Category Archives: Poverty

The Beneficial Lies – Who Did They Really Benefit? #banks #bankers #HBOS #Lloyds

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I should be used to offensive or thoughtless language from bankers and bonkers behaviour by their PR teams but I was genuinely shocked this morning at various articles in the press today.

Top of the list are the two articles in the Times where the CEO of Lloyds Banking Group, Antonio Horta-Osorio (AH-O) gives chapter and verse on an incredibly stressful period of his life as Lloyds boss. Knowing a lot about stress and how debilitating it is, I fully understand that it doesn’t matter who you are or what your personal circumstances are – inside your own bubble, you are still having a crisis.

However, the subject of people getting stressed because of banks is such a sensitive one, given how many thousands of bank clients are stressed to the point of being suicidal, I wonder why on earth the PR department of Lloyds Banking Group would make the Banks CEO such an easy and obvious target for outrage?

I imagine being the CEO of a major Bank is a very stressful job – which is why they are paid mega bucks. But there are huge differences between being stressed because of a well-paid job which, if you really can’t cope, you can resign from and being stressed because a Bank has destroyed your life, your business, your future, your reputation and, in some cases, your sanity – and you can’t resign from this situation – or check in to the Priory – or retire and live on a pension which, unfortunately for you, you no longer have because and unlike Mr AH-O, you’ve been asset stripped of everything.

There is no comparison between the stress Mr AH-O has suffered and the stress so many SME owners (and their family, staff and shareholders) have suffered. Therefore, while I would never suggest the stress Mr AH-O suffered was of no consequence or that mental illness isn’t a very serious issue that should be given a better platform, his two articles are unbelievably insensitive and offensive to the many who are still in a very dark place through no fault of their own and, in some cases, because of Lloyds Banking Group.

In the same way I have always been very grateful to many journalists who have helped expose the Reading fraud (Ian Fraser, Tom Harper, Andy Verity, James Hurley, Siobhan Kennedy and many others), I am also very grateful to Jonathan Ford, City Editor of the FT for his excellent article about HBOS Reading which has coincided with the Mr AH-O articles in the Times. The online article came out on Thursday and the six-page hard copy article came out in the FT today (7th). Comparing the two articles, there’s a very stark example of the inequality the Country is suffering. Suffering for Mr AH-O meant he was put off his tennis game, he didn’t enjoy his family holiday in Indonesia and he suffered a bad bought of insomnia. Speaking as a victim of HBOS Reading, I can confirm my own version of stress was years of insomnia, no holidays and 22 horrendously stressful eviction hearings. I did consider suicide but only in a wishful thinking sort of way as I had two teenage daughters to think of and a very strong husband who has pulled us all through these terrible years.

I realise none of what I (or many others) went through alters how Mr AH-O was feeling back in 2011 and I genuinely hope he is fully recovered. All the same, if I was him I would sack his PR team because they made him a sitting duck and will, I think, cause him more stress.

I would imagine one of the most stressful things about Mr AH-O’s job is knowing the truth about the Bank and managing that truth. The other disturbing articles I’ve read today – or indeed in the last few days – are about how much truth has been buried for the benefit of the public. An article in The Times yesterday reported how the Bank of England was economical with the truth during the financial crisis. Andy Haldane, the BoE chief economist at the time said:

“It is not always and everywhere the case that greater openness and transparency is a good thing. And that’s certainly true in my world.

“Had we been fully open and fully transparent about what was going on during the financial crisis, it would, let me tell you, have been a lot, lot worse. That would have been [like] shouting ‘fire’ in the theatre.

Mr Haldane is right about one thing, the crisis in 2008 was considerably worse than the public was allowed to know. I’m sure everyone at the BoE was trying to juggle so many flaming swords, they all wished they could book into the Priory. Trouble is, years later and as the real truth comes out, many people are wondering if the lies told (and that’s what they were) were for the benefit of the Country or told in order to cover up the fact the whole Country had been collectively mugged by the Banks? The fire in Mr Haldane’s theatre could and probably was full of bankers and what the BoE did was bring in the Fire Brigade – but was it for the public benefit? If it was, how comes the whole Country has been crippled by austerity so the NHS is on its knees, the police can’t even afford to investigate the epidemic of financial crime our banks still persist in using as every day conduct, young people can’t afford University fees or housing and hundreds of families are relying on food banks? Is that how we benefited?

In the same way Lloyds Banking Group has been economical with the truth of what it knew about HBOS Reading, Ross McEwan has been economical with the truth about RBS GRG division, the BoE, FSA, FCA, FRC, PRA have been economical with the truth about  almost everything to do with the Banks and their auditors – I fail to see how this has been beneficial to the Country? Maybe it would have been had the BoE and the regulator used the financial crash as a lesson learned and made sure banks really did clean up their acts? But they didn’t so we can expect a new financial melt down any time from now.

All we have years later is a lot of stressed people – bankers, bank customers, bank victims – and a struggling economy. So who has benefited from all these beneficial lies? And how much longer will the lies or spin of the truth continue? Clearly it’s in full flow today and my guess is Antonio Horta-Osorio is still stressed and, needless to say, so am I as too are so many victims of HBOS Reading, RBS/GRG, Lloyds BSU and other banks BSUs. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if stress levels in this country are at an all time high.

 

 

 

 

 

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#RBS Redress Scheme- Offensive and Ridiculous

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I never like to rush letters. They need to be well thought out, written, considered, edited, considered, edited again and then sent. News is so fast these days you could write a letter today and by tomorrow everything could change and your letter could be out of date and pointless. So I’m glad SME Alliance didn’t send the letter we wrote to Ross McEwan at RBS a few days ago because it would have been absolutely pointless.

The basis of our letter was in these two paragraphs:

As we understand it, the majority of businesses entitled to redress are already in administration or liquidation. As such, the business owners who have been mistreated or suffered loss will have no locus to request redress or compensation and only the administrators or liquidators can make any claim on behalf of the insolvent businesses. Therefore any repayment or award will end up paying the fees of the Insolvency practitioners or with the creditors of those businesses – of which your Bank is likely to be the major creditor.

If the above scenario is the reality of your proposed scheme it would be a highly cynical house keeping exercise and of little or no assistance to the business owners who have been so poorly treated. Aside from the fact £400M seems a totally inadequate figure for the serious damage caused to thousands of small businesses, we are concerned that, as in the case of the IRHP redress scheme, this scheme will fail to acknowledge or address the real issues – that in many instances your employees, presumably as a matter of policy, have behaved dishonestly to your customers and that is the prime reason for so many insolvencies.

Apparently that scenario is exactly what will happen with the scheme. The thousands of SMEs who have been placed in an insolvent position because of RBS GRG will have absolutely no right to claim redress.

It seemed illogical to me and others in SME Alliance that anyone would be quite that blatantly offensive to society. After all, SMEs represent over 90% of private business and employ millions of people. So when you take out 16,000 SMEs, you cause literally thousands of people to lose their jobs. And when people lose their jobs, it follows they can’t pay their mortgage so they lose their homes.

Just hold that thought for a moment. Just imagine you have done nothing wrong, a Bank has destabilised your business and taken your assets and to finish you off and so that you are so traumatised you can’t fight back, they take your family home. You and your children must pack up and go……. where? And why?

I keep playing this video clip because I keep hoping someone senior in RBS will watch this video of Nigel Henderson’s “Who Amongst You” speech at the Cambridge International Symposium On Economic Crime last September  and say “Oh my God, why on earth did we do this to this man and his family?” No such luck: http://www.smealliance.org/blog/who-among-you-extract-from-nigel-hendersons-powerful-speech

The conduct of RBS GRG has no doubt had a huge effect on society – the same society that bailed it out for billions of pounds.

I’m sure many SMEs read the announcement that RBS would be giving firms redress and thought their nightmare was over because the whole RBS GRG scam was exposed. But it seems that is not the case. The Bank appointed insolvency practitioners will do very well out of this deal and the Bank, as a major creditor to the companies it pulled down will be paying much of the £400M allotted back to themselves as a major creditor. Even if every penny of the proposed £400M really went to the people who most deserved it, that would work out at a maximum of £33,000 – that’s a couple of days wages to some senior bankers.

The fact remains – RBS was run so disastrously it ended up with billions of pounds of debt and had the public, via the Government, not bailed it out it would have gone to the wall. This is the Bank that felt it could run thousands of SMEs better than their owners. It was always obvious that couldn’t happen and I think some would suggest the GRG department of RBS could only run its own business and any business it was involved with straight into a wall – a brick wall. All the same we bailed it out and continued to pay it’s bosses millions of pounds to fail with vigour.

The Bank’s way of thanking its major shareholder since 2008 is to carry on with business as usual, destroying thousands of SMEs and, when it was finally exposed as an unethical and immoral organisation, it’s answer has been to come up with this cynical plan which will leave most of its victims in the same position.

While RBS are not the only Bank to take such a cynical approach to the people that saved it, it is perhaps the most disappointing. Certainly SME Alliance is disappointed any Bank would be quite so cavalier in its destruction of people’s lives but we are also very disappointed the so called ‘regulator’ of the banking sector would allow this to happen and condone this plan which is no more than a diabolical bit of house keeping by RBS.

If you own an SME that was destroyed by RBS GRG I would suggest you think carefully before joining any scheme proposed by RBS. Not every cloud has a silver lining and not every person has a moral streak. It seems this scheme is offensive and ridiculous.

When justice is delayed too long the Devil is dancing.

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It’s very hard to write a rational, unemotional blog about the state of our financial system when I’ve just been to see a friend, who is a victim of bank fraud, who has been waiting for justice for over 10 years, and who is now dying of terminal cancer. But I’m going to try because too many people now are dying without ever seeing justice done. Perhaps just as bad, those they leave behind see little benefit to justice in the future because no amount of money or even bankers being jailed, can never bring back someone you love. There are some things money can’t buy.

I should add straight away that I’m not saying a bank caused my friend’s cancer – it didn’t. But years of stress, anguish, eviction hearings and trying to make ends meet will not have helped the situation. I’m not a doctor but it seems logical to me that the energy and willpower you need to try and fight of an evil disease like cancer and which should be your primary concern, is not aided when you have bailiffs at the door and a banks top lawyers trying to grind your chances of justice into the ground with legal technicalities and the ever promoted ‘costs’ threat.

That is a reality. When victims of bank misconduct are put with their backs against the wall, no one in authority says “hang on a minute, there’s a reason they can’t pay their Council tax or their bills”, they just go for the throat – which is why we have obscene programmes like ‘Can’t Pay We’ll Take It Away.” Bankers on the other hand, faced with serious allegations that may see them facing fines or, God forbid, criminal charges, can rely on their fail safe – money. Shareholders money (in some cases tax payers money) to bail them out of difficult situations.

It’s only a month since the wife of one of the SME Alliance members died of a heart attack – and in that case I suspect the conduct of a bank was the root cause. When that happened it reminded me of an article I found years ago which was written as a result of research by Cambridge University academics, entitled “Can a Bank Crisis Break Your Heart?”: http://www.cam.ac.uk/news/can-a-bank-crisis-break-your-heart

Obviously a bank crisis and I would add bank policy, can break your heart but business, economic climate and political policy doesn’t seem very interested in the human cost of unethical or even criminal bankers conduct. I say bankers because, as always, I would remind everyone that despite legal terminology, a ‘bank’ is the sum of the people who run it. So I’m feeling pretty heart broken even although I’m not the person dying. Neither am I going to be the person most affected by living without my friend. Her husband and children are and even her parents (who can bear the thought of burying their child?).

Anyway, all this has just hammered me. I’ve found it hard to function in the last few days thinking my friend has a couple of weeks to live and there is no way I can do anything about it or even guarantee justice will be served when she’s gone.

I know it’s very non PC of me to talk about human tragedy and banking in the same breath – but tough. It’s about time we stopped pussy footing around what is happening. Above all else, I believe that as a society we should not let the interests of economics or globalisation over take our ability or even our wish to be decent human beings. Sadly, some people, whether because they are genuinely socio-paths or whether their terms of employment push them into that position, are losing site of their responsibilities as human beings.

Maybe they just don’t realise the consequences of their actions? Certainly many bankers and regulators seem willing to turn a blind eye to the reality of bad banking conduct – and this cavalier attitude to individuals is, ironically, doing good banking a huge disservice. Whereas it seemed totally unreasonable up until 2008 to suggest bankers were anything other than professional people and an essential part of society, in general the opposite applies now and the collective name for bankers is often derogatory regardless of whether they are perfectly good people or one of the acknowledged egomaniacs who have hit the headlines in recent years. No one bats an eye to “yet another banking scandal.” We have even become immune to them – right up to the moment they affect us personally. Right up to the moment a bank deliberately targets our business or repossesses our house. Right up to the moment we realise there is no defence against this immoral conduct.

I have been fighting for justice since 2007. I thought it would be easy and that, having identified a massive bank fraud, I could write to senior management of the bank concerned and they would be keen to investigate the matter and make sure any victims of the fraud were compensated and the villains persecuted. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Since then successive senior managements have gone out of their way to bury the fraud I identified and even persecute the victims – presumably in the belief attack is the best defence. But why would you attack your own clients for things your own staff did? I don’t know why but I do know at Board level that has been the banks’ preferred choice.

Nine years on I am still waiting for justice – and so is my friend. Except now justice will come too late. When she dies and she knows she will very soon, she will be the sixth victim to have died without seeing justice for this particular bank fraud.

Last summer one of my colleagues at SME Alliance and I went to a meeting with Head Counsel and Head of Litigation for a major bank. When our conversation turned to Private Criminal Prosecutions, the Head of Litigation became quite outraged and he said that we should realise that when we make criminal allegations we are ruining people’s lives. Even now I remain confused by this comment – does he seriously not realise how many lives his bank is ruining? Not just ruining lives but taking lives? Clearly the man was capable of having empathy towards others because he seemed genuinely concerned we would consider criminal proceedings against bankers. So how comes this same bank is notorious for its lack of empathy to its customers? Are they considered as a different species? Is this why the good old personal bank manager had to go – because he did empathise with his clients? Maybe he even liked them so the idea of selling them  ‘products of mass destruction’ would have have been distasteful to him?

In terms of banking reform I believe we are walking backwards. No one is properly regulating banks and no one is stopping the merry-go-round of greed and corruption which remains rife in our financial sector. On the other side of the fence, public anger is not dissipating and when one person dies one hundred people dig their heels in harder and want to see justice done. In the same way you can only beat a dog so many times before it will bite you, you can only break so many hearts before the consequences become equally dire.

I wish the senior management of banks would wake up to this fact. Justice has a way of being done despite all attempts to stop it and that includes the apparently well known judicial phrase “might over right.”

It is fortunate my friend is deeply religious and she has no doubt she will be going to a better place – neither do I doubt it, she is a good and kind person. The one sure thing we know about life is we we all leave it one day and the departure lounge for that journey doesn’t have a first class section or private jets – just a completely level playing field or “right over might.”

Now Is Not The Time To Stop Lobbying For Ethical Change.

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I wrote this blog at the beginning of February this year but didn’t post it – I can’t remember why and I probably just got distracted by something to do with a bank! Anyway, today the article about George selling off Land Registry reminded me about this blog and why charitable or not for profit organisations like SME Alliance need to be lobbying more rather than less – and now we also need to lobby for the right to lobby!! If we don’t, I fear very soon freedom of speech itself will be threatened.

Happy Easter to all.

Nikki

Now Is Not The Time To Stop Anyone Lobbying For Ethical Change.

It seems the Government are closing yet another door to democracy. I find the announcement last week that charities cannot use State money (tax payers money) to lobby for any changes in the law, quite sinister and quite sneaky. Not least for charities who campaign for justice – of which there are many. I suspect funding from Government is quite minimal to such charities anyway but, whatever the amounts, it is likely to be diminished to any charity that dares to speak out against Government policy.

What I find so offensive about this new ruling is the fact that while Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, is right and this could result in charities, taking “a vow of silence”, it will also very definitely mean even less opposition or challenge to the mighty ‘lobbying machine’ of big business. It is already an inequitable situation because most charities are struggling for any kind of funding post the credit crunch and unlike big business, charities are not based on profits but on positive action for good causes. When charities lobby for a change in policy or law it is generally in reaction to what they have seen as the consequences of either ‘bad law’ or evolving necessities. When big business lobby’s, the goal is invariably market share, shareholder value, reduced regulation or, let’s face it, how to keep fat cats fat. And in far too many cases, ‘The Ministry of Revolving Doors’ means MPs or regulators have a keen interest in keeping big business happy.

I’m no expert in lobbying but, even a quick surf of the net shows just how important lobbying is. For example this simple explanation in the Guardian (March 2014) clarifies what lobbyists do:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/12/lobbying-10-ways-corprations-influence-government

To a certain extent we are all aware of what lobbyists do and we’ve got used to the idea some companies believe (probably correctly) the best way to get results is to rely on the familiar maxims “you get what you pay for” and “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” If there is no other side to the coin i.e people lobbying for something just because it is fair, equitable and with no financial gain, then what we’re really doing is paving the way for important laws and policies to be swayed or decided on a ‘highest bidder wins’ basis.

What the Government is proposing is a curb on legitimate challenge by charitable organisations by restricting their ability to fund lobbying activities. This is rather like our inequitable two tier justice system whereby very few individuals or SMEs can ever challenge big business (especially banks) in the Courts because they have been priced out of the system.

I found an interesting article in the Bureau of Investigative Journalism about our Top 10 most powerful lobbyists – although the article does date back to 2012 and this list of names has probably changed by now:

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/07/13/britains-10-most-powerful-finance-lobbyists/

Of particular interest to me was No.2 on the list, Anthony Browne, Chief Executive of the British Banking Association. This organisation is funded by its members – the banks – to the tune of £7,729,000 in subscriptions (2014) and no one can say Mr Browne hasn’t done a good job (from the bankers point of view). Recently we’ve seen; the review into banking culture cancelled; various reports delayed for so long it means they are now about as useful as wet loo roll; a complete u-turn on holding senior bankers responsible for what happens in their banks and; any number of deals brokered for banks to pay their way our of repeated misconduct against consumers, breaches of financial regulation or even criminal prosecutions. Even if Mr Browne has slipped down to 4 or 5 on the list, surely it is hugely important to maintain a serious opposition to the powerful banking lobby?

If I had to say which banks have been most damaging to the members of SME Alliance, I’d say RBS is top of the list, followed by Lloyds/HBOS. Both banks were bailed out for billions of pounds by the tax payer and they have both paid a fortune in fines or compensation for various examples of misconduct. Both have representation on the BBA Board:

https://www.bba.org.uk/about-us/bba-board/

And both are represented by one of the most powerful lobbyists in the Country (and Mr Browne is just one of many powerful lobbyists for the financial sector). So – tax payers bailed out these banks and they are able to use tax payers money to lobby at the highest levels of Government in the same way they have used tax payers money to pay their fines, fight their battles in the Courts and continue with their telephone number pay packets to their senior executives. But the charities who are busy mopping up the catastrophic austerity the banks were so instrumental in causing, cannot use tax payers money to lobby for change or reform in banking or anything else.

Why? Because, according to Cabinet Office Minister, Matthew Hancock “Taxpayers’ money must be spent on improving people’s lives and spreading opportunities, not wasted on the farce of Government lobbying Government.”:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3434720/Charities-set-ban-using-Government-grants-lobbying.html

Yes, you have read that correctly – charities can’t spend tax payers money lobbying MPs for anything because the Government wants all charitable donations made on our behalf to be spent on making our lives better. And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. I think Mr Hancock is relying on the logic of La La Land and his statement is wrong. As long as this Government continues to be happy for the Country to be run for the commercial gain of a minority, it is crucial tax payers money is spent on exposing such an undemocratic system and that charities have every opportunity to be as vociferous as possible about any and everything they identify as detrimental to society because of bad law, bad law enforcement or inequitable access to justice.

Reading the list of the top 10 most powerful lobbyists in Britain, I would say the financial sector is becoming a bit of a ‘lobbying cartel’ which doesn’t just have the ear of the Conservative party, it controls the whole head, arms, legs and torso. When the Conservatives were voted back into power, it seems the real victory was for ‘The City of London’ and now the ‘masters of the universe’ have found another way to make its ‘puppet’ limit any further opposition to its avaricious and anti social plans. What next I wonder? We’ve already seen the results powerful lobbying has on Government (all three of the main parties) – the most obvious being soft touch regulation of a corrupt financial sector that brought the whole country to its knees and has seen thousands of people relying on food banks. Now we’re going to see ‘the consequences of inequitable lobbying power.’ Maybe we should all order in a good stock of banana’s before the next insidious brain wave.

Ironically and without doubt this latest and dangerous lunacy has come about because of powerful lobbying. And the spin factor, that ‘it’s all for our own good’, is very offensive and implies this Government thinks we, the public, are all very stupid. Now is not a good time to stop Charities lobbying – it’s time we all started lobbying our MPs to take power back from big business before we really do become a Banana Republic.

Can anyone save Greece and, while we’re at it, can we also save Mozzarella from EU lunacy?

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Having lived in Italy both pre and post the European Union, I’m surprised this EU marriage of assorted incompatible countries, which was definitely not a marriage made in heaven, has lasted this long. Historically, European Governments (and certainly in Mediterranean countries) have had enormous difficulty in efficiently running their own economies – so the idea that a central Government, run by bureaucrats from innocuous offices in Brussels could manage them all, was always a Panglossian scenario doomed to end up with one country or another or several ending up in the stew.

I don’t doubt there was some good intention behind forming the European Union. Open borders, one currency, easy trading – but it was always tenuous. We live on an Island and our only neighbours are Scotland (and that’s going well!!) Wales and Ireland and even those relationships are littered with dissent and the demand for independence. All the same, we just about manage to stay together under the heading of Great Britain and we have done for many years. But the relationship between the Italians, French, Germans and the Spanish (to name but a few European neighbours) prior to the EU, was frequently as collaborative and friendly as rival Pitbulls. The idea that Europe would unite and merge cultural and economic identities under one banner and one rule was always quite extraordinary.

Neither was it properly considered. Due diligence would have told anyone we are so culturally diverse in Europe, any collective rule book would have been as useful as a manual on aerospace technology for three year olds. The idea that Greece or Italy (for example) would conform to the same rules as Germany or France was just daft. I lived on the Italian French border for many years and the difference between Ventimiglia and Menton (about 5 miles distance) was so enormous it was just like entering a different country – because it was! What part of signing membership to the EU changed that scenario?

In my opinion the EU was never about what was best for people and always about what was best for the financial sector. And sooner or later it was always going to become impossible for voters in any country to have confidence in a system designed solely to feed the banks to the detriment of all else.

If the IMF decide in their wisdom to lay the blame entirely with the Greek people for this crisis, then I suggest they will find find they have a similar crisis with Spain and Italy (for starters) in the very near future. Even if (as the media would have us believe) Greeks really are the laziest and least trustworthy people in Europe – by whose standards are we judging them? By German standards? Are we saying Greeks are different to the Germans or the French and therefore they must change? Do the Greeks want to be like the Germans or the French? Or do they just want to be Greeks? Was the Greek economy on a sure footing before they joined the EU?

Ah but, I can hear people saying, in that case, they shouldn’t have joined Europe and borrowed so much money which they can’t pay back. And who engineered that situation? And who monitored it? Surely the top economists rounding up European countries for membership had some inkling that Greece was not economically stable – so how exactly did they qualify? As anyone in business (and especially the banking sector) knows, numbers on a page can be rearranged to tell a hundred different stories to a hundred different readers and someone obviously did some exceptional fantasy accounting for Greece. And who ever was regulating these figures somehow failed to notice two and two was never adding up to four.

Some might say it’s rather like the mess RBS or HBOS/Lloyds got themselves into which went (apparently) completely under the radar of the UK regulators. While the bank bosses were telling the world and his wife they were absolutely solvent, the truth of the matter was always bound to come out – they were completely broke and deeply in debt. Of course what happened there was the UK tax payer bailed the banks out even although it caused mass austerity. To add insult to injury, in the UK we continued to plough our banks and our top bankers with money and we refused (unlike Iceland) to hold anyone responsible for the catastrophe the banks caused. We even kept the obscene bonus system going.

Banks across the world were falling like nine pins during the so called ‘credit crunch’ and in the majority of cases the big banks were bailed out because they were “too big to fail.” Countries, it seems, are not. Fair enough – so Greece first and who is next?

The Greeks got themselves into this mess and now they can get themselves out of it is the attitude of the EU leaders. Although I can’t help feeling that the biggest offence Greece has committed against the EU has been to suggest it won’t be dictated to. How dare they tell EU leaders they won’t meekly submit their people to years and years of austerity and misery while they concentrate on pouring every possible Euro they can into paying off a debt that, realistically, is beyond repayment without some write offs? There has been a definite issue of ‘face saving’ here and the EUs big bosses have not taken kindly to the idea that the Greek people could have a say in economic affairs they clearly know nothing about! How many times do the ‘people’ have to be told “leave politics to the grown ups!” Hmmn – I think what they really mean is “leave politics to the bankers” who, as we all know, must continue to be paid millions of pounds for a job well done!

But Greece isn’t the only country in financial turmoil. And obviously the biggest issue with letting the Greek people have a say in their future is (God forbid) other economically badly behaved Europeans may follow suit. Worse still, when the European elite have finished blaming all the people of Europe, they may have to wake up to the fact the people of Europe are getting restless and some of them no longer care what a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels think. If the EU was run so well and regulated so well, why isn’t it an overwhelming success? Could it be the so called credit crunch was the fly in the ointment? Could it be the financial sector has had a big hand in this problem? Could it be that the big banks like Goldman Sachs (busy doing God’s work) just saw Europe and its populations as a delicious example of cannon fodder? And especially countries like Greece. Sun, sea, chaos, corruption, no taxes – did the EU not know that was the deal with Greece? Did they think people joining the EU and the Euro would automatically abandon their Mediterranean heritage get into straight lines?

Culture with all its good points and its failings is still the very thing that make Europe unique. A host of countries with a completely different way of life dating back hundreds of years. If you wanted to go to somewhere very well organised with fantastic motorways and possibly an over fondness for pork, you went to Germany. If you wanted to go somewhere where life is very laid back, prone to siestas and fiesta’s and with very good fresh fish, you went to Greece or Italy or Spain. You changed your money and deliberately set off to visit somewhere completely different to your own country with different shops, food, habits, architecture and lifestyle. What was wrong with that?

Clearly something was because we now have a system where EU countries must now conform to a bland similarity based on nonsense rules that are totally open to abuse. And apparently some abuse the rules more than others – well there’s a surprise. But I wonder who are the greatest abusers in a decade where corruption is so wide spread? You can get it anywhere these days but some nations hide it better than others and some are better at managing it. Take the UK? Some would call it the money laundering centre of the world – but in EU negotiation terms, butter wouldn’t melt. In my opinion, turning Europe into a franchise of one big corporation like MacDonald’s was never going to work. You were always going to end up with hamburgers containing snails, garlic, anchovies, sardines, sauerkraut and “don’t worry, I make lamb.” Bankers may have thought all European countries would perform unilaterally if they all had the same currency – they couldn’t have been more wrong.

Europeans are ultimately all Nationalists – even the Brits, look at the somersaults the UK Government did to keep Scotland British. You can’t tell Greek or Italian or, heaven help us, the French or German people how to live. You can try and bribe their Governments with grants and loans and swaps, and it all goes swimmingly while there’s plenty of money to dole out. But when the coffers in one country run dry and other richer countries start imposing such harsh austerity people risk losing their shirts, is it surprising we all start remembering we’re individual nations again?

We don’t have the Euro in the UK and that is our saving grace. Love him or hate him David Cameron does put the British point across in his negotiations with Europe and they have to listen. Despite our internal conflicts (Scotland, the power the banks have, austerity blocking justice) we do at least have our own currency and therefore a bigger hand in running our own economy – and even if it’s a mess, neither the Germans nor the French can dictate what’s best for us. Maybe the Greek leaders have realised (before the rest of Europe does) that the views of the people they rule are more important than the corporations who just think they’re so important. Maybe the Greek people just want their country, their dignity and their identity back. And whatever it costs them now, might be less than it costs them (or other EU nations) in the future. Bankers, in the name of the EU, have run riot over Europe in a bulletless war for too long now. Maybe the Greeks are right to fight back?

One final example of why I believe the European Union is ultimately doomed. It’s a small example but it clearly shows the dangerous level of interference the EU wields over national heritage. Last Wednesday I was talking to a very good friend who lives in Ventimiglia. I used to live there and I remember the border coming down. So I was asking my friend how Ventimiglia was coping with the thousands of migrants stranded there because the French have now very definitely put the border back up so the immigrants can’t just wander over to Monte Carlo or St Tropez.

However my friend, who is a great foodie, was intent on telling me about the latest crack pot EU regulation. Check out this headline: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11704323/Italy-EU-request-for-powdered-milk-in-mozzarella-is-attack-on-cultural-heritage.html

What meddling jobsworth came up with that idea? Is this really the kind of rule the EU was set up to introduce? Does anyone really want to be associated with such idiocy? Oh for the days of bent cucumbers, irregularly shaped tomatoes and interesting foreign currency.

I will keep praying for a miracle solution for the ordinary Greek people caught in the middle of these power struggles. Obviously, at this stage, only a miracle will suffice.