Two executives at the Royal Bank of Scotland have been suspended after alleged corruption at its overseas mortgage operation.
The bankers were allegedly asking foreign estate agents for payments worth tens of thousands of pounds in return for referring customers. Many of the suspected practices have taken place within the last 12 months and since the government bail-out.
Customers from RBS’ subsidiaries, including NatWest, Coutts and Adam & Company, are said to have been referred by the two bankers. Their unit would arrange mortgages for those interested in buying homes on the continent, and the pair would allegedly offer to put people in touch with “trusted” agents to help them find a villa.
An internal inquiry was being carried out by Chris Nichols, the head of legal matters for RBS international. Chief executive Stephen Hester is aware of the potential scandal.
An RBS spokesman has said: “We take any allegation of fraud very seriously and would always as a matter of course carry out a full investigation into any claims of wrongdoing.”
It is not yet known how the alleged fraud was discovered or the exact amounts involved.
A Spliffing Good Yarn.
- Professor David Nutt has been sacked as Chief Government Drugs Advisor because of putting his scientific opinion in the public domain. The Home Secretary wrote to him yesterday and expressed his lack of confidence.
- That is surprising because Professor Nutt is the country’s greatest acknowledged expert on the effects of controlled drugs. That is why he was hired in the first place.
- A scientist cannot modify or interpret that facts in order to placate a government whose “War on drugs” has failed. If scientific research indicates that cannabis is less harmful than say, alcohol , then that becomes scientific FACT. No amount of anecdotal evidence can alter the main thrust of scientific fact. A weeping mother in front of TV cameras who tells you that her 18 year-old died of a herion overdose but “started on cannabis” is very sad but certainly not scientific fact.
- It is not the first time that this government has chosen to ignore experts’ recommendations so perhaps they should find a scientist who will take political opinion into account during his researches and calculations. It has been done before – for instance in Germany about 70 years ago. During the Third Reich. It was Dr Joseph Goebbels who first perfected the propaganda technique of the “Big Lie”. Repeat something often enough and eventually the people will believe it. The more audacious the lie, the more likely it is to be accepted. Man-made Global Warming is the most recent “pseudo-scientific” load of garbage which has been adopted by the masses through the Big Lie technique. All contrary scientific evidence is either suppressed or ignored. Religion is another aspect of life in which facts need to be interpreted rather than accepted in order for it to function.
- New Labour is now ignoring all the evidence in the belief that their pointless and amateurishly conceived drugs propaganda will win-over public opinion.The principle of forming an opinion and then searching for facts to support that opinion, then ignoring facts that disagree with the opinion is not the way forward. That is exactly what New Labour is doing.A naïve government continues to impose its uninformed and prejudiced working class values while the nation spliffs-up.
One cannot help but hope that all other scientists that have been hired by this government take note and resign immediately.
Reading between the lines
Gordon Brown: “We are fighting the Taliban in order to keep terrorosm off our streets.” What he is really saying is this:
“We are sending our youth to Afghanistan be killed and mutilated and furthermore, we are NOT doing it on the cheap. What we like to spend the budget on is body-bags, processions, meaningless cermonies (with flags) , widow-medals, boxes, burials and those plane flights which bring the dead soldiers back – have you any idea about the cost of aviation fuel? The young kids who are mutilated – no legs, arms or faces…. well, we like to hide them away – unless, of course they are photographed by some bastard Tory newspaper and splashed on the front page. They are too embarrassing to be paraded in front of the voters – so cool those “hard luck” interviews, guys. I hope that they understand that they will not become heroes until they are properly dead. In fact, the best career move for a young soldier is to be blown-up first time into what looks like a half-eaten tin of dog meat, rather than a legless freak. (Those soldiers without boots are just too embarrassing). We put the blown-up ones in a too-big boxes (looks good on the telly), drape the boxes in Union Jacks , fly the boxes back, bung them in a hearse and play the Last Post. I admit that they keep asking for helicopters so that in Helmand, they don’t have to walk everywhere. They say that walking everywhere is dangerous because the Taliban keep planting roadside bombs which blow them up. Helicopters are all well and good but WALKING is what thes guys have been trained-for. Statistically, and according to scientific evidence, they have more chance of being hit by a car in Surrey that being blown up in Afghanistan. So, what’s the fuss all about? I have ordered an enquiry into how many of our young soldiers have to be killed and/or mutilated before the Taliban have learned their lesson. Expert advice is what it’s all about. Finally, I am pleased to announce that I have increased the medal and funeral budgets – so I don’t want to hear any more talk about this government not being financially committed to the invasion.”
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