Letters to the Editor - August 24th

Aug 24 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

Improve public transport

REGARDING the proposal to install cameras to catch the bus lane motorists.

When are we (the motorists) going to hear some good news to cheer us on our perilous daily journey into work?

Do the powers that be seriously think that installing bus lane cameras will force motorists onto buses?

I, for one, will do my best not to get on a bus which is always packed to the rafters at the time you need to get into work and come home.

I will do my level best to avoid getting on a bus which is dirty, uncomfortably hot and allows certain individuals to smoke onboard (often inhaling and exhaling smoke produced by an illegal substance), get on drunk and harass passengers, verbally and physically assault passengers and drivers.

Until these problems are sorted out and this city gets a decent transport system (whatever happened to the proposed tram system?), I and many others who have to go to work in the city centre will continue to drive into work, pay through the nose for parking, congestion charges and bus lane fines and avoid the hassle and aggravation of using what can only be described as a shambles of a public transport system.

John Evans, Knotty Ash

Our own festival

I ASKED my wife (who is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), the other day what would happen if the Samba Carnival in Rio was cancelled by the council (stupid question, I know).

She looked at me with a silly look as if to say "Huh, as if that would happen", but she did actually say "We would just go onto the streets and have our own carnival, we don’t need the council".

"That’s the spirit!" I thought – and that’s the spirit I would like the people of Liverpool to have this weekend.

The people of Rio would take their instruments and party in the streets so why not the people of Liverpool?

You don’t need the council or the authorities.

Why are you waiting for them?

Take your "instruments" to the city centre and fill the streets and squares with music and dance!

Set up your bands with your mini generators and guitars and drums and just play!

You don’t need the pubs and clubs, either.

Or don’t the authorities want this due to "health and safety" or do they want to organise it to "control" you?

Organise your own festival! Take to the streets! Forget the Culture Company and council – do it yourself!

John Rowlands, L8

Have fun anyway

SO WHAT if the Mathew Street Festival won’t take the form it always has in the past?

We can all go out and have fun anyway. Although preferably nowhere near the city centre, where there will probably be as many lager louts as there are when the stages are in full swing.

PG, via e-mail

Hard act to follow

THERE’S 131 days to 2008. It’s easy looking back down the tracks from hindsight station declaring "I told you Jason wouldn’t deliver" and using/abusing the young lad from Chorley rather like Liverpudlians disparage Rob Styles as a favourite bete noire.

Mr Harborow had an incredibly difficult act to follow, not simply because he was more comfortable with a rugby rather than soccer ball, but for following in the wake of a Chorley lad who never even made the Echo’s top 100, but who nevertheless rose to become Britain’s Henry Rockefeller by the end of the 19th century.

Yes, Henry Tate’s sugar dynasty was made in Liverpool, in the romantically named Love Lane, and became the foundation for more than just cubes in British art and cultural history.

How Jason must wish that fortune would have smiled on him in the way it does in a brilliant cameo I’ve discovered recently of how Henry made a fortune from a simple taken-for-granted everyday commodity.

In answer to a question from a sugar trader who asked Henry why he had not retired, the retort was magisterial: "You know, Hodges, when you pull on a string and gold sovereigns come tumbling down, it’s very difficult to stop pulling that string".

Perhaps Jason ought to research the sugar trade rather than experience deadly encounters with Mathew Street’s bitter-sweet "taste of honey".

Ron Noon, Allerton

Back to greatness

LET’S all pray in whatever faith we choose that one day Liverpool will get someone from somewhere who will lead us back to greatness.

Terry Ross, L4

It’s democracy

I DO feel concerned when a large authority like Wirral Borough Council and Wirral Primary Care Trust (NHS) wields massive power to stop or prevent a very small Parks Friends Group from appealing to the public in a very local area about plans or decisions to construct a building upon the Green Belt.

There may or may not be some severe political pressure behind the proposal to build a PCT GP surgery practice building, thereby replacing a number of village GP practices.

It is open to discussion about the requirement to re-build National Health Services all over the country, all of which revolve round the economics of the government of the day, or perhaps the personal aspirations of some Members of Parliament, possibly coming up for election in the near future.

But this does not mean or should not mean that the mighty muscle of the authorities should be miss used to club over the heads of well meaning local population groups with no political axe to grind.

What is even more galling is these authorities are using your money to fund such strong arm tactics, like restricting access to public land and ripping down hand made notices of protest.

If the Wirral PCT has a legitimate argument for the proposals let them ask the local population, open up for free and frank discussion, wait for the independent planning adjudication, and generally conduct them selves in a manner befitting the huge amount of money placed in their care by the people.

Wirral Borough Council’s only involvement is to carry out clear, concise planning regulations and be totally honest with the people who elected them in the positions they hold.

I think this is called democracy, please correct me if I am wrong.

Hugo Marchen, Heswall

Bad experiences

I HAVE every sympathy with your correspondent S Doyle and his comments on Liverpool Airport.

He is a little more fortunate than I am in that as he can walk out into the fresh air, whereas I’m afraid I have to be pushed out in a wheelchair.

Every time I fly in to Liverpool Airport, I have assistance until we come to a little red line on the floor as you enter the concourse and it is here that I am told by my pusher that this is as far as he goes and from hereon I am on my own. My wife is then left to push me and drag a suitcase behind her to get a taxi.

My advice to Mr Doyle is don’t bother to write, and next time go from Manchester.

It is worth the extra expense and you are treated with considerably more respect.

I’m sure Mr Doyle and I are not the only ones with bad experience of Liverpool Airport.

Name and address supplied

Deal with the yobs

THE chief constables of both Merseyside and Cheshire have both recently made public statements blaming youth crime and "yob culture" on bad parenting.

Few will disagree, but diagnosing cause and effect is one thing, the general public are concerned with the here and now, and how the police plan to deal with the situation.

Most people believe a visible police presence together with decisive action will do much to reduce this public nuisance. If our Police Authority insisted on it, it might happen, but I won’t hold my breath.

BW Hale, Upton

Illegal flyposting

NOW that the public meeting to "Stop the War" has been and gone, can we ask when the organisers are going to remove the hundreds of flyposters from around New Brighton and Wallasey?

Flyposting is against the law and we know how strongly the organisers feel about actions that are illegal.

We do not believe the Council Tax payer should have to pick up the bill for removing these posters from walls, phone boxes, utility boxes and lamp posts.

Sue Taylor, via e-mail

Tracing soldiers

I AM appealing for help in tracing former soldiers, both regulars and national servicemen, who served in the Free Territory of Trieste between the years of 1945 and 1954.

The BETFOR Association was formed in December, 2002, with the aim of giving members the opportunity of contacting old comrades through the quarterly journal and meeting again after more than 50 years.

I welcome enquiries from anyone who served there.

Get in touch by phone on 01283 790147, by e-mail crrussellqs@aol.com, or write to Colin Russell, 5 Walkfield Road, Alrewas, Burton on Trent, Staffs, DE13 7EN.

Colin Russell, Burton on Trent.

Correct terms

I HAVE noticed that more and more are using the term "Brits" instead of "Britons" and "British".

"Brits" is a term associated with drunken lager-louts and yobbish behaviour.

It is also politically-correct, along with "Ms" and "go missing/went missing" (no such verb, the correct verbs are "disappear", "vanish" and "go astray").

Everyone should remember that the correct terms for the people of Great Britain are Britons and British.

Miss P Lord, Prenton