Lies, damned lies and bank website claims
Last month as RBS began giving what they laughably call “evidence” to the Commons Treasury Select Committee (TSC) The Slog posted this piece pointing out the bleeding obvious as follows:
‘…but meanwhile, the new CEO “can’t see any evidence to substantiate” the myriad claims against the Bank that Hester let fester….‘
This would seem to be the worst case of myopia humanity has yet discovered, given that – as I revealed in January – there were some 6,000 cases of SME fraud claims outstanding against the bank:
‘…There was the usual bunny about ‘setting aside’ £3bn for defrauding SMEs. Think about that for a minute: that is £3,000,000,000, so if they defrauded at a rate on average per business customer of half a million, they stitched up six thousand customers…..but current CEO Ross ‘Magoo’ McEwan said last month he couldn’t find any evidence to support it. Should’ve gone to Specsavers…’
I warned in 2012 that RBS crookery had been on an industrial scale, and that the balance sheet liabilities were being shiftily understated. Yesterday the TSC told the media that senior RBS staff had been’ “wilfully obtuse” in answering MPs’ questions about the alleged mis-treatment of the bank’s small business clients. Its Chairman Andrew Tyrie said:
“If this is how RBS deals with a parliamentary Committee, how much can customers and regulators rely on it to be straightforward with them? I will be writing to the Chairman of RBS about this, and the Committee will report on it after the summer.”
As Tyrie is the Tory MP for Chichester, he is hardly what you’d call barnstorming Tom Watson material; clearly, he’s appalled by their attitude. So am I, but none of it surprises me. Fine words, however, do not butter parsnips: I haven’t a clue what good Mr Tyrie thinks will come from writing to the RBS führer, but I can tell him now that it will achieve nothing. The people running this bank – which we own FFS – have no more respect for the Sovereign body in this country than Bob Diamond, Rupert Murdoch, Eric Daniels, Fred Goodwin or Mario Draghi. These people help to run the neoliberal corporatocracy, and our politicians answer to them, not us.
What Andrew Tyrie should be asking himself is how come the aside-setters never seem to come under the Rule of Law in Britain. Or how come a lot of this fraud took place on George Osborne’s watch, but the Draper has nary a word to say on the subject. Or how come the bank that was supposed to be doing so well up and announced the £100m black hole in its balance sheet last month: was this the first time the corporate accountant noticed?
I only ask such a rhetorical question because sources told me about said hole during 2011.
RBS robbed the very SMEs the Tories claim to support. The ECB robbed the Cypriots of their savings. The new owners of the Cooperative Bank are in the process of doing the same to their members….who are now, of course, creditors. The bailin template cometh. Are we all just going to lie back and think of what England used to be? Are we to become a nation of painfully ambulating tripods, each with his own yard-brush up the rear end?
This remains a cultural problem. The West has become a culture of lawless greed, anti-social selfishness, powerless labour and dictatorial capital. Andrew Tyrie is I am sure a good man, but he is little more than the loyal waiter putting the chairs back in place as they slide across the doomed floors of the Titanic.
I want to see RBS bank officers arrested and facing trial. I want to see Osborne facing a genuine grilling. I want to know what evidence against Becky Redtop the cops held back. I want to know when somebody powerful is going to ask Mayor Johnson why his capacious bum is still sitting upon progress in the Elm House “investigation”. I want a law officer to ask the Mayor why he turned the office recorder off when meeting with Murdoch and Brooks three years ago. I want BoJo to explain why the next day he was all over the media saying phone hacking was “just a lot of left wing poppycock”. I’d like him to explain why, at the next Met Police steering committee, he was on the record as saying phone hacking investigations were a low priority and should be abandoned. I want the cps to tell me why a tape exists in the public domain in which Rupert Murdoch is clearly audible threatening revenge upon the Metropolitan Police.
But mainly what I’d like is an Opposition Party demanding these things, and showing some evidence of backbone as opposed to spineless double-speak and over-think. Miliband and Balls will change nothing….because as I keep insisting, this is a culturo-constitutional problem, not a political one.
Boris Johnson is a corrupt Mayor, Tim Yeo is a corrupt MP, Rupert Murdoch is a corrupting sociopath, and RBS is so mired in fraud that charges should be inevitable.
Lex autem mortuum est.
The Slog 