£82.5m Options

[Richard Garvie]

deleted

[Andy Capp]

Rule One. Get you facts right first.

[Richard Garvie]

Rule One. Get you facts right first.

My facts are right. The number relates to the amount of money borrowed by West Berkshire Council, £32.5m more than a year ago.

[user23]

Rule One. Get you facts right first.

Another gaffe based on incorrect information?

[Andy Capp]

My facts are right. The number relates to the amount of money borrowed by West Berkshire Council, £32.5m more than a year ago.

So why delete?

[GMR]

deleted

£85 million to delete? Wouldn't it have been better to have thought it through better in the first place and give that money to a much more worthier cause?

I suppose this is the year of the silly season?

I'll give you a few days to enjoy this retort and then I shall delete it; so you'll get two for the price of one.


Happy New year.

[GMR]

So why delete?

Silly; it is the year of the silly season.

[Richard Garvie]

So why delete?

I was trying to posty the screenshot of the info I got but woukldn't let me so I just gave up!!! Basically, the council responded to my questions from the last council meeting and after telling me it was all due to the last Labour Government, they explain that it's all within the approved borrowing guidelines. If we have another blowout like this year, the council will owe as much as it spends each year. If West Berkshire was a country, which would it be compared to? The UK, the USA, Ireland, Portugal or Greece???

[Andy Capp]

I was trying to posty the screenshot of the info I got but woukldn't let me so I just gave up!!! Basically, the council responded to my questions from the last council meeting and after telling me it was all due to the last Labour Government, they explain that it's all within the approved borrowing guidelines. If we have another blowout like this year, the council will owe as much as it spends each year. If West Berkshire was a country, which would it be compared to? The UK, the USA, Ireland, Portugal or Greece???

So gather your thoughts and post it properly! You are the Labour Party spokesman.

[Simon Kirby]

I was trying to posty the screenshot of the info I got but woukldn't let me so I just gave up!!! Basically, the council responded to my questions from the last council meeting and after telling me it was all due to the last Labour Government, they explain that it's all within the approved borrowing guidelines. If we have another blowout like this year, the council will owe as much as it spends each year. If West Berkshire was a country, which would it be compared to? The UK, the USA, Ireland, Portugal or Greece???

So WBC has borrowed another £82.5M on top of £50M that it borrowed last year without repaying, making a total outstanding debt of £132.5M which is pretty much it's annual turnover? Is that right? Why has it done that? That does sound like a spectacularly imprudent thing to be doing right now.

[Richard Garvie]

So WBC has borrowed another £82.5M on top of £50M that it borrowed last year without repaying, making a total outstanding debt of £132.5M which is pretty much it's annual turnover? Is that right? Why has it done that? That does sound like a spectacularly imprudent thing to be doing right now.

No, the total is £82.5m, a £32.5m increase on a year ago.

[Simon Kirby]

No, the total is £82.5m, a £32.5m increase on a year ago.

OK, so they've borrowed another £32.5M and their total borrowing is now £82.5M? Where did the thing about bowwowing equaling annual spend come from - isn't the spend around £135M?

Are the approved borrowing guidelines the Prudential Code - deregulation brought in under labour.

I'm not an accountant and I can't make head nor tail of the documents I can find, but as I understand it WBC have to prove that their borrowing to finance their capital programme is sustainable and prudent - is there some summary of that analysis anywhere? I'm guessing there would have to be some kind of impact assessment of an increase in the cost of borrowing, so it would be interesting to know if our prudence is in the green right now and what kind of borrowing rate would put us into orange and red.

[Simon Kirby]

Anyone able to digest the Council's Capital Strategy? Flipping through it looks to me as though the Council plan to spend around £7M per year on their capital programme - that's significantly less than the £32.5M that they're borrowing under what I'm assuming to be the Prudential Code. I'd be interested to hear some informed opinion (of course wild speculation would be quite fun too).

[blackdog]

Anyone able to digest the Council's Capital Strategy? Flipping through it looks to me as though the Council plan to spend around £7M per year on their capital programme - that's significantly less than the £32.5M that they're borrowing under what I'm assuming to be the Prudential Code. I'd be interested to hear some informed opinion (of course wild speculation would be quite fun too).

I particularly like this bit of the strategy:

The proposed average level of new Council funded capital spending for the next five years is approximately £7.1 million per year (including capitalised highways maintenance), as compared with over £18 million per year on average over the last four years. This reduces the need to increase the revenue cost of borrowing by approximately £330,000 per year.

Good to know they will be reducing borrowing ... from February 2011, oops!

[NWNREADER]

I particularly like this bit of the strategy:

The proposed average level of new Council funded capital spending for the next five years is approximately £7.1 million per year (including capitalised highways maintenance), as compared with over £18 million per year on average over the last four years. This reduces the need to increase the revenue cost of borrowing by approximately £330,000 per year.

Good to know they will be reducing borrowing ... from February 2011, oops!

That quote does not say borrowing will be reduced

[user23]

Good to know they will be reducing borrowing ... from February 2011, oops!

Are you confusing capital and revenue spending?

[NWNREADER]

Interesting, RG has spawned a debate by saying nothing.......

[Guest_xjay1337_*]

Guide to screenshot.

Press the print screen key
Open Paint
Press Ctrl+V
Save as > png
www.imageshack.us
upload > browse
select file
upload
right click on uploaded picture
get link location
come to NWN forum
wrap with IMG tags
hit reply.

EASY.

[Simon Kirby]

I particularly like this bit of the strategy:

The proposed average level of new Council funded capital spending for the next five years is approximately £7.1 million per year (including capitalised highways maintenance), as compared with over £18 million per year on average over the last four years. This reduces the need to increase the revenue cost of borrowing by approximately £330,000 per year.

Good to know they will be reducing borrowing ... from February 2011, oops!

It's a good example of differential obfuscation, worthy of Richard Nixon.

Reducing the need to increase the revenue is not the same thing as reducing the revenue - revenue cost of borrowing actually increases by £213k per year because the Council plan to borrow an extra £7.1M per year, but the cost of borrowing is more expensive every year by less than it would have been if they'd borrowed £18M more each year.

Of course if they've actually borrowed £32.5M more then that will increase the increase in cost, though in fairness to WBC it will have increased the increase by less than if they had increased the increase by more, so that's good, right. Woo hoo!

[NWNREADER]

It's a good example of differential obfuscation, worthy of Richard Nixon.

Reducing the need to increase the revenue is not the same thing as reducing the revenue - revenue cost of borrowing actually increases by £213k per year because the Council plan to borrow an extra £7.1M per year, but the cost of borrowing is more expensive every year by less than it would have been if they'd borrowed £18M more each year.

Of course if they've actually borrowed £32.5M more then that will increase the increase in cost, though in fairness to WBC it will have increased the increase by less than if they had increased the increase by more, so that's good, right. Woo hoo!

Worthy of Sir Humphrey in his prime, Minister!!!!