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.

Link [url=http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2010/01/06/kirklees-council-gets-80-back-from-failed-icelandic-bank-landsbanki-86081-25533996/here[/url.

and the same day: [url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2019f466-faea-11de-94d8-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1Here[/url

That's to do with online savings accounts in Icesave, not the council's investments via Landsbanki.

Peoples bins been emptied yet? Resorted to taking ours to the tip, still no collection (this is our designated day). Not a collection for nearly a month now.

Fortunately ours got done last Friday. The next street however has not.

Probably the same story with me.
Unsure whether to dump it at the end of the garage type bit we have to leave our bins at (as its unsafe for binmen to come down but safe for a couple of pensioners to take their bins up), or keep taking the bags that are building up to the tip.

lucky you - ours was emptied on Tuesday - after 5 weeks

Mine got emptied this morning yet those across the road got theirs done yesterday when they are usually done after ours.

The one thing that got me though was that our lovely council sent out a message saying recycling bins wouldn't return to normal collection dates till the end of the month but would be emptied along with the grey bins, so being someone who spends a lot of time seperating items for their respective bins i find this wrong. It's not as if the items in a recycling bin are decomposing, foul smelling and a health hazard, so I really can't see peoples eagerness to get these emptied too it's not like we have to wait over a month like we would've done last year as we've just gone to fortnightly collections for both bins!

Still waiting for ours to be emptied. The last time was before Xmas so i've had to make a few trips to the tip over the last few weeks.

The streets are beginning to smell. It's gone beyond silly now.

Our green bin hasn't been emptied for 6 weeks our black bin for 5. But on the plus side they emptied our bottle box last week.

Just been thinking my grey bin has actually been emptied twice this year so I must be one of the lucky ones, as it was emptied on the tuesday morning prior to the main snowfall on the 5th. Glass box and Green bins haven't though, but I can wait for those as the glass one isn't very full and I have two green bins!

Bins went this morning round ours. Green bin truck followed two minutes later by grey

Make that 7 weeks for the green bin and 6 for the black.

It is supposed to be our day and neither came.

Are's got emptied this afternoon

, the first time since the 10th december.

Yeah, that'll be me holding them to ransom

Put a good word in for me then.