Skip to main content

Albert the pensioner in the Irish Independent

This story is the details of the PIBS story. This is an interesting issue from the perspective of capital heirarchies and the voting against class interests (bondholder classes). However, the human story is quite real.

So, you want to burn all the bank bondholders? Read Albert the pensioner's story...
By Ciaran Byrne
Saturday June 18 2011
Meet Albert Kempster: he's 73, has a pension of just £56 a week and usually shops at night to buy the food supermarkets are about to throw out.

Financially, life isn't too easy. With the rising cost of food and utility bills, he enjoys no luxuries and rents a one-bed flat in the bleak high-rise suburb of Sighthill, Glasgow.

Albert is pretty much struggling to stay afloat. Now Bank of Ireland is about to sink him.

Thanks to an extraordinary move by the bank, adrift after years of disastrous lending and property speculation, Albert's lifetime savings of £24,000 (€27,294) invested in high- interest bonds are about to be snatched from him.


This is not an issue I am acting as a politician in, but instead as a bondholder. These bonds were launched in 1991 when this was a normal retail bond.

There are lots of interesting legal and financial issues behind this, but it is worth understanding some of the real human stories. Albert's story is far from unique.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

NHS reorganisation No 3,493,233

Followers of my blog will have seen the NHS question about how many reorganisations have we had. We've yet another. The number of PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) nationally is to halve. This means merging East and North. (and then probably HoB and south). It would be nice if people would stick with one structure. There is a quotation ( Which sadly does not appear to be a true quotation ) We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. But has to have been originated by someone. The web link shown goes through the derivation which appears to be more linked to an anonymous British Soldier WW2 than any Roman or Greek General called by a name perming 2 out of (Gaius, Galus, Petronius and Arbiter). From the...