HOW can Liverpool claim to be a cultural capital of any sort when its Central Library has such restricted opening hours?
On weeknights it shuts down at 6pm. On Saturdays at 5pm. On Sundays, 4pm.
Now, historically and philosophically, a society’s cultural worth is measured by the quality of its libraries. Think of the great library in classical times in Alexandria, Egypt, for instance.
Liverpool’s Central Library is good for content but – ‘doh!’ – it just isn’t open when most people have the time to use it. People who work in the city centre and would like to use it after work, can’t, because it is closed.

The same applies to people who live in the city centre but are out at work all day.
I had to go into the reference section there recently, hoping to use a computer to write one of my poems for BBC Radio Merseyside.
I arrived at 5.20pm and was told by a surly member of staff: “You’ll have to hurry up. They’ll be shutting soon.” Charming.
Sure enough, the section where the internet connections are available shuts down and ushers people out even earlier than the rest of the library – presumably for the convenience of the staff.
Naturally, it was the financially inept Liverpool City Council which ordered the restricted opening hours – right on cue for European Capital of Culture 2008. Brilliant!
I guess council reasoning went something like this … Why spend on libraries when there are so many other non-jobs to be financed by Government and Euro slush funds – ‘jobs’ which will help this useless authority tick all the silly boxes on the mad New Labour Government’s social inclusion and equality agenda?
The trouble is political leadership in Liverpool has been so weak for so long now (all those miserable years of Militant Labour, followed by the loopy Lib-Dems) that major national players in the redevelopment and grants industry really can’t take the city seriously.
And they know that there is a huge problem with bitterness and back-biting among employees of the city council.
That is why, despite having European Capital of Culture 2008 status, Liverpool is failing to develop as fast as Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle upon Tyne or Birmingham.
And, believe me, it gives me no pleasure to say that - because I love Liverpool.
Liverpudlians are lionhearts - led by donkeys.

I SEE no evidence that British people suddenly want to ‘talk about big and important issues in a way that does justice to them’, as the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, would have us believe.
On the contrary I see a continuing dumbing down in politics as well as in every other field of human activity in our country.
Look at the antics, for instance, of the leader of the increasingly stupid Conservative Party, David Cameron, in chasing what he perceives to be the green vote.
In a speech a few months ago he actually said: “Let sunshine win the day.” How trite and pathetic.
And Cameron’s most recent stunt was to go on rubbish-clearing duties with a council cleansing department down in Kent.
Does he think the public are so stupid they can’t see through such posturing?
Mind you, if he came to Wirral, I can just imagine him getting narky like our regular crews and refusing to collect a recyclable bin because it had ‘the wrong sort of potato’ in it – or because there were bits of paper sticking out the top.
But I can’t imagine our so-compassionate ‘hug-a-hoodie’ Tory leader approving of Wirral Council’s cavalier approach to hacking back social services.
Away from politics, the triviality of British TV is so depressing. How can grown men be reduced to tears just because they fail on a silly TV show such as Any Dream Will Do?
For heaven’s sake, brave people of the same age are being slaughtered week after week in Iraq.

AT SOME point in the early 1980s people in this country became very casual and careless about their public utilities.
We were conned into thinking by the Thatcher government that everything in the public sector must change.
She and her cronies looked at the services such as health, electricity, gas, telecommunications, the railways and hospitals, which were all at the time under State-control and strict regulation.
Thatcher then decided the publicly owned utilities must all be 'set free' – i.e. be privatised.
But Conservative ideologues like her never understood that business freedom is hardly any sort of freedom at all.
It is simply freedom for the powerful and wealthy. It is freedom for the wolves – and that usually means death for we lambs (the ordinary citizens).
And so it comes to pass today that we live in an era where, yes, we have more choice of suppliers and a confusing array of service packages, but everything seems unsatisfactory, more complicated and much more expensive than before.
I don’t call that progress.

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