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. 

Truth and Punishment

Mahatma Gandhi, preeminent leader of Indian nationalism in British-ruled India once said, "Many people, especially ignorant people, punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you are right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth" and after receiving not one, but two heartless letters of HBOS hogwash this week it is clear that ignorance and a complete disregard for the truth is not just the prerogative of Gandhi’s British-ruled India.

It is now four and a half years since the sale fell though on our home and I was prompted to discuss with Halifax Bank of Scotland how best to avoid repossession. Deaf to my proposals to create a tenancy to cover mortgage payments, I embarked upon another fruitless year of communication with HBOS after they forced its sale. During this highly stressful period I enlisted the help of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau’s but, despite their best efforts, no amount of explanation could satisfy this infamous bank that we were in extreme financial difficulties or persuade them to arrest their pursuit of us. It is was only after I consulted a government funded debt management organisation in desperation that I discovered the mortgage on my home may well have been miss sold in the first place.

It has taken me a further three years, via the Financial Ombudsman Service, to persuade HBOS to investigate my complaint only to find their original offer of mortgage was based on both a fictitious purchase price and a fictitious date of purchase at the application stage. I was sure making HBOS aware of this discovery would illustrate, without question, that not only did my compliant have substance but both HBOS’s surveyor and the broker to whom they paid more than £4,000 for placing the mortgage with them, had over-valued my home at outset. Convinced I had finally secured HBOS’s attention, I was relieved to have taken my first, albeit small, step forward after so many unsuccessful years of trying to communicate. Here follows their reply and sadly nothing could have been further from the truth.

In HBOS’s first letter they state,

“The information that was provided in this [mortgage application form] was what was entered into our systems. We took this as being accurate in good faith, and based upon the valuation that took place during the application process, there was never any reason to think this was wrong...Having viewed your comments and our response, my previous letter...has provided you with our final conclusions...As you have reached the end of our internal complaints procedure, any further correspondence received will be placed on file as we do not feel that further communication with you will help resolve your complaint.”

In HBOS’s second letter (which arrived by the very same post) I am told “this matter” has now been put in the hands of their debt collectors.

Because of the scandalous actions of banks such as HBOS, the taxpayer has been saddled with,

•         An £850 billion bill to bail them out,
•     £1.1 trillion of potential liabilities
•     £560 billion of quantitative easing to rebuild balance sheets

Yet I who have lost my home, my livelihood and my financial future at their hands can not only expect to be pursued by them for a £217,000 shortfall for the foreseeable future, while they, in the face of evidence which clearly illustrates there has been serious wrong doing, choose to remain ignorant of the truth and punish me for having the audacity to speak out.

Harvey Fierstein, American actor, playwright, author and champion for gay civil rights once said, “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim and accept no one’s definition of your life,” and because of the way in which HBOS have continued to treat me, it is my plan to turn this day along with each and every other one into an opportunity to follow, without deviation, every single word of Mr Fierstein’s advice.

Costs of Living

Joseph Franklin Rutherford, US trial lawyer, prosecutor and key developer of the Jehovah’s Witnesses doctrines, once said, “ False riches consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons” and allowing those who created a culture of banking fraud (a crime the industry and its regulators would prefer to call miss selling and manipulation) escape accountability, retain the proceeds of their ill gotten gains and position themselves beyond the long arm of the law, clearly illustrates how little has changed since Rutherford first made his observation.

In 2009 the National Audit office stated 850 billion pounds had been spent on saving the UK’s banks from the consequences of their fraudulent actions. This equates to something in the region of £3,500 to £27,500 per capita, depending on whether losses in share values are included in the calculation, and the obligation to fund this sum has been laid firmly on the shoulders of each and every individual in the UK. Furthermore, in Ireland current estimates indicate the cost of the economic crisis will quadruple that which the UK has so far endured. However, four full years since the first distasteful load of banksters dirty washing was aired in public, the tawdry truth has had little effect on those who masterminded this calculated redistribution of wealth.  Their houses and their lands along with their money remain intact and the fines levied by regulators (and perceived by the majority as punishment) have been, for the most part, funded from company coffers which were previously filled from the pockets of the long suffering British taxpayer.

Crime has clearly paid in the banking sector but for their victims the story is a very different one. Increased unemployment and reduced benefits have left many people struggling to make ends meet and 1.4 million families in the UK are currently facing homelessness because crisis driven austerity measures and job shortages have left them without sufficient income to meet rent and mortgage payments. Despite the Bank of England’s governor Mervyn King saying something has gone “very wrong” with Britain’s banks and “it’s time to do something about [it]”, little has changed. Speaking as one who has suffered insurmountable loses as a result of the banking crisis, I believe reform has not been forthcoming because those causing the problems have not been required to pick up the bill.

Natalie Ceeney, the Chief Financial Ombudsman recently told a Parliamentary Inquiry investigating bank miss-selling, “Evidence given by the banks was "factually untrue [and] implausible"  and further states "I have never trusted any CEO who says ‘I didn’t know'”. However, Parliamentary inquiries, independent investigations and harsh words have still not held the culprits to account and leniency of this nature allows infamous organisations like HBOS to remain untroubled by regulatory requirements and positively blasé about the complaints process.

As I have found to my detriment, making a financial service complaint is fraught with pitfalls and if my own case is anything to go by, it is not a journey to be undertaken by the fainthearted. I have spent years negotiating its tricky intricacies and despite my best efforts, I am still to be found waiting, under the less than watchful eye of the Financial Ombudsman Service, for a further two fruitless weeks for the Halifax Bank of Scotland to provide me with the thorough and timely investigation they personally promised me in November 2012.

In the meantime I have requested they supply me with the following,

• A copy of my original mortgage application form
• A copy of the Bank of Scotland’s underwriting compliance documents
• Acknowledgement from the Halifax Bank of Scotland ( by return) of my 24 Jan response to their letter dated 17 Jan 2013
• A revised response from the Halifax Bank of Scotland (within 14 days) concerning my over valuation complaint using actual figures rather than fictitious ones.

Needless to say I have heard nothing.

Joseph Franklin Rutherford also said, “If you are kept in ignorance of the true way and permit yourself to rely upon and be guided by the opinion of imperfect man, you can never gain the riches that bring you peace and lasting happiness”.  Likewise if both I and the general public continue to be kept in ignorance by the "factually untrue" and "implausible inaccuracies" of the banksters, I can see that not only will my imperfect Halifax Bank of Scotland customer services man be unable to furnish me with my rightful fair share of peace and lasting happiness, but the riches which were supplied to the banks by the British tax payer will remain in the pockets of the unscrupulous indefinitely.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Fifteenth century Italian historian, politician, diplomat and philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli once said, “There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor for others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless” and now I am finally in receipt of the Bank of Scotland full investigation into my overvaluation complaint it is clear I have most definitely had a close but useless encounter of the third kind.

It is a year since I first accused the Bank of Scotland, via the Financial Ombudsman Service,  of overvaluing my home in April 2006 at £925,00 and I have already received an unsolicited £500 for the distress their delay in investigating this matter have caused me. However I am now in receipt of their full report and in it the Bank of Scotland tell me, prior to instructing their surveyor “our systems were updated to show what the estimated value of the home was at the time. This shows that based on the original purchase price of £890,000 in 2004, the value of the home would have increased to £925,000 [in April 2006.] The valuation carried out for your mortgage agreed with the assessment that was entered into our systems during the application process.” 

  

After three more pages of “could haves, would haves” and “should haves” based entirely on this statement I am then told, “To compensate you for the delay it has taken to send this response to you, I have agreed to send you a cheque for £100”. This I have now also received with along a covering letter which states it is in “full and final settlement” of my complaint.

This was my reply,

“Dear [Bank of Scotland investigator],

Re; Bank of Scotland overvaluation complaint

Thank you for your letter dated 17 January 2013.

Unfortunately, I am unable to respond to any of the points you raise in your letter as the “original mortgage application notes that are held on file for this account” are inaccurate.

I purchased the Tithe Barn in 2000 for £250,000 and not in 2004 for £890,000 as stated in your letter.

You say that your “systems were updated to show what the estimated value of the home was at the time”.

I am assuming that the bank used a sophisticated piece of software to update your systems fed by data which you have gleaned from a number of sources.  Please supply copies and evidence of the data you used to “estimate” the value of my home in May 2006 at £925,000 based on a purchase price of £890,000 in 2004.  I am very disappointed, at this stage of the bank’s investigation, to find I am to experience yet further delays due to such fundamental inaccuracies.

You also state at the end of your letter that if I remain unhappy I have the option to contact the FOS as long as I do this within six months of the date of your letter.  Having previously fallen foul of the jurisdiction issue over time limits with the FOS and the Bank of Scotland I would request that you provide me with the information I have asked for within the next 14 days.  If you are unable to do this, I would further request the time limit be extended to the date of your next response to prevent it eating into my six months.  May I also ask you acknowledge receipt of this letter by return of post.

On another point, I have received your letter dated 17 January containing a cheque for £100 in “full and final settlement” of my complaint.  In your other letter of 17 January you state this cheque is “to compensate (me) for the delay it has taken to send this response to (me)”.  Could you please clarify if by accepting this cheque I would be forfeiting any legal rights I may have in the future to pursue this complaint further.  It is my understanding that this would indeed be the case.  I am very unhappy to have been put in this situation, particularly as I have not been given an opportunity to respond fully to your investigations or any time to argue my case.  My issues with the Bank of Scotland have stolen 4 years of my life and as a result my family has experienced huge financial loss.  To jeopardise my complaint with a cheque for £100 is very distressing.  I am returning the letter and attached cheque for the reasons stated above.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

[LAD]

cc Financial Ombudsman Service

Eighteenth century poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic Dr Samuel Johnson once said, “Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise” and as far as I can see those choosing to employ falsehoods and useless truths at the Bank of Scotland have simply not grasped that the purpose of my complaint is to not to finance the repairs on my car with compensation from their mistakes but instead to encourage them to address my miss-sold mortgage.

Now, once again, I await their reply.

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.

Shams and Shambles

American inventor and businessman, Thomas A. Edison, once said, “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence and honest purpose as well as perspiration” and throughout the difficulties of keeping my family afloat while dealing with the aftermath of our financial demise I have, not unlike Edison, remained convinced that a satisfactory resolution to my Halifax Bank of Scotland complaint will only be forthcoming if I remain sufficiently focused on all that is necessary to accomplish the task at hand.

Committed to the pursuit of an intelligent solution to our predicament following the collapse of our property business (2008) and the forced sale of our home (2009) I have diligently, trawled for news of government rescue packages together with banking reforms and financial regulation which might aid my endeavours. With each and every letter I have written, I have increased my understanding of the ways in which huge organisations like the FSA, the FOS and HBOS are expected to operate and familiarised myself with the guidelines by which they are supposed to abide. The by product of this has been a much broader knowledge and a substantial helping of increased confidence.

Entering the beginning of my fifth year of battle, I remain hopeful that media interest, public outrage and my own refusal to be fobbed off by bully boy banksters and their regulators will eventually combine to affect a change which alters the way in which banks have so far been permitted to treat their victims. However, despite my best efforts and the pre Christmas promises of both HBOS and the FOS with regard to my over valuation complaint, I have to concede to date I have accomplished very little and even the past few weeks spent in hot pursuit of a hearing for my HBOS complaint have done nothing to change this.

Tempered in expectation as a result of HBOS’s past performance but, nonetheless, hopeful my long overdue request of almost year might have come to fruition by 2 January 2013 (as per the deadline HBOS set for themselves) I still remain with without word or any sign of progress. Resigned to chalking up this absence of outcome to an all too predictable lack of HBOS inertia in the face of any investigation, I am doubly disappointed to find the FOS, after admitting they miss handled and delayed the investigation into my HBOS compliant early last year, have once again reneged on their assurances to affect investigative compliance from this too big to fail 41% taxpayer owned bank by not insisting they respond to my accusations within the time frame specified.  It is my belief this lack of momentum only goes to prove, despite what the government, the bankers and their regulators would have us believe;

• Rescue packages were designed to rescue the bankers and not those who are having their homes repossessed or their investments devalued
• Fines and settlements have allowed the bankers to move on but not their victims
• Banking fraud has proved a lucrative and prosecutionless pass time which has shown no moral regard for the (estimated) hundred million people it has driven into destitution and suicide
• FSA remuneration codes and EU directives do nothing to encourage banker’s to cap their earnings or persuade them to behave responsibly in the future.

And, when it comes to providing a fair and efficient method by which the individual can seek restitution in the light of these findings,

• The UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service is at best a shambles and at worst a complete sham.

Thomas Edison also said, “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways which do not work” and despite a seemingly unproductive year which includes 44 blog post, 1538 tweets, 16,000 page views together with a fair amount of fruitless endeavours in the hands of the FOS, I remain hopeful I will not discover 10,000 ways which do not work for me before I finally achieve a much needed and long awaited way forward with HBOS.

All Sants' Day

Son in law of Islamic prophet Mohammed and first male convert to Islam, Ali ibn Abi Talib once said, “One who acquires power cannot avoid favouritism” and in spite of four years of public outrage over the impotence of the UK’s regulators and a tumultuous term at the helm of the Financial Services Authority, for former banker and recently retired chief executive of the FSA (2007-2012), these ancient words have proved wholly true.

Infamously accused by MP’s of being asleep at the wheel at the height of the UK’s bank bailouts, for Hector Sants 2012 has been a remarkably good year. With an annual pay package rumoured to be worth a comfortable three million pounds for a regulatory position at Barclays and a knighthood coming his way in the New Year it is extremely hard to marry his current good fortune with a track record which found him napping while the UK’s banksters reaped havoc with the lives of everyone but their own. As a direct result of the FSA’s negligence, countless people have lost their homes, their livelihoods and their financial futures and aside from those who have been tricked by the banks into purchasing PPI, the majority have received no restitution for losses which occurred because the FSA, under the guidance of Hector Sant, chose not to,

• Regulate responsibly
• Prosecute banking criminality
• Protect the banks customers

The banks Hector Sants regulated,

• Fraudulently sold unsuitable products to their customer to increase their profits
• Manipulated Libor rates to serve their own interests and camouflage their exposure to risk
• Disguised their flawed loan books and sold them as blue chip low risk investments to negate their losses
• Insured themselves against a property crash they knowingly created

Hector Sant did little to stop them. 

I can only concluded that the favours of the powerful heading Hector Sants' way over the coming months can only be for Hector Sants' services to banksters and not banking. Speaking as a victim of the notorious Halifax Bank of Scotland who has unsuccessfully fought for the last four years to secure the assistance of both the FSA and the FOS in my mortgage mis-selling case, the decision to honour individuals whose actions were pivotal to onset of the banking crisis only serves to illustrate how these failure continue to be rewarded leaving the rest of us to pay the price of the financial sector’s avarice.

Ali ibn Abu Talib also said,“As long as fortune is favouring you, your defects will remain covered” and if the New Years honours list is an accurate measure of policy, it seems papering over the the cracks remains very much the order of the day. 

Little wonder the banksters believe they are above the law.