HBOS chairman talks about personal battle with depression

[Nattie]

PLEASE BE CAREFUL IF YOU WANT TO POST ON THIS STORY

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle2726401.ece

[Guest]

Re: HBOS chairman talks about personal battle with depression

Why Nattie?

Here is a man who heads up the largest mortgage lender in the UK and one of the largest commercial banks in the world and has, within his power, right there within his power the ability to end the suffering and misery - and yes, depression - of countless millions of his customers yet he does nothing.

NOTHING!

Never mind a black cloud of depression looming over him, what about the sword of damocles that his company has placed over the heads of so many of his customers?

What of the decision of his company to allow his solicitors to lie, to posture, to prevaricate and deceive those least equipped to deal with them over the issue of penalty charges?

What of the decision of his company to pull the rug out from under the feet of EHR that led to 300,000 people losing out on their Christmas savings to the tune of £35,000,000 when the funding gap was just £1.5 million, which incidentally, his company made in profit in just 8 hours during 2006 - yes, one million five hundred thousand pounds profit in eight hours!

What of the decision of his company to refuse to help those elderly borrowers experiencing hardship due to the mis-selling of SAMS (shared appreciation mortgages) during 1997 and 1998?

He could stop this, all of it at a stroke.


He can be as depressed as he likes, I really don't think I can express how much I really could not care less.

[iancognito]

Re: HBOS chairman talks about personal battle with depression

[Nattie]

Re: HBOS chairman talks about personal battle with depression

I do not agree with the manner of your post cetelco as the issue is clinical depression which is a personal thing not what they do in their job. At least being who he is in business allows him to be able to speak about it. Most clinically depressed people get little mention apart from "body found, no suspicious circumstances."

[Guest]

Re: HBOS chairman talks about personal battle with depression

If it is so personal why did he feel the need to broadcast it in The Times?

By his own admission he suffered from "mild clinical depression" and commented “God knows what it must be like to have it seriously” and then has the effrontery to talk about the need to develop a “a culture of humanity!”

Perhaps he'd like to explain what he means by that to the 300,000 people who's Christmas his company destroyed last year because, after rejecting five proposed rescue packages over a period of six months, HBOS pulled the plug for a sum they make in profit every eight hours. These people are the most vulnerable in society and are still waiting for this to be resolved and have recently been told that the 5p in the pound that they might get will not come this side of this Christmas!

Or maybe he'd like to explain his definition of “a culture of humanity” to the thousands of pensioners who have been waiting ten years for his bank to come clean on the profits they made from SAMS and to reimburse those now facing penury.

I stand by the manner of my post and say again that I don't care how depressed the wretched man gets, not now and not ever. If he truly cared about people, as you seem to be suggesting that he does by using his position to speak out, then I would expect him to use that position to do something about it, instead of bleating about how hard his life has been, with his three homes and his directorships, his Chaimanships, his CBE, his life peerage...

This piece is at best meaningless tittle-tattle written to fill column inches and at worst a cynical attempt by HBOS to paint a human face of fragility on the monster that is their company.

Let him go and talk to some customers of the company he runs and he will learn all about depression - and not the mild kind either.

As for your final comment, I think you need to re-examine your facts.

According to recent statistics, clinical depression affects 9% of the population, or 5,400,000 people. So for your comment that "most clinically depressed people get little mention apart from "body found, no suspicious circumstances"" to make any sense at all you would have to accept that (given your deliberate use of the word "most") something close to that figure commit suicide - whereas the statistics for suicide in the UK tell us that approximately 6,000 people per year commit suicide - or 0.01% of the population.

[Nattie]

Re: HBOS chairman talks about personal battle with depression

Cet, enjoy the statistics, on another night maybe I could dig deeper in the context of what I wrote but frankly, statistics,clinical depression, media and suicide is not my cup of of tea. I will leave that for others but thank you for your views(at least one of us read the news article in full{oops one day I will learn to do that!}).