Paul Moore and Jacqui Smith, hero and villain!

It is very difficult to see what famous people are really like. We hope that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is not as bad as the press makes out. But sometimes we can see through the spin and find out what people, especially politicians, are like.

The credit crunch has produced the unlikely hero in Paul Moore, the whistleblower at
Halifax (HBOS). The Prime Minister tried to diminish him by pointing to the independent report carried out by KPMG. However, it is unlikely that the accountant giant was objective on Mr Moore, since he was a former partner of KPMG. Also, the accountancy firm KPMG obtained major income from Halifax (HBOS) and would hope that this happy situation would continue. Gordon kept on going on about the independence of the report but how could it be independent?

Following the departure of Mr Moore, Halifax appointed a sales person as the head of group risk. If New Labour acolytes got peerages then Mr Moore deserves a dukedom for what he has done. The spin has been that nobody warned about the credit crunch but with Mr Moore, we do have an example of an internal warning at a major bank.

Declaration of interest: I used to be a shareholder of Halifax but had to sell at about four quid since we were broke. It has caused me sadness that such as a fine institution as the Halifax, which was founded in the Cock Inn in the 19th century,
has crashed. It is going to be carnage for Halifax and Bank of Scotland employees.
Lloyds is going to either give the bank to HM Government or carry out a major restructuring. The upside for Lloyds is that it has knocked out a major competitor.

www.searchaccountant.co.uk

For our villain, perhaps she is a pantomime one, step this way the venal Ms Jacqui Smith. An article in the Sunday Times says that she has even discredited herself amongst her own Labour supporters with the £116,000 of house expenses.
Her neighbours have called her a liar over the Smith claims of how long
she stays at the South London address. The Tory party have started making personal attacks while the Tory shadow home secretary Chris Grayling says she looks completely out of her depth. Some civil servants prefer Ms Smith's former deputy Mr Tony McNulty. Apparently, Ms Smith fears the sack in any cabinet
reshuffle.

What is with it with these Labour Home Secretaries? Why are they completely useless?
There was old Blunkett and the use of the train pass by his bit of fluff, which was
dishonest.