It’s a disgrace

I am taking some time out of my day to use my blog as a means of therapy/anger management.  I would prefer to hit Gordon Brown around the head until he agrees that he needs to take some action but I am not sure that  would make any impact hence this post.

The Farepak story is a relatively old one, so let me remind you of what happened.  Farepak offered a Christmas club where you could save on a weekly basis and then at Christmas time you would have a pot of cash to spend – without getting into debt.  These customers were typically low paid workers acting in a responsible manner by saving rather than getting into debt at Christmas.  The now publicly bailed out HBOS failed to extend the parent company’s overdraft and the firm went bust.

It was announced today that a number of the directors of the firm have now been forced into making additional payments to Farepak savers and they will now get back 15p for every £1 they saved.  The average saver saved £400, so they will get back £60 rather than the previous estimate of £16.  Good news, I may hear some of you say.

So why am I so angry?

1. If you invested £100,000 into an offshore Icelandic bank -  then Gordon Brown was willing to take legal action on your behalf.  Why does a labour leader feel the need to protect the richest greediest part of society but not responsible working class savers?  He guarantees customers who send their many thousands of pounds off-shore but does nothing for those who save, on average, £4o0 for Christmas.

2. The Conservative manifesto says ‘A Conservative government will promote responsible consumer finance by creating a powerful Consumer Protection Agency (CPA) to take over the Financial Services Authority’s consumer protection role.  Why doesn’t the Tories speak out for these customers?  This type of Christmas club is likely to remain unprotected under their proposed consumer protection agency.  

3. Cannot comment on the Lib Dems and their view on Farepak as they don’t appear to have one…

4. Finally, none of the major news websites have anything on Farepak  as a front page story. their silence supports the leading parties into failing to care about genuinely responsible savers in the UK.

Perhaps our politicians feel that £400 is not a lot of money and therefore not worth bothering about.  Though when you consider that HBOS (who failed to extend the overdraft of Farepak) has been bailed out by £17 billion, it does make £400 per saver seem like very small cheese. 

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