Taking Out The Trash

Frozen assets

I posted the following on the Total Politics local government blog and have updated it slightly for here.

There is an excellent analysis from Ben Duckworth which draws lessons from the issue of local councils and the Icelandic banking crisis.

He's right. It certainly appears that some councils did let their subscription to Investors Chronicle lapse (or not actually pay any attention at all).

As a former journalist on Hedge Fund Manager Week, Ben is certainly better qualified than me to understand the kind of risks councils were running. However I still think commentators reacted without knowing the facts and I think readers and listeners followed that lead eagerly. The debate was 'framed' and from then it was only a question of the degree of kicking which councils would receive.

This local authority kicking is apolitical. No-one is getting any real joy out of trying to pin it on a Conservative or Lib Dem-controlled administration. The mood is "a plague on all those incompetents".

For instance check out this post and the comments on Iain Dale's blog.

Iain's posted a follow-up and he concludes by saying:

"Whatever the rights and wrongs here, it is clear that councils of all political colours have made bad investments in Icelandic banks. Of course we need to know on what basis these decisions were made, but for any one political party to kick dirt at the others reeks of hypocrisy. Let's just accept that everyone has some explaining to do."

Ben then says: "If we have banks being nationalised then, the unfortunate result (leaving aside whether this is unfair or not) will be that local government simply can't be trusted with more control over money."

But I'm just not sure how much power they have at the moment. So much money is ring fenced, partitioned, directed or otherwise coralled.

To turn Ben's warning on its head, why not use the situation as a spur to localism and free councils from the requirement to chase Whitehall funds all the time?

Meanwhile there's a little-reported sideline to this issue which is the impact on local government workers. Union Futures has a piece on this. Over at Jon's union blog there is a report from a meeting of the Left Economic Alternative Panel on Monday night which partly addresses this aspect.

We may yet see local government workers take action if the crisis impacts on their wages and they may well gain general public support. The mood is for the banks to pay and not everyone else.

Just as Gordon shores up his position another dam bursts.

Update: The Stirrer has an interesting piece on the effects on local government finance in West Midlands.

Update (2): The BBC reporting councils to meet the government over this. Contrary to Iain's plea for avoiding the partisan blame game, the Tories Karl Rove clone, Eric Pickles, can't help himself.

Palling around with terrorists

Lovely piece from Carl Bernstein on the Huffington Post about John McCain's association with Watergate burglar and dirty ops specialist Gordon Liddy.
It may seem like ancient history to some but if McCain and Palin are going to start throwing mud at Obama for sitting on the same board as a former member of the Weathermen then they've got to prepared for some back.
And McCain's praise for a jackboot like Liddy is astounding. Maybe that's all part of being a maverick.

Paul Foot Award short (and long) list

In the end my entry didn't make any impression on the long or short list for this year's Paul Foot Award.
I comfort myself with the quality of those on it - with one caveat which I'll come to.

The short list is

Richard Brooks, Private Eye

Camilla Cavendish, The Times

Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard

Warwick Mansell, Times Educational Supplement

Dan McDougall, The Observer

Jim Oldfield, Rossington Community Newsletter, South Yorkshire Newspapers

The longlist (or highly commended but no cigar) are:
Ben Leapman, The Sunday Telegraph; Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas, The Sunday Times and Heather Brooke, Freelance, Freedom of Information Campaigner

Nick Davies, The Independent, City AM, Private Eye and The New Statesman

David Harrison, The Sunday Telegraph

James Lewis, Legal Business Magazine and the Guardian 

You can see on the Private Eye web site what the individual stories were that won the journalists their place. Suffice to say that anybody who says investigatative reporting, local journalism and international affairs are dead isn't paying attention.
What was my caveat? I think Gilligan's reporting was part of a campaign by his paper, the Evening Standard, and even if his motives were objective I think the aim of his paper was objectionable.

Follow the money

It's been a busy old time in the Trash household so just getting round to posting some items up. Normally I have teasers of my Total Politics posts on this site but Im going to post in full the following because it hangs together better.

What has surprised me most about the story of local authority reserves and the Icelandic banks is the degree of criticism of councils.
I heard Nicky Campbell on Radio 5Live going on and on at a representative from the Local Government Association about this (to be fair Campbell goes on and on whatever the topic and really needs to find that off switch).
Then the leader of Somerset County Council was on the drive programme and was asked why so much money was in these banks. She explained that it's only about 2.5% of their total, so not all their eggs were in one basket. The follow up was a surprised: "What are you doing with so much money?"
Wiltshire County Council, which put £8m just three months ago (whoops) into a subsidiary of an Icelandic bank, emailed all staff to explain: "The council invested with Heritable which was a reputable bank with a strong credit rating as part of the council’s policy to optimise investment income while ensuring security by investing in strongly-rated banks."
It went on to say: "At any one time, the County Council, like all Local Authorities, has money it is holding to use for forthcoming activities. This money is invested until it is needed to ensure we get the best possible income for the people in Wiltshire."
Which is the reasonable position adopted by many other councils.
As for the huge sums overall - isn't it obvious that, for example, local government being such a huge employer will also have gigantic pension responsibilities?
Yet relatives of council employees report being quizzed in the last few days about why councils have all this money and why don't they put it in to UK banks?
Local government finance is about as comprehensible as a plan for a nuclear power station written in cuniform. The situation is not helped by generally poor explanations from either central or local government which are keen to blame cuts on the other party and credit investment to themselves.
This latest crisis has highlighted the lack of public (and journalistic) knowledge there is about council finances.
And if you don't know where the money is going to and from, then are you really making informed choices when it comes to voting?

A home isn't too much to expect

This also from the Total Politics local government blog (yes, I'm catching up on aggregating my posts from elsewhere).

Sian would love to stay in the village where she grew up. She’d love her daughter to go to the same primary school she did. But the finances don’t stack up.
So she, her partner and their young daughter live with her parents - but it’s not a long-term solution.
There are For Sale signs up in the village but they’ve been up a long time because no-one is buying and those selling can’t afford to take a hit.
There are places to rent but if you’re on an average salary then you’re simply not going to be able to afford it.
A local builder is just completing his latest project. It’s one of the few signs of construction activity in our community of 1,900. (The other is a huge villa some millionaire is sticking on the green belt).
This new house is a big one and really we need flats for people like Sian.
Sian is not alone.

You can read the rest here.

We need to talk about John

Now I'm up to date with my posts from the Total Politics site:

Let’s call him John because, well, it's as good a name as any.
He’s one of my fellow parish councillors. He’s white, retired, middle class, been a councillor since the year dot – pretty standard fare.
John made one of his rare visits to the parish council last month and sat and listened to a debate on a proposed parish plan. It’s something we have been working on for a several months. We’ve been trying to involve the wider community and establish an independent organising committee.
John wouldn’t know that because he only manages to attend about six months of the year and for long periods he’s on holiday.
So we’re all listening to an expert tell us how we can take this idea forward.
John leans forward and pronounces that it all seems a waste of time because it’s a duplication of effort. He then leans back and adds that he won’t vote against it though, he’ll just abstain. That’s his sole contribution for the evening. Not sure when we’ll see him again.
I sit there open mouthed.

You can read the rest here.

Save Tribune

When you call something venerable it can sound like another way of saying 'on its last legs'.

Tribune magazine is venerable but is making every effort not to go under. Its list of previous editors and contributors is astonishing in its quality. The fact that I sometimes to book reviews for them and have written some articles gives me a small egotistical glow in knowing that I have shared a miniscule bit of history with such exalted names.

But selling 4,000 copies a week and relying on trade union donations isn't enough to keep it going and it needs to find a buyer and soon.

There is an editorial in it this week asking about expressions of interest in a reader co-op. I dearly hope Tribune doesn't go to the wall.

It's interesting if you compare it with The Big Issue (another magazine I've worked for). TBI found itself leading opinion ten years ago when it married the rise in social enterprise with an eye for the stories ignored by the mainstream. However, it didn't adapt to changing circumstances and is now shrinking rapidly. Another outlet for alternative viewpoints has been muffled.

As a Tory government looks more likely and the neo-con approach to economics collapses we need a critique from the other side (left, green or just plain angry). There is a hunger, I think, for this kind of news. The web-based media can't supply it all and old-fashioned sectarian ranting doesn't cut it.

There is some news and comment on the Tribune situation on Paul Anderson's blog on mediaGuardian and on Compass.

The long wait for round two

Got some reading to do for tomorrow, feeling knackered and know there are some long days ahead - but now it's coming towards 11pm thinking "why not stay up for the presidential debate?"
The last time I didn't get to bed until 5pm and was wired on coffee. But this could be a ding dong affair tonight/tomorrow morning.
Saw Recount on TV last night having recorded it from Sunday. It's about the Florida recounts in 2000. Pretty good but a lot of liberal actors getting serious about the constitution and hanging chads only tells half the story. The scandal of black voters systematically disenfranchised by the state was sidelined. Also, the whole way the companies who made the voting machines won the contract and operated was ignored.
There were plenty of clips from television shows in Recount reporting on the story, but not explaining or digging into it. Not American journalism's finest hour (Greg Palast excepted).
And Mr Palast has an interesting way of countering electoral fraud this time round (you thought it only happend in 2000? Check out Ohio in 2004). A comic book called Steal Back Your Vote. Whatever gets people motivated I guess.

blue wire, red wire

Seem to be doing an awful lot of military stories at the moment.
Off to this place on Thursday to see some bomb disposal people at work.
The commissioning ed said I could do a Blue Peter-style first person report but I wouldn't let Phil "the shakes" Chamberlain anywhere near even a pretend IED.

And in other news...

This blog is named after the West Wing episode where they try to bury a load of bad news by getting it all out on a Friday.
Are we seeing a similar principle with the Glenrothes by-election?
The date has been set for November 6. Now I'm sure there's something else happening around that date? Dentist appointment? Recycling? Saturn in conjunction with Uranus?
Oh yes; on the 4th it's the presidential elections so on the 5th news will be dominated by whoever wins as will much of the 6th (along with whatever the economic crisis du jour is).
Brown's not going whatever happens in Glenrothes; but it doesn't strike a confident stance if they pick a day designed for burying bad news.