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WBC to become a bank ??


boris1066

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I read in Warrington Worlwide that WBC are enthusiastically engaged in becoming a part owner of a private bank which

will require an investment of  30 million pounds.

 

 

Why ??????????? If they have a cool ten million pounds a year to speculate  I suggest it would be better invested in maintaining  services to the community which are becoming less and more expensive year on year.

 

How come they can find such amounts of money when they are always moaning about cuts of funding from central government.

 

Boris 1066

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Perhaps some of the councillors & financial hierarchy are already accomplished bankers.

A term no doubt applied to all politicians by some people at one time or another. (oops sorry just reread that last statement after cleaning my glasses) :oops: :oops: :oops::twisted:

 

 

Sounds like politicians and officers dabbling in things that know nothing about

Which is the standard way of politicians etc. :roll:

 

 

How come they can find such amounts of money when they are always moaning about cuts of funding from central government.

The money is probably from a different budget. So they are not allowed to spend it on things we need and have to spend it on things that they can say will be good for the people in around twenty years time, unless the bank goes bust, by which time the then incumbents will put the blame on the present incumbents, with the usual caveat of "lessons will be learned from this". :angry:

 

So will this bank, which has not yet been set up apparently unless I have read the article wrong, be a benefit to Warrington? Will the investment be paid back in full with interest and how much and what safeguards are in place in the event that it does not prove to be a success, e.g. will Warrington as a one third stakeholder have to bail it out with more money.

 

I am confident that our revered council leaders have the answers to all of the above, probably, er hopefully, after all they are doing such a sterling job in sorting out Warrington traffic problems.

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The deal is going ahead

http://www.warrington-worldwide.co.uk/2017/01/17/council-confirms-bold-plan-to-invest-in-new-challenger-bank/

Apparently it is so cheap to borrow money they expect to make a great return on the investment.

But there seems something very strange about a Labour run council bank rolling a Tory party donor!!!

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I see that both Warrington MP's have expressed concern at the prospect of  WBC's intentions of speculating in a private bank.

 

Further reading of their proposal reveals that there will not be a  boardroom position for WBC as they have no one who meets the qualifications required. This begs the question of why Mr Russ Bowden has been able to push this proposal through the council exec ????

 

There is no guarantee that the MSE's who might benefit will be in Warrington, so any job opportunitied might likely be somewhere else in the country.

 

This decision to go ahead with the inveetment stinks.

 

Perhaps someone with the know how could "crowd fund" a legal challenge to this scary idea 

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Further reading of their proposal reveals that there will not be a  boardroom position for WBC as they have no one who meets the qualifications required. This begs the question of why Mr Russ Bowden has been able to push this proposal through the council exec ????

 

Interesting point raised there Boris ...... quite worrying really but surely he doesn't have the only say in pushing the proposal though....or does he ?

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It would be wrong to point the finger at one person, but anybody not seriously concerned about all of this should be, especially given the council's attitude to transparency and accountability. As usual, it is marking its own homework when it comes to this stuff and the consequences could be disastrous. 

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SO John, are you suggesting ALL Councillors are involved in some kind of cover up ?

Not that straightforward is it? What is the use of a scrutiny committee if it consists solely of members of the organisation it supposedly scrutinises?

 

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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So, Parliamentary Cttees, set up to scrutinise the Gov (Executive) are similarly complicit in some kind of corruption ?    In WBC, the Executive is made up of the ruling Party; the Scrutiny Cttee of members from each Party; so at least the opposition members should be trusted to scrutinise the actions of the Executive, at least bringing some transparency to issues ?

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So, Parliamentary Cttees, set up to scrutinise the Gov (Executive) are similarly complicit in some kind of corruption ? In WBC, the Executive is made up of the ruling Party; the Scrutiny Cttee of members from each Party; so at least the opposition members should be trusted to scrutinise the actions of the Executive, at least bringing some transparency to issues ?

It's not corruption. It's a panel of turkeys scrutinising Christmas. As far as I'm aware not all the parties are represented.

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I have to wonder what Central Government is making of a council which is borrowing every red cent it can, even from places where others fear to tread, and then blowing it.

I don't expect the idea of a local authority modelling itself on the pre crash Greek economy is going down well.

 

The Public Accounts Committee has already expressed its dismay at the way councils are using capital spending as an investment when they don't have the skills. That isn't just Warrington though. https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news-parliament-2015/financial-sustainability-local-authorities-report-published-16-17/

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Who the hell knows? What we know about the council's behaviour is that nothing is quite as they want it to look, uncomfortable information has to be forced out of them by residents or external agencies and if anybody says anything they don't like, their instinct is to close it down and threaten people.

 

We'd better hope they've got these investments right. Even if they don't, chances are we won't find out unless it's something in the public domain like the failure of this bank. All we'll know if anything doesn't go to plan, is they'll keep pointing the finger elsewhere while they keep the relevant information away from view.

 

They also like to fall back on the argument that people don't know the difference between capital and revenue spending. Well some of us do, and we know that repayments on capital loans affect revenue budgets and that the fit-out, maintenance and management of the buildings in which they are investing also affect the revenue budgets. 

 

This is the main reason I'm suspicious of the way they're hiding the costs of their new offices in the overall costs of the Bridge Street development. It could well be that the cost I'd expect for something like this - £20 - £25 million including fit-out - has been exceeded or is running away from them or they simply don't want any oversight. Maybe the business plan depends on divesting existing buildings and their assumptions about this have been proved wrong. But, again, who the hell knows? They keep things secret then whinge about it when people are suspicious. It's common practice for councils to make the budget for these kinds of things public, but not Warrington.  

 

One other example which one guy keeps raising on the Grauniad website is the £4.3 million extra given to Live Wire to speed up the creation of the Sankey Hub. That money appears to have simply vanished and while Councillor Russ Bowden was all over the news when the money was given to Live Wire, now whenever he's asked about it he simply says it's got nothing to do with him and the person asking should approach Live Wire. It really is a disgrace.  

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