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Don’t tell tall tales

Don’t tell tall tales

AFTER suddenly instructing the Royal Navy last week that its warships could not open to the public during the Tall Ships’ Races, due to health and safety issues on Seament Jetty, Liverpool docks owner Peel Ports relented and will allow public access to destroyer HMS Argyll. Read

Great and the good

Great and the good

MR BROCKLEBANK flushed with pride at the University of Liverpool’s centenary graduand dinner at St George’s Hall, packed with the great, the good and Elvis Costello. Read

Designers at work

IS STAGING the Design Show Liverpool at the Contemporary Urban Centre, Greenland Street, an example of post-modern irony? Visitors will doubtless be intrigued by the image of modern Liverpool cleverly juxtaposed with scenes outside of urban dereliction, skips and scaffolding. Read

No sound of music

VEXED Under & Over Mersey Tunnel Sunday walkers demanded if Mr Brocklebank knew whether soured Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations led to Merseytravel banning the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and its maestro, Vasily Petrolko-Strikov, from playing mid-tunnel as Carl Davis and the RLPO had previously. Read

Covenant of the Ark

CARING Royal Navy commanders halted visitors boarding HMS Ark Royal at Liverpool when the queuing time reached two hours on Saturday, thus dashing northern Navy chief Commodore Madgwick’s goal of beating Newcastle’s 6,000 visitor total by a 500 shortfall. Read

Life in the bus lane

HOW time flies. It seems only 18 months ago that the new Canning Place bus station was opened for business, yet it is now closed for the tarmac to be replaced. Or, after the success of Tony Robinson’s Time Team TV documentary on Manchester Dock, is it being dug up for a follow-up programme? Read

Mr Brocklebank: Ruffled feathers

NATURE watch: ornithologists aerated over dredging Sefton Park lake during the breeding season prompted a Liverpool council spokesperson to smooth ruffled feathers, saying: “This programme of mitigation measures includes relaxing the maintenance regime in those areas of the park outside the contract boundary and providing additional nesting opportunities in neighbouring Greenbank Park.” Read

Food for thought

WHEN Liverpool’s best-loved genetically modified sculpture, Superlambanana, resided outside the blessed Sir Trevor Jones’s ships’ chandlers, JP Lamb, his art lover wife Lady Doreen ensured it always had a fresh coat of bright barnacle-resistant egg-yolk yellow paint. Read

Price of progress

Price of progress

BELEAGUERED Liverpool motorists driving around in ever increasing circles to find that elusive parking space have a new threat to contend with. Read

Mr Brocklebank: Missed opportunity

WHAT a missed opportunity not to action the idea of putting the four Beatles on each side of Lime Street’s Concourse House empty tower block, which would have become Liverpool’s most photographed object. Read

Mr Brocklebank: Off with his head

THOSE who said 67-year- old Ringo Starr lost his head when, after opening the European Capital of Culture, he told Jonathan Woss that he missed nothing about the city, have been proved right. Read

Defending maidens

A BASTION of fairness is the Grand National’s official starter. This Aintree grandee happily dispensed interviews with the press, except to one particular Fleet Street print which had gleefully printed many Ladies’ Day photographs of Merseyside’s maidens in a fashion obviously intended to expose them to derision and ridicule by southerners. Understandably, his ban did extend to this venerable organ that you, dear readers, are currently perusing. Read

The not-so Fab Four

NEVER one to exacerbate international diplomatic tension, Mr Brocklebank feels impelled to report that Merseyside sources firmly deny that the Swiss government, on behalf of a Zurich group for height- challenged bankers, is demanding that the four gnomes on the facade of the Hard Day’s Night Hotel should be restored to their rightful place in the Basle Cuckoo Clock, William Tell & Holey Cheese Theme Park. Read

Mr Brocklebank: Is Loyd pasta caring?

LORDY Loydy: Just what is the real reason for the shock resignation of Loyd Grossman, Britain’s best-loved pasta entrepreneur, from his post as National Museums Liverpool chairman, in what should be the city’s finest year and with the huge new Museum of Liverpool imminent? Read

Mistaken identity

Mistaken identity

HOW amusing that the celebrated late sculptor Arthur Dooley was commemorated by the Band of the Irish Guards playing at Liverpool Academy. Read

Stitched up in time

IN THE hurly-burly of creating the “New Liverpool” with skyscrapers breaking out like a rash across the city, the council leader is called upon to bury time-capsules in topping-out ceremonies. But Cllr Warren Bradley had to bury the bad news in the capsule at the new One Park West development. Destined for the capsule was a copy of that day’s Daily Post, complete with front page splash screaming: “Liverpool: England’s worst local authority.” Read

Peaceful thoughts

THE Beatles are not the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s only Merseyside links. Disgusted at Tony Blair’s support for the US war in Iraq, the Maharishi asked followers at his Skelmersdale Transcendental Meditation Centre to beam “peace-loving” thoughts at the UK electorate to overturn the Labour Government. Read

Mr Brocklebank: The nowhere men

THE millions (or is it billions?) of tourists expected in our fair city in the coming months will be interested to see statues of native men perched in improbable poses over one of the new hotels. Read

The price of art

NEW city centre residents desperate for green space for dog walking await with bated breath to see if they will be allowed to exercise pooches on Chavasse Park. After all, posters lining The Strand advertising Grosvenor’s Liverpool One development show a larger than life dog-walker striding over said green space. Evidence, surely, that dogs will be allowed? This is in contrast to Albert Dock’s total ban on dogs, although the riverside walk is legally a public right of way. Clearly, we need a dogs of war campaign, not a dog blanket ban. Read

Mr Brocklebank: Promoting our rivals

THE spirit of Drake and Raleigh blows through Moorfields underground station (along with other debris) with the uplifting posters urging local volunteers to join the next Round the World Clipper Race which Liverpool is so proud to sponsor. Read