Our Future We Bestow

Phosphorus gusts pirouette over boxed dwellings,

houses blink as naked people parade the stairs

in fear and confusion.

Curved trees silhouette a violet sky

and the moon,
the moon,
casts a spell as she sighs -
how red she looks tonight.

Tall, uniform hedges rattle a long, long breath

as screams ricochet down the soulless road

from hearts ploughed in this street.

Stark shrouds of trees weave betrayal

and the moon,

the moon,

showers malcontent as she bleeds -

how red the blood tonight.

Skeleton soldiers of towering metal

construct the chrysalis of tomorrow

bereft of aspiration, a derelict future we bestow.

Black sentries of trees mask the howls to end it all

and the moon,

the moon,

sheds tears as she unveils agony -

how long can we bear this night?

(with thanks to Ameuc for this version of the poem © Ameuc 2013)

Millions of pounds paid in bonuses to banks that have received Hundreds of Billions of pounds of your and my money in bailouts.

Here are a few services just a small fraction of the cost of bailouts, say £40 billion, could have provided for the country instead:

 1961 x teachers (all skill levels) and Headmasters (all levels) for around 40 years.

200,000 x houses at £200k each.

3376  x nurses (all grades) and consultants for around 40 years.

The amount the Government paid the banks from OUR money is utterly impossible to appreciate and I am still unable to understand the reasons behind these decisions. 

This newspaper article from 2008 and another from this year explains what happened. 

So from what I can gather, the bank bailouts happened because the banks decided, for whatever reason, to up their profit as fast as possible and some did it by any means it would seem.

HSBC: Money laundering drugs?  

It’s kind of ironic given that the bank started out as the ‘Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation with maritime business and the opium trade’.

" Lord Stephen Green, Baron of Hurstpierpoint and current Minister of Trade and Investment in David Cameron’s Conservative government, was previously HSBC’s chief executive and the chairman and director of HSBC Private Banking Holdings (Suisse) N.A. for ten years.

 

During Green’s tenure, journalist Nick Mathiason disclosed that “the sums allegedly evaded by Britons using HSBC’s Swiss bank are massive. HMRC told the Bureau ‘the early indications are that the amounts are significant’. "

Green told of his 'regret' at what happened during his time at HSBC and the bank has to pay fines of around One Billion Pounds to the US but where would a Bank get the money to pay such a fine?


This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as 'banking scandals' went, which includes Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland.

So we, the people, have shares in RBS? That's, er, comforting to know.


Lending money to real people who didn’t ask for it or even know about it, even going as far as signing loans without their consent as the more loans they sell, the more money is made from fees and hitting targets on paper, resulting in huge bonuses or so Nat West seemed to think.


Wait  a minute, isn’t all of this fraud?

“Criminals will exploit weaknesses in lending and conveyancing systems to gain illegitimate financial advantage from the UK property market. This can be either:

• opportunistic action using misrepresentation of income or property value to obtain greater loans than a person is entitled to
• organised crime syndicates overvaluing properties, using false identities and failing to make any mortgage repayments”

Maybe Shadow Banking can help us out?

Yet if something is concealed in the shadows, how is it possible to see what is going on?

Did we get duped by the idea of trusting in financial institutions that seemed to provide all the answers to the problems they gave us or did some just get greedy?

Everyone wants to make money, it’s the coin of living life but what about when those institutions, we put our trust and money in, turn out to be amongst the biggest fraudsters of all, what can we do then? Can we sue? Is there such a thing as Justice? 

Is this justice?  

Remember, Bonuses for the winner.

In 2001, “Sir George (Mathewson) also courted controversy last month by defending the £2.5m bonuses as insufficient to provide "bragging power in a Soho wine bar". ‘

Sir George Mathewson defended Royal Bank of Scotland bonuses after getting One Million pounds in bonuses himself.

 

While in 2010 the banks wanted more bonuses reaching £15 Million plus:

“Lord Myners, the City minister, admitted that many hundreds of the £1m-plus bonus payouts to 5,000 bankers in the new year would be at RBS. Some could receive £15m each. He said: "I think they have got to come back into the real world and to understand that the banking industry has needed huge support from the taxpayer and the taxpayer simply finds these expectations unacceptable."

“So, not only has the government bailed the banks out to the tune of £123.93bn, and at its peak had liabilities for the banking crisis of £1.2 trillion, but the value of its stakes in the biggest banks has plummeted and the interest it is receiving on the loans is relatively small. The interest collected is smaller than that the government pays on its debts, taken out to refinance the banks.”

Sweden didn’t accept it.

Iceland jailed the bankers

“Returning to the tense situation in 2010, while the Icelanders were refusing to pay a debt incurred by financial sharks without consultation, the coalition government had launched an investigation to determine legal responsibilities for the fatal economic crisis and had already arrested several bankers and top executives closely linked to high risk operations.

Interpol, meanwhile, had issued an international arrest warrant against Sigurdur Einarsson, former president of one of the banks. This situation led scared bankers and executives to leave the country en masse.”
 
Iceland went even further and formed a new government by offering candidates from the ordinary man and woman, the people.

“ In this context of crisis, an assembly was elected to draft a new constitution that would reflect the lessons learned and replace the current one, inspired by the Danish constitution.

To do this, instead of calling experts and politicians, Iceland decided to appeal directly to the people, after all they have sovereign power over the law. More than 500 Icelanders presented themselves as candidates to participate in this exercise in direct democracy and write a new constitution. 25 of them, without party affiliations, including lawyers, students, journalists, farmers and trade union representatives were elected.

Among other developments, this constitution will call for the protection, like no other, of freedom of information and expression in the so-called Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, in a bill that aims to make the country a safe haven for investigative journalism and freedom of information, where sources, journalists and Internet providers that host news reporting are protected.

The people, for once, will decide the future of the country while bankers and politicians witness the transformation of a nation from the sidelines.”

Because Iceland put its people first, the nation has been praised for its approach in handling the crisis, in part because it put households’ well-being ahead of honoring bank creditor claims. The country emerged from an International Monetary Fund-backed program in August 2011 and is now outgrowing most of Europe.

The island’s economy expanded 1.6 percent last year, according to Statistics Iceland, while Britain's economy stays down.

Isn’t it time Britain did the same for itself by jailing bankers and stopping poor decision makers such as our Government?

Isn’t it time for a new election?

Britain doesn’t have to be a nation in crisis and Britain doesn’t have to pay for the sins of the bankers. 

If Britain is to become what it has perpetuated to be over centuries, a democracy, then it is time The People decided what is best by electing a government that will not hesitate in putting Britons first.

Iceland will honor whatever debts it owes by paying back at a rate it can afford, and not at self-injurious rates of interest that others wish for it to do.

If Iceland can do it so can Britain and do so honestly without hiding in the shadows of false accounting and without using the current government’s malicious propaganda using anti-terrorist 'rules' to seize Icelandic assets.  

This government gets my vote of NO CONFIDENCE.

I am human.

Not a thing,

commodity

to be shunted

shifted or shunned.

Look in the mirror

at your flesh

my flesh,

daughter, father,

brother, sister,

mother, son -

we are human.