Letters to the Editor - 21st July 2008

Jul 21 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

A happy childhood

I AM sorry, if not surprised, that Peter Kilfoyle didn’t like my book. But it is a bit rich of him to suggest that I have invented a “poverty stricken background” as the Post reports him saying (Daily Post, July 16). It makes me wonder if he read the book at all. In fact, as the book makes clear, I was extremely happy in Liverpool.

There is nothing in the book which suggests I grew up in abject poverty or squalor. As I make clear, we ate meat pretty much every day, enjoyed holidays in Butlin’s and farther afield later when my mother got a job in the travel department of Lewis’s. There were plenty of families in the city worse off than us.

But nor was Waterloo at the time some sort of Hollywood-on-the-Mersey, as our neighbours in Ferndale Road would confirm. It was an area of the city, like many, where people often struggled to make ends meet. And my mother, bringing up two girls on her own, knew all about that. That’s what I remember about my childhood and all I try to reflect in the book.

Cherie Blair

Gross errors

I CAN’T believe that Alex Carrington, of Waterloo (DP, July 17) is moaning about the so-called moaners, whom he chastises for having the temerity to question whether Liverpool’s widespread redevelopment is a good thing.

He picks a very poor example to support his case. The major incursion into the World Heritage Site (a very high privilege granted to this city) on Mann Island for three new blocks of flats was not a former city centre “swathe of boarded-up eyesores”.

This was an area of operating businesses occupying low-rise buildings, including several single- storey dockside warehouses, which were the perfect infill between the magnificent landmark buildings of the Pier Head and the Albert Dock complex.

It also included Voss Motors, a building by Liverpool’s greatest architect Herbert Rowse, which complemented his adjacent George’s Dock Vent Building. Voss Motors was occupied by an up-market car dealer, but the entire site has now been swept away for some crazy, modernistic flats.

These particular “eyesores” will entirely block the view of the Three Graces from The Strand.

To point out these gross errors of planning and architectural judgment, where progress is not for the better, is not to my mind complaining simply about change. It’s complaining about a loss of quality.

D Henderson, via email

Frightening view

ALEX CARRINGTON (Daily Post, Letters, July 17), is right when he states: “. . . a city cannot live on heritage alone and that it needs to move forward” and Liverpool One is fantastic and just the shot in the arm that the city needed. However, his concluding sentence sends shivers down the spine: “if that comes at the expense of a few old buildings, then so be it”.

It is not change that Liverpudlians fear, it is change for change’s sake. To see perfectly sound, handsome pre-war structures such as Josephine Butler House replaced with awful boxlike flats and retail outlets, destroying the ambience and harmony of a much-loved area is heartbreaking. In this, our year as Capital of Culture, if Alex Carrington were to visit other European cities, he would notice that it is the varied historic architecture that makes them such interesting and attractive places to live, work or visit.

The insane mass demolition of so much of our pre-war infra- structure over the past 50 years has left us a poorer city not just financially but architecturally, and, in an era when tourism matters, the two do go hand in hand. As Anthony Moscardini stated in the Daily Post recently: “Unless you keep these landmark buildings, or ones which are key to a particular site, the whole cement of the community falls apart . . . If you like it, you should fight for it”.

Faceless developers rub their hands with glee when they hear the likes of Alex Carrington mouth such blasé comments. Meanwhile, our own city council and planning committee are reactive rather than proactive, too slow, too craven or too cash-strapped to say or do anything when yet another piece of historic Liverpool is needlessly targeted for demolition and “redevelopment”.

Name and address supplied

Take the challenge

BRITAIN has a proud tradition of producing adventurers such as Sir Walter Raleigh, James Cook and Sir Ernest Shackleton, but new research reveals almost half the population feel their life lacks adventure. As 56% of Britons say they have never taken part in an adventurous activity, has the spirit of Shackleton been replaced with a fear of the unknown or merely malaise?

A new photographic exhibition examines what adventure means to different people and aims to inspire those who would like to be more adventurous.

Portraits of Adventure includes 50 rarely-seen archive images from leading landscape, portrait, action and travel photographers, and 10 specially commissioned giant four metre high portraits by top British photographer Alastair Thain, featuring personalities such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Zara Phillips.

So throw off your inhibitions, come along to the Royal Geographical Society in London between July 22-August 3, and be inspired. If you can’t make it, look out for the accompanying coffee table book, proceeds from the sale of which will benefit the British Red Cross.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Somerset

Probe private deals

I AM writing in response to your front page article entitled “MPs demand inquiry on private health deal”. It seems to me that, yes, an inquiry is needed, quick. There are people who say that work should be put out to the private sector, and we should invite people to bid for contracts. Whoever wins the contract, they will receive very large amounts of our money. But it is the very same people who say the work should be put out to the private sector, who are bidding to win that contract.

It is not only the specific deal that you refer to that should be investigated. All of the deals that have been put together that involve the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) should be investigated and no more deals like this should be made.

This way of paying for hospitals has been shown to, in fact, cost us, the tax-payer, three times what it would cost simply to build a hospital ourselves. Here in Liverpool, the plan to build a new Royal Hospital using the PFI mechanism should be cancelled right now. I cannot believe that it is not possible to simply refurbish the existing hospital. Of course, this would mean that the private contractors wouldn’t be making profit at our expense for the next 30 years.

Alan Martin, L14

Go slow

IT IS perhaps appropriate that M Tennant, who wrote in support of abolishing speed cameras (Letters, July 16), lives in Warrington as the roads through the town seemed designed to encourage speeding. I think the town planners thought they were designing a Grand Prix circuit. It is about time that councillors and officials gave towns back to the people, giving priority to pedestrians over motorists.

I would suggest a visit to Amsterdam where this policy is followed and cars drive more slowly.

Mr Tennant shows his true colours by suggesting widening roads. I presume he is of the school that believes more and more roads should be built, the cost of petrol reduced and we should have free parking for all.

I would like to point out to Mr Tennant and his like that a recent report by the AA shows the true cost of motoring has fallen in real terms over the last 20 years.

In fact, for safety, roads should be narrowed and central white lines and signs removed from urban roads, as these have been shown to reduce speed and hence improve road safety. I would like to see the speed limit on urban roads reduced to 20 miles per hour and lower speed limits on all country lanes.

JM Berry, Aughton

So sad

I WAS very sad to read that the red squirrels in Formby are now nearing extinction, and it is feared that the entire pinewoods could be infected with the disease responsible, making repopulation a futile task.

If it is the last of them we see at Formby, and I sincerely hope it isn’t, will the National Trust try to establish another colony of them in the North West?

You see grey squirrels everywhere, but there is something about the reds with their delicacy and interesting colour, which has always captivated me, and to see them go completely would be a great shame, to say nothing of the cost to local tourism.

We need to hear more of their plans to remedy this sad situation.

Hilda Rudge, Formby

Work for the city

ONCE again, Liverpool’s politicians seem engaged in tit-for- tat infighting which makes the city the laughing stock of local authorities around the country.

Why can’t the city’s elected leaders do what they are elected to do? They have been elected to promote the city’s well-being, and do all possible for the betterment of its citizens.

Every time Liverpool seems to be advancing, and its reputation enhanced, the carryings-on of a few irresponsible elected people rob the city of its respectability, rendering worthless so much hard work and past advances.

While Liverpool navel gazes, others will once again take advantage!

Craig Earley, Kirkby

No butts

ON A recent visit to School Lane, I was appalled at the amount of discarded cigarette butts on the pavements.

People are smoking at the rear of the shops and offices and not a litter bin in site. The city council needs to put a receptacle in situ, or have the street cleaned more regularly.

Geoffrey Stewart, Kirkdale