Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Jack Straw may regret his comment on the Lib Dems

I was digging around the Parliamentary website yesterday (someone has to!) and came across this comment from Jack Straw, made in May 2007. “It is utterly irresponsible!” he exclaimed about the Lib Dem administration that had just taken over Hull City Council.

The issue at stake was the Council's 31% stake in Kingston Communications PLC. The Lib Dem administration decided that it was time to cash in the shares and bank the money instead. Apparently, such a move was regarded by the new Lib Dem council leadership as safer than playing the stockmarket with council taxpayers' cash.

Hull Labour MP Diana Johnson, however, seemed to think the sale was a bit of a bad idea. Nevertheless, the sell off by the Lib Dems netted the authority a cool £100 million.

The shares in the company were trading at around 80p when the sale went through last year. Now they are less than 10p.

Under Labour, the investment would now be worth about £12-13 million. I bet the residents of Hull are sighing with relief that the Council decided to follow the "utterly irresponsible" policy of protecting their investment. Apparently, the money from the sale last year could now buy the company twice over!

Interestingly, when the fuss first blew up, Blaydon MP Dave Anderson came rushing in with an EDM attacking the sale of the shares. Were he to lose his seat and need to get a new job, can I suggest that becoming a financial adviser may be an occupation he would wish to avoid!?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope you will help to educate those in Hull and beyond who may have missed this financial 'coup' by Hull City Council and seek to undermine that decision with misinformation. There is a failure to explain to the masses currently about what will be done for the citizens of Hull with the gain from that timely manoeuvre, especially in and for the future.

The decision to sell out of KCOM may become an exemplar for Next Generation Access and the services that infrastructure can provide that pulls Hull (and perhaps the Lib Dems too?) firmly back on the map.

Anonymous said...

Dave Anderson is out of his depth as an MP! never mind a financial adviser! He is totally clueless :

From head to toe
Westminster to Coxhoe
And from Blaydon to France
He just leads people on a totally incompetant dance.

Violets are blue
Roses are red
This is a message
That just needs to be said.

MP's are intelligent ?
They are supposed to lead ?
There is no hope at all
If the future he cannot read.

He sinks to the depths of the pits
And snarls and totally spits
Treats an outside person as a fool
Yet he's incapable of pulling the wool.

5000 VOTES ?
Make sure you sink him at the next election.

John McWilliam was mostly silent from 1979 to 2005,at least he kept his clueless mouth shut and survived his long spell as an MP.

Every time I hear Dave Anderson MP open his clueless mout, I cringe. Is this guy really an MP ? ? ?

Margaret Robinson
King Street
Birtley

Anonymous said...

For an amateur though, he probably has a better record than some of our 'professional' financial advisors...

Anonymous said...

AN AMATEUR ! ? * ? !

That is an admission and a half !!

All I can say to Jonathan Wallace is please keep exposing this amateur for what he really is = Totally useless

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