...............rumour is there were a fair few gritter wagon drivers..............

No point in having gritter drivers if you are not going to give them any grit

...............and theres no answer to that DG!!

I can't say a thing they've tried over this period of bad weather has worked. And about keeping exam routes open, they could've done that all they liked but the buses weren't sending buses up there all morning before one exam that I know of.

These bloody potholes are awful as well, truely awful.

Some people will moan about anything. The weather of the last few weeks has been pretty exceptional and I think the council have down a good job. To keep all the main routes running for the majority of the time in an area the size of Kirklees with a larger proportion of it on higher ground than the other councils in West Yorkshire was quite a big task.

Still if you can't get your car out you can also sit in your nice warm house thanks to the free loft insulation the council paid for.

They are voluntary redundancies. It's good that the council realise they need to cut costs and by offering voluntary redundancies everyone's a winner. There'll be quite a few people able to retire early.

Point was that whilst the Council are writing to employees to inform of redundancies the head of the council was in Westminster on our money.

Moan about anything? I'm being pretty specific about what my problem is

By not planning or fighting their corner they had their allocation from the 'Salt Cell' reduced - thereby reducing what they could and could not salt - it's a bloody good job this cold snap ended because they had run out completely of both salt and budget - hence the lack of argument from them to procure more salt.

Look at the photos of people having to crawl across roads, the bedlam that was Wednesday morning, the number of accidents and injuries on untreated roads and tell me this was pretty exceptional?

BTW: Loft insulation was paid for by investment of our own taxes in Leeds/Bradford airport. That came off - unlike the million quid they have lost in Iceland.

No you are right it wasn't exceptional to get freezing rain that left an inch deep layer of ice on the ground or a five week period of sub zero temperatures it's just bad planning we get that every year.

Say they did have enough grit stored away and this cold snap never happened professional whingers like you would be up in arms at the money Kirklees council wasted on their grit mountain.

As for the money lost in Iceland the council had to try and make money. They didn't necessarily know that the banks were going to collapse.

They were less risky options available to them - they were trying to get a high return for their investment.

High Return = High Risk and if something is too good to be true then it is generally is.

We won't see that money again and it has to be replaced from somewhere. Further reduction in services I guess. It's a bloody good job the education budget is ring fenced otherwise they'd be screwing our kids futures too.

Thought we'd currently got 80% back?

Nope - the personal investors were going to get something but the Icelandic people veto'd it. There has been no returns to businesses etc.