Plan’s impact on Chinatown

YOUR headline article, “£100m plan yo revive key city gateway” (February 14) reported the good news of regeneration for the Great George Street area. However, I wonder if the environmental impact study on the project has revealed its likely impact on the historic Liverpool Chinatown (Berry Street area).

The scheme, as you exclusively revealed, did not include the immediate adjacent Chinatown, which is in a derelict state in the shadow of the magnificent landmark of the Chinese archway.

While many areas of Liverpool have benefited from at least a decade of recent regeneration through private and public schemes, Chinatown’s development stagnated. In fact, it has continued to decline. Today, the archway, the historic Chinatown, the local Chinese community, the twinning with Shanghai and the continued effort to attract Chinese investors to the city are talked about with pride.

The Chinese business community has become more and more concerned about the current state of Chinatown. The archway and the subsequent street work (the RopeWalk project) have been the only visible public intervention in an area of important historic and cultural heritage to Liverpool.

Many Chinese delegations and businessmen we brought to visit Chinatown in recent years left with comments I would only wish to share in private. It pains me to point out that Chinese quarters in cities like Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle have been thriving in the last few years.

Although the Great George Street development will no doubt benefit the surrounding area in general, and could regenerate the wider area including Chinatown, whether the character of Chinatown can be maintained is a question that needs to be answered.

I urge Urban Splash and the Liverpool City Council to conduct an impact assessment and to include and engage the Chinese business community during the process.

Dr Kegang Wu, Director of ChinaLink & International Trade Centre, Liverpool Chamber of Commerce

Good development

RE: THE regeneration of the Great George Street area (Daily Post, February 14). What a fantastic development for this part of the city. I drive past this area every morning and it’s so run down. How can anybody not want improvement for this area? It will be fantastic for the city of Liverpool.

S Anthony, via email

Positive action

I AM becoming heartily sick of people who continually ask why an increasingly large proportion of our youth appears to be out of control.

Along with many of my friends, I am not remotely interested in why they behave so badly – I just want them to stop doing so. There is relentless, ineffective pontification on justifying the reasons for bad behaviour, coupled with the irrelevant pseudo- intellectual “hand wringing” over the inability to tackle the causes. We cannot go on like this. Someone has to take control of finding a solution to this problem before total anarchy takes hold.

Clearly, the softly, softly approach has not worked. In my opinion, we need the legal alcohol drinking age to be raised to 21 and properly enforced.

We need the introduction of zero tolerance for minor acts of vandalism and low-level urban crime.

To achieve this, we need far more effective high-profile policing on our streets and more instant justice.

We also need far less priority given to people’s “human rights” and more emphasis given to “citizen’s responsibilities”, coupled with a proper respect for those who seek to go about their business without constant fear of aggression and intimidation.

Those in authority have been dithering for far, far too long without taking the positive action that the silent majority desperately seek.

There is no time to lose. We need positive executive action now. We cannot wait for yet more re-examinations of “what has gone wrong”, coupled with yet further debates and reports being produced on how best to provide proper parenting coupled with the re-introduction of proper discipline in schools.

Will someone please take up the challenge and act without further delay?

David E, via email

Swimming lessons

IN THE late 1940s and early 50s, I learnt to swim in the Harold Davis baths in Dovecote, a pool now long gone, together with its sister pool in Norris Green.

Life took me around the world many times and I settled away from Liverpool.

I am, however, a Liverpool- registered swimmer and will be one of a number of Liverpool Master Swimmers making up the Great Britain Team to swim in the World Masters, to be held in Perth, Australia, later this year.

Every member of which has had to scrimp and scrape to pay every penny themselves, as indeed they do when they represent Liverpool in other national and international competitions.

Other nations train in 50-metre pools every day of the week and think nothing of it.

Now Liverpool has a decent pool at Wavertree, kids who train at unearthly hours on top of their school work and parents, who somehow manage to meet the costs involved, will be able to do so at a jewel of a pool.

As for the sniping about the cost, were where these people when a couple of multi-millionaires were given £29m of tax-payers’ money and half of a public park?

This pool is for everyone’s use, not some hollowed turf for the few. It’s been eight years coming, now I hope the public use it.

If you can’t swim, now is the time to learn. It may save your life, or at the very least get you fit .

M McDonald, Ellesmere Port

Money’s worth

THE Olympic-size swimming pool in Wavertree will have cost the city a whopping £31m.

And this pool was estimated to cost us £12m originally.

While I do not doubt it will be a first-class facility, it makes you wonder about the cost and whether we will really get our money’s worth, doesn’t it?

S Moore, Childwall

Have some pride

I QUALIFIED as a structural engineer in the 1960s, then went to live in Canada in 1966. On my latest visit to Liverpool, I was full of expectation about the 2008 celebrations.

Wandering about the city centre, some I recognised but much was completely changed, the thought occurred to me that, if I wanted to be invisible, all I would need was a high visibility jacket and hard hat, I could blend in with the thousands of others.

What is more, I did not need to get my own high-vis jacket as I saw dozens of them apparently just discarded on a number of construction sites.

The whole of the city was one huge construction site, with very little looking remotely finished, and what looked like some remnants of a strange type of fish building.

Then we went on the ferry. What a fiasco. Where is the half-decent landing stage that existed a few years ago? Mind you, the ferry trip itself was of some interest – well done for that, at least.

However, the language from some young girls was beyond belief. Do they not teach English without swear words in the schools now? Plus, the standard dress for young girls seemed to be droopy pale grey jogging bottoms, with sad-ooking fat hanging over the sides. What a shame.

Come on, you “Scouse” boys and girls – have some pride. You live in what was once the capital city of beat music, and it could again be a vibrant, energised, beautiful place to belong to.

John Gillespie, Toronto (formerly of West Derby)

Inflationary rise

RE: “IS a 10p rise in tunnel charges justified?” (Daily Post, February 5).

I think it is absurd that people cannot accept that the cost of travelling via the Mersey tunnels must naturally see an increase over the years.

How do they suppose the tunnels are being kept in good condition? Do they think the money comes from the transport fairies?

People keep on harking back to the days when the tunnels were first built and saying that the tolls should have paid for themselves by now, but that was then and this is now and we live in the real world where inflationary rises are an everyday occurrence.

That may not be a good thing, but it’s the truth, and unless you want to swim across the Mersey or travel via the Runcorn Bridge there’s no way around it.

Mrs Jenkins, Wavertree

Best use of money?

SO THE UK government is talking about getting on board for the new wave of space exploration (Daily Post, February 15). Wonderful, isn’t it, that we will be splashing out money on journeys into space while the people down here on Earth are struggling to make ends meet.

Really, is this the best use of our taxpayers’ money? Wouldn’t this money be better spent on housing, education, the health service in this country, instead of worrying about little green men on Mars?

G Howells. Allerton

City’s sculpture

I ALMOST could not believe my eyes when I saw your front-page story on Friday.

I never thought for a minute that Liverpool did not own the Superlambanana, and I think many, many people will have assumed the same as myself.

This sculpture has gone from being a laughing stock to one of the city’s most recognisable figures, and now we could be at risk of losing it.

We should not let this happen. Our loss would most certainly be Manchester’s gain – and how ironic would that be?

K Twist, Formby

Abandoned site

I WENT to the cemetery in Hornby Road, opposite Walton Prison, where the author of the Ragged Trousered Phillanthropists is buried. The site is disgusting and appears to have been abandoned by the city council. So much for City of Culture!

Chris Kelly, via email