THERE are just 64 days to go before Liverpool becomes European Capital of Culture. Good cue for Ringo Starr to sing his catchy ballad When I’m Sixty Four, but more reason for a new investigation to be demanded by our political masters and mistresses.

I want an investigation to investigate why the investigation into the cancellation of the Mathew Street Festival is taking so long. The fiasco happened in late summer, just weeks before the showpiece event was due to take place.

It would be interesting to know how much the inquiry is costing, especially now that lawyers and barristers have had to be drafted in to mull over the report – and they charge by the second.

So when the report is finally published, probably within days, there is bound to be the avalanche of critical publicity, trying to work out who was to blame, and who hasn’t been blamed but should have been.

Yet again, Liverpool will become the European Capital of Own Goals. We don’t need other cities to kick us while we are down: we can do a perfectly good job of self-mutilation ourselves, thank you very much.

What we should have done is use the time and energy of the investigation team to pull together a strategy to make sure that there is absolutely, positively, definitely no chance of the 2008 Mathew Street Festival being wrecked.

We more or less know what went wrong, and what needs to be done to make sure it doesn’t go wrong again.

Spending time and energy on a scapegoat exercise will do more harm than good. We made a mess of it, but does it matter who, why and how?

When the report is revealed, will that guarantee the ’08 gig happens without a hitch? It will fill columns of readable copy in this and other newspapers, and no doubt people like me will be asked to pontificate.

So in late October, just two months before lift-off, we should concentrate on our programme of events.

I am sure that nobody deliberately set out or conspired to ruin the Birthday Year Mathew Street bash. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did, and I can say with almost certainty that if fingers are pointed at individuals, there will be those that insist they are innocent.

Some will logic that the investigation was needed to get to the core of the problem, to make sure we can move forward. Bloodletting is neither good for the soul or the renal system.

When the dust has settled, when the inquest is finally over, when the finger pointing, the marching orders to the guilty, has taken place, will we be any more convinced that the Mathew Street Festival of 2008 is a done deal. Some may well say yes. Me? Ask me on August 26, 2008. I just hope I am not reporting the setting-up of an investigation to find out what went wrong with the Mathew Street festival in our Capital of Culture year.