Shop Local, Support Local Business, Invest In Iceland
It appears that local councils all over Britain have been following Kerry Katona’s lead and going to Iceland. Unfortunately so have large wads of your money.
Had anyone taken any notice of the lessons of history, this might have been avoided. However, as no one studies history any more, preferring to get degrees in media studies, that didn’t happen. As recently as 1994, the municipality of Orange County, California went bankrupt after its treasurer ‘invested’ in derivatives. This was an object lesson in not letting people of somewhat limited intelligence get their hands on large sums of money, particularly when it’s your money.
Local authorities tend not to attract the brightest minds of their generation and sooner or later someone will come along with a whizzer scheme for ‘investing’ municipal funds at an unbelievably high rate of interest. This always ends in tears. So it turns out that all these councils who never tire of telling the rest of us to 'shop local, support local businesses', have been depositing lots of your council taxes in Bjork’s local bank.
Gordon Brown leapt into action and froze Icelandic assets using anti-terrorism laws. Yet another lesson in why politicians should not be allowed to pass 'terror' laws that cancel out all the normal conventions – because they will use them whenever they feel like it. Ok, all the local councils involved were terrifyingly stupid but that’s as close as it gets.
Still, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, and what could be more extraordinary than bringing back Peter Mandelson to the cabinet? Admittedly he may be able to solve the mortgage crisis as he’s a chap that knows a thing or two about borrowing money to buy a house. Though, regrettably, most of us will probably be unable to raise a loan from Geoffrey Robinson. And if we could, and didn’t declare it on our mortgage applications, unlike Peter we’d be prosecuted for fraud.
But the news of Mandy’s return to Blighty was manna to many. Gay bars all over London were putting out the bunting and satirists everywhere wept openly. A clearly emotional Rory Bremner sobbed, “It’s no secret that things have been tough since Tony was replaced by someone so bland as to be beyond parody, but this is great news.”
So, crisis, what crisis? With men like these at the helm and plans already afoot to lend billions of pounds of your money to the banks so that they can lend it back to you at high rates of interest, we can all rest easy in our beds.
Had anyone taken any notice of the lessons of history, this might have been avoided. However, as no one studies history any more, preferring to get degrees in media studies, that didn’t happen. As recently as 1994, the municipality of Orange County, California went bankrupt after its treasurer ‘invested’ in derivatives. This was an object lesson in not letting people of somewhat limited intelligence get their hands on large sums of money, particularly when it’s your money.
Local authorities tend not to attract the brightest minds of their generation and sooner or later someone will come along with a whizzer scheme for ‘investing’ municipal funds at an unbelievably high rate of interest. This always ends in tears. So it turns out that all these councils who never tire of telling the rest of us to 'shop local, support local businesses', have been depositing lots of your council taxes in Bjork’s local bank.
Gordon Brown leapt into action and froze Icelandic assets using anti-terrorism laws. Yet another lesson in why politicians should not be allowed to pass 'terror' laws that cancel out all the normal conventions – because they will use them whenever they feel like it. Ok, all the local councils involved were terrifyingly stupid but that’s as close as it gets.
Still, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, and what could be more extraordinary than bringing back Peter Mandelson to the cabinet? Admittedly he may be able to solve the mortgage crisis as he’s a chap that knows a thing or two about borrowing money to buy a house. Though, regrettably, most of us will probably be unable to raise a loan from Geoffrey Robinson. And if we could, and didn’t declare it on our mortgage applications, unlike Peter we’d be prosecuted for fraud.
But the news of Mandy’s return to Blighty was manna to many. Gay bars all over London were putting out the bunting and satirists everywhere wept openly. A clearly emotional Rory Bremner sobbed, “It’s no secret that things have been tough since Tony was replaced by someone so bland as to be beyond parody, but this is great news.”
So, crisis, what crisis? With men like these at the helm and plans already afoot to lend billions of pounds of your money to the banks so that they can lend it back to you at high rates of interest, we can all rest easy in our beds.