More reasons to be cheerful

Margaret Thatcher once said, “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”  Hoping there is rationale to this argument, I put aside the financial ombudsman’s adjudicator’s judgemental and derogatory comments in an effort to relax with my children over half term. Distancing myself from the onslaught in this way has enabled me to reflect on my campaign to rebuild my family’s life and there is a lot for which I am most grateful.

In October 2008 my world fell apart when I discovered my husband had borrowed well beyond our means in a desperate bid to complete a building project before the property market went into recession. Our troubles were compounded by the news our business bank, Heritable, was in administration leaving us in an untenable position on every front.

However,

In December 2011 Heritable Bank formally released my husband and I from a shortfall obligation of £210,000 and in so doing presented me with a beautifully packaged Christmas gift of unbridled relief. I remain eternally grateful to those within Heritable Bank who chose to use empathy and compassion when considering the solution to our predicament.

In October 2008 when I realised there was also £446,000 of credit card debt and no means with which to repay it, I was distraught to be party to this insurmountable sum and imagined it would be with us forever.

However,

Today, £40,000 is all that remains as the balance has either been written off or deemed not persuable by our creditors. Those who elected debt forgiveness as a way forward for us offered it with words of good will for both our family and our future. I remain truly grateful for their pragmatic approach to our financial problems.

In October 2008 I was horrified to find our family home was the subject of a possession order and further panicked to discover without financial references it was impossible to secure a tenancy on a rented house through the normal channels. Fearing for my children’s future and desperate to remain in a familiar location amongst friends and family I tried everything I could think of but without success.

However,

In December 2008, I received a phone call from a gentleman who, having originally declined my request for accommodation, wished to reconsider our application on the basis of a character reference instead of a financial one. In January 2009 we moved into a homely farmhouse where we have remained ever since.  By finding an innovative solution to our housing needs our landlords provided us with sanctuary when others wouldn’t. For this ongoing act of kindness I am truly appreciative.

In October 2008, finding ourselves bereft of both income and assets we were not only unable to pay the school fees but were already a term behind. Believing my children would never again enjoy a private education I contacted the school to advise them of our position with the heaviest of hearts.

However,

Instead of being shown the door, not only was my eldest son awarded a full bursary but I was also given advice on how to secure two further awards for my younger children. In Feb 2012 thanks to the guidance of the Headmaster’s and their respective bursars I am proud to say my daughter has now received an academic award for an independent secondary school and my youngest son has been earmarked for a sports scholarship. I am indebted to the people who guided me through this emotive process with my children’s best interests in their hearts and a genuine understanding for our difficulties.

And,

On lodging my HBOS complaint with the Financial Ombudsman’s Services in April 2010 I mistakenly believed help would be on hand to communicate effectively with my persecutors and sheild me from further episodes of personal attack. Although FOS intervention quickly resulted in the removal of HBOS’s Merrils Ede henchmen from my case, more recent letters from my adjudicator have revealed an impatient disinterest combined with a sizeable ration of personal distaste. Attitude of this nature, from a financial regulator appointed to my case, left me feeling both despondent and completely disarmed.

However,

Following my complaint to the FOS’s Chief Executive, I was contacted by their complaints department who not only expressed remorse at the way in which I had been dealt with by their adjudicator but also revealed HBOS had been unresponsive to the FOS’s requests concerning my case and in so doing may well forgoe the opportunity to have their say. Futhermore my complaint is to be fast-tracked to avoid current case lead times of fourteen months and in addition I am also permitted to include my recent findings on the subject of HBOS’s over-valuation of my home. Being treated with respect and understanding over the pain-staking and painful process of bringing HBOS to account has not only lifted my spirits but given me the invaluable gift of a hope and for this I am immeasurably grateful.

William Arthur Ward, author, pastor and teacher believed we should all, “do more than belong, participate; do more than care, help; do more than believe, practice; do more than forgive, forget; do more than dream, work” and it is clear, from my half term reflections, with the exception of HBOS and my ombudsman's ajudicator, most people who have touched my life during these difficult years have chosen to live and work by a similar code to that endorsed by William Ward. It is to these  people I wish to extend my whole hearted thanks.

Girl Power

In the words of Groucho Marx, “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made” and with this in mind I am left wondering whether David Cameron is discovering or faking the secret of life when he speaks of the benefits of corporate equality and the need for more women in the boardroom as his ready remedy for the current economic crisis.

While I whole heartedly agree honesty and fair dealing, regardless of gender, should be a motivation for us all, I struggle to understand how Cameron plans to instigate a shift in age old corporate habits to ensure women get more top industry jobs when he remains unable to implement a shift in either policy or legislation which meaningfully takes to task the perpetrators of banking fraud or makes them accountable for their crimes against the economy.

Little more than one hundred years ago women fought for sound policy and impartial justice for all.  A century later however, it is not just women who are suffering the consequences of discrimination, this time by government backed banking recklessness and unbridled favoritism, when it comes to arrears solutions and debt forgiveness for individuals.

Although I applaud the principal of a meritocracy which takes no heed of gender, the chance of success will remain limited if our government appointed regulators continue to support employers like HBOS who openly declare they have no obligation to discuss lending matters with married women if they have already discussed them with their husbands.  I cannot imagine this Lloyds TSB Group owned, taxpayer supported corporation will be one to embrace a louder female executive voice on the board or anywhere else if my own experience is anything to go by.

For me it is Kishore Mahbubani not David Cameron who explains who will be guiding our politics towards economic recovery when he says,

"The simplest way of understanding the virtues of meritocracy is to ask the question: why is Brazil a soccer superpower and an economic middle power? The answer is that when it looks for soccer talent, it searches for it in all sectors of the population, from upper classes to the slums. A boy from the slums is not discriminated against if he has soccer talent. But in the economic field, Brazil looks for talent in a far smaller base of the population, primarily the upper and middle classes."

I strongly suspect any vision for economic recovery is destined to suffer the mediocre results of the Brazilian economic field if it continues to remains so deeply entrenched in the old boy network it is unable to pay anything but lip service to accessing the untapped potential of womankind from either the upper middle class or anywhere else for that matter.  However, in the event this is not the case and more women do find their way into high places with David Cameron’s help, I can only hope their effectiveness might bode well for those of us who have been discriminated against and defrauded out of our financial futures at the hands of banks like HBOS. If not, judging by the number of comments attached to articles on this subject, Cameron’s words have made a high profile and debatable headline even if, like Groucho Marx’s suggests, the speaker has merely mastered the art of faking it.

Dark Knights and Hoods

Evangelist Billy Graham said, “There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men” and hearing that former HBOS executive Peter Cumming’s corporate lending portfolio was something of an Aladdin’s cave, I can see how tantalising the promise of such riches must have been; especially to those who were ignorant of the fraudulent methods employed to achieve them. For those who agreed to practise the dark art of perpetuating “the get rich quick” myth on the balance sheets, I have no doubt the power that accompanied such lucrative returns was both all consuming and intoxicating.

Still victimised by the consequences of the ongoing banking gluttony, I often speculate as to how HBOS originally portrayed my own residential mortgage in April 2006 when an £790,000 advance was secured against my home based on what I now believe was a grossly inflated valuation of £925,000. It  has been no surprise to find HBOS' continued nonchalant attitude has persisted and precluded me from all discussions regarding this mortgage from the outset until the moment I contacted them about our financial circumstances in October 2008. Now I am even more curious to know how my unrecoverable £217,000 shortfall is being recorded in their loan book and explained considering it represents a nose dive of approximately 30% against their in house valuation only three years earlier and remains completely unrecoverable.

However, with all eyes currently on who will or won’t take a slice of the millions set aside for bankers bonuses this year and increasing public interest in who should be next to follow Fred Goodwin into his Knighthood free status, I cannot imagine anyone within HBOS or the FOS are wondering if the vast amount of HBOS debt that continues to be written off every day by Lloyds TSB might ever include a residential shortfall which has left me standing on a financial precipice for years. Nor do I delude myself any consideration by the FSA has been given as to whether or not my unrecoverable loan is still propping up HBOS balance sheets as a fictitious asset on which to pay executive bonuses or instead it is being used to perpetuate another boardroom driven myth that lurks in shady recesses supported by negative accountability for financial crimes against everyone but the HBOS executives themselves.

Forever presented with antidotes to our economic health which continue to favour the corporate along with solutions limited to toothless acts of regulation designed to placate rather than resolve, I cannot comprehend why, to date, no government initiative or banking reform has focused on a reprieve for the individual victims who, like me, remain in purgatory as a direct result of the well documented fraudulence, unadulterated greed and widespread corporate dishonesty of sociopathic CEOs, Banksters and their Hoods.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution” however, despite an economic crisis of global proportions, those who cruelly perverted the course of both my financial and family life, along with the lives of thousands of others like me, are not only at liberty to bully and persecute their victims without restraint but, thanks to David Cameron’s Christian principals of forgiveness and the captured policies of his regulators, they remain free to pervert any chance of a morally sound outcome for the individual.

Waste alot, Want alot

America’s Ethel Grodzin Romm once said, “What could our worst enemy do to damage this strong and beautiful country? He could do no better than to get us to squander our human and natural resources on dubious missions and then trick us into plugging our ears against the howls of those who object” and when Ken Costa openly said, "Anyone familiar with banking and finance will know that it is completely impossible to legislate out bad practise" it is difficult not to assume his condoning words are designed to encourage us to plug our ears to the public outcry at proposals to pay bonuses for failure and persuade us to discard the messy process of bringing the criminal actions of errant executive bankers to account.

Thankfully Lloyds banking groups CEO Antonio Horta Osorio and, after much media attention, RBS CEO Stephen Hester, have both seen fit to decline the proposed million pound bonuses which were heading their way from their largely tax payer owned employers. Their actions may well be the first chink of light at the end of a well established self serving banking tunnel of personal reward which not only highlights the importance of moral accountability within our corporations but clearly illustrates responsible capitalism can never be responsible if the people at the top are not. Although the banks remain an easy target when it comes to double standards, remuneration excesses and the squandering of tax payers money, I can’t help but find myself equally outraged at the news brought home by my husband regarding a recent Marks and Spencer’s initiative.

While I do not pretend to know the ins and outs of all things retail, I cannot begin to understand how M & S can, against a back drop of real hardship for many individuals caught up in the fall out of an ongoing global recession and in spite of their staff's willingness to run it for free, truly believe it is best practise to terminate the nightly waste sale of unsold food to their employees. Instead they now insist these very same people render unsold produce inedible before assigning it to land fill, or at best animal feed and compost. The impact of being unable to purchase discounted produce for their families will undoubtedly be hugely detrimental to every M & S employee but, above all else, it is immoral to squander food in this way.

With mounting evidence that irresponsible capitalism lives on in the majority of our banks as well as in retail giant Marks and Spencer’s too, it is no surprise to discover M&S executives remain deaf to protests of those of us who object. It appears English writer Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) was correct in his belief that written words are “the only riches our posterity cannot squander” because it seems, as a race, we are collectively doing pretty well when it comes to the squandering of everything else.

Outrageous Attitudes

The thirtieth president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” but, even with these tools in my armoury, I question my effectiveness when forced to deal with people who are,

·        dismissive
·        opinionated
·        irresponsible
·        sexist
·        self-interested
·        biased

And
       ·        full of contempt.

It continues to be a challenge to weigh up and then decide in what way I should respond.

When faced with "attitide" from both HBOS and Lloyds I wrote twenty two letters and made a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

When faced with "attitude" from the Financial Ombudsman’s adjudicator I responded with a fourteen page letter listing the unaddressed points in my original complaint, quoting the FOS guidelines that covered them and requested the escalation of my case to an Ombudsman.

And,

When it was my sixteen year old son who chose to exhibit the very same attitude towards me in outrage at being asked to help with the washing up, it was the withdrawal of Internet access and a phone call to Virgin to cut off his phone that were my weapons of choice.

If only the solution were as simple for the other culprits of compassionless contempt. Thankfully for me, life's trials have equipped me with a “black belt” in both persistence and determination on which to call........most days, and it is my understanding that, “in the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins. Not through strength, but through persistence.”

I live in hope.

 

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.

New Years Revelations

Believing, like TS Elliot,“ last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice” my New Year’s resolution has been one of mindful determination to mark 2012 with a new and audible voice of my own.  Sadly, my adversaries have neither new voices nor new words for this brand New Year and instead have chosen to sing the same old song.

Determined not to let their repetitive monotones colour my New Year spirit I have started my first child free week of 2012 by replying to yet more unsolicited and largely meaningless correspondence.

I have;

·        Explained to Egg I find selling my husband’s debt to a collection agency all but two years after advising me of their intentions not to pursue him both an unusual and unsatisfactory way of illustrating their compassion.

·        Explained to my very supportive MP that I wish to take my Warmfront complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman in the hope I will eventually secure the heating survey I was promised in December 2008.

·        Explained, again, to the Financial Ombudsman’s adjudicator, who has clearly taken umbrage at my fourteen page letter asking her to follow the FOS guidelines, that I wish to be informed of her reasons for seeking HBOS’s permission to escalate my complaint to a formal enquiry more than eighteen months after she first took my case.

Satisfied all wolves are once again deterred from any temptation to darken my door or my doorstep, I have been able to set aside fears of damage to my children’s sense of well being and turn my attention to the duties of house and home. The task in pole position involves venturing into each unruly but now vacant child’s bedroom while the occupants are at school in an effort to reclaim some floor space and restore some kind of order.

While I remain amazed, but no longer surprised, at the quantity of dirty washing and empty sweet wrappers that can harmoniously cohabit within a teenager’s bedroom if left unchecked, I can still be caught unawares with the discovery of an academic award received but not mentioned or, as on one occasion, an MI5 recruiting brochure abandoned on a bedside table. However, in spite of  more than thirty four years of parenting I was totally unprepared for what I read on the fly leaf of an old but otherwise blank diary I was about to throw away in the name of de-cluttering.

“Dear 2007 diary,

I have kept you because 2007 was a year of no troubles and my life was perfect.
Time flies and it is now February 24^th 2011.  I have moved house, moved schools and left the village I have always lived in. Now I have more school work, more home work and have been having a really hard time.

I have kept this diary even though it has nothing it because I wish I could turn back time.”

This simple but heartfelt statement written by my thirteen year old daughter almost a year ago saddens me immensely.  Not least because, unbeknown to me and in spite of my best efforts to keep our persecution at the hands of HBOS completely seperate from family life, my daughter has still suffered its consequences in silence and kept an old and empty diary purely because it represents the last year she remembers being wholly untroubled.

Aware that HBOS has stolen my health, my financial future and, so far, three and a half years of my own life, it did not occurred to me, until the discovery of this very unwelcome New Year’s revelation in the words of a child, HBOS has also stolen three and a half years of my daughter’s childhood and this, for me, is nothing short of heartbreaking.