Caring about UK insolvency
Morgan Stanley were the only firm out of thirteen to
offer a FREE helpline and comprehensive debt
management booklet, all the others just sent
threats and demands, plus in many cases tried
to circumvent the adjudicator by continually
phoning when demonstrably already quite aware
I had gone bankrupt. Trying to get paid up front
and preempt the receiving process, which incidentally
constitutes fraud once a receiver is appointed.
I have just gone bankrupt, due mainly to Lloyds Bank, which will come as no real surprise to those who have visited the website before. This letter may well help those who have just gone bankrupt or are considering it, towards feeling that they are not alone.
At one time banks and building societies protected us from ourselves by only lending us what they thought we could repay, not what we thought that we might possibly repay given no problems ever. Now we are advised to be responsible borrowers by increasingly irresponsible lenders, who do not care if masses of money they give you is within your ability to pay back or not.
Many of us come from an era where there was a loyalty to your bank, repaid with them looking after you like family.
Now customers are just fleeced for the absolute maximum possible with irresponsible loans, and mailshotted for everything financially saleable known to man. Generally accompanied by selling you protection insurance at high interest you do not even need.
Couple this with processing debits before credits then charging overdrawn interest and invalidly flagging Experion and Equifax, taking three to ten days to process a cheque or electronic transfer whilst they gain all the interest on the static money of yours, and draconian penalties and fines for late payments, often purely their own origin, which when validly complained about are performed lengthily on a premium rate line you are paying for and they are profiting from by splitting the proceeds with the telephone company.
If you say to someone, "here is some money, have it", they will happily take it.
We used to have bank managers who you had to prove you didnt need the money before they would lend you any; now you can get money online by post without ever having to see a single human being.
Britain is now at saturation level with borrowing, plus up to seven times wage mortgage lending; it is becoming payback time and interest rates will soon rise as shares inevitably tumble. Is it any wonder so very many people are simply going bankrupt, as they were lent what they patently could never repay by unscrupulous lenders in the first place.
You have to wonder whether the Government sanctioned this loosening of the fiscal belt in order to create a boom economy floated on borrowed money. Whether the recent changes to the insolvency laws, which many ordinary people, just like myself, are having to use of necessity in dread fear, and declare themselves insolvent, given the stigma associated with insolvency, were merely a way of getting people back on the borrowing conveyor belt sooner than used to be the case.
It is easier than ever before to borrow huge sums with no collateral, and easier than ever before to go bankrupt.
Whilst this may be fine for government and banks, who just wheel and deal around artificial money in circulation, it is however punitive and often fatal via suicide to ordinary people doing ordinary jobs in their previously ordinary lives.
Financial institutions have a responsibility to their customers to only lend responsibly, which they have absolved in favour of profit at all costs and be damned with the customer; is it any wonder so many have gone bankrupt on the back of deliberate lending to anyone and his dog, at virtually no limit? The current bankruptcies are the tip of the iceberg, this being June 2006. There are millions more to come, and the longer that they wait, surely the higher and ever higher the sums will be, I should have gone bankrupt way earlier, but old fashioned "anything but bankruptcy" stopped me in my tracks a few times before I did finally go bankrupt this month.
I am not proud of this letter, in actual fact I feel shameful it has come to this, but I would never have been able to borrow a fraction of what I have accumulated even ten years ago.
For those with no alternative and too far gone, read it to feel you are not alone; for others read it and be aware that this could well be you, and only you can govern your lending levels, the banks have forfeited looking after your interests for favour of looking after their own. You are no longer a respected long time customer, you are now just simply a source of revenue, and your well being and solvency are not their concern any more, just profits off your back and be damned with your future, health and sanity.
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am over 50 and Grammar School educated, so I view bankruptcy with a heavy heart, and as the last resort with attendant shame; far removed from the seemingly current view of insolvency, we believed it mattered to pay your debts off.
I come from a previous era where bankruptcy was seen as the ultimate social disgrace, I feel so myself now in applying; perhaps without this attitude I may well have applied sooner and in the process not have compounded the issue by continually striving to pay what has in effect eventually now proven to be unpayable.
I worked for thirty years or so at senior systems programmer level, cvs printed and provided, where I was used to earning at the end anything up to 200 pounds an hour or typically 2000 a week before tax.
It is hard to realise when you are over 40 now you are seen as useless by industry,
however this seems to be the case, and I am now 55, its beginning to sink in.
This letter is easy to write in hindsight seeing where I could have done things better, or seen events in a truer light, but I give you some background as to my state of mind at the onset of what I now see as the start of this snowballing effect towards disaster.
I had done 30 odd years being a top systems programmer, when hit with a financially crippling divorce, leaving me virtually penniless and the ex wife rich on the proceeds, this was when I was made redundant three times in one year in addition to all that.
I ended up alcoholic and chain smoking and addicted to painkillers due to a severe footballing injury.
Through alcoholism I nearly died, twice surviving intensive care, but quit drinking on 28th February 2000, and smoking 19th September 2001, and painkillers Jan 01, 2002. I have never taken a drink, cigarette or painkiller since those dates.
However I ended up owing considerable amounts of money to old friends who got hit for money when I was a drunk. Being old time I borrowed off the bank in the form of a loan to pay them all off.
Thus it started. Obviously I should have declared myself bankrupt then when owing just one bank loan; but you think that you will work again, or you will win the lottery because you have been “good” quitting addictions, or someone will offer you this amazing new avenue for your talents now you are “clean” and employable.
However, not only is there ageism at work, but my heartbeat is heavily arrhythmic and unlikely to improve due to the drink apparently, ditto the breathing; it took failing the dhss and job medical to realise I was a lot worse than I thought, as I have always been semi pro level sportsman over quite a few sports and felt not too bad. However that is not the same as being fully fit for employment it seems, though I bridle a bit over that even now.
I concede that I am not brilliantly fit, far from it, but generally most times I get about ok, play a bit of golf with some success, which allows breaks for breath in the course of the sport, and am still very sharp mentally if a little forgetful.
I should point out I have an iq of 161 and was trained at school and afterwards not to quit easily at anything, so I reckon that I have pursued this financial path to ruin right to the bitter conclusion partly out of a natural predilection to obsession/addictive tendencies; partly out of a desire never to quit and partly because I falsely believed I could eventually still earn again at the levels I used to do, even if only simply contract basis, but all my subtle feelers online and through friends recruitment agencies and the “golf grapevine” proved totally and utterly useless and futile.
couple this with the astounding ease there is in allowing credit these days, in fact as we speak I am still in Experions opinion a perfectly viable candidate for credit, but I have 13 credit cards and two bank loans outstanding, ive just never reneged on them as its not in my nature to do so, hence I am viewed as an ok risk, yet I am applying to you for bankruptcy. Bizarre.
At the onset of all this I had a loan just about payable out of my income with no probs, off Lloyds, who seem in hindsight to not give a damn who they lend what amount, and then refuse to admit any blame themselves if ever they are in error, which seems to be very frequently. Of fifteen major transaction points over fourteen months they got thirteen wrong, yet admitted to none though chased via their own complaint procedures and then further still via the financial ombudsman. They simply could not care less about errors and ignore complaints until you give up or are faced with a lengthy court action against their slick lawyers; all the time is on their side, and they can simply afford to wait you out.
I then wanted to buy some shares in British Energy, as to be honest I got word they were 3p and set to go up to 8 pounds eventually, which indeed they obviously now have. So I applied for lloyds to do me a new loan revamping the old one. They screwed up big time (see attached four years or so diatribe since) with the result I bought 3000 pounds worth off the back of two credit cards, which should have been reimbursed by the Lloyds loan that never was or ever will be now. I took this all the way to the Ombudsman, if you want to take it further to liquidate funds for the other creditors I would be only too pleased now to authorise you to do so on their behalf, because they also suffer in turn due to Lloyds habitual uncaring ineptitude.
This meant two credit cards suddenly had 1500 each on them that would not be paid back in time to avoid interest amassing (which has rolled on to this day, swallowing ten other cards in its wake) , this was coupled at the time with the astounding Kafka-like debacle with the Housing department (again full details attached – currently under investigation by my MP Julie Kirkbride). Any funds eventually liberated by that are obviously yours to distribute as well.
I own 1000 pounds worth of shares bought at 6.4 euros in Waterford Wedgwood now trading at about 4.5 euros). Those are yours too, plus I havnt run down the bank accounts or credit cards to the bare bones, as I realised, as with the drinking, smoking and painkillers that enough is patently enough, this is going nowhere, end it all now. I am at long last doing what I think that I should have done just after quitting drink, then again at Lloyds colossal blunders, and belatedly now.
I never had any intention of ever defrauding anyone, and personally hold Lloyds mainly, and the Housing secondarily as prime examples of trying to push water uphill at the same time as trying to pay others. Lloyds have effectively swept all their provable errors under the carpet and left me out to dry, and the Housing have taken 2000 pounds off me in error then refused to pay it back though prompted over a nine year period continually.
Consider this, had Lloyds not forced me to sell my 90,000 shares in British Energy short at 1.90 each, I would have actually been able to service the outstanding debt at that time with money to spare. But they persisted in ignoring my claims even though I wrote directly to their chairman.
To my mind, Lloyds Bank owe these people I tried to shore up the finances with, all the money I cannot unfortunately manage to pay them. I cannot describe just how livid I was, am and always will be with Lloyds and to just slightly lesser extent the Housing, to me prime examples of the malaise and blasé attitude towards normal people like me out here, who they only see as financial opportunities and not as human beings often needing protection from their own shortcomings. How in heavens name did I get lent so much money by so many people on the back of my 2000 a year pension plus 300 a month incapacity payments? It beggars belief when seen in the cold light of day.
I can only apologise it has come to this, there are many errors of judgement on my part, perhaps slightly to be expected having been a drunk for most of the nineties. I suppose my judgement was pretty warped to start with in comparison to now, in mitigation; plus there is a tendency in me to “try hard to make good”, and “not quit easily” partly from having had polio in boyhood, and then being schooled at Grammar School in the sixties, when you were taught nothing was beyond your capabilities and almost programmed to that, when patently in my case there has been a massive failure this time, hard to admit but true.
I am not trying to fob off the blame on Lloyds, but if you read it carefully, though very boring, it sets out a valid complaint which has genuinely prejudiced the chance of the other creditors to be paid in full ever.
I would gladly work in the computer department of my creditors for 2000 net a month guaranteed till I pay everyone back, I feel that strongly I would like to rectify this situation personally, and also I don’t see why “Lloyds Bank should get away with it” in their total absolution of themselves from errors they patently made in my case and which they failed to hold their hand up and admit, thus sentencing both me and my other creditors to inevitable inviability and my not being able to uphold my word to others.
When I borrow money I expect to be able to pay it back, but Lloyds have made that impossible for me to achieve, through demonstrable errors on their part, and though my word to others means something to me, theirs means nothing at all, in fact they “actually make money out of their own complaint lines – when people are only calling because of their errors in the first place.
Im sure my credit cards will show the odd meal and purchase where creditors would say why would he do this when he is in debt to start with, but we are all human; I am guilty of stupid purchases as is anyone at some given time, few could fail to hold their hands up to that one I believe; but underlying that there is a genuine wish to have paid these people back, however I can now see that is impossible barring a miracle. What I have now tried to do is cut to the quick before draining every card and every avenue, to at least try to minimise the damage that is left.
In the old days you had to visit a Bank Manager, the truly formidable and heavily experienced man to whom you virtually had to prove you were so absolutely cast iron solvent when you went to borrow money that you almost did not need it. There was no easy path to a virtual fortune.
Today it is unbelievably easy, for those who were used to that era, to gain funding. And once you gain funding you are soon seen as viable for more funding via Experion. I have a friend who always deals in cash all his life who could not get a credit card when he first applied in his life because he had NO credit record; in other words his total solvency and never having had recourse to borrowing counted AGAINST him now wheras it would have been a glowing beacon to an old fashioned bank manager.
Within this scenario it is easy to get blasé about huge amounts of money, it almost seems as if you are dealing with Monopoly money, not real money in a real world. Money can be easily obtained online to the internet without ever seeing a representative of any Bank or finance firm; it can be juggled about like confetti and more can be obtained at will simply by paying the ones you already have on a regular basis. In fact the more you have borrowed the better “track record” you get. It is simply too easy now to borrow huge amounts of money, and that fact makes the huge amounts seem very much smaller than they really are in real life in a real world. I found that I was actually recently thinking, “maybe I will win the lottery” and “perhaps I can get on who wants to be a millionaire, or one of my two premium bonds I have had since I was six would win 250,000 pounds; and that is how scary it is, as with hindsight these are unreal expectations yet at the time in question they seem quite plausible ways out, it is as if because the debt was so easy to run up that the solution will be just as painless and everything will revert to normal. As if it is all just this computer game and at the end you pass go, collect your money, pay everyone off and put the board away till next Christmas.
A friend this month helped an old man out by digging out some old concrete footings for four hours solid hard graft, and charged fifty pounds as his round figure for doing so. It made me realise where I was at in comparison. Work like that equates to fifty pounds; yet I had been moving about thousands with little or no collateral or prospect of earning the money to service the debts. It is almost like living in a surreal world with artificial money and no link to reality and the connection between work and money.
I counted myself as intelligent, and then one day a wake up call comes and you realise just where you are at and its bewildering how you got there and how bad it actually is.
It’s a bit like when you wake up to the fact you are an alcoholic, you suddenly realise just how much you are consuming with no hope of ever being able to get back to where you were before.
I suppose as well, having run 3i for years on end, I was already slightly inured to the value of “real” money in the “real” world, where a pound to you and I equates to a million to them, literally.
I feel like I have woken up from a bad dream, and yet it is still there, and I feel bad about myself for having got to these suprising depths of worry and failure. How the hell I got to such dire straits without ever waking up along the way is extremely worrying, I only know I will never borrow even another penny again in my life, as all I have to show for thirty years hard graft in a tough system programming environment is an old 88 jag that needs an mot next month and my clothes in a couple of wardrobes.
If this letter is any use in helping people not so far gone as I am, then please use it or quote from it at will, or put it on a website where someone can see it and maybe pull back from the brink where I did not.
Could you apologise to all those I have failed to pay, I genuinely wanted to try but it is sadly now, I finally realise, beyond me.
yours sincerely
Malcolm Pugh.
It is not easy to put this up in the cold light of day for anyone to read, but if it helps one single person avoid the bloody hassle and worry I have had over this, and am still having, then it is well worth it.
Remember, banks are not only for Christmas.
Only their own. Christmas is coming and our goose is nearly cooked,
Our plastic heroes prepare for one last Balaclava,
Money trees groaning under the weight of expectation,
About what will fill our stockings and our larders,
Once more unto the breach, forms the cards back into line,
Struggling forwards to pay their ultimate price,
And after the fanfares have blown away the swirling smoke,
They are fallen shredded on the battlefield of life.
And Januarys cold still light at the end of day
Shows all these broken bodies lying prone,
Theres wailing ever louder from this fallen few,
Proclaiming those in charge must finally atone,
And then that quietness falls just before the storm,
During which thoughts finally turn to what weve done,
Our phone starts ringing stridently and never stops,
And we realise our final race has been run.
Theres a scroll from the legions lying in your hall,
Theres a hungry wolf at the doorway baying,
Theres Christmas wrappers lying in the lounge,
And your family is in the back room praying,
Who will pay the piper at the gates of hell,
Perhaps our bankers will step in and stop it,
But for once our cries to them fall on deaf ears,
As we are no longer grist to fuel their profit.
Dont assume it wont happen, for tomorrows always come,
What is sown now is always reaped another day,
What you spend now giddily in ecstasy,
You will surely be asked to repay,
Theres a devil in the darkness tempting us,
His sophisticated adverts slick, bright, and cool,
Who paints his picture of spending over earnings,
Why wait and save for things just like a fool,
Have it all now and be damned with it,
Why work and slave when you can borrow,
But hes not ever there to soothe you,
When the lawyers come a calling on the morrow.
So here I stand now quite naked,
Shorn of all that I had before,
Banks are not just for Christmas,
And after peace surely there is war,
And only one side can win this one,
For I am short of horse and shot,
Its payback time to Doug and Dinsdales,
With money that I simply havnt got,
I wont end up part of a concrete motorway,
And my head wont be nailed down to the floor,
Worse still I will be just here endlessly waiting,
For when they come knocking on my door.
In times of old warriors were held against the leash,
By men who held a steadying calm hand,
Kept under firm restraint and immobilised,
Until they had formulated their prudent plans,
But where are all these sane heads now,
Where are the managers we knew of yore,
For they have absolved responsibility for profit,
And in doing so let slip the dogs of war,
And as in all wars already fought,
And in those yet to rear their head,
Its the troops who fill up the graveyards,
And the likes of you and I that end up dead.
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