Council cutbacks, and what you should be looking for.

  For the past two years through the Potteries Community Federation, and later with the England First Party, Stoke-on-Trent division, a group of us in this city have pushed to make certain financial irregularities public, in the hope that some of you would pick up on what we were showing you and try to pressure the city council into being honest about what it was doing with huge amounts of your money, but as usual, all we got was moaning and groaning about what was happening, but no bloody action.

  Well, you don't have a choice now, because if you don't take action against the crooked system of governance that this city is run by, you can kiss goodbye to the services the city council is supposed to provide as the entire setup comes crashing to the ground amidst a million pointing fingers, all claiming that it wasn't their fault, but the governments.

  One area of financial duplicity is what I'm going to take you through now, so please pay close attention, and I'll give you a demonstration of the city councils very iffy financial behaviour.

 

 The two documents above show what the city council had invested on your behalf, in cash, in 2007/08, and from then to 2009.
£92,784,000, just under £93 million of taxpayers cash kept in accounts so the city council could draw off the interest, which as the second document shows, was just a couple of million per year.

After the banks crashed, and the Icelandic bank Landsbanki in particular, the loss of £5 million of the money invested by the city council caused all kinds of strange financial behaviour, not least being the decisions as to what to do with the money from here on in.

Under the financial guidance of the biggest arsehole in British politics- Gormless Broon- decisions were made that smacked of corrupt practises.
There were at the time, limits as to how much money could be invested in one place at one time, this was circumvented by Head of Finance for the city council, Paul Simpson( or Homer, as we like to call him)

Of the £93 million invested, £13 million was on call- that means it was invested on the short term as it would be required in the near future, sometimes money like this would be invested overnight- so that reduced the amount to £80 million.
£43 million of this remaining cash was used to "pay bills", an e-mail I received from Hannah Quinn at the council answering a freedom of information request I had put in stated;

The £43m is a running down of cash balances which cannot be traced to individual items of spend as it is part of an overall strategy to fund either revenue or capital by cash (rather than, say, borrowing). It is not clear where the £43m has been derived from."

   The above statement should have you phoning the Audit Commission as you read, because it says that it is not clear where the money came from, or where it went to, but wherever that might be, rest assured it is untraceable!!
 When I asked the Assistant Head of Finance, Robert Thorley, about the £43 million that had been spent through the city councils current account, he refuted it was untraceable, but when I asked for a copy of the account statement so I could trace this money myself, I was informed by Mr Thorley that I was being 'unreasonable'.
Shortly after that, reasons were manufactured by the city council to stop me asking questions, and cut me off from freedom of information. 

    That leaves us with £37 million remaining from an original investment of £93 million. If we reduce the total by another £5 million to represent what was lost, that leaves £32 million which the city council invested with the governments DMO- debt management office.
For an investment of a least £32 million, the people of Stoke-on-Trent would become richer by the measly sum of £30,000, this being all the interest the city would get from this money, whilst the Labour government raked in millions.
  Questions asked about this investment were met with hostility and denial, of the three of us that submitted questions specific to this investment, none of us have had any answer from the city council other than, "investment? What investment? Don't know what you're talking about." 


  There is at least £32 million of the taxpayers money invested on behalf of the people of this city, of which they seem to have no knowledge, and funnily, almost the exact amount that the city council claims it needs to find.

It is high time that Sassi at the Sentinel, and all the other local media outlets, stopped protecting their Common Purpose/ masonic mates, and told the public the truth of just how incompetent the finances of this city are managed, not just big investments like this, but the S106 money from planning applications, money that has been taken for other purposes than those for which it was paid, and that is a direct breaking of the law.


  Stoke-on-Trent city council has become a boys club, with corruption and unacceptably unprofessional behaviour from the council management, behaviour that is readily embraced by far too many elected council officials in exchange for position and money.
Forget the political labels, let's clean this stinking mess up once and for all, and dump on their arses all of those that helped to support and sustain this corrupt and damaging system.


  contact us at; efpstoke@gmail.com or text to 07955 142 653