2010-03-24 - Rider Down/Fatality, A338

Yes £9million of my money into an Icelandic bank so those lazy fuckers could cream off the interest and pay for their prossies/rent boys and cocaine. And what happened when the Icelandic Banks went bust. Yep, all the money gone in a stroke and covered up pretty quickly.

Just a word on this as it's been mentioned a couple of times. Councils collect money against future expenditure. Oddly enough, funds from both the treasury and council tax revenue doesn't miraculously come in at the exact time that it's needed. In many ways this is a good thing because having funds on account means that councils can propose certain schedules of works and be taken seriously on them rather than being laughed down like a bunch of twats. It would financially irresponsible for councils to hold these funds on account without looking to exact interest from the financial institutions that are holding their money like any other business entity.

Furthermore the interest derived is not creamed off to sate the whims and vices of council staff but is actually held to account for. Go and check your councils annual reports if you don't believe me.

Using the Icelandic banks initially, many years ago, made good business sense, same as all the other councils who still have funds held overseas (most of them do) earning interest to fund public works. The inability to see the coming collapse of the Icelandic banking economy was a combination of poor external financial advice and poor internal forecasting. It was completely reprehensible to allow it to happen and heads have rightly rolled. However, that doesn't mitigate the key point that overseas investment is something that councils absolutely should do, albeit with more prudence and oversight.

But the main point that really gets me is that the funding for filling potholes would never have been held overseas anyway. It would have been held in safe accounts right here in England and not suffered any losses during the Icelandic banking crash. The issue here is about prioritisation of which holes to fill first and when. The councils couldn't predict the coldest winter for 30 years. Unfortunately Wiltshire council appears to have preferred to patch up minor holes in town centres where more people are likely to complain about them.