Lloyds to pay £3.2bn for mis-selling PPI policies

Bank trainee?

Lloyds Banking Group has set aside £3.2bn to pay compensation to customers who were mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI). This decision follows a high court ruling over the scandal. The bank is inviting past purchasers of PPI to get in contact and lodge a claim for compensation if they think they were mis-sold the policies. Well, that will be a deluge because whichever way you look at it people either got a policy that was never likely to pay out or they were forced to have the policy in order to get the loan.

PPI policies are supposed to cover loan repayments if someone falls ill, has an accident or loses their job. The huge bill has pushed Lloyds into the red to the tune of £3.47 billion. Shareholders be warned. Taxpayers look out!

Angela Knight of the British Bankers' Association will be miffed to highest miffery. But she's been overseeing this bunch of legalised cowboys since she lost her seat in parliament in 1997 and saw the light touch of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair descend upon the profession of banking. Not much said whilst New Labour set about new banking.

Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio has basically stuffed the BBA's case. "We will no longer be participating in the BBA's judicial review," he said. "We do not want to continue a long-standing debate of this with the regulator."

Long-standing debate? This is no debate. He and his cronies have been engaged in a despicable money-making scam designed to maximise profits whilst leaving customers with a product that singularly failed to meet expectations.

We should have let the whole stinking ship sink whilst we had a chance. Even paying compensation to savers would have been better than see this black horse limp towards the knackers yard.

Ministry of Defence run by scoundrels!

My, my! What a shower we have running the MoD. For years they have been condoning the filthy state of service quarters, the lack of proper equipment for the military and the generally deplorable way soldiers are treated after discharge. It is the chiselling way in which the country is told of things in general that sticks in the craw.

Now we find that they are incompetent at finance as well. Maybe they are lining their own pockets, who knows. What we do know is that £155 million which was said to have been spent on radio equipment in Afghanistan could not be accounted for. Is this the tip of the iceberg?

James Arbuthnot, chairman of the defence select committee, said the MoD needed to "get a grip" on its spending. "There are real concerns, given the importance of what the armed forces are doing, and the sacrifices they are making on our behalf, that the Ministry of Defence is almost breaking apart." Nest of vipers, I say. And they have the brass neck to complain about Sir Richard Dannatt.

When will it become clear to those in government that these people cannot be trusted. We need a complete clearout so that the MoD can be staffed by honourable people, not those driven to concocting falsehoods, calumnies and economies with the truth.