Forget Iceland inquiry, just say sorry (From Times Series)

Forget Iceland inquiry, just say sorry

9:55am Monday 22nd June 2009

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In reponse to the article regarding the appointment of Deloitte to investigate the loss of £27.4 million of taxpayers’ money invested in Icelandic banks, ‘Top firm will look into bank deposit blunder’, Times Series, June 11) we see here another gleaming example of Tories’ inconsistencies.

Not only was the initial investment and loss of this substantial amount of money one of the biggest fiascos in local government’s history, this Conservative council clearly shows no remorse or indeed care for its own taxpayers’ money by spending a further £18,000 to carry out this ‘investigation’.

We live in a political era of costly reports and investigations, when in fact the better thing to do would be to put up one’s hands and admit the blunder to the public, and set out a detailed plan to stop such a loss taking place again in the future.

Not long ago, we came to understand that the Government had warned local councils of the risk of failiure of these Icelandic banks long before they did in fact collapse, and clear advice was given by the Government to move these investments away, hence protecting taxpayers’ money.

Our Barnet Tory council decided to pay no attention. Instead now, once these costly mistakes have been made, Mike Freer and his team decide to make a weak attempt at redemption, spending further taxpayers’ money to shed some light into the whole incident.

As with many of these reports, the results will no doubt be skewed and spun to suit the wanted outcome, and when Tories constantly harp on about lowering our nation’s borrowing and spending more carefully, should the real lesson we take from this whole fiasco be that the Tories are clearly not sticking by anything they saw and instead are ready to put their hands into the pockets of the taxpayers at any given opportunity?

Harry Narenthira, Sheaveshill Avenue, Colindale

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