Of all the banks in all the world, dozens of our local authorities chose a bank and a country that doesn't guarantee depositors' money and yet Gordon Brown says they have not been negligent. Perhaps it's time we all realise that the people we allow to run this country are incompetent idiots at best.

I assume that the millions lost are pension funds because our local authority does not have the money to give us a decent road surface and yet have lost 28 million!

Contingency money.

Under the tories limits were set on Local Authorities and any public body about how much money they could hold in these sort of accounts. If they went above this then it would be taken back by the treasury ( I know this because I worked in finance for the Government for a few years when music industry went quiet for me )

As far as I can see these limits have been removed by New Labour and Brown.

Therefore this BILLION is the tip of the iceberg. I would think that most Authorities may have up to