Tag Archives: financial irresponsibility

Can you tell the heroes from the villains in the sub-prime mortgage disaster?

Michael Lewis’s highly readable account of the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market and the worldwide financial crisis it triggered focuses on a small number of characters. People with iconoclastic views determined not to be constrained by the old conventional rules. People who created new financial investments. People who put money into places their investors did not really understand on a good day and did not even know what had been done with their money on a bad day. People who made huge profits …

Posted in Books | Also tagged , and | 8 Comments

Labour’s legacy: £1 million every month on unused fire stations

We are used to stories of how Labour in Government wasted stacks of cash during their 13 years in office. From aircraft carriers to PFI projects to centralised ID databases and other IT projects, billions were needlessly thrown away. Those billions burnt the gaping hole in our public finances that the Coalition is trying, in difficult circumstances, to fix.

Another example of Labour profligacy came to light this week in the Times (£). Apparently, £1 million a month of our hard earned taxes is going to pay costs on unoccupied state of the art fire service control rooms built by …

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 11 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Tim
    So glad you are a councillor again. Still miss you here....
  • Chris Webb
    Excellent piece. I really like the "I'm a Liberal because..." idea, and will prod my local association along just those lines....
  • Mick Taylor
    Hi Chris. A brave man to take on a seat on Lambeth. I suspect that the great increase in casework is at least partly caused by the huge cutbacks in Local Govern...
  • David Raw
    @ William Wallace William, what's happened to the party's old policy of partnership and co-ownership ? If I remember correctly, our mutual friend Donald Wad...
  • William Wallace
    Roz: This is exactly what we need to get us all thinking. I would add that we need to rethink our approach to political economy. Liberal democracy is easiest t...