The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors - Too Posh to Squash. (424)

To the Business Secretary:
For  Clarity - Attempt 424.

424) The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors - Too Posh to Squash.

Dear Mr Javid,

Before they were axed, Consumer Focus made a prophetic statement about the failure of regulators to regulate. They attempted to warn government, the press, the media and anyone caring to listen, that;
"Sometimes an entire market has developed practices that are not working in the customer's interests. The market in regulating surveyors and estate agents is a case in point. We believe that the problem has its origin in the RICS apparent inability to adequately regulate its Members and Regulated Firms."

"An apparent inability to adequately regulate."

How very convenient for those who are inadequately regulated don't you think Mr Javid. But not so good for the victims of this regulatory failure.

Here we have an organisation with a Royal Charter apparently incapable of doing what it was set up to do - to regulate its Members and Regulated Firms - and yet no one did anything about it. And no one is doing anything about it. It was a right royal failure of regulation but it was the messenger who was mercilessly hung, drawn and quartered and not those who so ineptly fail the British public and who - thanks to a light-touch self-regulatory regime - continue to do so with total impunity, apparently.

It's as if everyone in the Establishment - en masse - migrated to the other side of the road so as look the other way and thus avoid the messy business of having to be Good Samaritans. Then, when they arrived at the unrockable boat they were all piped aboard, each and everyone of them careful not to rock it as they sailed serenely away from the problems that were all of their making.

Disembarking into a fleet of waiting taxis organised by one of their noble leaders - Baroness D'Souza - they were ferried to the Great Hall of Excess, red carpeted inside to gorge themselves silly at the golden trough all the time bickering about the quality of the champagne they quaffed and which had been gifted to them at the taxpayers' expense. Everything they so contemptuously grasped was provided at the taxpayers' expense. Only The Elite - those accustomed to such lavish lifestyles could so freely and so recklessly spend money that had been earned by the sweat others' labour.

As their consciences atrophied they were quickly replaced by a rapacious appetite for yet more and more and more of what wasn't theirs to have. "What was once the taxpayers' is now mine and what's my own is safely deposited in an off shore bank account," seemed to be their guiding philosophy.

Whilst stuffing themselves at others' expense and listening to Britten's, "Gloriana" - an opera depicting a flawed character motivated by vanity and desire - one of the great and good was overheard to say,
"You know we simply must ensure that the new Chair is one of us - we just can't have them handing out civil justice to those little people willy-nilly now can we!"
To which came the reply,
"Don't worry Minister it's all been taken care of. We just will not have business profitability and George's miraculous economic recovery threatened by these tiresome opportunists seeking redress of all things - it simply isn't going to happen."

The citizens of the UK are victims of Regulators who don't regulate and Ombudsmen who don't ombuds leaving inadequately regulated businesses free to develop yet more practices that do not work in the customer's interests.

And so it's the posh - and those eager to be seen to be doing their bidding - who continue to squash.

The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign is seeking:
- answers from Vince Cable.
- answers from Francis Maude.
- answers from Nick Clegg.
- answers from Mark Prisk.
- answers from Jo Swinson.
- answers from Sajid Javid.
- answers from Dame Janet Finch.
- answers from the Board of Ombudsman Services.
- a public inquiry into the workings of Ombudsman Services:Property (a company formerly trading as the Surveyors Ombudsman Service before undergoing rebranding) and the role of The RICS.
- compensation for the victims of the ombudsman's illogical Final Decisions.
- compensation for the victims of the executive's maladministration.
- the setting up of a truly, "fair" and "independent" redress scheme free from RICS' influence.
Please feel free to comment. 

Thanks,
Steve Gilbert - The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign.