Media Blast Corrupt Thistle Housing for Profound and Many Failures

1,323 DAYS – 3 YEARS + 7 MONTHS + 15 DAYS
since Thistle’s mismanaged Major Works Programme started on 7th January 2016
995 DAYS – 32 MONTHS + 18 DAYS
since 30th November 2016 when “all of the works to all of the houses in Toryglen will be complete“. Today, 22nd August 2019, still incomplete, work proven to be shoddy and more importantly, dangerous and now possibly hazardous to life and limb

Read the article in today’s Evening Times here
or click on the image below

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The Shambles of Thistle’s Mafia AGM
Following on from the publication yesterday of the Scottish Housing Regulator’s incriminating report (click here to read) on the many and dreadful failures of Thistle’s corrupt management, we quickly come to the shambles of an AGM last night, enhanced by the intimidating presence of Thistle’s hawkish solicitor (more fees ramping up) and two Police officers in the hall and three outside in a van, but suffice it to say that after a gibbering performance by Brenda Wilson followed by a flood of unimportant and deflecting minutiae from others, important questions were knocked back and absolutely no answers were given.

• Minutes of the last AGM, which have to be approved by shareholders, questioned as they were inaccurate, items omitted and favoured Thistle’s standpoint. The notes of those minutes, vanished
• Discussion of Thistle’s £1.7 million deficit in last year’s financial report or the £1.1 million they burnt through the previous year, disallowed
• Questions on the hugely increased loan fees and charges, ignored
• Questions on asbestos contamination, faulty roofs, chimneys, window cills and shoddy roughcasting, all deflected and unanswered
• ‘Any Other Competent Business’ (AOCB), an opportunity for discussion, barred
• The election and re-election of office bearers was announced by Thistle’s squeaky solicitor without any form of discussion or agreement. The inarticulate and amazingly dim Brenda Wilson, the rabbit caught in the headlights, who neither rents nor owns a property in Toryglen, was re-elected together with two other nonentities (Brenda’s cronies) whose abilities and competence were not explained, plus the additional Regulator external appointees, now totalling nine in number.
• No explanation to where the Director, Grace McColgan has vanished, conveniently some may say, given that she has disappeared herself for ten of the last twelve months.
• No explanation as to why the previous Chairperson, the unknown, haughty and lying Patricia Jamieson, was replaced (by Brenda)
• For the third AGM in a row, questions regarding the hundreds of thousands of pounds squandered on Gas Cats Limited (Jeff Poulter, the fake Clerk of Work’s one man company) or on the other equally fake Clerk of Works, Paul Nolan the Painter, sideswiped.
• Questions regarding Thistle’s current financial state, given that they are now into the fifth month of their new financial year and the requirement for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds to rectify poor work (which had been pointed out by residents in September 2016 and many times since), brushed away.

Thistle’s New Loan – The millstone now weighing heavily around Thistle’s neck
Also blocked were questions on the refinancing of their £9.4 million loan which was called in by their bankers, Santander, after the Scottish Housing Regulator marched in last year on 23 August 2018.

It has been discovered that their last lender, Santander, was no longer interested in financing gross failure in the Thistle sewer. Likewise, Clydesdale, NatWest and RBS laughed in their faces. Bank of Scotland (Lloyds Banking Group) is their day to day banker. Can you blame them? Imagine dealing with that bunch of inarticulate peasants whose only skill would appear to be colouring in with crayons.

As a consequence of normal funding streams having dried up as the regular bankers bolted, they went, cap in hand like no option beggars (which they are), to a small bunch of financial speculators in London, lenders of last resort, a company which ‘specialises’ in financing failed housing associations (at any cost to the associations), a company which has no employees, with an agent in Luxembourg with no employees and a management company in London (owned by the speculators) with no published accounts. All this utilising strange financial instruments and bond sales. In other words, a scary melange of Wonga, a bookies and a pawnshop.

• GB Social Housing (Holdings) Limited
• GB Social Housing plc
• GBSH Management Limited
• Shakespeare SARL, Luxembourg

It cost the Association £400,000 in fees to their original lending bankers as Thistle management broke the terms of that loan and have and will continue, year on year, with increased costs, fees and charges for the new loan of £10 million over a much extended period, resulting in millions of pounds going into the lender’s greedy hands caused only by the ineptitude of Thistle’s zero ability management. Failure is evidently well rewarded in Thistle where culpability is laughed at.

No discussion or questions to the difference of £600,000 between their old loan and the new one and where it went were allowed.

The last financial period (to 31 March 2019) whose results have just been published, as well as a massively increased deficit of £1,700,000, display bank charges increasing three fold to more than £700,000 and assets plunging by £2,000,000. All of this is the Association’s money (or they will have to find it), not management’s. They don’t stay in Toryglen and continue to pocket their fat, unjustified salaries no matter what they do, can come up with any hair-brained scheme which ultimately won’t affect them in any way. The wages for failure in Thistle Housing are breathtakingly high.

The Future of Toryglen Pawned
These financial speculators, whose advertised addresses are London pay-by-the-week tiny office spaces, who specialise in preying on housing associations, now lend to four housing associations in Scotland now making five by the addition of Thistle.

Their list of nowhere else to turn association borrowers (Thistle not yet included on their site) can be seen here. As a test, other than the five failed associations in Scotland, a random sample in England and in Wales was looked up on their respective Regulator’s website. Yup, all in the same leaky boat.

Each and every one of them was (and in Thistle’s case, certainly is) a failed housing association where their Regulator had to intervene, broke the terms of their financial lending with their bankers, through incompetence were desperate, couldn’t pay back the loan and were all driven, at any price, to this very shady mob.

Thistle management has pawned the Toryglen estate at huge cost and for years to come only so that Thistle’s lying and well corrupt management can cling on by their finger tips in a dismal attempt to keep their unjustified jobs. Let’s see how that works out.