Historical Factoids 8:

[Mal]

Just by way of a brief addendum:

Worth knowing how the wholly owned, by NCC, ‘arm’s length investment company’ came into being.

If you read the bit about Wansbeck Life you will understand the absolute furore that pretty shambolic episode produced far and wide.

When the news broke in the press damage limitation went into overdrive with one report to me saying he had never seen so many big shots all running into a meeting.

This was when the Lib Dems were in control and they wanted to see the thing contained as much as anyone else, even though it was Wansbeck District Council who had initiated the explosion!

The idea that all these local power brokers came up was that the assets of Wansbeck Life were to be transferred into another company called Arch. At that time, and according to that newspaper article, these assets were around £30M.

So that was Arch at that time under the Lib Dems, mainly a property landlord.

How it ramped up its asset base by 10 fold and became the centre of its own salacious renown will be another chapter…………..

Just as a postscript……..I have always felt and said that these sorts of people should be held accountable for their actions. Just recently we have seen similar at NCC and I have said the same in fact I offered to start a public campaign asking everyone for a fiver so we had enough to hire legal teams and issue warrants! I just feel enough is enough and I’m sure most right minded folks think the same!