Phil Redmond: What’s it all about?

Mar 7 2008 by Phil Redmond, Liverpool Daily Post

ANSWERS. More often than not, they depend on the questions. I’ve been asked to go on one of those BBC TV shows that claims to seek answers to life’s big questions and while it will, no doubt, make interesting "telly", I doubt it will tackle the really big question: what’s it all about anyway?

You can apply this question to almost anything, I suppose, as I did while watching LFC cruise comfortably past West Ham, sliding just in front of EFC on the run-in for a Champion’s League spot. Bit like the old leap frog days of the 60s and 70s?

I was pondering the big question watching the half-time demo against the current owners while, I admit, with one eye on the potential seating plan for Macca’s concert in June. Big question: what is a football stadium all about? Venue, theatre, temple? sport, entertainment, belief? Big answer: depends.

Following my recent columns about needing to do more to celebrate EFC across 2008, I have obviously had to start doing my homework, discovering some very strange but interesting facts.

At the turn of the last century, if you had been given a pub quiz question about which famous Liverpool team played in red and had the Liver Bird on their crest, today’s answer would have been wrong! For a number of decades, the two clubs shared a programme. That piece of trivia posed the big question: what was that all about? Somehow, though, it makes contemplating a shared stadium slightly easier to get my head round. So perhaps the big answers on the stadium issues depend not on the why questions, but the why nots?

One topic the TV folk have asked me to think about, surprise, surprise, is whether we should be spending so much on culture when there is so much poverty around. That in itself is a bit rich coming from a, well, very rich cultural institution like the BBC, but I suppose it is topically relevant considering the current situation with Liverpool Council’s budget shortfall.

Apart from the fact that the Capital of Culture spend is about 0.2% of the overall budget, which sounds less dramatic than saying £20m, I appreciate, any attempts to eradicate poverty have, and always will require, cultural change. Whether that is through philanthropic reformers like Rowntree and Barnardo, or political and social movements, cultural change has been crucial. On May Day, the TUC plans to celebrate the impact of Robert Tresell’s novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Culture is, actually, a front- line service.

Ultimately, though, all questions about public spending and linking culture to budget shortfalls are best left to politicians to fight over, but should not, perhaps, revolve around the shortfall itself, but why it happened? You have to ask the right questions to get the right answers.