February 2007 Archives

HARDLY a day passes without the political pygmies who control Liverpool doing something to mess up or detract from the 2008 Capital of Culture celebrations.
First, Robyn Archer resigned as artstic director of the city council-owned Liverpool Culture Company for 'personal reasons' (i.e. all the back-stabbing and amateurism).
Then slowly we began to realise that one project after another would not go ahead - or would not be completed on time.
Now Jason Harborow, chief executive of the culture company, is to be sent on the preposterous 'Leading Change and Organisational Renewal' course at the Harvard Business School in the USA.
Ain't it a bit late for that? Or perhaps we should postpone the culture year until Mr Harborow's has had all the traning he thinks he needs.
Taxpayers will, of course, foot the £7,500 bill for his four-day stay Stateside - and at a time when the inept Liverpool City Council is already having to borrow £20 million to ensure the 2008 festivities go off with at least a semblence of style.

NOW I'M not one of those inferior, unimaginative columnists who will bang on about 'a survey' they’ve read.
Nor will I bore your by constructing a strained piece of middle class whimsy about a perennial topic such as ‘the battle of the sexes’.
Well, not unless I am dead busy, tired or drunk anyway ...

I’VE BEEN listening to BBC Radio Merseyside’s Breakfast with keener attention than usual these days – because each week I write a review of the week’s news for the programme.
I compile my review as a rhyming poem and record it to be broadcast each Friday at about quarter to seven in the morning.
This Friday (16 Feb), unfortunately, due to many late drinks at Hell’s Waiting Room the night before, I was still well asleep when the poem was transmitted. I missed it in other words.
The reason I mention this is because a section of my latest rhyming review dealt with hard left Socialism - in the news because it is making half-hearted attempts to revive and re-launch itself in Liverpool.

WELL, as is often the case, my jottings about the grim reality of 'regeneration' in Merseyside (as opposed to the sad fantasies pedalled by PR people and councils) have set the indignant cat among the rancid old pigeons.
As someone who has known New Brighton since the age of three, I KNOW the decline in the resort's fortunes has been simply astounding, and it is clear that Wirral Council has been a big fat failure on this issue time and time and time again.
For instance, as almost everyone knows, the resentment among local people about that stupid pierrott clown sculpture on the coast road is so very hot and bitter even after all these years.
How dare municipal mediocrites insult the memory of a place as fundamentally good and beautiful and unusual in character as New Brighton!

IF I wanted to hire organisational help for a p***-up in a brewery, I certainly wouldn't consider those cock-up and cancellation merchants, Liverpool City Council.
I might, just might, trust the city council to do a marginally better job than, say, a team from Wirral Council.
But that's only because even a gang of morons in a hurry could organise ANYTHING better than Wirral Council.
In truth, there is little to choose between these two useless councils, which through their bungling are holding back the regeneration of Merseyside - despite Liverpool having the huge advantage of being European Capital of Culture for 2008.

THE most powerful political feeling that you find all over Wallasey is … what a waste of space is Wirral Council.
The antipathy is most keenly felt in New Brighton, where time and time again the council has failed the resort and watched it die a slow, lingering death.
Meanwhile, Wirral Council persists with the fantasy that Birkenhead can be a regional capital for the peninsula.
Doh! Let me tell the silly burghers of the Death Star (Town Hall) what our regional capital is … it’s Liverpool, dummies.
One man who expresses these thoughts poetically is Barman Burly from Hell’s Waiting Room. Here’s what he wrote recently …

IT'S not smart, and it's not clever ... but me and the girls from New Brighton got hog-whimpering drunk together in Liverpool yesterday afternoon and into the evening (Sun 4 Feb).
Eeeh, but we did have a good time ... as folk used to say.
And I for one needed to have a good "Leo", as I'd been feeling slightly down in the dumps of late (again).
Nothing to worry about, mind. It's just that I occasionally get into the sort of state that Paul Weller sang about so memorably in 'Paris Match'.
You know the line.... "I'm only sad in a natural way, and I enjoy sometimes feeling this way... I get so restless and bored... etc"
Anyway, Sunday's booze-a-thon was carried out under the terms of my new policy of going out socially with the girls at least once a week.
And what a bevvy of beauties I found myself in company with in the baroque splendour of the ballroom at The Vines in the city centre.

WE live in an era of incredibly bland and depressing popular culture - think of (most) American films, the fashion industry, pappy girlbands and boybands, make-over shows on telly, Hollyoaks and all the art-whores who thrive on grants of wasted public money.
Think of them and puke. Go on, it's an understandable reaction.
Think too of the waste of creative resources that goes into advertising fashion labels and retail brands - and all the soul-shrivellling consumer addictions they have created.
Think of WAGS and wannabe-WAGS who totter around the faux-trendy bars of Liverpool. It is all such an awful scene, spoiled by too much money and not enough education.

IT IS high time a line was drawn under the Big Brother racial bullying fuss.
Hardly anyone has come out of it with any credit, apart from Shilpa Shetty, who showed great grace and dignity when she won this tacky contest.
Shilpa also showed – originally at least – a forgiveness to those who taunted her, which was as appropriate as it was generous. Well done, Shilpa.
But the whole brouhaha is too much of a media circus for justice ever to be served now.
I'm very uncomfortable indeed with the way Jade Goody, Jo O’Meara and Scouser Danielle Lloyd are now being demonised and put under such intense pressure day after day.