[WillowTheWhisp]

Can we please just try to get our facts right too before mouthing off about councils hoarding spare cash that they should have been using for our benefit and hiding the fact from residents.

Councils receive money on an irregular basis. Some of it comes in monthly from people who pay their council tax monthly. Some of it comes in in lumps from people who pay their council tax all at once when they get the bill. Some of it comes in (I think) twice a year from central government. Councils pay out money on a regular basis in things such as wages, and on an irregular basis for things such as repair bills. That's just me simplifying the picture.

So it follows that there are times when councils have large sums of money apparently doing nothing but all ear-marked for something. Like when it looks like we've got a healthy bank balance before all the DDs come out. So what do they do with this money Do they leave it in £5 notes in a drawer in the council offices? Do they pay it into a non interest bearing bank account or do they do, as central government advised them to do, put it into a higher interest paying bank in order to make it work for them until they needed it and this reduce the burden on council tax payers?

Now if all had been jogging along smoothly and none of these Icelandic banks had gone belly-up we'd have had people moaning at councils for not putting money in them. This is nothing to do with greed or hoarding or secret keeping from local residents and everything to do with councils trying to do what they deemed best and not having the power of Mystic Meg to foresee that it was going to turn sour.