The following has nothing to do with our cars and if that offends anyone
please accept my apology and delete now.
It is intended for British Citizens resident abroad who may benefit from
the information contained in it.
I am only posting it because i know there are a lot of Brit ex-pats on
the list, worldwide and if the situation is applicable to them will pay
for at least a partial restoration of an MG of your choice! (It IS
applicable to me and im really pissed off by it - hehe)
Once again apologies for the intrusion to all other list members
.
mike robson
--------- Begin forwarded message ----------
From: "Brian Hazlehurst" <brianhaz@uninet.com.br>
Subject: UNHAV - NEW ARTICLE CONDEMNING HALIFAX - SOON ON WEBSITE -
(N.B. CAREFUL PLEASE COPYING WEBSITE ADDRESS
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 22:27:24 -0300
Message-ID: <002001bd9b22$717c3240$6b03dcc8@brianhaz.unisys.com.br>
'GULF DAILY NEWS ' 17th June, 1998
(Bahrain - The Middle East)
"Webbers Take on Bank"
For about a year I have been conducting what, until recently, I thought
was a
one-man campaign against a former British building society, but thanks to
the good
old internet, I now realise that I am no longer alone.
A building society in the UK is a society owned by its members for the
purposes of
both saving at slightly higher interest rates than those offered by the
banks and to
enable its members to obtain long-term, low interest loans to purchase
property.
Following the lead of several other building societies, the Halifax, one
of the UK’s
largest, decided that it would convert from a building society to a bank
and in the
process, it would grant shares to its 7.6 million members. The members
duly voted for
the motion and the Halifax became a bank in June 1997. The average member
received
350 Shares, which are currently valued at just under UK3,000 (BD2,000).
Unfortunately, I found that I am not an average member, simply because I
happen to
live overseas and therefore not surprisingly, my registered address with
the Halifax
is also overseas. The bank in its infinite wisdom decided that even
though I have
been a member for over 20 years, they could not issue me any shares,
simply because I
live in Bahrain.
I was a little bit miffed about this, especially as the Halifax did not
even have
the courtesy to inform me of the impending flotation and thus enable me
to take steps
to ensure that I had a UK address. I therefore commenced my campaign to
attempt to
extract justice and to get my hands on the loot, to which I feel that I
am entitled.
Anyone who has attempted a similar mission with a large, faceless
company may have
experienced the
frustrations, which are often encountered in such an action. Each time I
write, a
different person answers my correspondence. So far I have received
letters from seven
different people from two different offices. The respondents frequently
fail to
answer my questions but frequently give me answers to questions, which I
have not
asked. I usually takes weeks if not months to receive a reply, in fact a
letter which
was written in October 1997 still remains unanswered. Frustrated? Angry?
You bet!
Until, that is, I discovered UNHAV on the Internet.
UNHAV is an acronym for United Halifax Victims and is a group of people
who have
found each other through the Internet and banded together to jointly
fight the
Halifax and hopefully become HAVs. It is estimated that as many as
100,000 Halifax
members did not receive shares simply because they live overseas and
currently about
600 victims from over 50 countries as far afield as Mongolia and Papua
New Guinea
have contacted world co-ordinator Brian Hazlehurst, who lives in Rio de
Janeiro.
Brian has conducted an on-line campaign which has resulted in many of the
members of
UNHAV contributing UK50 (BD32) to a group legal campaign. They have
recently
appointed a British lawyer to act on their behalf and intend to jointly
fight the
Halifax through the courts and ultimately receive the shares, which they
feel that
they and others are morally entitled.
Is this a first for the Internet? I certainly hope so. Not only because
I would like
to receive my shares, but because I would like to see the arrogant big
corporation
humbled by the small man-in-the-street. After all the man in the street
created the
society in the first place.
Should any GDN readers be victims of the Halifax, they will find details
of UNHAV at
http://www.rain.org/~jmhmps/unhav.html Alternatively, they may contact me
through the
GDN and I will be pleased to provide details.
By RICHARD JOHN BINGHAM
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