23rd January 2026

BTW … Wirral View is the Labour controlled Council’s online rag that it uses for its own publicity purposes and for party political posturing, all in defiance of central government guidelines.

As you can see, interim CEO Matthew Bennett has cast around all over the place looking for someone to blame, but has omitted to mention LOBO loans. These were taken out in the early 2000s during the alleged ‘good times’ and when incompetent Wirral Finance Director Ian Coleman thought it would be a great idea to pay a visit to European banks based in London and saddle Wirral Council with hundreds of millions of pounds worth of LOBO loans, upon which interest payments would need to be made.

And what happened?

Due to Coleman’s gullibilty / incompetence, Wirral Council (and scores of other councils) were soon deceptively stung by these European banks, who simply flicked a switch and raised interest rates to obscene levels after the initial cooling off period.

So the incompetence of a senior finance person at Wirral Council – which Matthew Bennett has carefully omitted to mention above – put us into the dire straits we’ve been occupying for well over a decade, and from which we may never emerge.

Thanks Ian. Thanks Matthew. These loans don’t elapse until the year 2078, so there’s a hell of a lot more money for our grandchildren to stump up.

Matthew can take heart however, because he is being ably assisted by BBC-trained Local Democracy Reporters (Hi, Ed Barnes of the Echo, Globe and Birkenhead News…!!) whom, rather than do their jobs properly, are making no mention whatsoever of such awkward financial shenanigans in their captured pages.

Why would a BBC-trained reporter – with a brief on avoiding public sector scandal – want to tell the Wirral public about how and why their local council is going bankrupt?

Meanwhile, here’s a story today from criminally depraved, former ‘Trinity Mirror’ rag the Liverpool Echo, reassuring us that Matthew Bennett will be getting the old heave ho very soon:

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/merseyside-council-set-new-236k-33289938