Did you know that Weymouth and Portland Borough Council have approximately £27 million in debt with LOBO loans?
Or that Bournemouth has approximately £62 million in loans from the Public Works Loans Board?
Or Poole has total long-term borrowing of £90,000,000?
Or that West Dorset debt is only approx. £5 million and North Dorset and Christchurch have no recorded debt.
Did you know that Dorset County Council has approx. £100 million in LOBO loans and a total debt of £205 million.
Some councils have made some very bad financial decisions which the local electorates have not been made aware of. They see over and over money being spent, not spent, wasted… without the local council being up front and honest. Some are doing well (within limits) while others are in a mess.
Sir Howard Davies (current chairman of RBS) admits that it is always cheaper for Government to borrow than banks, and that PFI and by extension LOBO loans are therefore a fraud.
Newham Cllr John Whitworth labels RBS ‘inverse floater’ LOBO loans a “fraud on the people” at RBS AGM, demanding further disclosure from the bank.
Newham Councillor John Whitworth who is also the Chair of the Scrutiny Committee at the Council posed a series of questions to RBS Chairman Sir Howard Davies regarding RBS LOBO Loans- which Mr Whitworth likened to a: “fraud on the people” at the RBS AGM in Edinburgh.
Sir Howard Davies said during BBC Question Time that PFI was a fraud on the people because “it is always cheaper for Government to borrow than anybody else.” Mr Whitworth proceeded to outline that Newham was having to pay an interest rate of 7.6% on its LOBO loans, borrowed in 2010, when RBS was accessing credit from the Bank of England at just 0.5% interest.
Mr Whitworth noted local authorities were still struggling financially having received the bulk of austerity cuts, caused in no small part by RBS, which was the largest bank in the world when it collapsed in 2008. Yet despite this, RBS was looking to extract the “maximum interest possible” from local authorities struggling with cuts.
For a comprehensive analysis of the destructive nature of LOBO loans and the need to reclaim democracy from the financial institutions Debt Resistance UK provide detail and analysis.
