Ulster Banksters

By AM Saturday, September 21, 2013

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Guest writer David McSweeney with a piece on the serious threat posed by banksters to home owners.

A public meeting organised by the People before Profit organisation was held in Navan, Co Meath on September 11th. The meeting was called to address the Mortgage arrears/ repossession crisis stalking the 26 counties.

Stephen Curtis of the Irish Mortgage Holders Association spoke at the meeting. In his address Curtis stated:

we have information that Ulster Bank will in the coming weeks, send four to five thousand letters to people in arrears on their mortgages. These letters will signal the beginning of large scale repossessions and evictions.

Mr Curtis added:

Ulster Bank will do this without hesitation as they don’t give a damn about public perception. The other banks have to pay lip service to caring due to their bailouts, so they will just slip in behind Ulster Bank who will lead the way.

Ulster Bank is 84% owned by Her Majesty’s Government in London through its parent company Royal Bank of Scotland.

The Central bank in Dublin had in recent times given banks targets in relation to dealing with mortgage arrears on an individual basis. This was to involve communication with customers unable to pay their mortgages. Stephen Curtis revealed that 80% of the letters sent by Ulster Bank (British government owned) involved the option of telling people to sell their property’s. Ulster bank topped the rogue’s gallery of banks giving this ultimatum as part of the “consultation” process.  No option in other words.

The human distress and heartache that these letters have triggered is unbelievable, the behaviour of banks is killing people. This was brought home very clearly by the fact that one of three speakers at the meeting was a representative of a suicide prevention organisation.

Many of these same people can now expect letters which start the process of taking their homes from them.

Less than a week before the Navan meeting, Eamon Gilmore speaking at a British-Irish association meeting in Cambridge, England indicated the Dublin government’s intention to invite members of the Windsor family to the state marking of the 1916 rising centenary. This will take place at a time when if current bank behaviour is carried through on, thousands of people will have been made homeless by the Windsor led British state. People may find alternative accommodation in many cases but their homes will have been stolen through no fault of their own.

This craven, spineless self-hating attitude has precedent in the Dublin political class. The last visit of the Windsor family to Dublin started on the anniversary day of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings. A total of 34 men, women and children including an unborn child died in the explosions. The Commander in Chief of the British armed forces, whose members organised and directed the carnage, could not be facilitated on any other date it seems. The one meaningful result which could have come from the visit, the announcement of the release of British government files relating to the bombings- Denied.

While funding to the “Justice for the Forgotten” family support group was stopped by the Dublin government, funding for the very Loyalist groupings involved in the massacres was kept. Indeed they were official guests of the state during the visit. The Windsor presence cost the people of the state 40 million.

What could the Windsor representatives and Gilmore chit chat about during the proposed visit in 2016? What does one do - the likes of us - with ones loot? might fit the bill. The British Queen will receive a 5% increase in wages in 2014 bringing her tax payer funded income to £38 million per annum. Her total income is predicted to increase by 15% in 2014 when increased profit from royal estates is factored in.

Gilmore does not have to depend on his obscene political salary, received it has to be said for doing nothing more than fronting the Troikas economic terrorism. Land has been good to Gilmore and his family too. In 2000 Gilmore’s wife Carol Hanney made an agreement in principle with the Department of Education to sell them a site for a school in Galway. The amount agreed was €140,000. Five years later Hanney received €525,000 from the state for the same plot of land due to delays in planning being granted. In 2010 Hanney charged a local self funded community group €10,000 for a three-quarter acre site off the school sale land. The plot was to be used as a hurling pitch and playground. In 2012 Ms Hanney was appointed to a €92,000 job in Ruari Quinns Department of Education. The job was not opened up to a competitive process.

The obscenity is that Gilmore and others will claim to be honouring men such as James Connolly, Commandant General of the army of the Irish Republic in 1916.Connolly would, if he were alive today in Ireland, be working night and day for those victims of the capitalist system who are going to see their homes taken from them, from north Antrim to south Kerry. Connolly would rage against the cruel cuts to health care and education, he would rally people in diametric opposition to all that Gilmore stands for.

Another of the leaders of 1916 wrote:

I say to my people that they are holy

That they are august despite their chains

That they are greater than those that hold them and stronger and purer,

That they have but need of courage.

And I say to my people’s masters: Beware

Beware of the thing that is coming,

Beware of the RISEN PEOPLE, who shall take

What you would not give

Did ye think to conquer the people?

Or that law is stronger than life

And than men’s desire to be free?

We will try it out with you

Ye that have harried and held

Ye that have bullied and bribed

Tyrants- Hypocrites- Liars