Your Building Society ???

by Christopher Draper

BUILDING societies, like most good things, were invented in the North.

Founded by workers as mutual aid organisations, building societies provided a safe home for meagre savings so that in the long term members could secure homes for themselves and their families.  Over the decades the money men and city spivs moved in, privatised many societies and subverted democratic control of the rest.  You won’t see many millionaire money men walking the streets of Bradford these days but you’ll find a fair few if you pop into the Boardroom of the Yorkshire Building Society (YBS), a mutual aid for the wealthy.

Hell and Halifax

YBS isn’t the only example of the hollowing-out of the mutualist ideas and working class ideals of the original building societies.  The capitalist feeding frenzy that privatised the ‘Halifax Building Society’ (then Britain’s biggest) and then almost destroyed it shows YBS and other remaining ‘mutuals’ have further to fall from their idealistic origins.  A comprehensive analysis of every surviving mutual would be onerous to compile and boring to read so I’ll concentrate on contrasting the professed ideals of YBS with the actualite but the critique applies across the board.

'Our Society'

YBS ‘members’ who legally own the ‘society’ nowadays play no greater role in the business than they do in MacDonalds, Google, Asda or any other retailer yet YBS, like the other fake mutuals, constantly claims we do. ‘Our Society a Place Where We Belong', “Members…at the heart of everything we do’, ‘As a building society we are set up specifically to help people rather than make money from them’.  In the last few years YBS wasted millions of pounds of members’ savings settling fines and compensation claims imposed as a consequence of negligent and cynical trading practices. 

The Financial Conduct Authority discovered YBS indulged in mis-selling PPI; YBS neglected and improperly overcharged mortgage customers experiencing repayment difficulties and YBS promoted and sold bonds that promised financial returns that were virtually impossible to achieve.

Even a cursory examination of YBS documents reveals a focus on growth and expansion rather than member involvement. The truth is that bigger businesses bring bigger bonuses for bosses and for Mike Regnier, YBS CEO, this year’s bonus added a further £275,000 to his already massive salary. A YBS survey of “customer experience” over an identical period recorded a drop from 27^th to 87^th place (comparable organisations) yet had no negative impact on Mike’s bonus.

Once Upon a Time in Huddersfield

YBS started in the nineteenth century with the creation of 'The Huddersfield Equitable Permanent Benefit Building Society' by a handful of workers and tradesmen in a small building on the corner of King Street and Queen Street. In the twentieth century the 'Huddersfield' amalgamated with Dewsbury’s 'West Yorkshire' and then Bradford’s 'Self Help' to, in 1982, form the 'YBS'. 

 

From its foundation in 1864 until 1896 none of the Directors of the ‘Huddersfield’ drew any salary from the Society’s funds now the YBS Director’s trough is lavishly swilled with members’ savings.

The YBS Board comprises 9 directors and includes 6 non-executive directors. In 2017, the executive directors received a total remuneration of two million and fifty-six thousand pounds with CEO Mike Regnier alone getting almost a million (£930,000). As the average local wage is £20,929, Mike gets more every year than a Bradford worker would earn in a lifetime!

Keeping Members Informed

You’ve doubtless received one of those booklets that building societies send out to members as an annual report.  The first thing to note is that these documents are not actually ‘Annual Reports’ but selective, propaganda pamphlets that Directors employ to bamboozle members into thinking they’re involved.  For YBS the official 2017 ‘Annual Report’ is double the page size (A4 rather than A5) and six times the length of the ‘Annual Review’ sent out to members.  Both documents are essentially sales brochures boasting of how brilliantly the ‘business’ is being run but occasionally key details can be gleaned from the full document omitted from the dumbed-down version.   This year (2017/18) the YBS members’ pamphlet made no mention of the gender pay gap that all big organisations are legally obliged to publicly report but tucked away at the foot of the inner column of the ‘full’ document on page 71 we find that YBS operates a 31% gender pay gap but of course even here there’s no admission of guilt rather a statement of pious bullshit, ‘The Group strives to create an environment where diversity in all forms is encouraged and barriers in the way of colleagues fulfilling their potential are removed.’

The full 190 page Report includes lovely full-page, full-colour pictures of Chairman John (Uriah) Heaps and CEO Mike Regnier yet still doesn’t fully report YBS’s legally required analysis of its gender pay-gap (it’s available online).  This records women are very much in the minority among its highest paid employees (top quartile: 42% women/58% men) whilst down at the bottom end (quartile) the lowest paid YBS employees are overwhelmingly female (80% women/20% men).  In place of these facts the Report obfuscates:

‘In simple terms there are more females occupying less senior roles. It is this imbalance that results in the gender pay gap’.

YBS Democracy

Like all fake democracies YBS have the problem of manufacturing consent.  Pictures of people of all types and colour are an essential ingredient of all YBS booklets, sites and propaganda accompanied by slogans asserting ‘inclusivity’.   The aim is to make members think everyone else is involved and if you’re not it’s your lazy fault.  The truth is that YBS is as mutual as the Co-op is cooperative, it’s been captured and run by money men with no radical, socialist or even cooperative agenda.  Any claims to mutualism are utterly superficial.

In 1864, there was a plumber amongst the originators of the Huddersfield Building Society but you won’t find a ‘butcher, baker or candlestick maker’ amongst the directors now, most come from the banking world with a leavening of hotels, pubs and gambling directorships.

Directors know few members turn up at the AGM and there’s little likelihood they’ll be challenged.  Even if they were the Chairman wields thousands of proxy votes from members who returned their voting paper in response to whatever gimmicky inducement YBS offers that particular year (in 2018 it’s a donation to charity).  Few notice or understand the import of the inconspicuous phrase, ‘The Chairman will be your proxy unless you choose someone else by completing the box on the back of this form’.  Although almost fifteen thousand members voted against last years lavish directors’ emoluments with a further three thousand withholding their agreement the Chairman claimed the backing of 128,159 proxies as authorisation for the Board to stuff their wallets.  Business as usual and triples all round, Cheers!

Some more Equitable than Others

In 1864, the Huddersfield Equitable offered members the prospect of a home and interest on their savings of 5% interest (at a time that inflation was zero).  In 2018 Chairman Heaps claims YBS 'are proud of our 150 year commitment to our mutual values – delivering long term value' but consider what has been delivered by Heaps and his fellow buildings society money men.  'Our mortgage customers face average house prices that are almost eight times average earnings – an all-time high…By 2020 only a quarter of 30-year olds will own their own home, in contrast, more than half the generation currently approaching retirement were homeowners by their thirtieth birthday.'   Whilst consumer price inflation is running at around 3% per annum YBS savers are offered only 0.85% so even labelling them 'savings accounts' smacks of 'mis-selling'.

 

Branch closures reduce the service to members, increase centralisation and bring banks bad publicity but YBS is equally guilty with 48 branches closed last year with a further 18 closures already planned for 2018.

Progress?

YBS isn’t doing anything illegal and is typical of the building society sector and that’s precisely the problem, the rot is endemic.  What started as local mutual-aid societies founded by workers and tradesmen to shelter themselves and their families from the ravages of the marketplace have been gradually infiltrated by the values and personnel of commercialism.  Poorly paid, largely female, workers are welcomed at YBS to do the donkey work at the counters and computers but money-men run the show on classic capitalist lines. 

In 1994 YBS was the first building society to operate its own share-dealing service (subsequently sold) and members were encouraged to redirect their mutual saving into stock market speculation.

In 2018, as ordinary YBS members suffer miserable, below inflation, returns on their savings there’s rich pickings for the boys in the boardroom.  The members 'Annual Review' prominently boasts of £1.5m'contributed to our local communities' but fails to mention that this is less than the amount 'contributed' to board members Mike Regnier and Stephen White.

Re-building Society

The nineteenth century working class created a rich variety of mutual aid organisations, Building Societies, Benefit Societies, Trade Unions, Political Parties, Burial Clubs, Reading Rooms and much more.  Like YBS, most are now ideologically moribund zombies with some appearance of the original but devoid of humanity and political idealism.  The causes are complex but in almost every case a tendency to apathy and materialism amongst workers was exploited by lawyers and city slickers to gain control and extract value.  Hierarchies and huge pay differentials replaced equitable ideals and egalitarian practice. 

 

There’s no quick solution but we can all do a bit to reclaim our moribund organisations.  If you’re a building society member don’t ever return the paper giving the Chairman your vote, either tick all the 'against' or 'vote withheld' boxes. 

 

It’s optimistic to dream of reversing the decline in building societies and similar mutual aid organisations but we can at least try to stop the rot.  Recognise the rips-offs and speak out, don’t be complicit, expose the injustice and ridicule the rapacious.  Even YBS is not entirely immune to activism, every creative act of protest supports, encourages and incites others – You’d Be Surprised…

Computer Fraud, Sunday Post & The Bank

by Les May

YOU do not expect to find the most penetrating and insightful journalism in a newspaper published by a company which also produces ‘Oor Wullie’, ‘The Broons’, ‘My Weekly’ and ‘The Peoples Friend’.  But yesterday ‘The Sunday Post’ carried a detailed article about a computer fraud which needs to be more widely known.

Briefly, one of the paper’s columnists, Donald MacLeod, had had what he described as a ‘six figure sum’ filched from his account in the space of a few hours and his bank had not considered it ‘unusual activity’ and halted further transactions..

MacLeod had received a phone call from his mortgage provider.  Or at least he thought it was his mortgage provider because the caller knew his roll number, monthly payment, type of mortgage and term left.  Fairly convincing stuff.  On the basis of what the caller said MacLeod decided to take up a cheaper mortgage option.  To set things in motion a copy of his driving licence was requested.

Because his bank had insisted having his driving licence number as a ‘third level’ security check MacLeod had unwittingly given the fraudster the key to emptying not only his account but the savings accounts of two of his children.  All it required was for the fraudster to apply for online banking facilities using the ‘third level’ security check and then use this facility to make a series of electronic funds transfers to…  No one knows where.

I’d probably have just mentally filed the article had a security conscious friend not shown me a letter they had just received from their bank, HSBC.  This requested that certified copies of two separate documents be sent to a PO Box Number.   One was to prove the recipient’s identity, the other to prove their place of residence.  Plenty here for a determined fraudster to steal someone’s identity.

The icing on the cake was that for ‘speed and convenience’, you could do it online with their ‘Jumio’ tool, (at least they didn’t call it an app).   And the information would go precisely where exactly?

The ostensible reason for asking for this information is to protect customers’ accounts. But it’s not clear how this offers any protection to people who bank with HSBC.   The only beneficiary is the HSBC.   It’s the bank’s way of protecting itself from further accusations that it has a sloppy attitude to the prevention of money laundering.  In 2012 it had to pay £1.2 billion because it had inadequate controls against money laundering.  Type the words ‘money laundering hsbc’ into Google or any other search engine, and see watch the hits roll up.

If HSBC was serious about protecting customers’ accounts it would go about this exercise in a different way.  First it would be honest about why it wants the information.  Second it would use what remains of its branch network to process this information for all its customers, not just the few who spot the danger in sending identification to a PO Box or over the Internet.   Determined fraudsters with access to a colour printer can easily produce fraudulent copies of letters purporting to come from HSBC and then harvest the identification documents which flow in.  They are unlikely to go to the trouble of opening a fake bank branch.

Challenging Tourismofobia in Barcelona!

 by Brian Bamford

ACTIVISTS in Barcelona have recently targeted tourists as part of a campaign against overcrowding, rising rents and house prices.  Responsibility for a recent attack on a sightseeing bus near the Nou Camp football stadium was claimed by Arran Jovent, a group linked to the anti-capitalist, Catalan pro-independence party, Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP).  

There is a precedent for the current anti-tourist sentiment that is now flourishing in parts of Spain that has a long history that goes back at least to 1963, when I was first there. 

 'The representative of financial institutions told us that the Spanish legislation was great.  He says this when people are taking their own lives because of this criminal law, I assure you—I assure you that I haven't thrown a shoe at this man, because I believed it was important to be here now to tell you what I’m telling you. But this man is a criminal and should be treated like one.'

  These words came from the anti-eviction activist Ada Colau 

in the Chamber of Deputies of Spain in February 2013.

In February 2013, Ada Colau who has since become the mayor of Barcelona, was giving a evidence to a Spanish parliamentary hearing.  Colau had helped to set up a grassroots organisation, the Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH), which championed the rights of citizens unable to pay their mortgages or threatened with eviction. Founded in 2009, the PAH quickly became a model for other activists, and a nationwide network of leaderless local groups emerged.  

At that time people across Spain were joining together to campaign against mortgage lenders, occupy banks and physically block bailiffs from carrying out evictions. 

Ada Colau was there to discuss the housing crisis that had devastated Spain.  Since the financial crisis began, 400,000 homes had been foreclosed and a further 3.4m properties lay empty.  In response, Colau had helped to set up a grassroots organisation, the Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH), which championed the rights of citizens unable to pay their mortgages or threatened with eviction. Founded in 2009, the PAH quickly became a model for other activists, and a nationwide network of leaderless local groups emerged. Soon, people across Spain were campaigning against mortgage lenders, occupying banks and physically blocking bailiffs from carrying out evictions.

Others believe Ada Colau and her supporters will have difficulties in transforming the two-party democracy that has ruled Spain since the days of General Franco.  

'I don’t think the ideas of a city can be based on what a citizen’s assembly wants – it’s absurd,' said Francesc de Carreras, a constitutional law professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. 'Democracy doesn’t mean that everyone expresses their desires and they come true by some miracle.

'It’s not a good idea to have citizens participate in these things. We’re not the ones who have skills in these areas,' he said. 'I don’t go into a restaurant and tell them how to cook.'

'The Barcelona model is in decline,' said journalist Marta Monedero, referring to the ideas that guided the city’s growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s and helped put Barcelona on the world map.  'The model was a way to understand the city and bring it closer to the people – there wasn’t a lot of money so they came up with things like having lots of squares and intensifying the social fabric of the city through organisations.'

Monedero recently co-edited a book called The Dream of Barcelona: A City in Which to Live or to See?, in which she and journalist Núria Cuadrado asked residents from various sectors of society about the issues facing the city.  What they found was that the model that had once been so successful in guiding the city was now deeply out of sync with everyday reality.  Unlike in the late 1980s, today around 17% of the city’s population is foreign born.  Housing activists say that some 15 residents a day were evicted from their homes in 2014.  Until recently like other cities across Spain, unemployment remains stubbornly in double digits, while the young and educated continue to leave the city in hopes of finding work abroad.

Eduard Masjuan*

In 2006, the anarcho-syndicalist Spanish CGT trade union federation in Barcelona at the request of Tameside Trade Union Council in Greater Manchester, sent an expert on urban housing, Eduard Masjuan Bracons, to speak at Manchester Friends Meeting House about the problems of urban living, housing, planning and design.  The then active Manchester Social Forum was also party to the invite of Eduard Masjuan from the Universitat de Barcelona (Historia Economica), and the Manchester electricians in the then EPIU branch 1400/07, who later were famously in the forefront in exposing the blacklist in the British building trade, were present at the presentation fresh from fighting a case at the Manchester Employment Tribunal. 

The Manchester electrician, Steve Acheson, told the meeting about the problems of health and safety and conditions on the building sites, and what at that time were perceived as being victimisation against trade unionists and safety representatives on the local building sites.  The Calalan academic, Señor Masjuan addressed the urban problems in the city of Barcelona:  the shifting of local residents out from the central barrios to the peripheral suburban areas; and the corruption that was evident in the politics of all parties in the city. 

The predicament of the residents of Barcelona and the electricians on the British building sites were not so dissimilar in 2006.  The young people of Barcelona could not afford the rising prices of appartments in the Catalan capital, and in the same way even today we learn that many of the construction workers who work on building sites can't afford to buy the buildings they are errecting.  

In 2013, when Ada Colau addressed the parliamentary committee, ten minutes into Colau’s 40-minute testimony she broke from the script.  Her voice cracking with emotion, she turned her attention to the previous speaker, Javier Rodriguez Pellitero, the deputy general secretary of the Spanish Banking Association:   

'This man is a criminal, and should be treated as such.  He is not an expert.  The representatives of financial institutions have caused this problem; they are the same people who have caused the problem that has ruined the entire economy of this country – and you keep calling them experts.'

When she had finished, the white-haired chair of the parliament’s economic committee turned to Colau and asked her to withdraw her “very serious offences” in slandering Pellitero.  She shook her head and quietly declined.

The 'criminal' video became a media sensation, earning Colau condemnation in some quarters and heroine status in others.  A poll for the Spanish newspaper El País a few weeks later revealed that 90% of the country’s population approved of the PAH.  The group’s work continued.  In July 2013, Colau was photographed in Barcelona being dragged away by riot police from a protest against a bank that had refused to negotiate with an evicted family.


*  Books by Eduard Masjuan:

• • E. Masjuan, H.M. Elena & D. Saurí, "Conflicts and struggles over urban water cycles: The case de Barcelona",
  • E. Masjuan, "La cultura de la naturaleza en el anarquismo ibérico y cubano", Signos históricos, 15 (2006), p. 98-122.
  • E. Masjuan, "El pensamiento demográfico anarquista: fecundidad y emigración a América Latina (1900-1914)", Revista de demografía histórica, (2004), p. 153-180.
  • E. Masjuan, "Medis obrers, conflictivitat social i innovació cultural a Sabadell (1877-1914)", Recerques, 47-48 (2004), p. 131-155.
  • E. Masjuan, "Procreación consciente y discurso ambientalista: anarquismo y neomalthusianismo en España e Italia, 1900-1936", Ayer, 46 (2002), pp. 63-92.
• Altres publicacions:
  • E. Masjuan, Un héroe trágico del anarquismo español. Mateo Morral, 1879-1906, Barcelona: Icaria editorial, 2009.
  • E. Masjuan, "Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) i la nova cultura de la naturalesa en els medis obrers de 1900-1936", a Ciència i compromís social. Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) i la geografia de la llibertat, Barcelona: Residència d'Investigadors CSIC-Generalitat de Catalunya, s2007.
  • E. Masjuan, Medis obrers i innovació cultural a Sabadell, (1900-1939), Bellaterra: Servei de Publicacions de la UAB, 2006.
  • E. Masjuan, La Ecología humana en el anarquismo ibérico. Urbanismo orgánico u ecológico, neomalthusianismo y naturismo social, Barcelona: Icaria editorial, 2000.
  • E. Masjuan, "El urbanismo ecológico de Patrick Geddes y Cebrià de Montoliu", a Arturo Soria y el urbanismo europeo de su tiempo, 1894-1994, Madrid: Fundación Cultural del Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid, 1996, pp. 51-65.

Banking Crisis, Blacklisting & Justice

Clearing the air in banking crisis & blacklist scandal
by Brian Bamford

LAST weekend, a Financial Times (FT) editorial explained the purpose of the legal process:

'The law tries cases and metes out punishment for a number of reasons.  Securing restitution for damage done and deterring future misdeeds are the most respectable and most often cited.  There ais subtler reason, though, one that is easily forgotten.  Justice often consists in simply setting the record straight, in saying  what happens in a clear, public and final way.  If this last element is neglected, old wounds can remain open.'

The F.T. editor was referring in this case to the financial crisis, and the current specific shareholder suit against the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as an example.  The RBS shareholders are after money compensation, and are seeking £700 million, claiming that they were misled by the bank ahead of a £12 billion rights issue in 2008, which was then followed by a state bailout and a further collapse in the value of the shares.  

Some of the shareholders who suffered from the shakedown by the bank and refused offers of a settlement say they want fundamental questions answered publicly.  'It's about seeing the ex-directors in court and for all what happened,' one said.

The F.T. editor focusing on the Royal Bank of Scotland writes:

'The shareholders would, more specifically, want to see former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin in the dock.  Mr Goodwin has, to a degree, been punished already.  He has lost his job, of course, and his knighthood was stripped away five years ago.  After a fight he was forced to accept a reduction in his pension.  But, aside from an appearance in front of a Commons inquiry, he has not had to answer publicly for what he happened at RBS or his role in it.'

Essentially neither the banking crisis nor, more importance to us, the issue of blacklisting in the British building trade is about one man or about one bank or about one construction company.  They are both issues of concern to the country as a whole. 

The banking and the financial crisis with its mis-selling and price-fixing scandals has ended up involving the tax-payer, and the state is still saddled with three-quarters of ownership of RBS.  And the government has recently accepted that it may never square the circle.  Yet, as the F.T. editor points out 'nearly a decade after the crisis, no senior UK bank executive has yet been a defendant in a civil or criminal trial as a result of the banking sectors' decimation by bad loans, risky funding and ill-structured products.'

The blacklisted workers in the British building trade would immediately recognise this scenario as described above.  Despite blacklisting on a vast scale which is in all probability continuing, no culpable executive in the construction industry has had to appear in person before a criminal court in this country.  True compensation has been paid by the companies to the victims of blacklisting in out-of-court settlements, but apart from people like Callum McAlpine having to appear in front of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee with his solicitor by his side, there has been no proper admission of guilt.  Indeed, Mr. McAlpine told the Scottish Affairs Select Committee he'd been advised by hie solicitor that he couldn't answer any questions on the grounds of.sub judice.

It does not seem that the blacklisted electricians on the British building sites will ever get full justice through the courts; Dave Smith, as an agency worker, recently lost his case at the European Court of Human Rights  That is 'full justice' of the kind of sense of justice which according to the F.T. editorial above 'consists in simply setting the record straight, in saying  what happens in a clear, public and final way.'

Consequently, unless  the Labour Party comes to power in the forthcoming general election and establishes an independent public inquiry into blacklisting as promised by some including the Blacklist Support Group, the air will never be cleared in the British building trade creating much disgruntlement among the workers and trade unionists, and construction companies will continue to impose forms of blacklisting throughout the industry.  Thus, old wounds will remain open in the British trade union movement.

Merryn Somerset Webb's Look-alike News

LAST Saturday in the Financial Times, Merryn Somerset Webb argued that the there was little to chose between the crisis in Cyprus over 'a shock tax on bank deposits' and the British Budget with 'its sad admissions of failure (on budget deficit and growth) and its slightly bonkers-sounding solutions (looser monetary policy and more buying and selling houses).'  She wrote:  'these weren't different stories, just different aspects of the defining story of the decade'.  What's happening now is that big debts have been run up by sovereign states and now they're all trying to 'scam voters into paying them off.'

Clearly, Cyprus is in a bad way, but because our politicians are more subtle they can cover-up what's happening in a British way by simply depriciating our currency and going in for 'quantitive easing'.  Ms. Somerset Webb writes that this is not much better than the brutal Cypriot method threatened last week; merely more smooth. 

At has been calculated that if you'd put your money on deposit in the UK for the last 4-years that you would be worse off than if you'd kept it in Cyprus and endured the tax loss threatened last week.  Of course, this Cyprus tax of last week has now been modified, and will only impact on deposits of over 100,000 euros (£85,000) when the banks eventually open there.

Ultra low interest rates and inflation which is relatively high compared to the interst rates, means that it is impossible for savers in this country to make any return on savings that is real when allowing for inflation.  Cash is certainly not King at the moment, and judging by the Chancellor's recent utterances, he seems determined to drive up house prices in anticipation that the feel-good factor that this produces among middle-class voters will help the Tories in the 2015 General Election.  Some pundits are now talking of a kind of growing 'apartheid' in British society between those who own their own houses, and a younger generation who stand no chance of buying a home until prices come down.

Bob Diamond grabs conversational control using first name terms

IN his book 'The Art of the Advocate', Richard Du Cann writes:  'Really the advocate has only one weapon:  words', and he continues:  'If the advocate is appearing for the Crown in civil or criminal proceedings he cross-examines in order to get to as near the truth as he can and not to secure a verdict.' 

Yesterday, the parliamentary committee of MPs failed to ask Bob Diamond, the former head of Barclays Bank, the crucial question as to if he thought that the Brown government or its officials wanted Barclays Bank to seek to adjust the Libor rate (interest rate for Banks) downwards.  As a consequence, because this question was not asked, it will now be difficult to establish if any untoward pressure or encouragement was brought to bear on Barclays by civil servants representing the Brown administration in the previous Labour government.

This morning one female participant in these seemingly never quasi-judicial parliamentary inquiries described them as 'Bun Fights', and another commentator said they were the modern equivalent of the Stocks.  For months now the quality of the level of advocacy and questioning of MPs as a means of getting at the truth has been challenged by solicitors and others as being rough and ready, poor and impoverished.

Today, the morning news broadcasts are fascinated by the novel tactic used by Bob Diamond to deflate the force of the investigators among the MPs.:  particularly his ready use of first name terms to address them.  We don't know how often Bob Diamond may have practised his performance in front of the mirror or tutors trying to refine his skills.  But this casual use of first name terms yesterday may have been an approach recommended by his advisers.  This tactic would certainly have been worthy of study and interest to a conversational analyst like the late Harvey Sacks.

On the question of style and the advocate Mr Du Cann writes:  'Probably more nonsense has been written about style in cross-examination than about any other single aspect of forensic advocacy.'  There is no miraculous style the win cases and illicit the truth and basically it is the effect on the day that counts and can lead to triumph or defeat in the investigation.  What the MPs who interviewed Bob Diamond yesterday, should now be asking themselves is the question Richard Du Cann puts in his book:  'Has the advocate done all he (or she) should for his client in testing the value of the evidence that has been given?'  Yesterday, the client who the MPs were representing in their cross-examinination of Bob Diamond was the general public, and on that showing we must doubt that we were well served by our representatives.