An Open Letter From The Leader Of Blackpool Council
This letter written by the leader of Blackpool Council and published in the Blackpool Gazette has been discussed on the BBC.
I couldn’t resist penning a reply.
In 2011, to raise money for Cancer Research after the death of my wife and son from the disease, i visited all 92 Football and Premier League clubs alphabetically by public transport.
Of all the towns and cities I visited Blackpool was the worst and most visitor-unfriendly. Turn up at any station and try to get a bus to Bloomfield Road or even find a map. Compare the town to Bournemouth, where the public transport is easily understandable.
But after my experience of Blackpool, I kept asking people I met, within day trip distance, if they ever went to the town. A plumber from Wigan said that he never went although he had many times until a few years ago. But now if he wants a day by the sea, he’ll go to Liverpool or Southport.
Blackpool needs a real change of attitude and must look at everything it does to make sure that it does the best for everybody and every business in the town.
Incidentally, I’m an Ipswich Town supporter and travel to a lot of away games from London where I live. I’ve done Blackpool twice, but I suspect never again, when I can enjoy the friendly atmosphere in places like Barnsley, Burnley, Derby, Hull and Nottingham.
I’m also a coeliac, which means I must have gluten-free food. Last time in the town, all I found was a banana and a coffee. Compare this to the lovely meal I had in that noted holiday resort called Crewe.
As it is I think I kept it quite mild!
Skyfall
I went to see it this afternoon. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s only about the fourth or fifth Bond film, I’ve actually seen. I saw the three early ones; Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, before I went to University.
Although C and I were together for forty years, I think we may only have seen one together and that could have been Thunderball or You Only Live Twice.
She wasn’t really keen on that sort of action film.
For many years too, whilst we were raising the kids, we rarely had time for the cinema and tended to go to the theatre or out for a meal.
I did see Quantum of Solace on the way back from Hong Kong, but does that really count as it wasn’t in a cinema.
In fact, I must be one of the few people, who’ve never seen a Bond film on the small screen. After all, Bond has always been on a channel with adverts and I don’t like intermissions.
I don’t think we even took the children to see any of the others.
So if my memory is correct, Skyfall was the sixth Bond film, I’d seen in the cinema.
I said that I enjoyed it and in some ways very much how I enjoyed the early ones. It was fresh and different with just the right amount of humour to go with the action.
I’ve read all of the novels, including some in French, and I think Sam Mendes has captured the exotic themes of the books. To someone like myself growing up in a London suburb, places like the Caribbean and Istanbul were very exotic to say the least. The choice of Hashima Island for the villain’s lair was the sort of idea of which Ian Fleming would have approved.
So in some ways the film went back to the 1960s for me.
As ever though, the computing in the film isn’t as good as it could be. But that would be my only major gripe. Although, the tube train is a deep-level one running between sub-surface stations. It’s actually because it was shot in the old Charing Cross platforms for the Jubilee Line, which turn up in quite a lot of films and videos.
A Pedestrian Crossing From Hell
I could have labelled this crossing between Bordesley station and Birmingham City’s ground of St. Andrews, the worst I’d seen, but the pictures didn’t do it justice.
A Pedestrian Crossing From Hell
They don’t show how there was no signs, lights or a policeman on a road, where cars took the junction at well over the legal limit. Two cars actually touched as I waited to cross.
But nothing will be done, as a proper solution would slow the cars. And cars are of course kings in Birmingham, with only losers using public transport.
One day, there’ll be a serious accident.
A Small Cathedral For A Big City
Birmingham’s cathedral is the third smallest in the country.
A Small Cathedral For A Big City
Surprising really, considering the size of the city.
It Has To Be By Anthony Gormley
This sculpture just has to be by Anthony Gormley.
And it was, as the plaque shows.
A Gold Statue
You don’t see may gold statues. Or even gold coloured ones like this.
A Gold Statue
It does strike me as being rather gaudy.
Would You Live In A Church?
The Church of St. Andrew in Rodney Street in Liverpool has been a ruin for years.
Would You Live In A Church?
But now it’s being converted into a hundred student rooms. For a city with a deep religious feeling, it does seem to be very happy to use old churches for secular purposes. Many of my university exams were taken in redundant ones.
I do like this piece from Wikipedia about the church.
Adjacent to the church in the churchyard is a monument to William Mackenzie, a railway contractor who died in 1851. It is in the shape of a pyramid, is constructed in granite, and was erected in 1868. Facing the street is a blind entrance flanked by uprights supporting a lintel containing a bronze plaque. The structure is a Grade II listed building.
There is a tradition that, as Mackenzie was a gambling man, he sold his soul to the Devil, and that his body was placed in a seating position above ground within the pyramid, in order that the Devil may not claim him. His ghost is said to haunt Rodney Street.
So will Mackenzie be surprising students in their beds?
Gates To A Palace?
Are these the gates to a palace? Or as they are in Liverpool, perhaps they’re the gates to a bishop or archbishop’s residence.
Gates To A Palace?
But no! They’re the gates to a pub. But it is the Philharmonic Dining Rooms.
A Liverpool Facelift
You’d think it would be something like an Essex facelift, which appears in Wikipedia as a Croydon facelift. Although, I’ve never heard of it with respect to Croydon.
A Liverpool Facelift
But as the picture shows, it’s not that at all!
Liverpool University’s Metric Signs
All of the fingerposts around the campus at Liverpool University are metric.
I’ve never seen so many metric signs in the UK. Even Liverpool council avoids the argument by using minutes, as one picture shows.
The Anonymous Widower 