Wise after the event
There has been a great deal of being wise after the event and political point scoring after many local authorities - of which Copeland is not one - found they had exposure to losses in Icelandic banks.
Authorities controlled by all three political parties have done this, so instead of pretending that any party has a monopoly of wisdom we would be wise to start by seeing what we can do, preferably in a less heavy handed way that Gordon Brown has, to get the money back and reveiw investment guidelines for the future.
Paul Scully, Leader of the Conservative opposition on one of the Liberal Democrat councils which has millions of pounds tied up in Iceland was not particularly impressed with the comments made by the national Lib/Dem team (and neither were his Sutton Lib/Dem colleagues.) This is what he had to say on his blog about it
"It was disappointing to see Vince Cable unhelpfully trying to lever some political capital out of the situation whilst others were seeing their monetary capital disappearing. He criticised councils for investing in Icelandic banks explaining that he and his colleague, Lord Oakeshott had concerns as far back as July. It is a shame that he didn't tell his colleagues at Local Authority level about his fears as it might have saved Sutton £5.5m. Never mind, he got his headline."
and
On the party political point, it is interesting to see Vince Cable quoted in the Telegraph as saying "In a crisis like this I don't think people would warm terribly to my running around saying 'I told you so'" The LibDem parliamentary finance team certainly did not warm themselves to Sutton's Lead Finance Councillor who told Lord Oakeshott yesterday afternoon that his comments were less than helpful.
You can read the full posts at
http://paulscully.blogspot.com/2008/10/icelandic-meltdown-hits-sutton.html
and
http://paulscully.blogspot.com/2008/10/call-for-icelandic-losses-investigation.html
Authorities controlled by all three political parties have done this, so instead of pretending that any party has a monopoly of wisdom we would be wise to start by seeing what we can do, preferably in a less heavy handed way that Gordon Brown has, to get the money back and reveiw investment guidelines for the future.
Paul Scully, Leader of the Conservative opposition on one of the Liberal Democrat councils which has millions of pounds tied up in Iceland was not particularly impressed with the comments made by the national Lib/Dem team (and neither were his Sutton Lib/Dem colleagues.) This is what he had to say on his blog about it
"It was disappointing to see Vince Cable unhelpfully trying to lever some political capital out of the situation whilst others were seeing their monetary capital disappearing. He criticised councils for investing in Icelandic banks explaining that he and his colleague, Lord Oakeshott had concerns as far back as July. It is a shame that he didn't tell his colleagues at Local Authority level about his fears as it might have saved Sutton £5.5m. Never mind, he got his headline."
and
On the party political point, it is interesting to see Vince Cable quoted in the Telegraph as saying "In a crisis like this I don't think people would warm terribly to my running around saying 'I told you so'" The LibDem parliamentary finance team certainly did not warm themselves to Sutton's Lead Finance Councillor who told Lord Oakeshott yesterday afternoon that his comments were less than helpful.
You can read the full posts at
http://paulscully.blogspot.com/2008/10/icelandic-meltdown-hits-sutton.html
and
http://paulscully.blogspot.com/2008/10/call-for-icelandic-losses-investigation.html
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