One law for them, and one for the rest of us!

When a top business executive throws a wobbler because one of his staff has put a pink wafer biscuit on the coffee tray, you know you are dealing with a rare kind of individual. But Sir Fred Goodwin, for it is he, was obsessed with biscuits and also had anger problems, The former Royal Bank of Scotland boss, who was known as "Fred the Shred" because of his obsession with cutting costs, left the taxpayer with a £45 billion bailout bill, and a lot of uneaten pink wafer biscuits.

He was, by all accounts, a terrible boss to work for. It is claimed that Sir Fred could not control his anger if the wrong type of biscuit was put in the boardroom, and even threatened catering staff with disciplinary action in an email titled "Rogue Biscuits" after executives were offered pink wafers.

The reason why Goodwin’s discredited name is back in the public frame again is because the FSA has now published its report into the way they regulated or failed to regulate the way in which RBS engaged in the contested take-over for Dutch bank, ABN Amro.

Let us be clear in the interests of simplicity, RBS made a bid for the Dutch bank, which resulted in their buying a crock, leaving RBS with a £49 billion black hole in her accounts, requiring a £45 billion injection from public funds to keep RBS afloat.

The FSA report makes repeated criticisms of the culture and governance at the bank, and labels the £49bn takeover of ABN Amro in 2007 as little more than "a gamble". So delicate are the sensibilities of some of the Directors of RBS as to the way this bad joke should be described, that they have hired lawyers who have been engaged in a lengthy legal dispute with the regulator over its description of the ABN deal.

In the foreword to the report, Lord Turner, the FSA chairman, says that the due diligence conducted by RBS amounted to "two lever-arch files and a CD-ROM", a claim disputed by the bank's former directors.

During its inquiry, the FSA wrote to former non-executives of the bank, including Sir Tom McKillop, the chairman at the time of RBS's collapse, to gauge whether they had felt intimidated or bullied by Sir Fred's notably autocratic style. The former directors are understood to have responded, perhaps not surprisingly, that they had not. Of course not, who would have thought that such a thing could even have been contemplated, I’m surprised anyone felt the need to question whether these nice Scottish gentlemen might have felt at all intimidated by a commercial thug who threw a hissy fit when a pink biscuit appeared by his coffee cup. What we do know is that The City regulator has reconfirmed its conclusion of last year that no former directors of RBS, including the former chief executive Goodwin, will face punishment over their role in the bank's collapse.

Why should this be, did no-one do anything wrong?

The duties of a director of a public company are straightforward and they include;

Directors must act in the interests of their company;

They have a duty to act within their powers;

They have a duty to promote the success of the company;

They have a duty to exercise independent judgment;

They have a duty to exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence;

They have a duty to avoid conflicts of interest;

Looked at through eyes given the benefit of hindsight, how could Goodwin possibly have thought that the ABN Amro deal was a good one for the Bank? Remember, the FSA report calls the whole thing a ‘gamble’!

The banking culture at the time was caught up in a mania of merger activity. The atmosphere in 2007 was, as one senior former RBS director put it, “eat or be eaten”. This was the era when everything was about rapid growth and global domination. Internally, RBS, it was felt, had to be part of that.

Yet Goodwin was repeatedly warned of the dangers of making a bid for part or all of ABN Amro. The memory of the Charter One deal was still fresh in the minds of RBS board members and many doubted whether a bidding consortium could be formed and did not want to buy the whole bank. Goodwin called UBS banker John Cryan, who had helped broker a previous deal and had been a close adviser of Goodwin’s in the past, for advice. The one-sided conversation was what one colleague later described as the “Fred hairdryer”.

Cryan had been against RBS buying ABN from the start and had warned Sir Fred against doing the deal, telling him he was “extremely concerned” about the impact it would have on the bank, particularly its capital ratios.

In one note, Cryan wrote to Sir Fred warning him about ABN’s exposure to subprime: “There is stuff in here we can’t even value.” Sir Fred replied saying: “Stop being such a bean counter”.

This was a man exercising reasonable care skill and diligence? I don’t think so. This was a man so puffed up by his own ego that he was willing to ignore serious professional advice. The full, gory story of this banking farce can be read at;

uk,finance.yahoo.com/news/RBS-investigationpChapter -2-tele-2357916462.htmail?x=0

What it demonstrates is the way in which one man’s inflated sense of self-importance determined the way in which a bank would quickly founder and collapse to the point that it needed vast sums of public money to stay afloat. Goodwin of course walked away completely free, with an obscene pension to feather-bed has latter years, and no-one inside the RBS Palace of Varieties has been required to explain their dereliction to the duties they owed the company in Court.

To understand the reasons for this inexplicable conclusion, we are forced to revert to the most recent FSA findings. In a report published on 12^th December 2011, the FSA admits its own supervision was "flawed" and "provided insufficient challenge" to RBS, the BBC reports. However, it did not concede these shortcomings amounted to negligence.

How can this possibly be the case? The FSA has had a very chequered track record of dealing with the big cases and it has always employed people who were not really qualified to take on the big players. We were repeatedly told that the FSA was going to be better than its predecessor, the SIB,, which was supposed to be infinitely preferable to its predecessor, the DTI, etc, etc.

It may just be that lawyers reviewing the case may have found themselves constrained by the fact that the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was on the record insisting that the FSA continue to engage with the financial sector, with ‘…a light touch approach to regulation…’

Perhaps they felt that this evidence might not assist a jury in coming to a clear conclusion. Whatever the reason, no-one is going to be held accountable for this farce, and the tax-payer must pick up the bill.

In any other walk of life, any failure to fulfill your role and responsibilities properly, and in such an egregious manner as this, would have resulted in immediate sackings inside both organisations. Any chief officer of police deemed to have acted in this way would have been picking up his P.45 long ago, The same goes for any other kind of public service role, but in the City and the financial sector, we do things differently! No one will be called to account, senior figures inside the FSA will be quietly selected for promotion and the whole rotten system of cosy City financial regulation will just drift on and on.

Many of those of us who have been closest to financial regulation in the past have tried to warn the FSA of its failings, but to no avail. We have tried to show them through offering training or working with their enforcement arm, with the aim of providing a high level of assistance, how to develop investigators with real skills, but we have been rebuffed at every turn.

The good old tradition of well-meaning amateurs exercising senior positions in public life, without any real professional skills, will continue to operate. No detective worth his or her salt would have been confused by Goodwin or his satraps, and it is unlikely that they would have allowed him and his cowed team to shout them down. They would have insisted on getting straight answers to straight questions like;

Why, when he knew that other professionals were counseling caution, did Goodwin ride roughshod over their concerns, without reviewing them by third-party professionals? How did this demonstrate that he was acting within his powers?

Why was so little due diligence undertaken before making such a huge investment? How was this in the interest of the company? How much did Goodwin believe his personal commercial worth in the banking fraternity would be increased in the event that the buyout went through successfully?

It would have been put to him that his anxiety to get the deal done in such a hurry, was largely motivated by his greed and avarice in both wanting to beat Bob Diamond from Barclays, (a personality issue) and wanting to be seen as a major banking icon (a big swinging dick in other words) in the banking world, which would of course have increased his commercial value.

It would have been put to him that his anxiety to achieve this fast fix was in fact a series of major conflicts of interests and not in keeping with the interests of the company and its shareholders, but in making him even more commercially valuable.

He would have been kept at the interview table until such time as he gave simple and reasoned answers. He would not have been allowed to roam off into the realms of commercial bullshit, speculating and pontificating and trying to avoid the real meaning of the questions, and he would have been invited to demonstrate why he should not be litigated against for a gross breach of all these requirements?

We, the investing public have a right to deserve far better from those who regulate our financial sector. We have a right to expect that those who have the stewardship of our great financial institutions, should exercise considerable skill, diligence and above all, caution in their handling of our money. We have a right to expect that the Regulators will employ people who can do their job properly, and above all, we should not expect to have to sit through another sniveling apology from a the head of the SFA, explaining why their handling of their responsibilities was so pathetic.

They should be subjected to the same treatment as any one of us would expect, but the problem with the British financial sector is that there has always been one law for those on the inside and one law for the rest of us. Oh, and they don’t like pink wafer biscuits either!

Lord Snooty Went to Brussels

What on earth was David Cameron thinking when he went to Brussels to join the talks on the future of the EU?

He managed to enrage most of those present by his intransigence over the issue of European proposals for further financial regulation in Europe, splitting the European Union, after failing to secure “safeguards” for the City of London that he demanded as the price of Britain approving a new treaty for the bloc.

Lord Snooty almost certainly misread the signals coming from the EU, probably believing that Germany would not force his issues to a point where he had no choice but to play his veto. Germany possibly also thought he wouldn’t press the point so far, but would be willing to roll over on certain issues. In the end, his decision to force a breakaway treaty within the EU came after a standoff with France and Germany, who rejected Lord Snooty’s demands for legally binding commitments to shield the City of London from new and wider regulations.

“I had to pursue very doggedly what was in British national interest. It is not easy when you are in a room where people are pressing you to sign up to things because they say it is in all our interests,” Mr Cameron said.

Well, let us examine that statement!

The City of London, and the very small number of extraordinarily powerful (and obscenely wealthy) men who run the Square Mile, have, through their friends and lobbyists in the Tory Party in Parliament, let Cameron know in hugely certain terms what his future would be, if he were to accede to EU requests for further financial regulation. The City does not like financial regulation, because it gets in the way of business. The City has taken this view for hundreds of years. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Alexander Baring, 2nd son of Francis Baring of the prestigious banking family said;

‘...I consider every regulation to be a restriction and, as such, contrary to that freedom which I have held to be the first principle of the well-being of commerce…’

Nothing has changed in the minds of British bankers since that statement was uttered, and no-one proposing wider regulation of the financial sector is going to be given a wide audience in London.

We have banking regulations, of course, it’s just that they are not enforced very well, or really at all, to any great extent. You only have to look at the level of downright fraud committed by our High Street banks to realize the truth of that assertion.

The financial mess we are currently laboring with was caused directly by these very banks. They played around with financial products which they did not understand sufficiently, they gambled on other people’s debts in the sub-prime scandals, they encouraged their people to sell worthless and dangerous products to gullible investors, and they made fortunes gambling in proprietary trading. Then, when they were broke, they went bleating to the Government for a bail-out, and we were forced to pick up the tab for their incompetence, their arrogance, ignorance and greed (thanks Steve Knightley), all the while, being told that it was our duty and in our best interest to do so!

Can someone help me understand how our best interests are served by continuing to bail out these conmen, crooks and thieves, without any kind of gut-wrenching regulation being imposed on the bastards in return.

The British financial sector, which is all we have left now that most other meaningful jobs have been destroyed, exists to serve the interests of a very small group of elites. They serve the politically exposed criminals and foreign dictators who use the London market to launder the looted contents of their bank accounts out of the reach of their true beneficial owners; they serve the interests of tax evaders, both from home and abroad, they facilitate the onward safe-passage of bribes and corruption on an international scale; they gamble recklessly with the contents of their Treasuries, and then pay themselves bloated bonuses.

We now know that 98% of the FTSE 100 companies (which includes all the major banks) pay little or no tax in the UK, so what benefit do we really get from them? If you need financial services, it is now a given that you will be gouged, cheated, ripped off and sold wholly inappropriate products. If you want a pension, it is an accepted fact that you will have much pulled out if it by the way of inflated and almost invisible charges.

These are the products whose promoters, ever so quietly, through their friends on the Tory back benches, sent the message to Lord Snooty. ‘…If you don’t want to end up like John Major, fighting a constant back-bench army of ‘Euro-bastards’, make sure you know where your (and our) best interests lie…’

Lord Snooty has won himself a reprieve. He will have pacified his Euro-demented back-benchers and given himself some breathing space. He has done his job by his mates in the City, who will be happy that they may not have to face greater EU regulation.

However, Cameron’s bid to secure a new protocol on the City’s exclusion from new rules won little or no support from other EU members, and was barely discussed in detail during the ten-hour summit. Mr Sarkozy merely dismissed the demands as “unacceptable”.

Snooty came home with nothing, except having succeeded to marginalize Britain even more in the eyes of the wider EU members. He may think that the EU can do nothing in the wider scheme of things, Haig, the Foreign Minister was wittering on about ‘protection by treaties’ on Radio 4 this morning.

For myself, I expect that if the new club members form a group, of which Britain is not a member, then they will almost certainly not let us come to their parties! Britain’s ultimatum has infuriated many European leaders who saw Britain as the biggest obstacle to a rigorous treaty to improve eurozone governance and resolve the sovereign debt crisis. Some in the negotiation said the decision to stand firm would have repercussions. “This is going to cost the UK dearly. They have antagonised everyone,” one senior EU official said.

Still, as long as the City gets what it wants, they won’t give a fuck!

Row Over Clarkson’s Suicide Comment

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has faced a storm of protest from mental health charities after he branded people who throw themselves under trains as "selfish".

The 51-year-old, who was forced to apologise earlier this week after saying all striking workers should be shot, was embroiled in further controversy after he reiterated his view that those who commit suicide on railway lines cause "immense" disruption for commuters. In this article, Clarkson mirrored the writing of Dean Swift, and has received the same response.

‘…A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick…, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests that impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocks heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as Irish policy in general.

Swift goes to great lengths to support his argument, including a list of possible preparation styles for the children, and calculations showing the financial benefits of his suggestion. This essay is widely held to be one of the greatest examples of sustained irony in the history of the English language. Much of its shock value derives from the fact that the first portion of the essay describes the plight of starving beggars in Ireland, so that the reader is unprepared for the surprise of Swift's solution when he states, "A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

Readers unacquainted with its reputation as a satirical work often do not immediately realize that Swift was not seriously proposing cannibalism and infanticide, nor would readers unfamiliar with the satires of Horace and Juvenal recognize that Swift's essay follows the rules and structure of Latin satires.

Swift was widely criticized for publishing this piece once it became known he was the author, and he faced widespread public anger. The same can be said for Mr Jeremy Clarkson who has been on the receiving end of politically-correct opprobrium for his comments on public suicides.

Charities said his comments were "tasteless" and accused him of trivialising the subject of suicide.

Clarkson said: "I have the deepest sympathy for anyone whose life is so mangled and messed up that they believe death's icy embrace will be better. However, every year around 200 people decide that the best way to go is by hurling themselves in front of a speeding train. In some ways they are right. This method has a 90% success rate and it's extremely quick.

"However, it is a very selfish way to go because the disruption it causes is immense. And think what it's like for the poor train driver who sees you lying on the line and can do absolutely nothing to avoid a collision."

Later, the presenter referred to those who choose to jump in front of trains as "Johnny Suicide" and argues that following a death, trains should carry on their journeys as soon as possible.

He added: "The train cannot be removed nor the line re-opened until all of the victim's body has been recovered. And sometimes the head can be half a mile away from the feet. Change the driver, pick up the big bits of what's left of the victim, get the train moving as quickly as possible and let foxy woxy and the birds nibble away at the smaller, gooey parts that are far away or hard to find."

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity Sane, said: "We are absolutely appalled that Jeremy Clarkson should accuse people who throw themselves on railway lines of being 'selfish'. He has obviously never experienced the agony of mind which drives people to such desperate acts.

"When gripped by such mental anguish people do not act rationally. The selfish person is the one who rates being late by minutes or hours as more important than a person losing their lives forever."

Catherine Johnstone, Samaritans' chief executive, said: "The insensitivity of Jeremy Clarkson's comments in his Sun column today about people who die by suicide on the railways truly beggars belief. While purporting to express sympathy for people who die this way, his remarks about their bodies constitute gross intrusion into the grief and shock of bereaved families and friends."

Jeremy Clarkson is the Dean Swift of our times. He is a great satirist, and he makes his points with a pen as sharp as any wielded by the former Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. In this article, he is making a serious point about the sense of hopelessness and uselessness that our modern times can engender in some people, and the steps they will go to, to extricate themselves. His writing is in bad-taste, because that’s what satire is and is meant to be. He is just being Clarkson, for fuck’s sake, and is not meant to be taken literally. Read him, and move on.

The real satire in these comments is the paucity of education in English literature these pundits have received, in that they have obviously never read Jonathan Swift, one of Britain’s great writers, and therefore are unable to recognize satire when it is served up to them!

'...Father, forgive them.....'

A blog examining the organised criminal nature of the High Street Banking Industry.

When criminologists measure criminal threats to society, one of the criteria evaluated is the volume of loss (or financial damage) such criminality generates. So, we can get statistics about the value of goods stolen from shops, or the value of quantities of drugs seized, because obviously, if a particular activity is causing severe financial loss to the country, then it ought to be taken more seriously, and hopefully, escalated in the threat-value recognition.

When a specific group of individuals or practitioners repeatedly appears in the statistics of criminal activity, as being responsible for the egregious activities identified, the Government and the Home Office encourage the agencies of control to target these people and focus investigative and prosecutorial attention on them.

We tend to call this kind of activity, 'Organised Crime' and it is defined by the UN, among other agencies thus... "... large scale and comples criminal activity carried on by groups of persons, however loosely or tightly organized, for the enrichment of those participating and at the expense of the community and its members. It is frequently accomplished through ruthless disregard of any law...'

Paul Nesbitt (head of Interpol's Organized Crime Group) defined it in 1993 as, "Any group having a corporate structure whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities, often surviving on fear and corruption."

We are living in what I think is now generally agreed to be the worst period of financial constraint since the Great Depression, and every man, woman and child in this country is having to make do with less and less. The Government is telling us at every opportunity that we must get used to making do with fewer social supports, while at the same time, saying that it is trying to help the economy by engaging in Quantitative Easing (printing more money to you and me) in order to get growth started again.

Ordinary savers have found that their savings' rates have dwindled to virtually nothing, and many people are looking to find advice on how to get the best from their limited reserves of money.

So, why is it that at the very time when people need good financial advice most, the British High Street retail Banks appear to be completely immune to this need, and carry on their business as if their clients are merely there to be fleeced?

For many years, it has been one of the great mantras of the financial services industry that the institutions are looking to acquire 'as big a share of the customer's wallet' as possible. This phrase was widely bandied about in the banking industry by executives who used to come to seminars put on by a leading computer manufacturer, and they looked to the IT industry to help them develop software that would do just that, 'get a bigger share of their customers' wallets', and a great deal of time and energy was spent encouraging the development of technologies which would help banks 'up-sell and cross-sell'.

We have had to go through a financial services revolution in this country to get financial institutions to grudgingly subscribe to a theory of 'best advice' for their clients. The regulator has had to issue meaningful warnings about 'treating clients fairly', (an issue you might have been forgiven for thinking was a 'given'). So why is it, after all this time, that so many of the banks and their financial friends are still behaving like a bunch of highway robbers, cheating and stealing their clients blind. Some recent cases are instructive.

Two Barclays bank employees were sentenced to five years imprisonment following their roles in £1.3 million worth of fraud on old age pensioners. Karl Edwards, 44 and Andrew Waters, 26 appeared at Birmingham Crown Court on November 18th 2011, following the fraudulent activities, they received five years each. The court heard that the bankers targeted three victims who were all over the age of 80. Karl Edwards was thought to be a "premier relations manager" whilst employed at Barclays.

In July this year, Another ex-Barclays employee was jailed after he stole more than £600,000 from dead, elderly and ill customers, to fund his online gambling addiction. James Leonard Finnigan, 42, from Twickenham, Middlesex received a four-year jail term at the Old Bailey, having previously pleaded guilty to the fraud. A police spokesman commented: “James Finnigan appeared to target customers who were elderly in the hope of avoiding detection, in some cases going as far as taking money from accounts when customers had recently died.”

How about a greedy bank manager who was given a hefty bonus payment - at the same time as he was robbing customers of tens of thousands of pounds. Liam Allmand was so highly thought of by Barclays Bank for looking after their higher-earning clients that he was rewarded with a £20,000 bonus on top of his salary. But unbeknown to the bank, for two-and-a-half years customer relationship manager Allmand, 27, had been rifling the accounts of his portfolio of 300 wealthy customers.

Former customer relationship manager Liam Allmand was jailed for four-and-a-half years in February 2011, after stealing more than £45,000 from wealthy Barclays Bank customers. He said he was so "clever" even the bank's sophisticated security system took two-and-a-half years to spot his thieving.

These cases were straightforward criminal activities, and although it is tempting to ask why Barclays' so-called sophisticated internal financial crime prevention systems did not identify these activities earlier, the most likely truthful answer will be 'what sophisticated internal systems'?

But what about more inchoate dishonesty, what about the way you treat your clients? If you are behaving in an honest and proper manner with your clients, why would they complain about you? What is it about the High Street retail banking industry that means when you join, you leave your morals, your honesty and your integrity in a pile on the doorstep?

Perhaps it has something to do with the culture of the institution which is being joined!

The consumer magazine 'Which' has just published a report on bank selling practices, which makes for compelling reading.

High street banks are offering poor investment advice and recommending inappropriate financial products to consumers, according to an undercover investigation. Which? sent nine researchers - all aged above 60 and posing as retired savers inexperienced at investing - to get financial advice at bank and building society branches across the UK. The study found that 32 out of 37 advisers made misleading statements about available investment products and appeared not to have a good understanding of the financial risks involved.

Many of the bank employees recommended complicated financial products, and which incur hefty fees to pull money out in the short term, which are considered inappropriate for the average investor near retirement age. Even though financial institutions earn commission on the products they recommend, nearly half of the advisers said there was no cost for their advice.

One of the undercover researchers was told by an employee at Yorkshire Bank, a subsidiary of Clydesdale Bank, to invest £50,000 in a bond without disclosing that this would net the bank £4,400 in commission. Earlier in the year, two of Britain's biggest banks, Barclays and RBS, were reprimanded for mis-selling financial products. Barclays Bank is the most complained-about financial services company in the UK, according to figures released in late November 2011. The bank's customers lodged 8,283 complaints with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) from 1 January to 30 June, of which 5,226 were about banking and credit services and 2,085 about insurance cases.

More than two-thirds (71%) were upheld in the complainant's favour – 67% of the banking and credit complaints and 93% of the insurance complaints, most of which related to payment-protection insurance policies. The data covers a total of 69,841 complaints handled by the FOS in the first half of the year. Of the 100,000 businesses under its remit, 142 accounted for 87% of all complaints.

Banks topped the table, with five groups each receiving more than 3,000 complaints and together accounting for 38,286 cases. Lloyds TSB was the subject of 6,947 complaints, Bank of Scotland 5,804, Abbey 2,493, NatWest 2,379, MBNA 2,298, HSBC 2,177, Royal Bank of Scotland 1,812, Alliance and Leicester 1,786 and Nationwide Building Society 1,149. The FOS was deluged with complaints about unauthorised overdraft charges in 2007 and 2008, when it came to investments and pensions, 63% of complaints were about sales and advice, but a spokesman said the latest complaints focused on other aspects of banking services and charges, most notably PPI mis-selling.

Indeed, PPI issues made up 51% of all complaints to the FOS, of which 75% of those complaints were about selling practices and advice. Remember, when reading what follows, please recall that the PPI scandal was determined to be a wholesale engagement in what is euphemistically called 'mis-selling', which is a misleading way of saying ' wholesale, institutionalised fraud.'

The Financial Ombudsman Service publishes an annual review of the cases it undertakes. In last year’s annual review they reported a 58% increase in the volume of complaints referred to them about payment protection insurance (PPI). The FOS said they hoped that the FSA’s proposals in relation to the handling of PPI complaints would be finalised as soon as possible – and that the improved complaints-handling processes subsequently put in place by businesses would result in a significant reduction in the volume of PPI complaints referred to the ombudsman service over the following year (2011).

Unfortunately, the year did not turn out that way. In August 2010 the Financial Services Authority (FSA) introduced new complaints-handling guidance (its policy statement 10/12) about the assessment and redress of PPI complaints. Some businesses started to implement this guidance but a number of high-street banks decided to challenge it.

We may want to ask ourselves why is was so necessary to challenge a policy statement which was intended to make the PPI resolution simpler, but we must also remember, that banks would rather throw money at any issue which might prevent them from having to spend money on a compliance issue, or to repay customers, no matter what the cost. This is all part of their dysfunctional egregious culture.

This meant that these banks started to issue standard letters to customers from autumn 2010, saying they were unable to decide PPI complaints while legal action was ongoing. How many legitimate claimants may have died during this period is not known. This legal action took the form of a judicial review brought by the British Bankers Association (BBA) – on behalf of a number of high-street banks – challenging the FSA and the ombudsman service.

This massive (and expensive) exercise in gratuitous time-wasting resulted in a judgment which was handed down by the High Court at the end of April 2011 – endorsing the FSO approach, and that of the FSA, to handling PPI complaints. Just as the annual review was going to print, the BBA announced that it did not intend to appeal this judgment.

While awaiting the outcome, most banks that were challenging the case stopped responding substantively to many thousands of complaints. Regrettably this led to delays and uncertainties for the consumers in these cases, and following a report on 14 September 2011, the spectre of the biggest financial mis-selling scandal in the industry’s history doesn’t look like going away any time soon.

Millions of customers have now realised that for years banks have made a killing from selling expensive Payment Protection Insurance to people taking out loans – whether or not it was appropriate. It became so profitable for banks to sell PPI that many customers ended up paying for it without even realising they had it.

Others were sold insurance they didn’t need or couldn’t use, but which still ended up costing them thousands of pounds. Now the banks have been forced to put aside billions of pounds to cover the cost of compensation to thousands of customers after abandoning the legal challenge in the High Court.

The latest figures from the Financial Services Authority show that in many cases the industry is still failing in its attempts to resolve people’s complaints. 'Which?' executive director Richard Lloyd says banks still aren’t treating customers fairly. ‘If the next round of complaints data doesn’t show a dramatic improvement then the FSA must take tough enforcement action against banks whose complaints handling isn’t up to scratch.

‘To ensure that consumers get the redress they deserve the FSA must make sure that all major banking groups are required to review the PPI complaints they previously rejected unfairly. These figures point to the blasé attitude banks seem to have towards their customers. In a properly functioning market banks wouldn’t be able to get away with treating customers like this.’

Of the big four retail banks, Lloyds TSB has the worst complaint record, with 84 per cent over the last six months being settled against them. Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays occupy the middle ground, with scores of 55 per cent and 52 per cent respectively.

Natalie Ceeney, chief executive of the FSA, puts the statistics into context when she says: ‘These latest figures show a significant increase in the number of new PPI complaints referred to the ombudsman during the first half of 2011. This period coincided with the time when most of the high street banks and some other financial businesses had put PPI complaints on hold, because of their legal challenge against the ombudsman service and FSA.’

So, what are we faced with?

We are examining a market sector that has grown too bloated and complacent for its own good. This arises largely out of the fact that there are far too few retail banks to give the customer any real choice, coupled with an attitude within the institutions, that the ordinary rules of commercial probity and legal compliance do not apply to them. This is exacerbated by the fact that most banks now have difficulty in separating their wholesale from their retail arm. Retail client accounts should be separated and ring-fenced miles away from the casino banking end of the institution.

These institutions possess significant criminogenic characteristics. This does not mean they are all criminals, but that they possess the capability to slip into criminal activity whenever it suits them.

So-called 'mis-selling' is a classic example. Customers were routinely deceived into buying PPI insurance, without a full knowledge of the facts, at a significant cost which caused them loss and damage. Such activity is a crime, it is Fraud, and it should have been dealt with as such. The people who sold the products should have been arrested as should their managers, their directors and their Board members, anyone who had an interest and a position in the selling chain should have had their collars felt. The craven attitude of so many British politicians and regulators towards their relationship with the banks, has prevented this example of blatant criminality from being dealt with as such, yet the damage and losses it causes to the country and its citizens are of grotesque proportions, running into many, many billions of pounds

If a group of any other organised criminals had caused in excess of £9 billion damage to UK plc over just one individual financial product, in any other circumstances, then you can rest assured that huge attempts would be made by dedicated teams of law enforcement, to hunt them down, try them and send them to prison.

Because these crimes are being committed by the banks, no-one raises the issue, and yet, if you apply the definitions I included at the beginning, banks bring themselves firmly within the definition of organised crime.

We have to begin to start seeing some major banks as little more than criminogenic enterprises, who deliberately flout or pay little more than lip service to regulations which get in their way of making profit. They have lost any sense of financial proportion, even those whose existence has been preserved by the tax-payer, and at a time when the vast majority of the country is being forced to undergo financial constraints that are causing significant hardship, they still believe that they are entitled to pay themselves bonuses of obscene proportions even when they continue to report losses.

Pure greed influences and informs all their decision-making processes, and we should see and call them 'Organised Criminals' for that is what they truly are.

Father, forgive them, for they know all too well what they do.