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We didn’t go to Iceland
• YOU will have seen in the media that over 100 councils have deposits with Icelandic banks.
We would like to reassure everyone that we do not have any funds deposited with these banks.
We invest our money based on advice from a range of credible experts and within the framework of the agreed national financial code of practice for local authorities.
We lend only to the top-rated institutions based on this advice, combined with the judgment of our senior finance professionals who monitor the position on a daily basis.
The object is to lend to the most secure institutions, including the largest banks and building societies, as these have historically been the safest investments.
Despite financial pressures we pledge that we will continue to look at how we can provide our services in the most cost-effective way.
If any residents are concerned about paying their bills they should seek professional advice immediately from organisations such as the Citizens’ Advice Bureau which the council supports financially.
The current financial crisis is clearly a worrying and uncertain time for many of us. While this is an international crisis requiring international solutions, as a council we want to do as much as we can to help minimise the impact it has on residents’ everyday lives.
CLLR KEITH MOFFITT
Leader Camden Council
Cllr Andrew Marshall
Deputy Leader
New Deal for Britain
• GREENS have been warning for several years that London’s economy has been massively over-reliant on the financial services sector.
It was folly to think we could rely so much on the City and the inevitable fluctuations in global finance to deliver London’s jobs and economic prosperity.
That is why Green Party Leader, Caroline Lucas MEP, unveiled proposals for a Green New Deal to get our economy on a more secure and a greener footing.
The plans are inspired by President Roosevelt’s New Deal, his comprehensive plan to pull the USA out of the Great Depression.
This time, the Green New Deal is about providing solutions to the credit crisis, climate change and dwindling oil supplies.
The Green New Deal proposes schemes like free insulation for every home and low-cost loans for green energy projects, both of which would create many thousands of new jobs in green industries.
These, combined with measures to properly regulate the banking sector and crack down on tax evasion will help us beat the credit crunch, tackle unemployment and dramatically cut carbon emissions.
It is definitely time for a change in direction.
DARREN JOHNSON AM
Green Party Member of the London Assembly
Nationalise!
• YOUR Comment and Neil Titley (October 9) correctly finger the laissez faire mania for our present troubles.
We are reaping the wages of Thatcherism, a policy pursued zealously for more than a quarter of a century, the Labour government being if anything even more culpable than their Tory predecessors because they have abdicated any meaningful control over the banks.
The half-baked partial nationalisation of British banks is giving the taxpayer the worst of all worlds, for it provides frighteningly large sums to the very people who have got us into this mess without any proper control over what the banks do with it.
The response of the banks to the present action is likely to be the same as their response to the previous massive taxpayer assistance they have received in the past year: they will hoard the money to fill the holes in their balance sheets made by reckless lending.
Full scale nationalisation is the answer.
That Gordon Brown, the prime British architect of the present mess through his failure to act to control the expansion of credit (worse, he acted as cheerleader for it), is trying to portray himself as our saviour is truly repellent.
ROBERT HENDERSON
Chalton Street, NW1
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