instruct the conveyance of a family home without giving a wife independent advice.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for a creditor to lay siege to a woman and her children in her home, until such time as the police arrive, with sub machine guns, wearing riot gear, to remove them.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any family to be hounded by phone and threatened by debt collection agencies who pretend they don't know the financial position of the vulnerable despite hundreds of letters to the contrary.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to borrow £17,000 from the parents of his children's school friends.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to borrow £65,000 from his and his wife's family.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to secure the equity in his step daughter's and grand children's home against a business debt.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to sign documents which will give  unpaid tradesmen the authoriy to take away gifts made to his wife from her parents.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to tell anyone he can afford to  pay them when he does not know how he will achieve this.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man under any circumstances to keep all of the above from his wife with lies.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to go to any lengths to avoid taking responsibilities for his actions and instead choosing to blame others.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to lead his whole family to the edge of a financial precipice without asking them if they wish to go there.
• I believe passionately it is unacceptable for any man to pretend he has his difficulties in hand in order to avoid losing face.

But I also believe passionately,

•  No man should be hounded by creditors to the point of suicide.
• No man should lose his brother (age 44) and his mother (age 67) to Motor Neurone Disease three weeks apart. 

 And above all else I believe passionately

• No child should be forced to grow up without a father as consequence of having financial difficulties.

It is for these reasons I am still here and for these reasons I continue to fight back.... passionately.