The human cost of the banking crisis

The Kaupthing Singer & Freidlander IOM Depositors Action Group has found it necessary to post the contact details of the Samaritans on the home page of their website www.ksfiomdepositors.org in recognition of the desperate plight of some of its members.

The core team is doing its best to keep depositors' spirits up but desperation is beginning to grow. There have been growing reports of distraught depositors ending up in A&E after collapsing with chest pains and numerous instances where medical help has had to be requested to treat stress, anxiety and depression.

We believed that we could see our group through this ordeal but an incident over the weekend has brought home the fact that some of us are no longer 'coping'. In recent days a fellow depositor tried to take their own life as a result of the situation they find themselves in. Our deepest sympathies go out to the family involved and we can only begin to imagine the depth of despair that person is feeling.

Depositors are now desperate for some positive news so that their lives can return to some kind of normality. You cannot imagine the purgatory this current state of financial limbo has given people for the last 4 weeks.

The authorities in the Isle of Man and the UK may still believe that they are simply talking about cash, but we are now talking about people's lives. It is time for the elected representatives of the people to recognise the toll this is taking on the lives of thousands of normal British people. The see-saw between silence and political point scoring is only adding to their pain.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

"[Manx banks] are regulated by the Isle of Man authorities, and I would have to think long and hard before saying, for the first time, the British Government would then go and underwrite savings made in another jurisdiction. It's not something that we would lightly do." Alistair Darling, 3 November 2008.

A young widow would like Alistair Darling to think long and hard...

Just when you think life cannot get worse after the death of her husband last year leaving her with three school age children, this young mother now faces the fact that the money which she received from a critical illness policy as a result of her husband's death, and invested for the family to live on, is now likely to be lost. She does not understand how banks can do this to their depositors as the UK Government stands by and watches.

Jim would like Alistair Darling to think long and hard…

Jim worked most of his life for the British government in places of strife - Afghanistan, Mozambique, Kosovo. Since he lived overseas he had no alternative but to bank offshore. His civil service salary was paid into his KSFIOM account but now he finds himself penniless, staying with friends and having to try to find work at the age of 64. His life savings lost in the political limbo caused by actions of the UK government, his former employer.

A member of the British army would like Alistair Darling to think long and hard…

A member of the British Army in Afghanistan lost his arm and sustained shrapnel damage from a land mine in Paktia province in June 2006. He was medically discharged and given a lump sum payment (fully taxed), and pension. This £68k was deposited in the Derbyshire BS (IOM) which became part of KSFIOM last year. The money was to be used to facilitate a small holiday home in the country for his retirement so that he 'could spend the rest of my life in peace, and nature.' Now it could all be lost.

Please don't let these British citizens be forgotten in this nightmare political tangle between the UK and Iceland. Can you imagine the stress and bewilderment this situation is causing to thousands of British people at home and abroad.

Each of these individuals entrusted their hard earned savings to a bank they thought they could rely upon. Nor was it something they did lightly.