Many investors from 2007 were conned into buying properties that were fraudulently over-valued by third party professionals, including property developers, panel surveyors, mortgage brokers and conveyancing solicitors, all part of a scam to fleece money from high street lending institutions. The high street lenders have repossessed many of the properties which have so far seen millions of pounds lost in shortfalls on the original mortgages. These shortfalls have been 'lost' in the accounts of the Lloyds Group and UK tax-payers should be told in detail how much all this amounts to and what steps the group has taken to recover these shortfalls. Lloyds has protected itself by repossessing the houses of the investors who fell foul of what a member of Lloyds' Chief Executive Team termed as a 'scam', in a letter to one investor, it then repossessed. The investor had written to challenge the bank's conduct in the whole saga that saw three of her properties re-possessed to the tune of £530,000. In its reply, the bank's official wrote: 'I disagree that BoS should be accountable for the shortfall as we were also victims of the scam.' There are at least 22 properties in the north and north-west of England, which were all over-valued by between £100,000 and £150,000, involving investors that have been forced into repossession. Third-party professionals used by Lloyds on a daily basis have fleeced the group for millions. Lloyds meanwhile, has been able to 'write off' these 'bad debts' with no comeback or explanation on its behaviour. British taxpayers shored up the ailing Lloyds Group, following the disastrous and scandalous way it operated its business in the lead up to the 'credit crunch' in 2008. The public need to know exactly how the losses - in the region of £3.2 million - from this 'scam' were reported and whether Lloyds reported the 'scam' to the Police or any of the financial watchdogs and authorities. Bank of Scotland were made aware of the 'scam' in May 2008. It is now December 2017 and the Lloyds Group has not addressed any of the questions raised by investors about its handling of the situation and hides behind jargon, data protection and its solicitors, Eversheds. In the meantime, Lloyds continues to hand out 'performance' bonuses in the tens of millions to a raft of senior management, whilst it has taken no action in delving into the 'scam' that it said it was a 'victim' of. How shameful that it has not had the decency to work with the investors/borrowers involved in the 'scam' it too was involved in, other than to repossess their homes and push them into untold stress and misery! Come clean Bank of Scotland - face up to the situation like the rest of us do when times get tough!

Year after year landlords and Councils have increased rents by at least 4%. This year many are levying 4% increases at a time when many ordinary people - 'hard working families' to use politician speak, are on minimum wage and who have not had a wage rise in 2 years. Private landlords and local Councils are proactively making people poorer as expenses increase and income remain stagnant. Just recently The Royal Bank of Scotland, that was bailed out by tax payers, has defended plans to pay £588m in staff bonuses despite suffering an £8.24bn loss in 2013 as it slumped into the red for the sixth successive year. Ross McEwan, its Chief Executive, is expected to earn £2.7m for simply doing a job he was brought in to do. However, the bank is still in the red, so he hasn't achieved the goal, yet he still receives more money in bonuses than most people earn in a lifetime. Barclays increased bonuses by 10% to £2.4bn. HSBC said it would increase salaries for its bosses to get around a European union cap on bonuses. Are we going to swallow this silently? We clearly are not 'all in this together'. Perhaps the worst offenders are those local Councils who are taking the easy option and passing on the costs of their central government funding shortfall to those in social housing and those who have to pay council tax - those who have the least ability to pay and do anything about the increase. It is sickening to hear politicians speaking about raising people out of poverty yet allowing this activity to continue.

Every man deserves a second chance to live happy and to prosper, it is the role of government to provide the conditions that allow man to do just that. Many cases where ccj's etc have occurred is simply because, of failing governments failing to recognize that they themselves are the root cause to much of the bad debt and as a consequence of their bad decision making from all sectors, society as a whole indeed suffers. Access to credit to create wealth must be made for everyone. Not everyone is bad and many suffer as a consequence. Humankind is entitled to a better standard of living. When the government demands a significant proportion of a mans wage, there is very little left for the man to prosper. We need change and we need it now. If the government removes its stealth taxes, then perhaps man can flourish and his family prosper, this will not happen and cannot happen when every door that is knocked on is closed for you unless you have a bank balance of a million pounds. The distribution of wealth is not fairly being played as the wealth is consumed by banks that are unwilling to give credit where credit is due and if the government really want to be in touch with the common man, then it must aid the common man or forever be hated by the common man.

I personally feel, rightly or wrongly, that if British Telecom were allowed to buy the 'Everything Everywhere' company, it would be like Tesco's buying Morrison's or Sky buying I.T.V. We need a competitive market place to create employment and drive consumers standards to higher grounds. The reaching long term implications of this potential sale, would have to result in job losses and if the public does not raise it's concerns about potential huge company sales such this and similar situations and attempts like it, we could be guilty of scratching our heads in 5 years time and asking ourselves "Where did all the work go?" In the last 3 years, I have found B.T. and E.E's customers standards to be poor and if they become no longer in direct competition with each other, how will their customer services ever improve? We are still recovering from a double-dip recession and the last thing the business market needs is an eventual streamlining of a big phone network. This must be stopped and it is in all of our interests to stop B.T. buying E.E. I have already contacted my M.P, Andrew Turner, about this matter and hope that others are able to find the time to contact their M.P. too.

Pensioners who have made a life outside the UK's list of "Recognised Countries" are being denied their human rights to receiving their full pensions. The UK doesn't mind sending UK citizens to Thailand or other far flung countries to fight and die for them, but if god forbid any of them choose to return and live there, their pensions are either stopped or frozen without the benefit of cost of living increases. At the very beginning of our working lives, and at 10 year intervals. We should be given a list of countries we can expect NOT to receive our pensions.

This will save the average consumer around £180 to £200 per year as many (myself included) only have a fixed phone line service into my house because I have to in order to make it possible for broadband to be delivered. In many cases, the phone service is more expensive than the broadband. There is absolutely no technical reason why this service could not be turned off and as long as there is a copper pair into the property, the broadband will still work as well as it does now. We are effectively being held to ransom by telcos if we want fixed line broadband. This also affects most domestic, so called "fibre optic" broadband as this service is still delivered to the property over the copper wires. Whilst we cannot realistically expect that the provision and maintenance of the copper network can be carried out for free, Ofcom should look at what is fair pricing for the provision of a "naked" copper pair with only broadband provided over it and the removal of the obligation to have a fixed landline telephone service to the home as a large percentage would prefer to remove this option if they were given the choice.

For too long politicians from all the major parties have publically stated they would not sell or privatise areas of public spending on the run up to elections, only to then do so once they are in office. They clearly cannot be trusted. If any area of PUBLIC spending is going to be privatised, then it should be THE PUBLIC who decide, not politicians. It should be the public who have the last say on the matter. If it is the PUBLIC's money that is going to spent, then it should be the PUBLIC who decides how it should be spent.

How many of you with a landline actually use it? Ofcom proposed an upto 8% cost reduction, yet the costs have just gone up by 6%+!! Ofcom produced a report that proposed the reduction in the costs of landline rentals over a number of years. At the time of the Ofcom report, 11th July 2013, the wholesale cost of a landline was £93.27 per annum or £7.77 per month. These are phone lines rented from BT by the likes of Sky, and then re-sold to Sky subscribers at a cost of £196.80 per annum or £16.40 Ex VAT per month (current price after latest price rise). The current landline rental price from Sky Is £16.40 Ex VAT per month and that's a rise of 6.49% on last years cost - yet Ofcom proposed a reduction in these rental costs! Ofcom stated in its published article 11th July 2013, and I quote: "Wholesale line rental: the regulated wholesale price today is £93.27 per year. Under Ofcom's proposals the prices will fall in real terms by between CPI - 2% and CPI - 8% every year" and if the proposal was successful the reduction in charges would come into effect on 1 April 2014 and run until 31 March 2017. CPI = Consumer Price Index. See full details of Ofcom's proposals here:http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2013/new-prices-for-landline-and-broadband-services/ What happened to Ofcom's proposals as monthly costs for landlines are still rising? Perhaps this text below explains the price rises?! According to a BBC article; Latest figures from the regulator, Ofcom, show that consumers spent three billion minutes fewer on their landlines in the year to June 2014, a reduction of 12.7% in one year alone. As a result, operators lost out on £85m of revenue compared with the previous year. "Call volumes are declining," said James Barford of Enders Analysis. "People are using Facebook or WhatsApp, or even email if they're a little old-fashioned, so operators are having to recover their costs from increased line rental," he added. see full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30251029 The landline price increases: Sky: up by 6.49% to £16.40 a month BT: up 6.25% to £16.99 Virgin Media: up 6.25% to £16.99 Talk Talk: up 4.7% to £16.70 Why are the costs of landlines still rising and what happened to Ofcom's proposals to reduce the costs of landlines? We all understand that companies have to make money but making a margin of £103.53 per year, per landline, per customer is scandalous, especially when the likes of Sky do not have to do any work or maintain the landline, as they pass this job back to BT. We do understand there are processing costs associated with these charges though!! Let's put this into context:- SKY have 5.3 million subscribers who need a landline to receive the full TV service from Sky and use their broadband services. So, all the subscribers have a phone line, thats 5,300,000 x £103.53 (Sky's margin on landlines) = £548,709,000.00 income from landlines per year! That's over HALF A BILLION plus revenue, per year from landline charges! BT, Virgin and Talk Talk are making vast amounts of money as well from landline rentals per month. There where as of December 2013 - 22.6 Million residential and SME broadband connections - do the maths at £103.53 margin per connection! See full details here: http://media.ofcom.org.uk/facts/ 'Margin' is the amount of money made by Sky when charging for a landline:£16.40 x 12 = £196.80 less the £93.27 quoted by Ofcom = £103.53 Margin. What about the elderly that don't have SKY TV or Talk Talk TV or BT TV/Sports? These are people that need a landline to stay in contact with family and the outside world? The fact that it costs them £16.99 + VAT per month or £203.88 +VAT per annum for a landline from BT is outrageous. Is it any wonder some elderly people will not put the heating on? They probably can't afford it when they are paying £16.99 + VAT a month NOT TO TALK! In 1995 BT ran an advertising campaign with the late great Bob Hoskins and the strap line was "It's good to talk". Their next advert should use No Doubt's song 'Don't Speak' as the backing track and they should have a Dick Turpin character holding a sign with the strap line "It's great for us!" or they could pay Bork to use her version of the song 'It's Oh So Quiet" with an elderly person in a cold house, staring at the landline telephone!! The more people that sign the petition the better. "Come on BT, Sky, Talk Talk and Virgin, show some community spirit and immediately reduce the costs for landlines for the elderly and for those who need landlines to communicate with the outside world because they are house bound. Individually we can moan about the costs of landlines, sign the petition and collectively we could get cost reductions as proposed by Ofcom. Please sign. Thank You Philip Smith-Lawrence

The small amount we receive in profit is apart of our Welfare State and should go back to the few public services we have left. Our Government seems to be trying very hard to privatise our NHS and ALL of our transport services and the ten million pound yearly profit from the Eurostar should play a small part in financing what our nation needs the most. The money made from selling it will disappear very quickly and we will never know how that money was spent. Every time we have privatised a public service, such as the Royal Mail, the estimated profit was never reached and it just so happens that George Osborn's close friend, Peter Davies bought the most shares. Interestingly, very few other share holders made any profit where Davie's is said to have made £18 million. It is important that our politicians realise that if they sell everything the State owns, then there will be nothing left to help the Nation in benefits, health and education. These are fundamental issues that are not being looked at enough by our Government and the Eurostar is just one example of how, little by little, our Welfare State is being shredded to pieces. Please sign this petition in the hope that this will play a role in saving our services. We shouldn't sell business's that generate any kind of profit which could be put back into our system.

The same perpetrators who promoted and operated Ark were responsible for Capita Oak, and they are still out there right this minute doing the same thing day in, day out. Thousands of victims, hundreds of millions of pounds worth of pension funds. This is now seriously out of hand and desperately urgent. Too many families have been destroyed and hurt, pensioners can't afford to eat are paying bills, over 12 suicides and people taking nervous breakdowns and families losing there homes and there's been no help or support from the government. The Ark victims AND the Capita Oak victims have for many months been asking the Police, Action Fraud, TPR, the Pensions Ombudsman and the government to take action and nothing has been done. Please Help Now http://www.roundtownnews.com/index.php? http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article1445014.ece?shareToken=278303c72da7ebd57fab5c5cd9ffcefb http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04t0sk8/xray-series-14-episode-9

So many people face becoming Homeless. Including families with Children.

The industry has got away with too much for too long since 2007. We need to demonstrate that the general public have had enough. Unless action is taken and those within the industry are sanctioned for their behaviour this cycle of unethical and illegal behaviour will continue. They have broken the law. They need to be punished to the full extent of the law to send a message to the industry as a whole. We have had enough.