A Little Victory

Quite a long time ago, around the beginning of the eighties I think, we had a visitor at school. A lady arrived from the local bank, bringing good tidings for us all. We each got an ATM card, a bank account and best of all, £5 in the account. We would never see a poor day again. I can actually remember the day I used the card for the first time. Standing at the hole in the wall in town, the card was inserted, the PIN was entered on the keypad and the screen sprung to life. Surrounded by half a dozen 16 year olds, we waited with teenage enthusiasm to see what would happen. “INSUFFICIENT FUNDS” was the message on the screen. As I still see this message to this day, it’s proof that not everything has changed in the intervening years.

Fast forward quite a few years and the time came to see if we could buy a house. I still remember the day when we headed into town, dressed to the nines for a meeting with the banks and their Mortgage Advisors.

At the time, you had to have 10% of the house price saved. If you hadn’t, then there was no point even considering talking to the bank. I actually laugh now at the histrionics of people when they are advised to have their deposit and how they feel so hard done by.

Anyway, we got a mortgage, fixed for the first 5 years at an APR of 9.95%. “I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is” was a long way off in 1995 and we signed our lives away for 20 years. The bank remained in close contact with us in the early years. Every now and then, we would get a phone call to know if things were ok and if we had any problems. We actually got to know our mortgage advisor personally and enjoyed her company on a few occasions. I’ll be honest here, we actually felt supported by the bank and while the interest rates were ridiculous by today’s comparisons, we never felt we were on our own. There were times when we were at the pin of our collars to make our payments, but we seemed to get through it, sometimes by the skin of our teeth.

20 years is a long time and our new home saw its fair share of moments. We often say that if the walls could talk, imagine the story they would have. The happy times, the sad times, the funny times, the exciting times and of course, the odd row, thrown in for good measure. Our home, our “little bit of land” is our sanctuary, where we lock the world outside and do our own thing.

20 years is a long time for a country too. Ireland changed immeasurably in that time.  It’s been well documented and reported on, but as a nation, I feel that we lost our soul and when you lose that, it’s not good. Let down by government, let down by greed, let down by the pillars of society, Irish people were cast aside, like pieces of dirt. To the elite, saving your political skin or protecting your arse was more important than serving the people you were elected to serve.

On September 29^th 2008, the Irish Finance Minister announced a broad state guarantee, to save the Irish banks. There are various estimates of how much Irish people paid to recapitalise the banks, so we’ll just say it was a lot, a hell of a lot. We were assured that it was for the greater good, in the national interest and it was now time to “take one for the team”. Irish people took on the unjustified weight and took on the debt they were never responsible for.  While our politicians became the poster boys in Europe, genuflecting to their superiors, getting their heads patted, like Labradors after performing a new trick, the damage at home was catastrophic. To the powers that be, it was business as usual and they continued to play golf in the South of France, they still drank their fine wines and lived the high life.

The fallout from that infamous night in 2008 is well documented, written in the annals of Irish history, for our children to read and gasp over, in times to come. Normally, you would say that’s the end of the story, but you must remember that this is Ireland, nothing is straight forward here. You would think that admonishment would be severe, that the people responsible for the malfeasance, ineptitude and irresponsibility would be held to account. I’m afraid that’s where you would be wrong too, this is Ireland and that’s not how it works. The Irish people had saved the banking system and their children would pick up the tab, the banks would now be eternally grateful, would now go down on bended knee and thank them. They would beg forgiveness and plead for a second chance. They would endeavour to help the people that suffered so much from their stupidity and mistakes. Well I’m afraid, once again, this is Ireland and that’s not how things work here.

Quite the opposite happened in fact and it wasn’t long before greed, power and narcissism raised its ugly head again. The very banks that the Irish people had saved, rather than thank them, they went for the jugular. “Struggling with your Mortgage? Tough shit, we’ll repossess your home”. “Lost your job, through no fault of your own. Tough shit, we’ll repossess your home.” “You’re on a tracker mortgage. We can’t have that; back you go to variable rate. You can’t afford it, tough shit; we’ll repossess your home”. “You want to speak to an actual person in the bank. Tough shit, we have left most of them go, you can use that machine over there”. “You want a loan to keep your small business going. Tough shit, you mean nothing to us”. “You want to access your own money. Tough shit, we’ll charge you for it, you mean nothing to us”.

I could go on and on and on, to document how the banks crucified the Irish people and how they stabbed them in the back.

This weekend, I thought of our classroom in 1981, with my £5 and my ATM card. I thought of the day when we qualified for our mortgage. I thought of the excitement as we walked into our home for the first time. I thought back to the decent, respectable people that worked for the banks, how they made all this possible and how they were stabbed in the back too. The good people, who realised how important a customer is, how every situation is workable. Good people that realised how a person can be helped, how there is always a way out and there is no such thing as a “dire” situation over something as stupid as money. At the end of the day, money is an object, a commodity. A “dire” situation is where a person or their child is seriously ill.

To the greedy elite though, that’s not quite how it works. People mean nothing to them and they plough on regardless, leaving a trail of misery and destruction in their wake. Is there any way for the mere mortal to fight back? Well maybe there is one very small, miniscule way.

This weekend, I started to close down all my links with Irish banks. For well over 30 years I have been a customer, through good times and not so good times. What will it matter to them?. The answer is nothing, my few DD’s and the few quid I owe on my credit card will mean nothing to them. They won’t even know I’m gone, my exit won’t register. Even if it did, they would advise me to make sure that the door doesn’t hit me on the arse on my way out, such is their contempt for people.

I have started to move my small bit of business to the local Credit Union. A local business, employing local people, with the local community at its heart. As a strong advocate of supporting local business, it feels good to keep that business local.

Overall though, it’s a little victory and it makes me feel that little bit better. I can live with that.