Category Archives: Liverpool And Merseyside
The Metropolitan County Councils, Abolished In 1986
Incredibly, it was twenty two years ago that the Conservative government closed down the Metropolitan County Councils , thereby ensuring control from the national centre of power. The impact on local decision-making was huge, as was the effort subsequently required to rebuild the regional administrative decision-making process.
The Metropolitan County Councils, like the Greater London Council and the Inner London Educational Authority, were powerful bodies representing local and regional interests, and were seen as irritants on the national body politic. So Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher decided they ‘had to go’.
But as Dr Richard Beeching also demonstrated, when years earlier he closed many local and regional railway lines, it takes little time to destroy something which holds together the physical or political regional infrastructure – and an enormous amount of money and effort to reinstate it.
This is the invitation I received to the Merseyside County Council closure reception for ‘Workers in the Merseyside Arts Community’, on 20 March 1986, at Metropolitan House, Old Hall Street, Liverpool. The evening was hosted by Cllr Keva Coombes, a local lawyer and Leader of the Merseyside County Council.
See more photographs at Locations & Events and read more about Regions, Sub-Regions & City Regions.
Liverpool’s Hope Street ‘Suitcases’: A Case History
The Hope Street ‘Suitcases’, installed by John King in 1998, are at the junction with Mount Street, by LIPA (the old ‘Liverpool Institute’) and Liverpool School of Art, opposite Blackburne House Centre for Women. The labelled suitcases ‘belong’ to many of Hope Street Quarter’s most illustrious names and organisations.
Coming A Cropper On Global Warming
It was quite a surprise to see the global warming slogans which appeared from nowhere in Liverpool city centre – especially given the name of the street itself! Someone’s been doing their homework on the stats; and the figures are truly scary…
See more photographs at Camera & Calendar
Monday Women ’08 Take The Next Step!
2008 sees a new location for Monday Women in Liverpool. For a few months we’ll be meeting in El Rincon Latino, by Roscoe Street and Oldham Street in the new City Gate development at the top of Renshaw Street. It’s free to come; all women most welcome, first Monday of every month, from about 5.45 to 7.30-ish p.m.
El Rincon Latino is located on the corner of Roscoe Street and Oldham Street just one block up the hill from Renshaw Street. It’s immediately across from the multi-storey car park behind Leece Street Post Office, on the town side of Leece Street but still near St Luke’s, the ‘Bombed Church’. You can also get there via a very short walk up the hill opposite the main entrance to Rapid Hardware on Renshaw Street.
The address and postcode are Roscoe Street, L1 2SU (map); tel: 0151- 324 0454.
All you pay for is your supper and drinks, ordered as you wish from the bar, if / when you’d like some – but no obligation. (There’s a photograph of a sample menu below, right…) Our Chilean host, Francisco Carrasco, is also Director of All Things Latin (ATL) and tell us the cafe aims to serve food from across Southern and Central America, as the head chef is from Ecuador. The venue has many cultural links with Latin America.
If you have ideas about anything you’d really like to discuss or do when everyone meets, you can of course join the Monday Women e-group (absolutely free, quite voluntary) and suggest things beforehand. Other than that, the format of each Monday Women event is decided by those who are there – drinks and chat, debate, even this year perhaps post-meeting salsa classes… It’s your choice! Dates for 2008 are below.
Monday Women meeting dates for 2008 (all first Mondays of the month, 5.45-ish to approx. 7.30, please just come and go as you wish) are:
February 4th
March 3rd
April 7th
May 5th
June 2nd
July 7th
August 4th
September 1st
October 6th
November 3rd
December 1st (special event, the annual Christmas Do!!)
To check any particular date please call the venue on 0151-324 0454.
Do join us. No need to book, just turn up whatever time you can; and bring your women friends as well…
We’d love to see you there.
Find out more here or visit the Monday Women message board.
Sefton Park Renovations Have Begun
Mid-winter, and the rawest, sorest part of the oh-so necessary works on Liverpool’s Sefton Park has begun. Here lies the pink ribbon of protest an anonymous tree-lover tied on this felled tree. And here (below) lies scattered the still fresh sawdust of the vigorous cull of trees around the upper lake. Soon, we are assured, these voids will be host to new and vibrant growth. Soon, our park will be even more lovely than before.
More information on Sefton Park is available here.
Photographs of Sefton Park on this website include:
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily? (Photo of the subsequently removed Willow tree in the Cherry Blossom / central lake)
and
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool.
For more photographs please see here.
What’s Regeneration For?
The British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) annual conference is in Liverpool this year, on 30th and 31st January 2008. The conference, bringing together some 300 people, will see brisk debates between professionals and community leaders from across the U.K. One important focus may be the search for consensus on what regeneration is ‘about’.
BURA is an organisation moving forward with increasing momentum and confidence in both its own role and the direction and meaning of regeneration in Britain.
What is regeneration?
We, as members of the Board of BURA, are beginning to understand anew, or at least consciously to explore in a new way, what ‘regeneration’ means. The discussion will doubtless continue for a long time yet; but for me some clarity is emerging from many years in the business.
Regeneration is much more than ‘construction’, ‘development’ or even ‘capacity building’.
In the end, regeneration is about adding long-term shared value to all these activities.
A win-win
Regeneration’s a real win-win; it’s about creating a more equitable, more sustainable life-context for everyone.
The challenge is, how to do it.
The UK is often said to be at the forefront of regeneration. BURA’s annual conference discussions this week should prove interesting.
Liverpool 4, 11 & 12 January 2008: The Euro-Year Begins!
Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture Year is finally launched.
First, we went to the pre-launch of the Liverpool Echo Arena on Friday 4 January.
Then we went to St George’s Plateau for the ‘People’s Opening’ on Friday 11 January, where after much frenetic construction all day Ringo Starr sang from a box on the roof of the Hall and we saw some fireworks and lights.
And finally we found ourselves in the Echo Arena again on Saturday 12 January for the formal opening of that venue and Liverpool’s 2008 events. The Arena ceremony offered a colourful performance of Liverpool – The Musical by artists ranging from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Vasily Petrenko (who all played valiantly throughout the show) to performers such as Gary Christian, The Farm, Sense of Sound, Ringo Starr, The Welsh Choral Union and The Wombats.
And so began our city’s European Year of Culture….
Everyone worked very hard to make it all happen. The preparations were no doubt complicated and frantic, the general mood was convivial and fun, and the outcome was by and large convincing and festive.
This was certainly not the weekend to be negative; though it has to be said that there is a lot still to do. Watch this space….
(But after this posting we shall, I promise, begin once again to acknowledge the world outside Liverpool 2008.)
For more photographs please see also Camera And Calendar.
Queen Victoria Celebrates Liverpool’s European Year
This is the Victoria Monument in the heart of Liverpool’s commercial quarter. However special the occasion, one can only imagine what Queen Victoria might have thought about being festooned by Christmas lights in preparation for the Liverpool European Capital of Culture in 2008; but for passers by on a very chilly evening this festive sight is one to raise a cheery little smile. Perhaps Queen Victoria would not have been amused, but in a different age we can surely innocently enjoy.
Liverpool At Christmas
The few weeks as 2007 ended and became 2008 saw much festive activity in Liverpool. Here, the set for the BBC’s special production of the ‘Liverpool Nativity’ was surrounded by excited onlookers well before the performance started, but alongside all the high technology Saint George’s Hall stood serene, just as it has for the past 150 years.
Carols Round The Christmas Tree At Sudley House, 2007
Sunday 23 December 2007 was the date for an occasion to remember: Carols Round the Christmas Tree at Sudley House, the historic home of a Victorian Mayor of Liverpool. The free singalong afternoon concert saw almost three hundred people came to enjoy the company and the carolling with Live-A-Music and the Children’s Choir.
This event was supported by the National Museums Liverpool and offered a warm welcome to everyone. The musicians (Martin Anthony (Tony) Burrage, John Peace, Richard Gordon-Smith and Hilary Burrage) were all members of Live-A-Music, a group also known as Elegant Music. The children’s choir of Mossley Hill Parish Church also performed.
Sudley House has an excellent tearoom for refreshments throughout the afternoon, and provides full disabled access. It is set in peaceful parkland and offers spectacular views across the River Mersey to the Wirral and beyond, to Moel Famau in Wales.
Visitor information and location and travel advice for Sudley House is available here.
See also:
Sudley House: Victorian Home Of A Mayor Of Liverpool
Liverpool’s Ancient Chapel Of Toxteth, Dingle Gaumont Cinema, The Turner Nursing Home & Dingle Overhead Railway Station
Autumn Glory In Sefton Park
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
For more articles please visit History of Liverpool and The Music.
Dreaming Realist 