A FEW weeks ago I stepped out into the dark, sacred beauty of the New Brighton night to see multi-coloured stars glittering along the once mighty Victoria Road.
Heavens, could it be that the ultimate faded resort had been given some public Christmas lights for once?
Last winter there were no such illuminations. It was said the traders in downtown New Brighton were too mean to enter into the customary deal with Wirral Council to get them put up.
Well this year they were put up all right, hung high on the fake Victorian lamposts, but from the start things went wrong...
One by one in quick succession the Crimbo decorations spluttered out. It started on the very day they were put up, when a couple of them instanetly broke.
And now, with Christmas upon us, fewer than half of the festive lights remain illuminated.
I ask you: is there any sadder image than civic Christmas lights that have gone dark?
No, expect perhaps a bird without wings, or a bar without a bartender.
If the lights - shaped like stars and Christmas trees - had all worked they would have looked lovely.
But there is something about New Brighton's relationship with the civil powers that means everything always goes wrong.
Wirral Council is not popular in New Brighton nor in the rest of Wallasey. The perception is that the resort and the Wallasey foreshore has been allowed to rot by the council, which prefers to busy itself in efforts to tart up the ugly Birkenhead town centre.
The miserable dark of the Christmas lights that never came on in Vicky Road is powerful testimony to the constant failure of Wirral's imperial council to engage with or even to understand Wallasey.
Along with the hated Pierrott clown sculpture on the approach road, and the shamefully rotting Victorian bandstands on the prom, the crocked illuminations scream disatisfaction with the ineptitude of civic attempts at regeneration.
Personally, I would like to see this unweildy council split up and a seperate Wallasey Borough Council created to cater for local needs.That's how things used to be before the disastrous local government reforms of the early 1970s.
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