*blinks*

[annwfyn]

Does anyone know any more about this?

This is a really harsh column, and if it's true, then Gordon Brown is even more of a prick than I thought he was.

How is this OK?

Comments

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

Apparently only Landsbanki's assets were seized, not Kaupthing. They're claiming that comments made about the whole thing may have caused Kaupthing to collapse.

From Reuters: Warnings by the Treasury that action had been taken to protect retail depositors in Kaupthing, Singer and Friedlander, may have led savers to think its assets had been seized

[adze.livejournal.com]

I heard about this a few days ago, and there's an article on the BBC News site about Icelandic people's reactions to it - they aren't exactly positive.

I don't understand how he thought it would help never mind how it could be the right thing to do...

[lawrencegillies.livejournal.com]

I read about that in the Guardian. It really is appalling.

I'm a little surprised that morehasn't been madde of it.

I suspect the level of "they did what!" will grow.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

I think it should be.

I'm really quite shocked, and I can understand why there's a lot of anger in Iceland about this. The credit crunch has screwed Iceland more than almost anyone, as far as I can tell.

[lawrencegillies.livejournal.com]

The use of anti-terror legislation against a friendly country is terrible. I seem to recall reading in one of these articles that that is exactly the sort of possible use that people were worried about when the legislation was passed.

To balance my previous comment.

[lawrencegillies.livejournal.com]

Equally, we just gave Landsbanki £100m.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/oct/14/savings-banking

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I was discussing this with a number of friends at Friday's not-party.

I feel it gives an excellent demonstration that when people say, 'do not bring in this law intended to solve X because it will be abused for other purposes', they are absolutely right.

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

Um, bear in mind that legislation starts with the T word but has SEPARATE clauses to do with Crime, which is the aspect enacted AFAIK (wihout doing more than skimmin git)

Ultiamtely please remember this is all a chance fo rthe papers to shriek COD WAR! COD WAR! and sell copy/get website hits.

[madwitch.livejournal.com]

Exactly this.

......

[reindeerflotila.livejournal.com]

I mean, I am not in anyway supportive of the shit*y rubbish they have snuck in, fact is the ID card business is one of the major pushes for me to leave the UK for good. However I do like to be factual where I can and the Anti-Terror law clauses are not being used here, it is other bits.


I really do think it is telling that the british press is picking on A) the Cod War which is rather silly especially as we were bullying them and we lost anyway* and the press generally does not like to go all patriotic over LOSING battlesfor us, but also B) their population is something like 300,000 and their financial insitutes comprised a very small percentage of the european stock market etc as a whole. It's kinda like " OMG! your banks we had a bit of money in, because we got excellent deals out of you...it fell over along with the mega uber overlord-banks! it's your fault our small** amounts of lucritive money went away! UK SMASH! UK SMASH YOUUUU"

displacement activity much? it's not having a moan about hte US sub-prime market anymore is it? Cynical?me?





*what we did to our own fishery industry is enough to make me see red if even slightly mentioned btw.

**small in financial terms, to me, it is a barely imaginable sum of spine-tingly joy of course.

[commlal.livejournal.com]

Greg told me this a few days ago, I stopped and swore in the middle of the street.

Apparently the Iclandic people are surprisingly peed off with being called terrorists! I'm slighly bemused as to why not a bigger fuss is made about this. I suspect that Gordi is loosing it a bit.

That smug git brown

[lexx-uk.livejournal.com]

Brown is trying to keep a float long enough to win an election......if it means bankrupting and allied nation then who is he to care......

Brown just wants power.

He does not want to lead or improve.

I thinkn the thing that p's him off most is the fact that we do get a vote.

Dishonest, dishonourable and, I suspect, illegal

[colonel-maxim.livejournal.com]

He has choisen to bully a small country by seizing the assets of private citizens in a dispute with their government for not guaranteeing deposits. Please note that these deposits were not guaranteed when they were made so he is asking for a retrospective payment because, well, because otherwise he will continue to screw over a small country.

As ever, an utter toerag.

[ulaidhan.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of justifiable anger in the UK over Landsbanki's behaviour - many people were told prior to its collapse that their attempts to transfer money from it had gone through: not would go through, or were likely to go through, but _had_ gone through.

Many were using methods that are supposedly guaranteed to work - once you're told it's complete, that's it done.

Brown concluded that a bank reneging on such guaranteed transfers after confirming that they'd gone through was A Bad Thing.

Sadly, his response was to do A Bad Thing in return.

However, being Seen to Do Something is far more important than _not_ doing A Bad Thing....