Showing posts with label banking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label banking. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

What do you feel about the recent UK election results?

What do you feel about the recent UK election results?

By Dark Politricks

Did any of you foresee the result of the recent UK general election in which the Tories won an overall majority despite every poll leading up to the election calling it too close to call. 

There was a general expectation across the media that there would be another hung parliament and probable coalition government with the Lib Dems as King Makers.

The multitude of polls preceding the election were very wrong, whilst the exit poll was spot on.

This led to ex Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown to embarrassingly have to "eat his cake" on the subsequent BBC's Question Time due to his comments on election night TV that:
"If these exit polls are right I will eat my hat" - Paddy Ashdown
His party, the Lib Dems were almost wiped out and went down to single figures losing 49 seats and leaving just 8 MP's in parliament.

Major party figures including Danny Alexander the ex chief secretary to the Treasury, lost their seats in the decimation of the party.

Along with 2 other party leaders, one of which changed his mind after a day (Mr Farage), the Lib Dems leader Nick Clegg immediately resigned leaving the future of the party in doubt along with Labours.

The Labour party also had a bad night, almost being wiped out in Scotland, and losing 26 seats. However Labour still managed a 30% share of the popular vote despite pundits calling the election "too close to call" right up until the votes came rolling in for the Tories across England.

The Lib Dems were never going to be forgiven by their core voters for joining the right-wing Tories instead of their natural cohorts, the left leaning Labour party, in a coalition. Many Tory back benchers were very unhappy at the unequal number of Lib Dem ministerial posts that were given out to their junior partners in the collation that was, as we were kept reminded, in "national interest".

Whilst they may have helped prevent some Tory excesses and helped push the amount you can earn before paying income tax up above £10k, they showed their lack of respect for the voters, mostly young and left leaning, when they broke a much publicised pre-election promise never to raise University tuition fees. This promise was broken almost as soon as Nick Clegg got made Deputy PM and access to ministerial chauffeurs and apartments.

Lib Dems sign pledge with top students
The Lib Dems sign pledge with top students never to raise tuition fees in 2010

Tax breaks for the rich, a raise in VAT which is a tax raise that affects the poorest the most, a massive failure to reverse the huge police state Labour had built up and a decimation of the benefit system to save money instead of taxing the banksters who had caused the financial crisis were all unforgivable as well.

We were kept being told that the deficit was shrinking whilst in fact it grew along with the national debt. The last Government was not a success story at all.

Maybe Nick Clegg saw joining the Tories as his only chance to get some modicum of power whilst he could. He must have known the writing was on the wall when he basically stuck two fingers up at his constituents and joined the Tories. 

Letting the banksters get off scot-free, supporting the Tories war on Libya and speaking out for Israel instead of condeming it when it attacked Gaza which was quite common to hear when they were the third-party with no expectation of favours for power were just some of the things that pissed off grass root Lib Dem voters.

He thought the electorate were willing to vote for constant coalition with a referendum on a change in voting but the country wasn't ready for the watered down choice they had to make. Maybe if they had made their point after the recent election more people would have been willing to vote for a change.

You just need to look at how the popular vote in the recent election matched seats to see how many people would be pissed about the current voting system.

The Green party and UKIP together won around 16% of the popular vote (5,038,712 votes) yet only returned one MP each to Westminster.

Yet on the other hand the SNP won far less when it came to the popular vote, Scotland has a population of 5.2 million and only 1,454,436 people voted for the SNP, yet they took all but 3 Scottish seats, 56, a massive gain of 50!

They almost managed to take every single seat in Scotland but instead chose to leave one each for the major 3 parties taking the remaining 50 seats. The SNP are sending a nationalist mob down South who want to see an end to the union and more Scottish powers devolved. This includes the articulate and always enjoyable to watch debate, former leader of the party, Alex Salmond as an MP.

People who had never thought about electoral reform are now calling for it.

Those people who say we only just had a referendum on changing our first past the post system seem to forget that the choice on the cards for voters was not a proper proportional system but instead a form of alternative voting. This is where you would mark an alternative candidate who would take your vote if no-one managed an overall majority.

It does seem odd that Scotland's 1.5 million voters can send 56 MPS to Westminster yet England can vote over 5 million to achieve just 2 MP's.

UK vote share after 650 of 650 seats

Political Party% of Popular Vote
Conservative Party36.9%
Labour Party30.4%
United Kingdom Independence Party12.6%
Liberal Democrats7.9%
Scottish Nationalist Party4.7%
Green Party3.8%
So now without the Lib Dem's "Steadying Hand", as one of their election adverts put it. There to prevent Labour spending all the cash again and there to prevent the Tories from being too mean, we are now left with an overall Conservative majority.

That means that there is no-one to stop them hammering away at the poor whilst letting their rich benefactors and friends all off with tax cuts and a far too complicated tax system that provides enough loop holes for most of the Tory front bench to keep multi million pound trust funds overseas and away from the UK tax man.


Surely this is a money bomb for accountants and the rich looking for loop holes.
The Hong Kong tax code, widely held by tax lawyers to be the most efficient in the world, is a mere 276 pages long.
The British tax code which has tripled in size since Blair got into government in 1997 is currently in excess of 17,000 pages!
If our government really wanted to claw back some money from waste they would surely shorten this gargantuan piece of legislature.

As anyone knows the longer and more complicated a piece of legislation the more loopholes and get out of jail cards are to be found within its pages.

Instead they will carry on using their right-wing supporter rags of papers, the Sun and The Daily Mail, to attack benefits claimants and the poor. Obviously forgetting the fact that benefit claimants had nothing to do with the banking crash or the dramatic rise in the national debt and deficit under the previous two administrations.

Why is it we have still not seen any bankers jailed from the illegal behaviour from banks like HSBC who laundered drug cartel money, terrorist funds and more?

Instead they get $1.9 billion fines in-case the banking system is "destabilised".

I don't understand why their banking licence could have been kept whilst still jailing the bankers in control of the slush funds and drug cartel accounts as an example. London must continue to be the bankster capital of the world it seems. This won't change under any Tory administration.

What will change under the new Government?

Well let's watch embarrassingly as our country, who actually came up with the European Convention on Human Rights, pulls out of the Human Rights Act. This is despite the fact that it was written by Conservatives after World War II to show the newly freed countries that some things related to a countries ethics and morals should be set in stone and not relative to a countries current situation.

This will be something that will not only be a massive blow to civil rights in this country unless replaced by an English Bill of Rights that actually means something and is kept to, not invalidated bit by bit over the years as the US Bill of Rights has  been.

People don't seem to realise that the Human Rights Act although abused by a small minority of terror suspects in jail or on control orders trying to prevent extradition to countries where they will be tortured - including the USA - is there to protect them as well.

You may read the odd cherry picked Daily Mail horror story about the new Abu Hamza we can't extradite to a country X or Y where they maybe tortured or executed. Why, because we have morals and see ourselves as a civilised country not a 7th century Islamic State where heads roll as often as the weapons we sell them are unboxed.

The national debt will continue to grow due to the lack of GDP, plus the interest rate apartheid which sees banks loan money from the Bank of England at half a percent whilst the average man now has to rely on WONGA loans with an APR of 1,500%.

The current national debt stands at £1.36 trillion, almost triple the £0.53 trillion it stood at in 2008, the time of the economic collapse and grows at £5,170 per second.
As stated on the National Debt Clock website:
"Mainstream media headlines today are focused on Britain's record national debt, which just surpassed £1 trillion, a figure that can only exponentially increase unless the entire mechanism of Government finance is overhauled.
The truth however is much worse, factoring in all liabilities including state and public sector pensions, the real national debt is closer to £4.8 trillion, some £78,000 for every person in the UK."
 Our National Debt Problem

UK National Debt

UK National Debt Over Recent Years

During 2007, the Labour government borrowed £37.7bn, of which £28.3bn was invested in big projects (the balance of £9.4bn represents the current budget deficit). However during the last government during 2013, the Conservative-led coalition borrowed £91.5bn, with just £23.7bn invested.

So when you hear George Osborne talk about fixing the hole in the roof or reducing the deficit / national debt, take it with a big pinch of salt.


Instead of recouping and saving billions by doing just some of the following ideas they are mostly going to attack the poorest in society, both here and abroad.

Saving some money...


It really pisses me off when I hear MP's call our rotating Trident submarines at sea an "independent" nuclear deterrent. This is because they all rely on US GPS satellite systems. Unless we put our own GPS system up into space we would always have to ask the permission of our US allies to fire any nuclear missiles anyway. Therefore it makes the whole system redundant. 

What if we had to go to war with the USA? Why not save the £34bn and spend it on the NHS instead. Nukes are not going to help in the war against terror and when China and the USA finally duke it out our piddly number of missiles is going to be inconsequential when it comes down to it. 

Satellites will be one of the first victims of any war between the US and China. Falling from the skies like rain drops in any major conflict as China and the USA race to become the superior technological and information power house before any real bullets or nukes are fired. 

As China showed the world in 2007 when it downed one of it's own Satellites with weapons from earth, it is willing and able to take the modern battlefield that one step further and into space by making the US armies massive reliance on information and technology redundant.


We seem to blindly follow US policy as if it's our own. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the UK £20bn by 2010 and the final cost when you add in extras such as the cost to society due to the fact that a large proportion of homeless people, those with mental health problems and prisoners are ex service men will increase that by the end of 2015. 

Add to that the £1.75bn cost of David Cameron's war in Libya and the cost we are now dealing with due to the failed states we have created across North Africa, people smuggling into Europe, and increased security checks on immigrants due to fears ISIS is using people trafficking to implant sleeper cells in the country and the cost of recent wars reaches £12bn. This does not even include secret wars such as our involvement training fighters in Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.


During 2010-11, the HMRC estimated that companies were avoiding tax worth £4.1bn however some campaigners such as Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, think that the real figure could be £12bn or more. 

This is not even including the amounts of money "legally" avoided by our huge tax code that gives corporations such as Vodafone the means to avoid £6bn in tax during 2010, an act which spawned the anti-austerity protest group UK Uncut.

Added together legal and illegal tax avoidance could easily be in the £20bn+ figure per fiscal year.

These are just 3 things that could be done to prevent more austerity whilst increasing spending, generating growth by creating jobs and not wasting money on pointless exercises in hubris by going to war to destroy a country only to spend more money trying to re-construct it and deal with the aftermath of failed states such as Libya and the recent people smuggling epidemic.

Has David Cameron even admitted that the hundreds of people dying in the Mediterranean are related to the failed states of Libya and it's neighbours which we helped create. From Tony Blairs 2004 kiss with Gaddafi in the desert to blockades to prevent immigrants reaching Europe in two easy steps.

Blair meets Gaddafi
Tony Blair makes up with Col Gaddafi in 2004

The problem with people smuggling from Libya to Europe
A cramped boat full of desperate people trying to flee the failed state caused by David Cameron and the Axis of Wars destruction

Will the Tory government do any of these 3 easy ways to save dozens of billions of pounds?

The answer is obviously no.

The divide between the rich and poor will get wider.

The people who keep the lights on in London won't even be able to afford to live in the city they work in due to the average house costing £350,000. Even in certain rich areas of London like Kensington, up to 70% of houses are classified as "Second Homes". Even the local paper shops for the rich people of Chelsea are shutting down due to the influx of rich Chinese and Russians buying up our capital city.

Instead the Tories will attack immigrants, benefit claimants, people who cannot get good jobs and rely on job seekers allowance and more diversionary tactics as they continue Maggie Thatcher's dream of a total privatised country.

We only have 5 more years until we get another chance to vote for a party to represent us. The problem is there doesn't seem to be a party on the horizon I can see myself putting a cross against anytime soon.

Labour is Tory Lite, and with the resignation of Ed Milliband, a person many could never imagine seeing as PM, much in the same way I can never imagine Boris Johnson as PM, let alone Mayor of London, we have no real party that represents the people anymore.

The Greens did well to get 1 million votes but with our current system of voting, one MP per million votes in England is not going to get us far and they still have an environmental edge that puts many off them despite the fact that if you read their manifesto there would be many aspects to it that you could find yourself agreeing with. 

Maybe it is just the fact that they are led by a woman and their only MP, Caroline Lucas from Brighton is a woman who puts many working class men off from voting for them.

Personally this election, I did as I said I would and spoilt my ballot paper. This was because there was no-one on it that represented my views. I live in an area where Tories have always ruled and there is no chance of Labour or Lib Dems getting in instead. In one election in my ward Labour and the Lib Dems didn't even try to contest the seat which allowed the racist BNP to come 2nd!

I hoped enough people would do the same so that even this amount of spoiled papers would have to be recorded along with party numbers and shown in graphs such as the one from the BBC website I put on this page.

From anecdotal evidence from people I spoke to at various events and groups I know quite a few people also spoilt their papers.

The news even carried a story about someone who spent the time and effort to draw a tiny little penis inside the square of an incumbent Tory in Wales. However because the drawing was within the confines of the box it was actually counted as a vote rather than a spoilt ballot!

I would still love to know how many people did write "None of the above" or spoilt their ballot in some way or another.

If you took the effort and time out of your day to go and vote there should be a "None of the above" option by default to measure peoples dissatisfaction with local politicians or political parties. However because there isn't we should create our own.

Hopefully by the time of the next election a party which doesn't represent the Axis of War, Austerity, Tax cuts for the rich and attacks on the poor will emerge, a bit like how the Unions created Labour. The only exception is that we don't want to see our new party being taken away from us slowly and infiltrated by MI5 to ensure when it becomes electable it's going to be "establishment ready" like MI5 asset Tony Blairs successful attempt to turn Labour from a real Left wing socialist party to Tories with northern accents.

We have plenty of protest groups about but no political consensus or a political body that we can use as an umbrella for them to rest under.

Students, the young unemployed, the people who cannot afford to live anywhere due to the lack of cheap housing, the anti-war brigade, the pro privacy, anti GCHQ/NSA Pirate groupsUK Uncut, Occupy, anti-austerity groups, religious organisations and charities that manage food banks and support the poor. These are just a few of the protest groups around at the moment.

Groups helping wounded soldiers and soldiers disillusioned with the wars they have been forced to fight. People working 50 hour weeks on minimum wage or not being able to take loans out at decent interest rates due to interest rate apartheid. These are more people who might be looking for a new political home.

Basically anybody who doesn't want to see the gap between the rich and poor get wider would be a perfect member or voter for such a Peoples Party.

In the meantime let's just hope we still have a public NHS, good public schoolmma decent benefit system and proper jobs with decent pay in 5 years time rather than another tripling of the National Debt and more lies about reducing our debt that the current Chancellor likes to spiel.

View the original article Did you foresee the Tories winning the UK election at the main site www.darkpolitricks.com.


© 2015 Dark Politricks

Saturday, 9 November 2013

Iceland vs Gordon Brown

Iceland vs Gordon Brown

By Dark Politricks

If you follow me on twitter at @darkpolitricks you will know I have just had a few days in Iceland. It was on my bucket list of things to do before I die and I had some cash so why not. I just wish I brought a video camera or better camera as the amount of rants I heard from taxi drivers about Gordon Browns actions during the Icelandic banking collapse could have filled 60+ minutes.

Gordon BrownI had to get taxis as standing around in minus 10C waiting for a bus that will most likely drive past you isn't much fun. However I am glad I did. Not only was every single taxi driver able to speak perfect English but they are on the ball when it comes to politics, international relations and how the world really works.

Every single person I talked to was sick to the teeth of Gordon Browns action to use anti-terrorism laws to freeze Icelandic money in British banks. Not only did this help worsen the economic crisis in Iceland but it made the Icelandic people think they had been betrayed by a friend and ally.

If you don't know, Iceland kept the Brits alive during World War II by sending over fish for us to eat whilst all our trans Atlantic ships were being destroyed by German U-Boats. A little known fact is that per capita, Iceland lost the most people in the war, more than Russia, more than the Jews and more than the USA and UK combined. They only have a population of 320,000 (now), so a lot less back then, so you can see how many a few thousand people's deaths would compare to the total population.

Iceland suffered their economic crisis between October 2008 and the 31 August 2011, which was the day where the international bailout support programme led by the IMF officially ended.

The economic crisis revolved around a few Icelandic banks which were offering stupidly high rates of interest which attracted many foreign investors including many UK local authorities. Our dear leader of the time, Gordon Brown, had told them to invest their money in the highest paying interest accounts they could find. The Icelandic banks were offering high rates and were thus used by many.

The problem was that these rates of interest were totally unrealistic and there was no security for screw ups. In the UK we get up to £85,000 protected if the bank goes bust. So the Government bails small account holders out up to that sum. However Iceland failed to do this for foreign investors and it sent Brown and co fuming.

Every taxi driver I spoke to said that anyone with half a brain cell could see these banks high interest schemes would fail in the end and they eventually did. However Gordon Brown was having none of it. The UK along with the Dutch, demanded that Iceland pay back all the monies owed with interest or they would be thrown out the IMF.

Gordon Brown froze any Icelandic money in UK banks and used anti-terrorism laws to do so. This prompted the Iceland's prime minister Geir Haarde to call it "a completely unfriendly act" and was disgusted that a supposedly friendly nation was calling their country terrorists.

More than 25% of the Icelandic population (over 80,000 people) signed an online petition called "Icelanders are not terrorists". The UK responded by cancelling its scheduled patrol of the Icelandic airspace in December 2008. As Iceland has no standing army of its own it relies on other NATO nations to take turns in protecting it. The UK pulled out of this agreement leaving Iceland vulnerable to attack.

Iceland basically stuck two fingers up at these threats, kicked their whole government out when they seemed to bend over to the demands and took matters into their own hands by voting in a coalition government led by the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement.

They even won a court case in the court of the European Free trade Area, when the UK and Holland took Iceland to court over the failure to payback depositors in the failed banks. The court ruled on the 29th January 2013 in favour of the Icelandic banks and saved the country from having to pay back billions to foreign savers.


The EFTA court dismissed an application by the EFTA surveillance authority, which claimed that Iceland had failed to comply with an obligation to ensure compensation of a minimum €20,000 to Icesave depositors in the UK and Netherlands. Over €6.7 billion was owed to UK and Dutch investors and whilst the UK paid back the investors out of their own tax payers money, they then demanded that Iceland was to pay back the money to them.

However logic and reason won the day and when Iceland's President's Olafur Grimsson refused to sign an amended law on repayment he forced a national referendum on the issue and 94% of Icelanders rejected the move to payback the cash.

The judges have sided with Iceland in the matter and it was plainly obvious that the rates of interest were unsustainable and a payback to foreign depositors was unfeasible. The Iceland banks are actually paying back some of the money by selling off assets so that people won't lose out - it is just the unrealistic rates of interest that won't be given back to savers.

At the time the crisis resulted in massive migration from Iceland yet Iceland's economy stabilized under the government of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, and GDP actually grew by 1.6% in 2012. However many Icelanders remained unhappy with the state of the economy and government austerity policies. In 2013 they voted back in the same people who were in power during the crisis, the centre-right Independence Party but in coalition with the Progressive Party.

Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s systemic banking collapse was the largest suffered by any country in history. The amount of money owed by the 3 Icelandic banks taken into national ownership was equal to more than 11 times Icelandic GDP.

They also threw a load of banksters into prison - can you see a trend here? These people included:

  • Baldur Guðlaugsson, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, who was sentenced to two years probation by the District Court of Reykjavík for insider trading.
  • Aron Karlsson was sentenced to 2 years in prison by the District Court of Reykjavík for defrauding Arion Bank in real estate dealings.
  • Lárus Welding, CEO of Glitnir, and Guðmundur Hjaltason, Managing Director of Corporate Banking of Glitnir, were sentenced to 9 months in prison by the District Court of Reykjavík for a major breach of trust.
  • Friðfinnur Ragnar Sigurðsson, Glitnir employee, was sentenced to 1 year in prison by the District Court of Reykjanes for insider trading.
  • Styrmi Þór Bragason, President of MP Bank, was sentenced to 1 year in prison by the Supreme Court for breach of trust.


The other thing to note is that whilst Ireland and Greece are now suffering like hell due to their Governments subservience to the banksters and their German EU masters Iceland is recovering well.

Instead of loading future generations up to the eyeballs with huge debt, and suffering serve austerity like many European countries Iceland is well on the way to recovery.

They have had one of the fastest economic recoveries on record. They stuck to their guns and told the banksters to fuck off. This is a lesson others should follow.

GDP of Nordic countries
GDP of Nordic countries including Iceland from 2000 to 2007

Not only do the Icelandic people do things their way, but they are the leaders in the world for press freedom and Internet freedom.

Everywhere I went, whether it was the airport, the bus from the airport, the hotel, pubs, clubs or restaurants, all had free WI-FI. No logons just Internet access wherever I went, it was great.

No wonder many companies who don't want hassle from the NSA/GCHQ nexus of spy bitches base their servers there. It's just a shame we are sucking data straight from cables and main routers and until other countries build their own Internet infrastructure the axis of spying will continue to do so.

It is also not coincidence that the owner of Lavabit, who closed his business rather than succumb to threats to spy on his customers, was told by his lawyers that Iceland was one place he could move to and setup his business to escape NSA spying and Security Letters.

You can watch his interview on RT.com below.


The fact that anti-terrorism laws were used and abused by Gordon Brown shows that their true intention was nothing to do with terror but more to do with control over people.

The same laws were used to attack an 82 year man who dared protest the Iraq war during a Labour conference. Walter Wolfgang was dragged out of the conference for daring to heckle Jack Straw and detained under the terrorism act in 2005. They were also repeatedly used by the previous Labour government to detain and question tourists and other photographers "daring" to take photos of London landmarks.

Gordon Brown was only following in the foot steps of Tony Blair, the war mongerer who took us into 4 wars, destroyed many civil liberties and did more to destroy the picture of Labour as the "peoples party" than any other Prime Minister in recent years.

However whilst the UK is languishing in debt, the Greeks are begging on the streets and the Irish are cutting back services and trying to find ways to pay back their own banking debts the Icelandic people are doing just fine.

If you don't mind the cold, enjoy beautiful women and scenery then Iceland is one place to definitely consider going. Not only is everyone friendly but they all speak English and everyone I met was a good laugh. The fact that booze is so expensive yet the Icelandic people knock it back in gallons from 10pm to 6 am most nights must indicate that people are being paid enough to have a good time.

So whilst I had to apologise for my Governments behaviour constantly, I also let the Icelandic people know we also hated the Labour Government just as much as they do.

The fact that we are still suffering under many of Labours big brother laws, and that the farcical Protection of Freedoms Bill which promised so much when a Lib Dem idea yet turned into a "freedom from wheelclamping" bill just goes to show that none of our current political parties can be trusted when it comes to protecting our civil liberties and hard-won rights.

So just remember the next time the Daily Mail or Sun attacks the EU Human Rights Act or our PM threatens to pull out of it. We invented the thing in the first place after the 2nd world war. On top of that these rights protect you and me as well as the tiny minority of Jihadists the papers like to trot out as examples of the bill's failure. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater is the appropriate saying!

We don't have a written Bill of Rights like the American's (not that it seems to be doing much to help them anymore) so we must take what we can.

Until we get our own Bill of Rights and proper protection of free speech, without journalists boyfriends being detained at airports for revealing the massive spying our Government does on us, we should be happy for anyone who sticks up for our liberty.

The Icelandic people saw us as friends. When Gordon Brown froze their money it made it hard for them to import goods and prices shot up in their country. His act did more to harm them than the banking crisis in the first place.

The fact that a court sided with them just shows that he was in the wrong and they were right to ignore his demands.

Well done Iceland.

View the original article Why Icelandic people hate Gordon Brown at darkpolitricks.com.

Sunday, 17 March 2013

Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?

Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?

By Dark Politricks

I just saw an advert on Channel 5 USA (a UK channel) in which a PPI Claims company said that if you had taken a loan out within 15 years and had added Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) then you could attempt to claim it back.

Now I had taken a load of loans out in my youth, with PPI, and when the first adverts started appearing the adverts were only saying that you could claim the money back if you had taken a loan out within the past 3 years. I didn't do anything because my loans were 10 years old.

However it seemed that the time length that you could claim for was extending and extending every few months. It seemed to coincide with the UK finances getting worse and our GDP going down and inflation going up.

First I started seeing adverts for 5 then 7 years and then when I first saw an advert earlier this year for 10 years I was straight on the phone. I shouldn't have gone through one of the "specialist PPI companies" however it was money I wouldn't have got back if I hadn't of attempted it in the first place - so in reality it was literally free cash in my pocket.

From an initial 3 years to 15 years is a long time and I have a feeling that the government is hoping that PPI payouts will help stimulate the economy by putting money back into people's pockets in a stealthy Keynesian method without any government minister having to  admit to it of course! Austerity, Austerity - that is the only way says our supposed economic wizard George Osborne.

It is Georgey boy who's claim that our deficit and debt would be reduced through his spending cuts and VAT tax rises would have started working by now. Anyone with half an eye can see they blatantly haven't done the job.

Their are no private jobs rushing in to fill all the public ones he is gutting. He is forcing people off disability allowance onto job-seekers (a much lower benefit) and making them look for jobs that don't exist.

He is introducing "bedroom" taxes  for the poor so that people with extra rooms have to give up more of their money or move across  the country to places where one bedroom flats exist. All the while he is cutting public services and yet at the same time he has reduced the top rate of tax for the richest people in the country. What happened to "We are all in this together"?

The politicians know the banks were mainly to blame for our current crisis and the UK is one of the most indebted nations on the planet.

This doesn't only include Government debt but personal debt as well. All through the later 90's, and the years of the Labour government, people were re-mortgaging their houses and spending the money or having loans literally thrown at them by the banks. I know for a fact I and many other people I know were.

After the first law suit over PPI was won by someone years ago the banks have had to set aside billions in case they had to pay out more to future customers who were mis sold PPI.

From The International Business Times
PPI has become the biggest mis-selling scandal to hit UK banks and they have repeatedly underestimated the scale of the problem.

Britain's biggest retail bank, Lloyds Banking Group Plc , has set aside 6.8 billion pounds for PPI compensation. Barclays Plc has set aside 2.6 billion and RBS has provisioned 2.2 billion.
So far the banks have set aside around £20 billion and the payouts so far amount to £8.9 billion.

Payment Protection Insurance was meant to protect borrowers against redundancy and sickness , but it was often sold to customers who didn't want or need it or who couldn't claim it even if they took it out. People such as those with certain medical conditions or people who were self employed. Often, like myself, I had PPI added to my loans or credit cards without my knowledge!

The worst thing, in my mind anyway, was that if you had to claim (as I did once) the money from the insurance only lasted for a year. Plus the amount the insurance cost you worked out exactly the same as if you had added an extra years worth of  loan to your original debt. It was a total con!

Because the UK finances are in such a state and recent news reports show customers are holding back from buying goods. I have a sneaky feeling that the government is secretly hoping that the PPI payouts will be a way of putting cash into potential shoppers pockets to stimulate the economy. The added benefit of course is that it's all at the cost of the banks who caused the mess in the first place.

To me it sounds like a good plan. The banksters are the ones who caused the mess and I am not joking when I said they used tot literally  throw loans at people.

For instance I was given a £5,000 loan when I left college with no job or way of paying it back. Then every year the same bank would give me an extra £5,000 - £7,000 loan and overdrafts up to £3,500 to pay back the outstanding amount and give me some more spending cash! It was truly a time when "debt was good" and people didn't think about the future.

As a young man who didn't really think he would have to pay back the money anyway (I had a bit of death wish back then, plus the money management skills of a frog) it seemed like free money and I grabbed whatever the banks would offer me. One of the things I often feel our schools let the population down with is real world lessons in living. How to manage money, how to look after yourself, how money works, how to use logic and reason and think for yourself.

Young men are worse than woman who are often taught these skills from their mothers so if the schools are not teaching the boys and they are not getting taught at home they are left to the mercy of the loan sharks and banksters. Shuffling money from one account to another to pay off monthly repayments and sticking to the minimum payment to keep them off your back is not exactly "good" money management!

Unlike other people I know who "went missing" for 5+ years and now have mortgages and are debt free. I honestly OR  stupidly (pick your own word) decided to pay off my debts. Even thought this took over 6 years I managed to do it. Therefore when I saw the opportunity to reclaim all the PPI which amounted to around £5,000 I took it.

Some credit cards I didn't even realise I had PPI on at the time and on other banks I had no details apart from the name of the bank but their customer service department returned a list of 6 loan accounts taken out within 7 years. I used one of these companies on TV but didn't realise they took a THIRD of the money as recompense for doing the job you could easily do yourself.

Luckily for me they forgot about one loan and I got £2,000 all to myself without deductions but I would recommend anyone who has ever taken a loan out in the last 15 years to check if they can reclaim the PPI on it.

The Government is not helping us and the banksters who caused the mess are still making billions therefore we should not feel sorry for them in the slightest.

Just remember if the EU can order the Cypriot government to just take 10% of any bank savings without your say then who is to say the UK government won't do the same?

I would expect the time you can claim for any PPI to continue to go up and up until either the banks have dolled out all the money they said they set aside years ago but haven't given out yet. Or until the UK GDP rises above a single percentage point for more than 3 months in a row!

To anyone thinking of claiming their PPI back I would definitely recommend everyone to do the work themselves. It is not hard.

You can just write t o the banks customer complaints department and ask for all your loan details that had PPI on them, then write a letter back saying you want your PPI money for any of the following reasons:

  1. You were not informed that the PPI protection would only last a year.
  2. The PPI was added without your consent.
  3. You were self employed which meant the PPI wouldn't cover you.
  4. You were depressed or had another medical complaint that would have meant the insurance would not be paid out.
  5. You were not informed you wouldn't get the insurance if you were sacked.
  6. The PPI insurance was not fully explained to you at the time. Most of the employees who sold the PPI will be long gone and those that remain won't remember what  they said when they sold it to you. Therefore this is probably the best one to use as they will not be able to re-call what they said when they sold the loan to you.


A good thing to do is to write off to one of these PPI companies, get a payment pack sent to you and see what sort of questions they ask you to answer. All they do is use the answers and send the paper work off to the same places you could easily do. Therefore use these packs as a guide and write to the same Financial Ombusdman yourself if  the Bank doesn't pay out after your first letter of complaint.

Remember - this could be your chance of getting out of any recent debt. If they are going back 15 years then I would guess that the majority of adults in this country would have had a credit card or loan within than time. Even if you don't think you took PPI out it is worth checking in-case the bank added it on without your knowledge.

View the original article "Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?" at www.darkpolitricks.com