Britain stands alone...... again

26 out of 27 EU countries yesterday voted to sign a new treaty of further, financial, integration into the EU. Only Britain refused to enter into the new agreement.
Again we see Britain standing alone, apart from Europe. For once a British government has been firm and looked after Britain's interests ahead of those of our European neighbours, and we applaud the Prime Minister for a bold decision (although it appears that Cameron's hand was forced by patriotic Conservative back benchers who demanded a referendum should be hand over further powers).
Hopefully this decision will make our elected representatives realise that our future does not lie in further integration into the EU, we voted for a Common Market, we have already gone further than that with the Maastricht Treaty.
Let's not rest on our laurels, the EU is still the biggest threat to our nation state, write to your MP, inform them now is the time to start clawing back our sovereignty, the EU experiment has failed and we offer the current economic situation as proof of that fact.

Shameless Bankers

British based bank HSBC has been fined £10.5m and ordered to pay £29.3m in compensation by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for the mis-selling  of investment bonds to elderly people in care.

In other words, in almost Dickensian fashion, they have been conning the elderly and infirm.

2,485 customers of the bank's subsidiary company, NHFA, were advised to invest in the bonds to finance their care costs. Unfortunately, many of these people, with an average age of 83 and who were already in care, had a life expectancy of less than 5 years and started to cash in the bonds sooner than expected. meaning their capital was quickly eaten away. 87% of NHFA customers were sold inappropriate bonds, resulting in the largest retail fine to date from the FSA.

HSBC, said it identified problems at NHFA and had closed the business to new customers in July, and alerted the FSA. HSBC said it was 'profoundly sorry'. NHFA was the leading supplier of independent financial advice on products to help pay for long-term care, with a market share of nearly 60%.
According to the BBC, HSBC reported pre-tax profits for the first six months of the year of $11.5bn (£7bn), up 3% on the $11.1bn the bank made a year earlier.

After everything that's gone on, they are still taking the piss....... I'm sure you will agree, it doesn't get much lower than targetting the elderly

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16032593
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/banking/8935361/HSBC-fined-10m-for-mis-selling-to-pensioners.html