FROM an earlier era, Mr B remembers the stirring rhetoric with which motions were debated before his parish council’s cemeteries and crematoria committee.

The passions remain the same, but he wonders sometimes about the way in which opinions are delivered, and the decorum that used to exist between those of differing persuasions.

He blames all things electronic. Amplification does not make an argument more convincing, despite many suggestions to the contrary.

Liverpool City Council looked to be about to revert to an earlier style this month when the fixed microphones in the council chamber seemed to have given up the ghost.

A hand microphone was duly procured, but Cllr Louise Baldock, of the Labour party, still had a certain difficulty making her voice heard.

Enter the booming voice of Cllr Ron Gould, from the Lib-Dem benches. Mr Brocklebank applauds the manner in which he was able to make his point without a microphone, but is not so sure about the sentiment, even in these more demotic times.

“Stand on the bench, love,” he advised. Love? Councillors would never have addressed each other thus in Mr B’s youth.

He was persuaded to apologise by the Lord Mayor, graciously accepted by Ms Baldock.

But a riposte is awaited with glee on her blog, one of the most entertaining from the corridors of power.

MR BROCKLEBANK also recalls so well the dotty old aunties that populated Brocklebank Towers in his childhood, charming dears whose occasional memory lapses he suspected of being a cover for a lifetime of derring-do on behalf of His late Majesty’s Secret Service.

The species is alive and well in Liverpool in the 21st century, he is glad to report. A young friend, on seeking an audience with a senior member of the city’s literary set, was courteously invited round for coffee and a chinwag.

And the address? On one of the longer roads that snake through the suburbs. And the number?

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” came the reply. Where would we be without such otherworldliness?

LIVERPOOL’S new nightspot, Lenny’s Bar, aims to recreate the days of Prohibition-era America.

Given that Liverpool has doubled up for Chicago on screen at least once, that should be easily done. But owner Mike Girling wants to go the whole hog, promising: “We’re still working on some real true speakeasy features.”

But those auditioning to recreate the late Alphonse Capone will have to do without the once-obligatory Gatling Gun, we hear.