Last updated 13:11, Thursday, 13 November 2008

THE sorry saga of Tynedale’s £20 million surrender (Courant, October 31) seems somewhat at odds with your leader column in the same edition.

On your front page, you reported that Lib Dem Coun. Derek Kennedy was warning of the risk of losing local cash reserves ‘as long ago as 2004’. Yet a few pages later your editorial asserted that ‘no-one could have predicted the demise of the district council’.

Suggesting that Lib Dem criticism of Tynedale’s Tory administration is ‘unfair’ implies that it is also unfair to criticise Labour for running up a £230 million pound debt before they were run out of County Hall last May – yet we have consistently alerted local residents to Labour’s financial ineptitude, often through the pages of the Courant.

For a real example of ‘unfair’, you need have looked no further than Tory Coun. Peter Jackson’s juvenile attempt to link Labour’s Icelandic investments to Northumberland's new Lib Dem council.

Barely six months in office and with Labour’s legacy of debt to contend with, it is ridiculous for him to suggest that Lib Dem Northumberland, along with several Conservative councils elsewhere in the country, should have forecast the full effects of Gordon Brown’s bust.

With such a prescient crystal ball, shouldn’t Coun. Jackson have done the decent thing, as Coun. Kennedy did in Tynedale, and warned the new council of the risks to taxpayers’ money?

Regrettably, he appears to have confused the gift of foresight with all too typical Tory hindsight.

ANDREW DUFFIELD,

Parliamentarycandidate,

Hexham Liberal Democrats