I am frankly appalled at the behaviour of some of our mortgage lenders who have taken the opportunity in the past week, to re-price their Standard Variable Rates by as much as 50 per cent in the case of The Bank of Ireland. The hard hit British tax payer is once again being asked to foot the bill for years of mismanagement of the banks, right under the nose of our industry regulator. Perhaps the biggest concern for me is that this signals banks once again doing pretty much whatever they want at the cost of millions of hard working, decent families. Why do they do it, well quite simply because they feel they can get away with it.

On to a lighter note, we moved our Brightstar caravan on Friday to the third camp site in eight months. The new lighter and larger office allows my Brightstar Boys to express themselves a little more and the noise volumes have increased to yet another record high. I’m just waiting for the petition to start to remove the new ‘anti-social’ specialist distributors from the office on the basis that we make too much noise and too much mess!

This week I am spending three days with a major client in the south of Spain. Sadly, with my current work volume trips like this are extremely rare but it will be good to spend some quality time with a small group of like-minded individuals. The slightly worrying prospect is how like-minded these guys are so I’m expecting milk thistle to feature heavily on my diet over the weeks ahead.

Well done to the Association of Bridging Professionals (AOBP) for their successful meeting last week that appears to be well received and well attended. It was great to see the FSA at the event. I have always found staff at the regulator both informed and pretty understanding towards the complexities of the lending market and making the effort to attend events like this can only help.

Three points on Saturday against ‘Pay up Pompey’, a good 48 hours in the office and three days of good networking in Spain makes for a good week I hope.

Have a good one all.