We used to have 6 independent regulators to regulate the different divisions of the financial services industry, including our Banks. (Margaret Thatcher knew what the Banks were like and in the 1988 Finance Act she bound the Banks up in regulation to prevent them from being reckless).
Then Gordon Brown became Chancellor on 6th May 1997
1. Gordon's banker friends said "We want all these regulators to go, we don't want regulators watching everything we do" Mr. Brown said "OK".
So, Gordon announced on the 20th May 1997 (2 weeks after becoming Chancellor) that the six regulatory bodies would be broken up and a new Financial Services Authority would replace them. The FSA had virtually no powers over the Banks and he also took away the powers from the Bank of England to enforce regulation on them.
2. We used to have a Monopolies and Mergers Commission
Then Gordon's friends said we don't want the Monopolies and Mergers commission telling us who we can and can't "Take Over" - Gordon said OK. So, in 1998 Gordon scrapped the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and created a replacement called the Competition Commission, with very much reduced powers and different ideas of what used to be regarded as a "Monopoly".
3. We used to have pension regulations, which included something called "The Pensions Cap"
The pensions cap set a limit on how much pension any scheme member (including directors) could get from an occupational pension scheme, irrespective of how high their earnings were. It was there to protect the ordinary members pensions. To prevent Directors paying themselves obscene salaries and then draining the pension funds with huge pensions.
Then Gordon Brown's banker friends said that they wanted the pensions cap removing so that they could get pensions related to their obscene earnings. (The whole Pensions industry gave him warnings of the effects it would have. Even the Inland Revenue put forward objections). Gordon said "ok". Because Gordon never likes to disappoint his banker friends.
So Gordon took away the Pensions Cap in 2005 and then some of his friends were able to leave their boardroom positions with huge pensions. For example Fred Goodwin was apparently entitled to a pension of over £700,000. If Gordon had left the pensions cap in place that would have been a mere £125,000.
(The Superannuations Division of the Inland Revenue have kept a record of what it should be, in readiness for when we get a new chancellor who sees fit to re-instate it. George Osborne has pledged to do that). The record of Pensions Cap limits are available to view on the Revenue's website.
4. The result of this is that along with Gordon's "Tax Raid" on pension funds starting July 1997, over four thousand UK company pension scheme's have closed their doors to new members and many of them have had to close down altogether, leaving millions of workers without any pension provision. This man Gordon Brown professes to be a socialist and "for" the working man.
The working man's main form of long term financial security had for many years been his company pension scheme, something to look forward to at the end of a life of hard work, his reward, light at the end of a long dark tunnel. Gordon has put an end to that by destroying the most valuable asset of the average British worker.
5. It is one of the greatest travesties of justice that this man, who pretends to be "for the working man" has in fact been his worst enemy for the last thirteen years and will leave a legacy that we will be clearing up for man years to come. The real injustice is that it's all been done in areas which are totally out of sight to the general public and beyond the understanding of many.
Mr. Brown relies entirely on people's ignorance to get away with his indiscretions.
6. Finally what Mr. Brown likes to call the "Global Banking Crisis"
Have you noticed that we were the first to be in it and are the last to be out (and whether we are out is very speculative).
As he has openly admitted, The Royal Bank of Scotland was the world's biggest bank.
So when RBS and HBOS were about to go BUST in October 2008 and they had to be bailed out overnight so they did not take the entire country down with them, (that by the way was almost certainly a decision made by the hierarchy in Whitehall for which Gordon loves to take the credit).
As the world's leading banks now all lend money to each other on a collosal scale, isn't it obvious that the worlds biggest bank going down would have a devastating effect on all the others it dealt with. This "world's biggest bank" had also sold bad mortgage books to other banks.
Most of the Banks in Europe which ran into crisis were dragged into it because of the crooked dealings of our big banks. A fact that both Germany and France were quick to remind Gordon Brown of at the G20 emergency meeting shortly after the crisis.
There are many other of Gordon's indiscretions, far too many to list here, but perhaps the few biggies shown above will give some insight into how Gordon operates.
By the way have you noticed how he has suddenly become interested in Social Issues now an election is looming and seems to be able to promise the world when, as Alistair Darling put it a few days ago, there is not a penny left in the bank.
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