State ownership of companies

[unbeliever]

Unfortunately, the mortgagees had agreed to the terms and conditions when they took out their mortgages. There was no sense that anyone would have "got away" with anything. The banks had a legal obligation to protect their investors and the only way to do that was to recover the money they had lent to others.

 

Still don't think they would have got away with it. Putting the right to recall a loan at any time into the fine print of a contract would be unlikely to stand up in court when dealing with somebody's home who had been a good debtor.

 

PPI is a good example. Thanks L00b.

[Cyclone]

At the time of the banking crisis I was working at one of the major banks in the mortgage sector. We had compiled a file of several million letters which would have gone out to mortgage holders should the bail out not occur. What these letters stated was that the mortgagee had 28 days in which to repay their mortgages otherwise the bank would foreclose.

 

If the government had not saved the taxpayers from this catastrophe then the fall out from the banking crisis would have been unimaginable.

 

I can't find a link to any terms and conditions that allow for a bank to demand early repayment. Can you provide one?

[L00b]

I can't find a link to any terms and conditions that allow for a bank to demand early repayment. Can you provide one?

I've actually no doubt that it -or a clause to similar effect- would have been in there.

 

But having a clause in a contract signed by consenting parties <etc.> is never a guarantee of its enforceability, regardless.

 

That's precisely why all agreements (not just those with banks, far from it) have boiler plate clauses governing the severability of unenforceable clauses deemed illegal/abusive/etc.

 

However justified they may have felt with proceeding in case they weren't bailed out, max's employer doing that at the time would have been that bank's final mistake. I hope for max that they pre-approved personal security teams for all staff at the time, as well.

Edited August 10, 2015 by L00b

[unbeliever]

I can't find a link to any terms and conditions that allow for a bank to demand early repayment. Can you provide one?

 

That's why they call it "small print" and why they'd have had it struck down in court.

[geared]

At the time of the banking crisis I was working at one of the major banks in the mortgage sector. We had compiled a file of several million letters which would have gone out to mortgage holders should the bail out not occur. What these letters stated was that the mortgagee had 28 days in which to repay their mortgages otherwise the bank would foreclose.

 

If the government had not saved the taxpayers from this catastrophe then the fall out from the banking crisis would have been unimaginable.

 

I call bull on that story:

 

First:

What would a bank do with several million properties??

 

Second:

They would never have been able to afford the associated legal costs that would come along with such a move (people would stay in their house regardless, the police would not be able to shift them (too many))

 

Third:

Foreclosing on the property doesn't generate any income until it's sold, and even then the final sale price needs to exceed the amount they've lent on the property

 

Who do you think is going to buy these places in the first place, you just evicted everyone so where are the buyers and money coming from???

[Cyclone]

Nationwide for example has nothing I can find in it's mortgage terms and conditions that would let it demand repayment, except in the event of the mortagee having defaulted.

 

http://www.nationwide.co.uk/~/media/MainSite/documents/about/media-centre-and-specialist-areas/information-for-lawyers/Mortgage%20Conditions%20Eng%20and%20Wales%20-%20Feb%2012.pdf

 

---------- Post added 10-08-2015 at 14:04 ----------

 

I've actually no doubt that it -or a clause to similar effect- would have been in there.

 

But having a clause in a contract is never a guarantee of its enforceability.

 

That's precisely why all agreements (not just those with banks, far from it) have boiler plate clauses governing the severability of unenforceable clauses deemed illegal/abusive/etc.

 

However justified they may have felt with proceeding in case they weren't bailed out, max's employer doing that at the time would have been that bank's final mistake. I hope for max that they pre-approved personal security teams for all staff at the time, as well.

 

If Max is saying that this term does exist though, then he should be able to point it out.

Even if it does exist, I agree that a court would be unlikely to uphold it.

[Anna B]

I do try in as much as I can from my position, which is not very senior.

But without any meaningful pressure, which would normally arise from competition, administrators get into this self-serving mindset and everything bloats.

 

One of the problems in my experience is that peoples' time is not valued. When everybody is on fixed pay and conditions and people are very hard to replace or discipline, productivity is removed from the equation.

There are any number of people running around generating activity and not producing anything. It's not only their own activity is a waste, by that activity they slow everybody else down.

 

For example we have procurement.

If you want to order something, even for £10. You first do what everybody else does and find it listed for £10 on amazon with next day delivery available for maybe £3.

You can't order it though, because there's the matter of contracted and approved suppliers. You have to first make every effort to establish whether one of the "contracted suppliers" can supply it. These are contractors with whom a deal has been made that a small discount ~10% or less on their list prices has been agreed in return for exclusivity.

The contracted suppliers don't appear to have it once you've trawled through their catalogues, so you can go to the "approved suppliers". Maybe they have something similar, if so it's probably £20 (-£2 "discount") with delivery in a few days, not quite right but maybe it'll do.

So you've gone through this process, which has taken you at least an hour and cost your employer about £100 by now.

You put together an order and then track down an approved person to sign the order and tell you which of the hundreds of charge codes should be applied to it.

Sorted. You'd think. You take it to the accounts secretary. It sits on the accounts secretary's desk for about a week and then you get an e-mail summoning you to the office of the accounts secretary to explain why you're ordering from an "approved supplier" and not a "contracted supplier". You explain that none of the contracted suppliers had it listed in their catalogues. The accounts secretary is not happy and sends you away to e-mail each of the "contracted" suppliers and ask them whether they can supply the item. Some of these suppliers reply and others don't. 2 weeks go by and your order is still sitting on a desk.

Eventually the accounts secretary concedes that you've made reasonable efforts with the "contracted" suppliers and puts the order through. The order then goes to the accounts secretary's boss for approval. The boss is away on a management training course and then has a backlog to deal with on their return, so your order gets approved about 10 days later.

In the mean time, the "approved" supplier has run out of stock so now the order sits on their desk and they wait 3 weeks for the item to come in.

By this time, you've lost the will to live, but you contact the accounts secretary and ask what happened to your order. A few days later the accounts secretary tells you that the item has been discontinued.

You then start again.

This time you find a company which has the item you originally wanted (still more expensive than amazon ~£15 but still), but they're not on the approved suppliers list. You talk to the accounts secretary who gives you a form to fill in to request that the supplier is added to the suppliers' database. You do as you're told and a couple of weeks later you're told that this has been done.

You generate a new order and get it approved, then put it in and wait for it to be approved again, and about 2 weeks later, the item finally arrived.

By this time, the project you wanted the item for has been cancelled for failing to stay on schedule. I wonder why.

 

Total man hours spent: ~20. Total delay: ~2 months. Total saving: -£3 (i.e. a loss of £3) and 1 failed project.

 

Thankyou Unbeliever (and L00b) you state your case very clearly, and I can only sympathise. Please send this or something similar to Jeremy Corbyn and anybody else you can think of in government. You'd think they'd know, but I wouldn't assume anything these days...

 

I know very little about it really but would guess that the problem is endemic and starts at the top. The contracts need redrawing at the very least, or doing away with altogether. I assume contracts are put out to tender so should be competative, but maybe the old pals act comes into play... Mind you, using Amazon isn't necessarily the answer either, their low prices, tempting as they may be, come with far reaching strings attached and some major implications for the workforce, taxes etc. Swings and Roundabouts...

 

It's a very hard nut to crack. More autonomy perhaps? But that comes with a big trust element. More computerisation of orders with built in programs to do the checking and pricing?

 

Honestly, I don't know what the answer is, but there has to be one, surely. I refuse to accept that hard as it is, nothing can be done...

 

Anyway, very good post.

[unbeliever]

Thankyou Unbeliever (and L00b) you state your case very clearly, and I can only sympathise. Please send this or something similar to Jeremy Corbyn and anybody else you can think of in government. You'd think they'd know, but I wouldn't assume anything these days...

 

I know very little about it really but would guess that the problem is endemic and starts at the top. The contracts need redrawing at the very least, or doing away with altogether. I assume contracts are put out to tender so should be competative, but maybe the old pals act comes into play... Mind you, using Amazon isn't necessarily the answer either, their low prices, tempting as they may be, come with far reaching strings attached and some major implications for the workforce, taxes etc. Swings and Roundabouts...

 

It's a very hard nut to crack. More autonomy perhaps? But that comes with a big trust element. More computerisation of orders with built in programs to do the checking and pricing?

 

Honestly, I don't know what the answer is, but there has to be one, surely. I refuse to accept that hard as it is, nothing can be done...

 

Anyway, very good post.

 

The system has just been heavily computerised at a cost running well into 7 figures. Made it worse. Everybody involved had to go on 2 days of "training" to use the web interface. Now rather than copying the order from the form into a word template and e-mailing or faxing it, the accounts secretary has to type it into a very slow web interface which argues a lot. This created a backlog at the accounts secretary and everybodys' orders were delayed by weeks.

They did eventually come up with a solution for this. They hired a second accounts secretary. After even worse delays as the second accounts was trained by the first and then went on the training courses, the system is now only a bit slower than before it was computerised.

[cuttsie]

If people were paid on results ,no production no pay ,then it would make no difference if the company was private or public .

All some workers have to do is turn up and they get paid wether they do owt or nowt.

[Anna B]

The system has just been heavily computerised at a cost running well into 7 figures. Made it worse. Everybody involved had to go on 2 days of "training" to use the web interface. Now rather than copying the order from the form into a word template and e-mailing or faxing it, the accounts secretary has to type it into a very slow web interface which argues a lot. This created a backlog at the accounts secretary and everybodys' orders were delayed by weeks.

They did eventually come up with a solution for this. They hired a second accounts secretary. After even worse delays as the second accounts was trained by the first and then went on the training courses, the system is now only a bit slower than before it was computerised.

 

Bloody hell...