The Northern Shitehouse

[njackets]

Another thing that passes me off about Liverpool is the planning department. They seem to meddle in really good schemes and water them down. They then approve bogstandard bland shite all over the city.

 

There was a 55 storey tower planned for Brunswick dock yet the council fucked about approving it and let Ruth Kelly who was the MP for housing scrap it.

 

They also butchered the Cesar Pelli buildings in Liverpool One making the architect for the Petronas towers turn his plan into a bland stumpy block because they are the real experts.

 

They also let several developers who have a track record of either producing shit quality builds or not competing projects take over prominent city sites.

Spot on this, it's criminal what fuck ups they've been allowed to get away with over the years and decades.

 

Look at the fucking state of Lime Steet as an example, how is nobody accountable for the derelict ruin shit hole that Street become over the last couple of decades?

[njackets]

That's it. All the retail jobs in the world are not going to save the city. Retail is low paid, and requires people with disposable income to sustain it. When the average salary in Liverpool must be around the lowest in the UK (from a city perspective), then it's clear that this retail empire is built on sand and will soon be replaced by wall to wall Poundlands. What is needed is commerce (old school and new school), and plenty of it - finance, insurance, IT etc - the council should do whatever it takes to bring that sort of business back into the city. Businesses in the south east are squeaking with spiralling expenses - L&G are selling up their campus on prime south east real estate and relocating to Cardiff. We should be winning that sort of business for Liverpool.

 

It doesn't help that we've got in Joe Anderson one of the very worst ambassadors the city could have. He looks awful, the very epitome of a stereotypical parochial northern council leader - old, fat, lazy, ugly, and just looks thick and corrupt. If you were running a multi billion pound organisation, would you engage with him?

 

It's a depressing shambles, and we constantly seem to shoot ourselves in the foot, usually through inexperience, incompetence, a major lack of imagination, and a willingness to accept third rate anything. To encourage business and proper investment into the city, we need people who can truly represent the city, and reflect the bright, entrepreneurial, imaginative, energetic place the city should be aspiring to be, rather than the laughing stock it too often is. The Adelphi is a beautiful building from the outside, easily the equal of most London hotels, yet I wouldn't let my dog stay there if I had one. Like it or not, we need to get people into the city that have seen how things should be done properly, and have the ability to deliver them.

Spot on this, people's attitudes need to change in the city also, there's a lot of negativity to change and anything new and shiney.

[Rocky Sullivan]

Spot on this, people's attitudes need to change in the city also, there's a lot of negativity to change and anything new and shiney.

The problem with new and shiney is that a lot of it is white and elephanty.

 

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[Anubis]

If you want a small foothold in the debate about the region then here's a place to start.

 

Steve Rotherham is asking people to help shape his manifesto for Metro Mayor by giving their opinion on priorities. Bear in mind that this is very much a foot in the water to test possible devolution to local areas, so don't write it off just yet.

 

While there are some options in the poll, there is also space for you to raise any other issues you want.

 

http://www.steverotheram.com/manifesto-have-your-say/

[Moctezuma]

I always got the impression that the northern power house stuff along with the Mayorships was a piece of political calculation by Osborne when hitting the country with austerity cuts. i.e. give the allusion of independence and power while shrinking budgets so that it can be blamed on Labour councils/mayors.

 

Though perhaps i'm being overly cynical.

[Paulie Dangerously]

 

THE best place for the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ scheme is probably in London after all, the government has announced.

The massive investment project for Northern business and infrastructure will now take place in the capital instead, making it easier for government ministers to visit and find a decent restaurant.

 

Chancellor George Osborne said: “Improving the North would only have made it slightly less shit, but if we spend the money on London it will become even more amazing with moving pavements and a Jamie Oliver restaurant on every corner.

“We won’t need all those new rail links now because Northerners just need a tram to go to the bingo.”

He added: “The Northern Powerhouse would have been wasted on Northerners.”

Hull resident Tom Logan said: “This is a real blow for Northerners like me. I’m only a part-time toilet cleaner, so it would have been a real status boost to clean bogs in a Powerhouse.”

 

 

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/northern-powerhouse-relocated-to-london-20151117103906

[Anubis]

I always got the impression that the northern power house stuff along with the Mayorships was a piece of political calculation by Osborne when hitting the country with austerity cuts. i.e. give the allusion of independence and power while shrinking budgets so that it can be blamed on Labour councils/mayors.

 

Though perhaps i'm being overly cynical.

 

 

I think you're right. But whether we like it or not, this is going to happen with at least the initial budget. Whether ti survives beyond the initial period - who knows.

 

I'm beginning to think May has read the Hunger Games and is trying to turn us into districts.

[VladimirIlyich]

Commonwealth Games are shite.

The 'Empire Games' re-branded to sound less racist and imperialist.

[Stickman]

You only have to walk through the city to see how run down the city is looking.....Loads of shops boarded up places like Burton's , Armani , Select, BHS, USC, more than half the shops in the Met Quarter are all closed.

I know most of this can't be laid at the feet of the council but this is the main shopping part of the City and it looks fucking awful. All Liverpool seems to be at the minute is a stag and hen do destination for Saturday's but fuck knows what they must think when they see how shabby parts of the centre look like.

[VladimirIlyich]

Everyone in Knowsley votes Labour and would never vote for the tories or trust any other party. Yet Knowsley is one of the worst off areas in Britain with schools that are at the bottom of the national league tables.

This is not really the fault of Labour MPs themselves. This could also be said of Halton,where I live too. I also wouldn't be judging areas based on school 'league tables' as they are just another tory idea(introduced by Labour and Blair I think?) to spread division and selfishness between ordinary people. Not that I'm saying local Labour MPs should be let off the hook of course,mine(Derek Twigg) wants ground war in Syria, according to the local press, rather than focusing on why Runcorn and Widnes are massive shitholes without jobs and poor standards of health and low education standards too,among other things.

[Section_31]

The city had/has a golden opportunity to turn itself into something. It's got four universities on its doorstep filled with students, most of whom love the place, but nowhere for most of them to work. There's absolutely no agency scene in Liverpool at all and very little new media/media, the jobs are mostly low grade. 

 

London is increasingly expensive and in this modern world it doesn't matter where you're based as much as it used to do. The council could have incentivised tech jobs and encouraged big players to come here but they don't bother.

 

Those kinds of jobs really do 'trickle down', because they're high quality and people like that spend money in coffee shops and bars.

 

When you go to town in the week,  the ONLY people out at bars and restaurants are students spending debt  money, the city's night time economy is basically run on debt. There's no 'scene' here at all, no comedy clubs or music clubs save for a few small ones that come and go seemingly on an almost six monthly basis. In Manchester half the BBC and Coronation Street would probably be out on the lash at any given time. 

 

With regards infrastructure, I was working in Oldham once until midnight and the guy I was working with ran out at full pelt to catch the tram shouting 'if I miss it there won't be another one along for another seven minutes!'. Sums it up really! 

[Faustus]

It doesn't help either that when a 'scene' is created by people leasing out the shithole bits of landing and transforming them with a bit of ingenuity- getting a buzz about them, injecting a bit of character, even turning a profit in some cases- the council are quite happy to shit all over them from a great height and flog the land to developers. Create some more student flats to eke out that little bit more from the quicksand economy.

 

The gist of it just fucking stinks. "Yeah, sound, we'll lease you that dump for buttons, do our dirty work for us by cleaning it up and get people flocking there so we can sell it on."

 

From a personal perspective as someone who loves live music, it's scandalous the amount of gigs and events Manchester gets in comparison. A great venue like the Kaz goes to the wall, Kitchen Street looks set to go down the pan- all because the council are quite happy to accept a quick buck. Never mind, eh? They can just stick a couple of Beatles stickers on places and put a plaque close to the bombed out church because Ringo Starr once fingered a bird there.

[Kidder Bukowski]

A big part of the problem for me is the government's wish to compartmentalise the country. If you were to go to the industrial regions of China you'd find whole towns/cities that make just the one kind of thing. They are even named after the goods they produce as in bathroom town etc.

 

Our own government wants the same kind of thing here and when they decided Manchester was to be the business centre of the North they also put us down as a bigger Blackpool and we've all seen what a shithole that's become. You begin to sound like a conspiracy theorist when you talk about all this lark but the evidence is right in front of us.

 

While I feel sympathy for the council with the way they've been raped by this government, they really don't help themselves. Every little jaunt over to Cannes or wherever the latest investment party is at sees our crowd gathered around the Manchester stall offering our full support. Well do you know what? They don't fucking need it. Bernstein and his team are so politically savvy they have most deals wrapped up before Liverpool has even realised there was a deal to be made. The more we rely on service industries for employment the less money the locals have to spend and the situation just gets worse yet our representatives aren't exactly beating down the doors of parliament.

 

Steve Rotherham might improve matters but I won't hold my breath.

 

And let's not forget that the media crowd were paid to go to Manchester by the government, just as gaming and IT companies were given tax incentives to go to Salford Quays. What we need is to call out our representatives on this and insist they actually do represent us!

[Paco]

Are The Guardian moving to Manchester?

[Bjornebye]

That's it. All the retail jobs in the world are not going to save the city. Retail is low paid, and requires people with disposable income to sustain it. When the average salary in Liverpool must be around the lowest in the UK (from a city perspective), then it's clear that this retail empire is built on sand and will soon be replaced by wall to wall Poundlands. What is needed is commerce (old school and new school), and plenty of it - finance, insurance, IT etc - the council should do whatever it takes to bring that sort of business back into the city. Businesses in the south east are squeaking with spiralling expenses - L&G are selling up their campus on prime south east real estate and relocating to Cardiff. We should be winning that sort of business for Liverpool.

 

It doesn't help that we've got in Joe Anderson one of the very worst ambassadors the city could have. He looks awful, the very epitome of a stereotypical parochial northern council leader - old, fat, lazy, ugly, and just looks thick and corrupt. If you were running a multi billion pound organisation, would you engage with him?

 

It's a depressing shambles, and we constantly seem to shoot ourselves in the foot, usually through inexperience, incompetence, a major lack of imagination, and a willingness to accept third rate anything. To encourage business and proper investment into the city, we need people who can truly represent the city, and reflect the bright, entrepreneurial, imaginative, energetic place the city should be aspiring to be, rather than the laughing stock it too often is. The Adelphi is a beautiful building from the outside, easily the equal of most London hotels, yet I wouldn't let my dog stay there if I had one. Like it or not, we need to get people into the city that have seen how things should be done properly, and have the ability to deliver them.

Yeah the adelphi is vile. Id rather sleep in the bogs in the vines

[Creator Supreme]

Are The Guardian moving to Manchester?

It was originally the Manchester Guardian anyway.

[Creator Supreme]

That's it. All the retail jobs in the world are not going to save the city. Retail is low paid, and requires people with disposable income to sustain it. When the average salary in Liverpool must be around the lowest in the UK (from a city perspective), then it's clear that this retail empire is built on sand and will soon be replaced by wall to wall Poundlands. What is needed is commerce (old school and new school), and plenty of it - finance, insurance, IT etc - the council should do whatever it takes to bring that sort of business back into the city. Businesses in the south east are squeaking with spiralling expenses - L&G are selling up their campus on prime south east real estate and relocating to Cardiff. We should be winning that sort of business for Liverpool.

 

It doesn't help that we've got in Joe Anderson one of the very worst ambassadors the city could have. He looks awful, the very epitome of a stereotypical parochial northern council leader - old, fat, lazy, ugly, and just looks thick and corrupt. If you were running a multi billion pound organisation, would you engage with him?

 

It's a depressing shambles, and we constantly seem to shoot ourselves in the foot, usually through inexperience, incompetence, a major lack of imagination, and a willingness to accept third rate anything. To encourage business and proper investment into the city, we need people who can truly represent the city, and reflect the bright, entrepreneurial, imaginative, energetic place the city should be aspiring to be, rather than the laughing stock it too often is. The Adelphi is a beautiful building from the outside, easily the equal of most London hotels, yet I wouldn't let my dog stay there if I had one. Like it or not, we need to get people into the city that have seen how things should be done properly, and have the ability to deliver them.

Having worked for L&G mate, they've already got a big presence in Cardiff. It was more of a pisser that after 6 scouse underwriters worked for them for a year and received all the plaudits possible, they decided to open a new underwriting office in frigging Edinburgh.

 

That was 12 years ago and I'm still fuming!

[stringvest]

Having worked for L&G mate, they've already got a big presence in Cardiff. It was more of a pisser that after 6 scouse underwriters worked for them for a year and received all the plaudits possible, they decided to open a new underwriting office in frigging Edinburgh.

 

That was 12 years ago and I'm still fuming!

 

 

Yep, but it's good to see that they're moving away from Surrey - there's absolutely no need for that business to be there.  Liverpool used to be a commerce hub, especially in insurance.  We now have call centres and shops.  I hate to think what the city centre will look like in 10 years.

[Creator Supreme]

Yep, but it's good to see that they're moving away from Surrey - there's absolutely no need for that business to be there. Liverpool used to be a commerce hub, especially in insurance. We now have call centres and shops. I hate to think what the city centre will look like in 10 years.

I agree, we were taken over by Crapita 5 years ago, and within 8 months they closed our office in town, moved us to Stockport, and since then to Mancland. There are no life companies left in Liverpool, and to be honest in the rest of the North West either, maybe one or two at a push.

 

Most of them are in Scotland, mainly Edinburgh, London, and the South West.

 

Like my old fella, I've managed to work in a dying job.