UK Poet, Philosopher & Artist Ivor Griffiths' Official Website

Tories to remove Bank of England independence to set interest rates

Ken Clarke today on Sky News gave the clearest and most unequivocal confirmation to date the the Conservative Party is set to reclaim the right to set interest rates should they win the election. He described “Gordon’s” decision to make the Bank of England independent a mistake. It was a Freudian slip. He was being asked to consider the reasons for the failure to arrest any of the British bankers that have busted the banking sector. His argument was that there was not enough political control.

Of course the whole sector is riddled with corruption and political connivance at a high level.

Remember the bank charges case? The banks have for years been stealing money from consumers in the full knowledge that what they were doing was unlawful. By any standards this is theft. The Theft Act of 1968 says so. Anything happened to the folk responsible for the largest fraud in UK history? Not likely. So a few brave souls began to reclaim the right and issued  summonses and requests for bank statement, using the Data Protection legislation to do so. The banks settled them all, not wanting a judgement recorded against them. Then, conveniently, the Office of fair Trading stepped in, issued hastily prepared proceedings, the government (who control The Court Service)  allocated a judge to deal with it and the whole case (worth billions) has been kicked into the long grass. The issues are very straightforward, the case is stopping hundreds of thousands of people from getting their money back, what happens? The OFT gets a second rate QC to fight the case against at least a hundred top rate commercial lawyers who are defending the banks. The banks will appeal this all the way to Europe. The Government could easily have passed emergency legislation to make the banks give the money back and instructed Scotland Yard to arrest those responsible.

Now with that kind of political interference and fixing of the court system it’s little wonder that the sector is rife with corruption. But incredibly they are still levying the charges.

The Tories will put rates back to 11% quicker than you can say “I’m bust”.  George Osborne reckons it’s the fault of house prices that HBOS is bust, but it’s his mates in the city who’ve ramped up prices in collusion with the valuers who suddenly decided that land in the UK was worth 100% more than it was ten years ago. And why? To generate massive commissions and bonuses. Where are they now? Gone fishing. Ken Clarke reckons capitalism is okay and there’s no real problem with the concept. How dumb is that? Of course there’s a problem.

Get your savings out as soon as you can, they’ll spend it all if you don’t.

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