LIVERPOOL’S Labour and Co-operative MPs are currently banging the drum on behalf of credit unions as an affordable alternative to those evil illegal loan sharks with their exorbitant interest rates.

And how timely they are, even if they fail to spot another form of loan sharking with spectacular interest rates currently troubling the city’s waters.

Mr Brocklebank was at the coma-inducing meeting of the full council the other night when he began to muse on the subject of lending and borrowing, and particularly upon the days of Militant Labour in Liverpool. As many will recall, those rogue entryists, having lost favour with the government of the day, borrowed from Japanese banks around £100m to build the houses and sports centres about which they still boast to this day.

All in all, with a couple of debt reschedules, by the time the debt was paid off in 2001, the total sum was £157m – 57% interest on the principal.

But, if Mr B considers the deal on the rebuilding of the Royal Hospital through a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme, he finds that the initial build cost of £451m will in the end be dwarfed by the final bill to the taxpayer of £1.3bn – an increase of 180%. Strange, then, that our MPs and councillors should be so “down” on Militant’s style of budgeting, but less so in relation to the money-guzzling PFI model.

FULL council meetings are often a time to reflect on the absurdities of the process of local government, and last week’s was no exception.

All these substantive motions, amendments, addenda . . . no wonder a lot of people find it difficult to know exactly what is being done in their name.

When it came to the council’s budget, the Lib- Dems – who, of course, played no part in the joint-finance talks – moved amendments aimed at averting some of the more headline- grabbing cuts such as school uniform grants.

Given the sheer voting muscle of the Labour group, the amendment was beaten down, and the original motion stood to be voted on. Now, correct Mr B if he is wrong, but to amend the budget may have been to suggest they weren’t happy with it. So it came as a great surprise to all present that, when the vote on the original budget came, the Lib-Dems abstained.

They’ll be abstaining on their own amendments next at this rate!

IN CASE anyone thought the council’s motions were straying too far into the absurd, Green leader John Coyne brought the assembled back down to earth.

With nothing less than a motion about that most burning of issues for Liverpool council – the perilous state of repair of the Mullaperiyar Dam in India, which could be in danger of collapse.

Cllr Coyne’s motion calls on the state and national governments in India to sort the issue out, and implores the council chief executive to put pressure on our own Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the matter.

Good luck with that one, John.