Chip and PIN

[PeteM]

Ian Batten wrote  on 25-01-08 16:25:
> 
> On 25 Jan 08, at 1604, PeteM wrote:
>>
>>
>> I certainly believed that the elderly man on the 
>> Y&Y programne was defrauded, it is almost inconceivable that he would 
>> do what he did if he really was guilty.
> 
> But on the other hand, if he had obviously been defrauded, I presume 
> your contention is that the Financial Ombudsman is so deep in the 
> pockets of the banks that it is rejecting complaints that are obviously 
> valid, knowing them to be valid? 

I don't have a firm contention, because I don't have the facts. I 
observe that (a) the banking industry is deeply corrupt; (b) corrupt 
industries try to capture their regulators; (c) therefore it is quite 
possible that the priorities of the ombudsman's office have become to 
protect the industry and not consumers; (d) if (c) is the case then the 
ombudsman will tend to reject consumers' complaints whenever it believes 
it can do so with impunity; (e) so long as the detailed facts of such 
cases are unavailable to us, then behaviour as in (d) can take place 
with impunity.

   It would only take one such case to
> come out --- and whistleblowing is possible in all organisations --- and 
> the ombudsman would collapse.  

I don't think so. Official bodies can survive large numbers of 
disgraceful exposures. When they do finally lose all credibility they 
are simply renamed and set running again, probably with an expanded 
salary for the new chief executive. Look at the CSA. And that chap who 
"resigned" as chair of HMRC, only it turned out he simply moved to 
another comfortable armchair somewhere else in the establishment.

> Why would the bank/ombudsman conspiracy 
> risk their black helicopters for three grand?

You might as well ask why the banks would bother pissing off one of 
their customers by charging him penalty charges for incurring penalty 
charges for incurring penalty charges for going £10.00 overdrawn for two 
days. They do it because that's what they do. If they do it to enough 
people, they have a profitable business. They need the infrastructure in 
place to make it happen, of course, so regulator capture is an important 
goal for them.

I doubt if "black helicopters" is a constructive phrase here. If it 
means anything, it means "Anyone who suggests that officials are 
sometimes involved in wrongdoing is a conspiracy theorist, and therefore 
must be wrong, because we know a priori that all conspiracy theories 
(thus defined) are fantasy and that no officials are ever involved in 
wrongdoing."

   And if the banks exert a
> magnetic effect on regulators such that they will risk public ridicule 
> for rejecting obvious cases, 

They're not risking public ridicule. They suffered five minutes of Ross 
criticising them at 12.40 on a Wednesday lunchtime radio slot. Even a 
sensitive soul like me could cope with that, in return for a 
sufficiently generous salary.

how come those self-same regulators have
> pummelled the banks for millions over the selling of endowment 
> mortgages, and the pressuring of members of DB pension schemes to buy DC 
> pensions?

Those are not the same regulators. And the pressures on regulators are 
different where so many people have been defrauded; they can't so easily 
marginalise the complainers as oddballs, freaks and liars. Millions of 
people *knew* they had been missold endowment mortgages, they weren't 
going to accept that the complaints were coming from a handful of 
nutters who were only trying to get something for nothing. Whereas card 
fraud of the kind described in the Y&Y programme is still rather rare, 
and so the tactic of marginalising the victims is still, for the moment, 
effective.

-- 
Pete Mitchell