Banking system is rancid

I LISTENED carefully to Ed Miliband’s dissertation on banking. I learned much, he confirmed without any doubt he does not understand what has gone wrong with banking. No more, of course, than the Coalition Government.

The collapse has been caused by the fractional reserve banking system where banks can lend money which does not exist on a mammoth scale to fuel asset bubbles doomed to bust. A central bank, which is basically an arm of government, encourages this behaviour.

When the money eventually runs out, central banks, at the behest of the Treasury, electronically print yet more money, compounding the problem even more. This is nothing to do with codes of conduct, numbers of branches, number of banks, failed regulation, bonuses or meaningless buzz words like “stewardship banking”.

The whole concept is rancid and doomed to failure. Government is part of the problem, not the solution.

Flooding fears over sites

From: Rick Sumner, Chairman, East Yorkshire Eye, Cliff Road, Hornsea,

I READ with interest your report on the proposed housing developments in the Molescroft area of Beverley.

I was particularly interested in the reference to the possible building of 162 houses, by Wilson Homes, on the field next to the new ambulance station.

Could this be the same adjacent field which the health authority considered as a desirable site for the new Beverley Hospital – the field which the East Riding Council said was unsuitable for building as it was a grade 3 flood risk area?

Instead the ERYC gave permission to build the hospital in a regularly flooded field close to the tidal River Hull. The cost of trying to drain this area is phenomenal and there is no guarantee that it won’t flood in the future.