Letters to the Editor - 24th July 2008

Jul 24 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

Well done, Merseyside

WE RETURNED to Cardiff yesterday, after a five-day stay in Liverpool. We spent Friday and Sunday at Royal Birkdale, and Saturday on the Anfield Tour, and then visiting Wellington Dock to see the Tall ships. On Monday, we went to New Brighton to see the Tall Ships sail up the Mersey.

The Open was one of the best ever, having seen the 1991 and 1998 Opens at Birkdale. The Tall Ships events and the Open were both excellently organised and had excellent train and bus transport arrangements.

Congratulations to all involved, and well done Merseyside. The wind contributed to the Open Championship, but somewhat distracted from the Tall Ships sailing up the Mersey as the sails could not be unfurled. Padraig Harrington and Ian Poulter dealt best with the weather. The Bristol amateur Chris Wood did very well, too.

All in all, it was a most enjoyable visit to my home city.

Gordon and Kitty Heald, Cardiff

No information

MY WIFE and I visited Liverpool on Friday, July 18, to view the Tall Ships. Our visit to the Albert Dock was a delight and well organised, but our trip to Wellington Dock was something else.

We walked past the Liver Building in order to board a shuttle bus to Wellington Dock, but a steward informed us there had been a monumental mess-up with the available buses. The time by now would have been around 1.30pm. Wishing to avoid the huge queue for transport, we walked along the Dock Road, which was pleasant enough.

Attempting to walk around the dock, we found the bridge crossing the dock was still being built. How long has this event been in the planning stage? Eventually, we reached the far side of the dock in order to see the main body of the Tall Ships, only to be told that we could not enter that area without a ticket. We had seen no information regarding tickets – how was one supposed to obtain such a ticket?

Come on, Liverpool, Capital of Culture 2008 – get your finger out.

JE Broadbent, Lancs

Wirral line chaos

IN ALL the coverage of the Tall Ships’ race and the numbers of people attending, there seemed to be no reference to the fact that Merseyside’s infrastructure once again collapsed.

Merseyrail’s Wirral line descended into utter chaos when this event must have clearly been planned for a very long time.

There were a number of cancellations at peak time, resulting in everyone for Wirral being asked to pile on to a New Brighton train. I changed at Birkenhead North where there were hordes of passengers waiting for West Kirby trains as three whizzed by for New Brighton.

Staff, as usual, had no answers, although one Merseyrail person offered the following:

“It’s not like the London underground, you know. We can’t cope with big crowds, we’re provincial”.

Pathetic.

Harry Miller jnr, Moreton

What a relief

MR BROCKLEBANK will be relieved to know that the new toilets at Hillside station will remain (Daily Post, July 22).

They are part of an upgrade planned well before the Open Golf, and he would probably have been the first to complain if the station had not been upgraded in time for the thousands of visitors.

In reference to his comments about the timetable for train services for the Open.

During the vital morning and evening periods, when we were transporting up to 3,000 passengers per hour, trains were operating an increased service, running every 10 minutes.

Off-peak, there were three instead of the usual four trains per hour, but each train was a six- car unit, instead of three, meaning we were still able to transport more passengers per hour than with the normal service.

Neil Scales, chief executive, Merseytravel

Give them a bonus

WELL done, me hearties, what a fabulous weekend. Liverpool could not get any taller. We saw everything there was to see, with ease and with lots of fun.

The heads of operations usually get the plaudits but it is the ground crew, the site managers and their teams that make it all happen. It all seemed to go so well, the soft touch crowd control, the walkways, the super-loos. And the volunteers were so cheerful and helpful. Give them all a big bonus and bring them back for the next big one.

Mr & Mrs Green, L18

Wonderful day

MY FAMILY and I visited the Tall Ships on Saturday. The organisation was superb. There was a continual flow of buses taking us from the Pier Head to the Docks, which was excellent. Police and stewards were also most helpful.

It was a wonderful day out. Congratulations to all concerned.

M Davies, L12

Ignored again

ON MONDAY, I had planned to come into Liverpool with my grandchildren to watch the Parade of Sail of the Tall Ships out of the River Mersey. Unfortunately, on Saturday afternoon I slipped mopping the floor and badly twisted my ankle, meaning that I just was not up to standing for a long period of time.

No matter, I thought to myself, I will sit down and watch it on the television with a nice cup of tea. However, that was not to be because, other than a couple of snippets on the local news, the Tall Ships rarely registered on the TV schedules.

If this event had taken place on the River Thames, you can wager that it would have been given a prime afternoon slot on the BBC, and there probably would have been at least one hour-long documentary about it. But because it happened in Liverpool, no-one seemed to care in Broadcasting House.

It seems, if it doesn’t happen down south, it does not happen at all.

K Ellison, Netherton

Better days

I HOPE the next time the Tall Ships come to Liverpool, they go back to Vittoria Dock, West Dock, West Float, Birkenhead like they did in 1992. It was much better organised.

K Scotland, L25

Give trees a chance

THE Festival Gardens campaigners make a good point in their letter requesting that the woods along the prom should not be cut down “until building is certain and ready to begin” (“Delay woodland destruction”, Letters, July 22).

Mr Bradley has been claiming that the go-ahead for the apartment blocks along the prom at the Festival Gardens is a “victory for common sense”. It would certainly show some real common sense to put a hold on cutting down the woods along the prom until the building is absolutely ready to start – and preferably with the guarantee that it be finished.

A needlessly devastated landscape or an abandoned concrete eyesore at the Otterspool end of the Prom would certainly be a defeat for a good many Liverpudlians.

David Morton, Aigburth

Let us vote

MERSEYSIDE Stop the War Coalition would like to appeal to the trustees of Merseyside Pension Fund to agree to the recent request of Liverpool City Council that the Pension Fund ballots the fund’s beneficiaries as to whether they wish for their pension monies to be invested in immoral activities such as the arms trade.

As councillors, I’m sure that what motivated you to come into politics were great ideals and the thought that you could make the world a better place. Now is your opportunity. In order to challenge the restrictive practices of “Fiduciary Duty” which stops you offering an ethical pension scheme will require courage.

According to the eminent journalist John Pilger, British arms sales over the past 20 years have indirectly caused the deaths of over one million people world wide. Do your beneficiaries really want a pension scheme marred in blood? Please let them have a say.

Mark Holt, Chair, Merseyside Stop the War Coalition

Bee fears

LAST night, I was walking on the land next to St Josephs, near the Formby pinewoods, and I came across hundreds of dead bees over an area of perhaps 100 square yards. It was completely mystifying, because it looked like they had died at practically the same time.

I had heard about a mysterious illness wiping out bees, but also read that (according to Defra) it was not affecting the British bee population and that the newspaper articles about it were more or less media whipped-up false alarms.

Has anybody else seen any large numbers of dead bees, or know what it could be?

Jean Peabody, Formby

Finance needed

I DO not think the Government should win unanimous support for its plans to tackle what it regards as the “problem” of incapacity benefit. Any other department which displayed as much failure as the department for Work and Pensions would surely be brought to account.

They have totally failed most of their clients who receive one benefit or another.

Competition for jobs is higher than it has ever been, unemployment is rising and Remploy factories have been closed. I don’t want to see disabled people bullied. If the Government does not put some hard cash into initiatives to help the disabled find work, then it is not being entirely honest about what it can achieve.

J Carmichael, Southport

Justify the cost

HOW on earth can it cost £6.5m to police a Labour conference in Manchester. Is this government now so unpopular.

Jane Swanson, Kensington