Gordon Brown is not a leader

May 7 2008 by Our Correspondent, Liverpool Daily Post

IT IS quite clear that the recent election results across the country were a backlash against the Labour Party.

The British people have had enough of being over-taxed and patronised by a nanny state and showed their dissatisfaction by voting against the Government at the polling booth, giving the Labour Party their worst results for 40 years.

The Labour Party is in a mess, as was demonstrated at the beginning of this week.

In the morning, it was announced that the Government would be scrapping the so-called “pay-as-you-throw” bin tax, only for the Government to make a U-turn later in the day.

Does anyone in the party know what is going on?

Gordon Brown may be a very intelligent man who was a good Chancellor, but it is quite evident he is not a leader.

His promise to “listen and lead” has probably come a bit too late.

J Moss, Hightown

Rubbish tax

SO THE Government has decided the “bin tax” will go ahead after all, with trials set to begin in five areas in the next year.

I can see town hall officials rubbing their hands in glee at all the extra money coming in, particularly as households who are deemed not to recycle enough will face bills of at least £50 a year.

This is all well and good but living as I do in an apartment building in Waterloo, Sefton Council has not provided us with any recycling facilities. All we have are large Biffa bins which get emptied every fortnight.

I try to do my bit by taking rubbish to the recycling centre in Bootle (in my car, which adds to the pollution in the air).

As the council is unaware I do this, does this mean I will automatically be faced with a bill?

P Hardman, Waterloo

Support for Nadia

AS A Croxteth resident and someone who voted for Cllr Nadia Stewart, I fully support her in joining the Lib-Dems and giving Warren Bradley the vote he needed to lead the council for the next two years.

What claim did the Labour Party have to lead the city? It is not and is still not the largest party on the council.

The Labour leader showed that he is not the man to lead Liverpool when he said that the Lib-Dems were welcome to Cllr Stewart.

Would he have said that if she had supported him? I think not.

I am sure it would have been easy for Cllr Stewart to stay independent and sit back and pull the string of power.

And it would have been a disaster for Liverpool to have had a hung council with no one party leading the city, and even more so at this vital time as Liverpool continues to move onwards and upwards.

Well done, Cllr Stewart, I am proud to have voted for you. It was a very brave step for you to take but you took it. Good luck and thank you.

J O’Donnell, Croxteth Park

Thanks for votes

IN THESE days of low turn-outs at elections, I should like to thank the 3,599 residents who voted for me last Thursday.

Quite often, Heswall is referred to as a “safe seat”.

However, its safety is as a result of caring for the well being of all residents regardless of their political persuasions.

Thank you once again for electing me to serve you for another four years.

Peter Johnson, Heswall

Independence push

NOW that Scotland is pushing for “complete” independence from the UK, maybe it’s time we English pushed for some independence from all the Scottish cabinet ministers in “our” Parliament’

GC McIver, Liverpool

Funding response

GILLIAN REYNOLDS MBE, a trustee of National Museums Liverpool, says in her letter in last Friday’s Daily Post that requests to the Friends of NML for the backing for Sudley House, the International Slavery Museum, the Museum of Liverpool and the connecting waterfront project have met with only negative response.

In fact, the Friends gave £40,000 towards the renovations at Sudley. In response to a request from NML for funds for both the new Museum of Liverpool (at the Pier head) and the Slavery Museum, the Friends pledged that they would pay £65,000 for specific exhibitions at the Museum of Liverpool once it is fitted out.

On the afternoon of the day that the trustees took their decision to withdraw all privileges for the Friends, the Friends committee agreed to provide £15,000 towards computer information systems for the waterfront, subject to receiving further information about what is proposed.

Other grants in this period included one of £6,000 towards the cost of acquiring the painting, A Man of War in an Estuary, by Richard Wright.

Is this a negative response?

Andrew Pearce, chairman, The Friends of National Museums Liverpool

Police’s attitude

IT IS terrible that parents are drunk in charge of their kids on holiday, and I’m not condoning the behaviour of the couple from Northern Ireland, but I think the Portuguese authorities were going too far suggesting there might have been three Maddies instead of one if they hadn’t acted.

The fact we’ve “got one Maddie” is largely because of the lackadaisical attitude of the Portuguese police in the investigation in the aftermath of her abduction, so their current claim to the moral high ground in this case is rather rich.

The implication also seems to be that drink played a part in Maddie’s disappearance, which has never been proven.

Margaret Lees, West Derby

Street’s the best

I’M AFRAID I’m not as impressed as M Bennett, in the Letters page of Tuesday’s Daily Post, who congratulated Hollyoaks for cleaning up at the Soap Awards at the weekend.

I don’t think it is a good soap at all, particularly not when compared to the scriptwriting genius of Coronation Street.

Where Coronation Street succeeds and all other soaps, as far as I am concerned, fail is in the day-to-day scenes – Rita teasing Norris in the paper shop, Liz and her husband bickering behind the bar in the Rovers and Blanche, the wonderful Blanche, taking her butties and flask of tea into the bookies for a 20p bet.

There is so much humour in the writing and it is wonderfully acted by a strong cast, whereas Hollyoaks is all high heels and make-up and supposedly shocking storylines with no substance.

It is not the only one, of course. EastEnders has literally lost the plot. Apart from Ian Beale and Peggy Mitchell, do we actually care what happens to any of the characters?

What were they thinking bringing Bianca back? You know things are bad when Sid Owen’s acting seems impressive next to an unconvincing Patsy Palmer. Perhaps soap operas, apart from Corrie, of course, have had their day.

Mrs Harper, West Derby

Packaging scourge

THE impetus towards cutting back on plastic bags and packaging already seems to be on the wane. You rarely see anyone bringing their own bags into a supermarket and people at the checkouts almost never ask if you need a bag, before automatically reaching to wrap your single item in one.

Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that clothing shop Oasis now seems to have increased what it wraps your goods in, putting them in a paper bag then a plastic bag!

As the season of picnics and soft fruits approaches and if you can’t get to a farm shop, I would like to urge all supermarket goers to leave unwanted packaging at the tills.

We have to take this scourge seriously.

Kerry Mills, Allerton

Lovely photographs

WHAT lovely photographs of the animals at Knowsley Safari Park in the Daily Post (May 5)!

As an animal lover with mobility problems, I was delighted to be able to share the experience of visiting the Safari Park without having to leave my sitting room.

Before being confined to my wheelchair, I visited Knowsley quite a few times and once I even went on safari in Kenya (though I didn’t shoot anything, of course!)

Thanks again for the opportunity to relive some happy memories.

Mrs Taylor, via email

Same old story

HERE we go again – the Everton stadium is happening, no it’s not, yes it is; oh, look, there are problems again!

You could change the word Everton for Liverpool and nobody would notice.

It’s the same old story, no matter which club, and Tranmere is more likely to get its act into gear and build a brand-new stadium while the two larger clubs are still chatting about it.

PK, via email

Cuppa in a crisis

IT WAS refreshing to see our Government had carefully considered its priorities in the event of a nuclear attack (Merseyside possible H-bomb target, Daily Post, May 5).

It was that British spirit that most things could be solved with a “nice cup of tea and a sit down” that has always helped us win through in times of crisis.

It’s a shame that things are so different today.

If it became clear we were to be the target of such an attack, I imagine that the powers that be would use all their resources to protect breweries up and down the land so that everyone could get as drunk as possible and then come out fighting . . . a bit like most weekends down any street.

The trouble is they would all be fighting each other instead of any attacker.

There’s a lot to be said for a calming cup of the brown stuff . . . so often referred to in reverential tones in David Charters’s excellent column.

More crises might be averted if people could be persuaded to return to high tea consumption instead of downing half a brewery or snorting Columbia’s largest export up their nostrils.

M Woolton, Anfield