JUSTICE FOR RAY DAVIES - LLOYDS BACKS DOWN...

Lloyds has returned Ray Davies's house deeds. One of the conditions Lloyds executives tried to impose in return for resolving the Ray Davies affair was a halt to the growing Internet campaign against the bank and its subsidiary Halifax-HBoS as veterans' groups mobilised for an old comrade. Halifax-HBoS employees running the firm's Facebook page, for instance, had initially tried to censor posts and questions about the Ray Davies affair but their censorship proved ineffective as the details began circulating on veterans' websites. 

As fellow veteran and local man Tony Aitken, whose family has known Mr Davies for years and who is a kingpin of the campaign to get justice for his elderly friend, stated on January 17th: "Ray has suffered over the last ten years with the fear of losing his home , his savings spent on solicitors who did F-A. The police , judges, banking ombudsman all failed him/ The system let him down. It took army veterans and ordinary people to gain justice thus far. The bank obviously saw it was a fraudulent transaction. We will be pursuing the police and others who failed this old man, including Kevin Brennan MP". 

When asked about compensating Mr Davies, Lloyds responded that the return of Mr Davies' deeds was an act of "goodness" on its part and "without liability". 

Inside sources at the troubled bank, one of several beneficiaries of bail-outs using taxpayers' money, suggested that the last thing Lloyds Banking Group's Portuguese CEO António Horta-Osório needed in the wake of revelations about his remuneration package and bonus was a tabloid-fuelled scandal about the treatment meted out to British veteran and dementia-sufferer Ray Davies over a ten-year period. 

LBG CEO Antonio Horta-Osório

António Horta-Osório describes himself to acquaintances as a committed Anglophile, someone who loves England and Britain so much that his tennis shoes and the cushions in his office are emblazoned with the Union Flag. “I really like the UK – the culture, the culture of tolerance, the great corporate governance,” he told a Daily Telegraph journalist. “This is where my wife and I want to see our children grow, and we want to stay here for the forseeable future.” Many upper class Portuguese gentlemen are Anglophiles and Britain and Portugal have long been natural allies. However, British taxpayers might wonder how much of Mr Horta-Osório's anglophilia could be due to the £8.33 million salary package that tempted him away from Santander, where he was paid the equivalent of £3.4 million, to say nothing of his bonus package, details of which were recently leaked to the press.

António Horta-Osório is in line for a £2.3 million bonus despite the group's recent announcement that it was in the red to the tune of £440 million following payment of a £750 million 'provision' for 'mis-selling' payment protection insurance. The British taxpayer owns 32% of Lloyds, which made 7,000 employees redundant in 2012 and plans to turn a further 8,000 into jobseekers over the next two years. As Robert Oxley, Campaign Director of the Taxpayers' Alliance, told the media: "The priority of Lloyds should be paying back taxpayers, not handing out bonuses to already very well-paid staff. The bank had to rely on a huge bailout from taxpayers, which much be repaid as soon as possible." 

A Lloyds spokesman said: "Antonio's bonus, which he won't receive until 2018, reflects the significant turnaround at Lloyds under his leadership, something that has enabled taxpayers to start getting their money back at a profit." Back in March 2011, Mr Horta-Osório himself had promised that Lloyds "will be totally focused on the UK with the ultimate aim of getting tax-payers their money back. To achieve this will require putting the customers at the heart of the bank".