Co-Op Bank Chairman Caught Taking Crystal Meth

[Goat]

Can't help thinking the Co-op train wreck has been engineered. Flowers is a vile patsy hired to put a few more nails in the Co-ops coffin.

Cui bono??

Can't see how anyone could engineer such a thing and those with control of the organisation would certainly have no incentive to wreck it.

I think this Telegraph editorial sheds some light: This obsession with Ethics is one of the great curses of our time byline: Paul Flowers and the Co-op Bank thought they were so good they couldn’t possibly be bad.

...the Co-op is not a common-sense organisation. It is an Ethical one, very much with a capital E. It is precisely because it is Ethical that it reached the brink of collapse.

If you read what the Co-op Bank still says about itself on its website, you will be almost suffocated by the amount of Ethics on offer. It has an “Ethical Operating Plan”, an “integrated Ethical Policy compliance system”, and what it calls a “warts and all” Ethical report on itself:...

...These Ethics, so fully serviced by units, plans and compliance systems, seem preoccupied with the totems of a certain sort of morality. They are about how many women, ethnic minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people there are on boards, and how to avoid investing in companies involved in “blood sports”, the arms trade, GM crops and tobacco...

So it's a hardcore lefty organisation dominated by politically correct "ethical" worldview, in that context Flowers looks like a perfect candidate for chairman. He may know nothing about banking and have a prediliction for drugs and rent boys but he knew the right people, could talk the required ethical talk and had the title "Reverend" to boot, what more could you want?

[thecrashingisles]

Have a read of the 6 November Treasury Select Committee transcript.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmtreasy/uc300-v/uc30001.htm

To be fair, perhaps someone had shown him the real valuation of their assets.

[okaycuckoo]

To be fair, perhaps someone had shown him the real valuation of their assets.

Hehe! Nice.

The last conservative in the Tory party is making a few points:

David Davis, the former Conservative challenger for the party leadership, has unsettled the Tory campaign to pin the blame for the Co-op Bank fiasco on Labour by saying the Treasury under George Osborne and the bank regulators have questions to answer over how they scrutinised the growth of the bank.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/22/david-davis-george-osborne-co-op-bank

[SuperChimp]

Anyone think this is a rarity? I bet there's 1000s of people like Flowers in the City. Filthy professions like banking and politics is attracting scum. Shock. Horror.

Just because someone takes drugs does not make them scum.

[Frank Hovis]

Anyone think this is a rarity? I bet there's 1000s of people like Flowers in the City. Filthy professions like banking and politics is attracting scum. Shock. Horror.

Flowers isn't a City man. I have encountered several people like him ("career"wise, not in his other activities) who somehow have got enough contacts that they get onto any committee / board going without actually have a clue what they are doing. One particularly useless guy I had to deal with put on his CV some guff about wanting to contribute his experience to other organisations after a brief (though admittedly successful) career. He sits on the board, asks his standard two pointless questions a meeting so that people mark his presence, then he goes home with his stipend. People who actually do a proper job recognise these seat-moisteners for the waste of space that they are, but they take in enough people to get away with it. NHS boards are stuffed with them.

I knew some dodgy types when I worked in the City, they were very much the minority but yes they existed.

[macbeth79]

Flowers isn't a City man. I have encountered several people like him ("career"wise, not in his other activities) who somehow have got enough contacts that they get onto any committee / board going without actually have a clue what they are doing. One particularly useless guy I had to deal with put on his CV some guff about wanting to contribute his experience to other organisations after a brief (though admittedly successful) career. He sits on the board, asks his standard two pointless questions a meeting so that people mark his presence, then he goes home with his stipend. People who actually do a proper job recognise these seat-moisteners for the waste of space that they are, but they take in enough people to get away with it. NHS boards are stuffed with them.

I knew some dodgy types when I worked in the City, they were very much the minority but yes they existed.

Good post, i learned something from it.

[Ah-so]

So it's a hardcore lefty organisation dominated by politically correct "ethical" worldview, in that context Flowers looks like a perfect candidate for chairman. He may know nothing about banking and have a prediliction for drugs and rent boys but he knew the right people, could talk the required ethical talk and had the title "Reverend" to boot, what more could you want?

Flowers was only ever a non-executive director, part-time, but we can clearly see the quasi-political reasons for his appointment:

Co-op Bank was fully owned by the Co-operative movement and Flowers was a senior figure within it. The chairman is appointed to represent the shareholders, so it is logical that a Co-op person was put forward for the role. The Co-op and Labour are very close and in 2009 Labour was still in power, which made it in reality quite hard for the FSA to refuse his appointment.

He became Chairman after the Brittania merger was underway. By then, Co-op Bank was already holed below the waterline - there was little a chairman could have done to change anything.

[Bland Unsight]

He became Chairman after the Brittania merger was underway. By then, Co-op Bank was already holed below the waterline - there was little a chairman could have done to change anything.

+1

As soon as the shitty Britannia mortgages were the Coop's problem, it was all over bar the shouting. Presumably the Britannia/Coop merger was an FSA/government orchestrated 'rescue' of the Britannia. This is what King meant by saying it will take decades to solve the problems in the UK financial sector. First the losses burn through the Britannia's capital, then the Coop Bank's capital, then then they burn through the money that was lent to the Coop by its various creditors (bondholders, PIBS - whatever).

And these are just the money losses that can't be hidden by ZIRP and forbearance.

The greater threat to the median household is too many of them are paying out a ton of interest on a big IO mortgage, (or as rent bid up by some clown with a BTL IO mortgage) and the household is not directing any of its income into any kind of savings pot or pension. Indeed there is suggestive evidence that the number of weak borrowers who are having to use additional credit lines (cards, pay day lenders) just to meet their obligations is moving up again.

Nothing is being fixed. Every year that we fail to resolve this contest between weak debtors and foolish creditors reduces further the ability of the cohorts affected to sustain themselves once their earning powers are weakened by age and illness. This is getting very ugly, very slowly.

Edited November 23, 2013 by ChairmanOfTheBored

[spyguy]

+1

As soon as the shitty Britannia mortgages were the Coop's problem, it was all over bar the shouting. Presumably the Britannia/Coop merger was an FSA/government orchestrated 'rescue' of the Britannia. This is what King meant by saying it will take decades to solve the problems in the UK financial sector. First the losses burn through the Britannia's capital, then the Coop Bank's capital, then then they burn through the money that was lent to the Coop by its various creditors (bondholders, PIBS - whatever).

And these are just the money losses that can't be hidden by ZIRP and forbearance.

The greater threat to the median household is too many of them are paying out a ton of interest on a big IO mortgage, (or as rent bid up by some clown with a BTL IO mortgage) and the household is not directing any of its income into any kind of savings pot or pension. Indeed there is suggestive evidence that the number of weak borrowers who are having to use additional credit lines (cards, pay day lenders) just to meet their obligations is moving up again.

Nothing is being fixed. Every year that we fail to resolve this contest between weak debtors and foolish creditors reduces further the ability of the cohorts affected to sustain themselves once their earning powers are weakened by age and illness. This is getting very ugly, very slowly.

Yes +1000

Write the debts down, close down the banks, kick out the pricks.

[The Masked Tulip]

Mail On Sunday has, ahem, more revelations.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512511/Sex-drugs-blasphemy-depravity-arrogance-Crystal-Methodist-didnt-believe-God--brazen-texts.html

[Guest TheBlueCat]

Labour faces cash crisis as Co-op's new bosses move to cut funding

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/23/labour-faces-co-op-cash-crisis

This really is the story that never stops giving!

[koala_bear]

Observer front page lead article just seen on TV news suggests that new Co-Op management team is going to turn down/off the funding taps to labour...

[Guest TheBlueCat]

Mail On Sunday has, ahem, more revelations.

http://www.dailymail...azen-texts.html

The Crystal Methodist

ROTFL

[Guest TheBlueCat]

Observer front page lead article just seen on TV news suggests that new Co-Op management team is going to turn down/off the funding taps to labour...

You would have to think that a bunch of US hedge funds, those being the incoming owners, will not be natural labour supporters.

[happy_renting]

You would have to think that a bunch of US hedge funds, those being the incoming owners, will not be natural labour supporters.

If Labour get back in to power, expect generous tax concessions to hedge funds, like they have in the USA.

[1929crash]

Which is the bigger crime - Flowers indulging himself or HSBC and Wells Fargo laundering billions of pounds in drug lord money?

[Frank Hovis]

Which is the bigger crime - Flowers indulging himself or HSBC and Wells Fargo laundering billions of pounds in drug lord money?

Which is the bigger crime - the slaughter of countless millions [insert appropriate bit of further hyperbole here] or Flowers indulging himself?

[1929crash]

Which is the bigger crime - the slaughter of countless millions [insert appropriate bit of further hyperbole here] or Flowers indulging himself?

I think I made an entirely reasonable point, Frank.

Flowers was appointed in 2010 after the bank started going downhill, and his drug use affects nobody but himself, whereas the crimes of the banks I mentioned, which are on record, have affected many tens of thousands.

[Frank Hovis]

I think I made an entirely reasonable point, Frank.

Flowers was appointed in 2010 after the bank started going downhill, and his drug use affects nobody but himself, whereas the crimes of the banks I mentioned, which are on record, have affected many tens of thousands.

IMO you are shoe-horning in something unrelated, where I am coming from with this (I can't claim to speak for everybody) is that this is typical of the cronyism that afflicts this country. Flowers is a man clearly unfit for any position of responsibility as has been repeatedly proven in his record. Even if his private life was that of a saint he should not have been made chairman of a major bank.

[LiveinHope]

IMO you are shoe-horning in something unrelated, where I am coming from with this (I can't claim to speak for everybody) is that this is typical of the cronyism that afflicts this country.

SNIP

Cronyism that is strangling the rise of much of the real talent in the country. Probably, the best solution is to leave and let it self-destruct.

[stormymonday_2011]

I think I made an entirely reasonable point, Frank.

Flowers was appointed in 2010 after the bank started going downhill, and his drug use affects nobody but himself, whereas the crimes of the banks I mentioned, which are on record, have affected many tens of thousands.

The problem is that there are quite a few flakey characters like Flowers scattered around the higher echelons of British society. The real story here is not his sexual peccadillos, his drug taking, his expense fiddling or his incompetence but the fact that he was essentially able to bullsh*t his way to the top job at a major bank despite all his failings. I suppose the one thing remarkable about his case is that he did not end up in the natural place for these type of people which was the Houses of Parliament. It says something about the scale and the nature of the financial crisis that Flowers was caught and essentially weeded out of local politics by Bradford council yet was allowed to stay on his job at the Coop bank by the financial regulators.

Edited November 24, 2013 by stormymonday_2011

[Bloo Loo]

Mrs Loo reckons you are all wrong.

He has been exposed after the Co-op failed to buy the Governments crap bank branches.

There will be place men with "leverage" all around the economy, in banks, Corporates, Councils, everywhere....when the time comes, they know when to do their "job".

Fail and this is what happens....maybe Flowers is more righteous than many others in the same position, fearing their leverage will some day be called upon.

[justthisbloke]

Observer front page lead article just seen on TV news suggests that new Co-Op management team is going to turn down/off the funding taps to labour...

That's the Group rather than the bank, surely?

And they can hardly carry on "donating" millions to MPs when they've just the members' dividend to nothing.

[stormymonday_2011]

That's the Group rather than the bank, surely?

And they can hardly carry on "donating" millions to MPs when they've just the members' dividend to nothing.

Quite.

If Milliband, Balls and Labour MPs want to find out who is largely responsible for this a funding crisis then I suggest they buy a mirror and take a look in it.

The way that Labour politicians have milked Union members and the Coop members yet delivered nothing on return has been one of the wonders of the last 20 years.

Edited November 24, 2013 by stormymonday_2011

[dinker]

You voted for these perverts and called it Thatcherism. Your fault.

Flowers was a member of the Labour Party:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25039286