Bill Gleeson: Telling question about our city from a Welsh ambulanceman

Sep 5 2007 by Bill Gleeson, Liverpool Daily Post

ONE of my children developed acute appendicitis while on holiday in west Wales last week and had to be taken to hospital.

The ambulance driver I sat next to as we drove the 30 miles to Aberystwyth hospital had some very well-developed opinions about how Wales had spent its European Union Objective 1 regeneration cash.

Some of his comments about waste could easily have been made about the less successful Objective 1 initiatives in Merseyside.

But his most telling comment was the one he made after discovering I was from Liverpool.

“Is the gun crime as bad as the papers say?”

What can you say when an 11-year old is shot dead while out playing with his mates?

“Oh, you shouldn’t worry so much about that as its largely confined to predictable areas” is both hollow and sometimes untrue.

By contrast, the driver painted an almost idyllic picture of life in the county of Ceredigion. “This is a great place to bring up children.”

I had to agree. It was a safe bet that nobody would be shot dead in the county that night, not something you can say about Liverpool.

Indeed, as reported in today’s Daily Post, Merseyside’s Chief Constable believes the city is one of the worst places in the UK for gun crime.

Perhaps his comments are introducing a new sense of realism about our locality. In the past, there has been ambiguity from various authorities about the city’s crime status. How many times have we heard the police, local authorities or inward investment agencies try to reassure us that crime isn’t as bad on Merseyside as it is in other large cities?

Such sentiments only serve to demonstrate how hardened we have become and those that utter them have lost sight of how others perceive our city. The claim that gun crime is not as bad in Liverpool as it is in Manchester, Birmingham or London may be true, but it doesn’t make it OK.

If the killing of Rhys Jones made such an impact on one Welsh ambulance driver, just imagine what those whose job it is to select places to locate business operations will be thinking.

We can build fabulous business parks, but if just outside their gates are some of the worst social conditions in the country, inward investors will go elsewhere.

IT CAN be no surprise that Littlewoods is making 200 staff redundant.

It is an essential part of the strategy of the new owners that they find cost savings in a bid to restore some measure of worthwhile profitability to the company.

The Speke-based group’s plans for its future revolve around new trends in consumer spending. The old- fashioned catalogues are being used by some consumers as a way of looking up what stock is on sale, but the actual purchase transaction is carried out online. The new and old methods appear to work well together.

But it is interesting that the news of Littlewoods’ jobs cuts comes on the day a public relations officer representing Primark chose to call to tell me that internet rumours that it would sell stock at £1 an item on the first day of trading at its new Liverpool store were untrue. Apparently, the same rumours caused a stampede and injuries at a recent store opening in London.

A case of the new and old not working well together.

Ironically, Primark’s new Liverpool store used to be owned by Littlewoods, who struggled to make its high street shops work. Primark, in contrast, has to take precautions to fend off over-eager customers.