Comments on: Pottersville

By: Allistair

Allistair — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:15:03 +0000

Well I do, so I am glad to see it is back up. And long may your ad-hominems continue to be half-baked. You ain’t pretending otherwise and they are all the more readable and truthful for it.

By: Sean O'Keefe

Sean O'Keefe — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:04:58 +0000

I took it out back and shot it, Allistair. Nil desperandum and all that, because if you’ve a perfervid desire to read half-baked ad hominems interspersed with pictures of Charlotte Gainsbourg then this is the place to be!

By: Allistair

Allistair — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:28:13 +0000

Mr EG,

What’s happened to your other site. I can’t seem to access it. Problems?

Leeds9

By: errorgorilla

errorgorilla — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:16:54 +0000

Hi Caz, even if I wanted to I couldn’t disagree that what has brought Bradford & Bingley to the brink of collapse is not explicitly the fault of the carpetbaggers. Nor can I say with anything approaching certainty that it would have survived this crisis (and notice how we have to employ the language they use?) if it had remained mutual. We haven’t yet seen the likes of the Yorkshire report difficulties and I suspect their more conservative business models are robust enough to withstand the worst of this ~~crisis~~ clusterfuck exemplar of disaster capitalism engineered by Wall Street, in which they knew they’d get away with it and would shaft us in the process.

I tend to only write whenever my gander is raised sufficiently and although this piece reads quite stridently, I’m still unsure if I’m being unfair on Stephen Major, a man whom I’ve never met and know nothing about. I tried to imagine how I’d feel now if I had been the one to have put in motion a chain of events which has led, inevitably, to this. I think I very probably would, but then I’d have never done what he did in the first place. For me, the political is deeply personal and I don’t intend for that to sound quite as pious as it does. I just wouldn’t have done it. In 1999 the scales had only just began to fall from my 24 year old eyes but I knew enough even then to know that Bradford & Bingley could never survive in the long term and that would inevitably lead to job cuts. Whilst Major was certainly not acting alone, and whilst if it hadn’t have been him it would surely have happened anyway, he and his ilk cannot, must not, be allowed to shirk responsibility. Nor can those who voted for conversion, who at best were wilfully naive and at worst were shamelessly greedy. They took the action that inexorably led to this invidious situation. I remember one woman, red-faced and indignant at the branch counter, who, as I passed her a leaflet adumbrating the reasons to remain mutual, leant forward and practically spat “I don’t care” at me before storming out. And that’s just the problem isn’t it? Nobody cares.

By: Caz

Caz — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:29:40 +0000

I have worked for Halifax (before it demutualised), Lloyds TSB before it took over C&G and Portman B.S. before it merged with Nationwide B.S where I still am now. I have lived through the carpetbagging era and seen how the financial services industry has changed. Originally a service industry, now the sales culture has taken over completely! Whether bank or building society, you cannot hope to be served anywhere now without the efforts of staff, under constant pressure to sell mortgages, insurance and current accounts. The B.S.’s who demutualised were never big enough to compete effectively with the Big 5 and so tried to grow their businesses too greedily and quickly – hence the Northern Rock debacle. Soon B&B will be taken over and Alliance & Leicester have already agreed terms with Santander. So, demutualisation would appear to have been an abject favour.
I don’t believe we can pin the blame on the USA or even the carpetbaggers for the current problems in the UK – they didn’t help but the blame must be shouldered by the FSA, Government and all the greedy directors/CEO’s – the former two for condoning the aggressive sales culture and the latter for their greediness in lending imprudently.
What goes around comes around!
Personally, I yearn for the good old days of a building society, or bank where the customer was not viewed merely as a sales target but someone who was to be impressed with good service and care of their financial needs!