Credit

Three cheers for Linda Riordan MP, putting the Co-operative into Co-operative & Labour:

Linda Riordan MP has linked up with Calderdale Trades Council in a joint campaign to set up a credit union for small and medium sized businesses.

Linda has already tabled and Early Day Motion in Parliament to gain support for the campaign and is looking to attract Ministerial support for the plan in the coming weeks.

Government business ministers have been lobbied to see if Calderdale could be a pilot area.

The visionary idea has been put forward by Joe Mitchell of the Calderdale Trades Council and would link with existing Government schemes like the Enterprise Finance Guarantee and the Capital for Enterprise Fund.

Linda said: "I think the Trades Council's idea is excellent. A Credit Union for businesses would link in with existing Government support packages. It would boost businesses, save jobs and help the local economy.

"I am putting pressure on the Government to pilot this scheme in Halifax and the Calder Valley. It would be a real shot in the arm for many companies and give them a much needed support package.

"Calderdale Trades Council does some fantastic work, underlined by this dynamic and radical idea which I will be urging the Government to take on board and implement."

The credit union will do more to help small and medium sized businesses with problems they are having with the recession: more needs to be done to help them out.

Joe Mitchell of Calderdale Trades Council said: "These are not people who have gambled in the casino style behaviour of the banks, they are small entrepreneurs who are the life blood of the economy. They are the back bone of Calderdale's industry."

Hear, Hear.

Furthermore, the full nationalisation of Lloyds TSB, and thus of HBOS, should lead to the re-constitution of the Halifax Building Society, as the template for rebuilding the highly localised mutual movement throughout the country. That would be the right thing to do. And Gordon Brown should consider that it might also save a previously super-safe seat (Linda Riordan's), plus at a hell of a push at least one neighbouring marginal as well.