Smiling, not laughing all the way to the bank.

Above, Lloyds Bank in Penzance.
Today Lloyds Bank announced its latest results. Happily the bank announced that it would pay a special dividend of 0.5 pence and an ordinary dividend of 2.25 pence a share.
GOTO: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/lloyds-banks-dividend-surprise-sweetens-112039363.html
Readers will note the billions that have been SET ASIDE to pay PPI miss-selling claims. They will also note that it is expected the PPI cut-off [claims] date will be October 2018 – ten years since October 2008 when Lloyds Bank did what Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling wanted and took over the busted bank, Halifax/Bank of Scotland – the source of the vast majority of PPI claims!
Since that time those who were Lloyds Bank shareholders in October 2008 have suffered an absence of dividends – a token one was paid last year – and a collapse in the value of their shares. Of course for those LUCKY shareholders who had Halifax/RBS shares can rejoice in the fact that their shares are trading at over 60 pence today for had Lloyds not stepped in their shares would have been trading at precisely ZERO as that was what they were worth!
Another thing that British Gazette readers will have immediately spotted are the words SET and ASIDE.
Now, Dear Reader you of course will know that the phrase “set aside” means to set something aside, or to put to one side, or to keep apart. It does not mean “to pay out”. This of course is simple English. Something we hope the nation’s teachers are teaching the nation’s eight year olds!
A mastery of Simple English however appears to be beyond the capacity of the Labour front bench to understand. Of course, the Tory front bench received their education from such establishments as Eton and accordingly understand perfectly what is meant by “set aside!”
There is of course a very simple explanation for this: Eton College is in the private sector and as such has to deliver results! If they don’t they will loose business and cease trading!
What is going to happen is this: In February 2019 – after the PPI cut off – Lloyds Bank will announce another Special Dividend. This is going to be a lot more than 0.5 pence a share! This is because a large proportion of the billions stashed away (as “set aside”) will not have been paid to PPI claimants and therefore can be returned to the bank, a considerable portion of which will be paid out to shareholders.
This of course, will be an anathema to Comrade Corbyn and his colleagues. They will be foaming at the mouth and howling like mad dogs! They will of course totally ignore the decade of no dividend payments to the long suffering Lloyds shareholder.
Why?
Because say the phrase, “Lloyds Bank shareholder” to the unfortunate Comrade Corbyn and an image will appear in his impeccably left dominated brain: it will be that of an upper class “Hooray Henry” character sitting on a super yacht anchored of the Cap d’Antibes attended by a liveried footman. It is true that there are such characters but they represent a vanishingly small minority of the total number of shareholders. Most are ordinary people like you and me.
But then Comrade Corbyn imagines a Britain where the huddled masses are cruelly exploited by a landowning Tory upper class and imagines the solution is nationalisation without compensation – which is against the European Convention on Human Rights – observance of which is a requirement of the European Union, the union that he wants Britain to remain a member of. You see, for Comrade Corbyn, it is not 2016. It is the year 1916 – without the Great War!
But then we must expect a certain detachment from reality from a man who appears sincerely to believe that the UK can be supplied with base load electricity by covering the North Sea with wind turbines, despite the best efforts of his brother to convince him otherwise!
Declaration of Interest: The Editor owns shares in Lloyds Bank.