MORE than anything else, what stops Liverpool from regenerating is the fact that the city’s politics are so inept and juvenile.
Private investors (and even those committee placemen and women with responsibility for hosing away Government and European slush funds disguised as development grants) are not idiots.
They can tell if a city has an unstable political culture, and they consequently direct investment elsewhere.
That is why Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham are succeeding with regeneration while Liverpool is faltering – despite our city having the extra benefit of European Capital of Culture 2008 status.
The latest twist in the sorry story of Liverpool City Council and its pathetic offshoot, the Liverpool Culture Company, illustrates my point.

Warren Bradley, the ineffectual Liberal Democrat leader of the council, was kept in the dark last month (July) about the imminent 11th hour cancellation of the key outdoor gigs of the Mathew Street Festival while he sunned himself on holiday.
And he responded to the news when it broke with a hasty, ill-judged and intemperate email to the council’s chief executive, Colin Hilton, demanding that Jason Harborow, the Culture Company boss, be “relieved of his duties” .
According to Bradley’s leaked email, this demand was backed – indeed “mandated” by the “ruling group on the city council” – i.e. the cursed Liberal Democrats.
Not only does that fly in the face of Bradley’s claim that the inquiry into the Mathew Street fiasco was “independent”.
It also shows Bradley to be naïve in expecting the city's chief executive to jump at his bidding and simply get rid of Harborow and divide his duties up among other pen-pushers as directed. Pompously, Bradley told Hilton in the email that "nothing short of my request will be deemed acceptable".
In fact, a situation very short of what Bradley wanted was deemed quite acceptable – at least by the complacent suits within the council's bloated bureaucracy.
Let me explain, for those who don't know, how the apportionment of blame for council cock-ups (countless cock-ups in Liverpool City Council’s case) works. It certainly doesn't work in the way Bradley imagines – with scapegoats being instantly relieved of their duties.
What usually happens is a slow-moving, back-stabbing drama, involving the (metaphorical and actual) pounding of chests puffed up with self-justification and the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Sooner or later you get massive absences from work, on full pay, by "stressed" pen-pushers, then there is usually a festival of grievance procedures and industrial tribunals – with big pay-outs at the end for the Fat Cats.
The whole wasteful drama can drag on for months. Years even. That's how modern, sclerotic, local government works.
But you know what, heads really should roll over this.
And I wish the whole shower of the city council’s “ruling group” and the plonkers who run the Culture Company would get their snouts out of the public money trough now, and march off into well-deserved bureaucratic obscurity.
Because of their incompetence, this coming weekend has been ruined for thousands of visitors to Liverpool, who will now have to cram into sweaty indoor vendors where they won’t even be allowed the comfort of a smoke because of the hateful, intolerant bifter ban.
And the long-suffering public will be subjected to a draconian booze ban if they venture out onto the pavements around the indoor venues of what's left of the festival.
This is the only country in western Europe where the authorities hate and mistrust the citizens so much they cannot allow people to have a cheering drink out on the streets.
Welcome to the New Prohibition – the disgusting spawn of the sinister Liberal Fascism that’s growing bolder by the week in our beloved country.
What is more, Liverpool has lost valuable business and goodwill around the world, following the unecessary late cancellation of the outdoor festival.
And the reputation of the city council has sunk lower (I know! I hardly thought that could be possible, either).
As I say, heads really ought to roll over this, and so I think it timely to repeat my generous offer (first made in my posting of 7 August, 'Condoleezza Rice and the Mathew Street Festival') to the city council bunglers.
Regular readers will recall that I offered to come personally to the rescue of Liverpool’s stalled culture ambitions.
Those in authority haven’t so far responded to my offer, so this time I am underlining it –because I read somewhere that thick people can understand words better when they are underlined. Here goes...
I, Steve Regan, solemnly pledge to get things back on track quicker than you can say 'Liberal Democrat councillors are idiots'.
So come on, Liverpool, give me a chance to show what I can do. Put me in charge of Kulture!
I’m a poet and a blogger and a former national TV critic and music columnist – so I know a thing or two about popular art and entertainment.
Can I write? Can I communicate? Do I know a thing or two about PR, Yup, ticked boxes to all of those.
And I’ve been a professional journalist for the past 26 years, so I know how to work to tight deadlines, handle pressure, and be very organised about my forward planning.
And to all the cultural commissars and city councillors now blanching with embarrassment and panic under their fake tans, sweating in their nasty suits from the Met Quarter, and choking over their cappuccinos, I say this...
Give us a call, lads, if you want me to get a grip on things for you.
My services don’t come cheap, but then neither do yours.
The difference is, I’ll deliver, and you’re clearly USELESS!

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