Kepler-186

Simple but tasty, and dead quick to make. https://www.nigella.com/recipes/drunken-noodles

Not a bad read on the Echo. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/death-addiction-hope-frontline-liverpool-21189833

Good old Boris giving the lefties what for, guv’nor ha ha ha doff me cap matey! Only the best is good enough, hey Gavin?

I care about it but realise it’ll take more than glib campaigning to change my shopping habits: it is a collective failure of governments around the world, most of which in the West have been infiltrated by the American far right libertarians like the Koch brothers, who’ve brought us Brexit, Bolsonaro, and long term damage to the fight for green issues, as well as warping public opinion of things like health care, social security, and “big” government or tax in general. I’m only partly into the book that details it called Dark Money by Jane Mayer, but think of all those shadowy think tanks in the UK, and GB News. There’s a special place in hell for that Kate Andrews and her ilk. What chance do we as individuals have to make an effective change when the Amazon is being deliberately burnt down to grow soy or farm cattle, and Siberia is warmer than Ibiza? As has been pointed out, manufacturing was outsourced to China, and the goods created return in massively polluting container ships burning awful bunker fuel. We’re all “guilty” as consumers, but the systems have been set up long before we were born: just think how coffee was originally from Ethiopia, or tea from China, but spread with European colonialism and slavery, yet we all enjoy a brew first thing. As a species we don’t deserve this planet, and the space billionaires can get fucked, too.

The RNLI, a beloved British institution that does selfless good in the world, turned on by ignorant racist trolls who’ve been encouraged by our government, media barons and their populist minions. Shameful days.

Yeah, handball is played on the same courts as fútbol sala. Instead we’re asking grassroots footy teams to find £150-200 quid an hour to play on crushed up car tyres.

Weird that other countries compete across the board while posh kids get to go snowboarding.

Cracking game of volleyball, Brazil v Dominican Republic, just finished now. Where’s Seb “Olympic Legacy Tory Cunt” Coe telling the UK why we don’t have teams and individuals across all sports? After all, that was in the sales pitch, much like the Olympic park being used to develop young athletes, and not a freebie for the Porn Barons.

Slash police numbers, juke the stats for 11 years, hire younger, less experienced plod on worse contracts, say you’re tough on crime, but sell police stations to developers.

Another little hidden classic if you’re about in town. https://www.chopchopliverpool.co.uk/

Dimmies in the U.K.

2nd time a memorial to Lanarkshire International Brigade volunteers has been vandalised. The lad and Dad who cleaned up the first time had their work spotted by PSG and the lad got a signed shirt. Worrying times. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/in-your-area/lanarkshire/vile-fascists-vandalise-scots-spanish-24569546.amp

42 years of Thatcherism: shiny flats that won’t last 20 years sold to you by Gary fucking Neville but old, solid terraces built to last for a quid. Crime and destitution next to Metro City. Once that bloody stadium is built, if ever, it’ll employ 1000 tops, most on low wages. No transport there to speak off. Peel have sat on that land, avoided tax, just like all the ships that use the Mersey are on flags of convenience with sailors earning a pittance to bring in cheap, plastic shite.

From SevenStreets site. UNESCO's Binned Us Off. What Next For Liverpool? Our World Heritage status has gone, floating out of sight like a chippy wrapper from the Lobster Pot. But it's not about them anymore. It's about us. SevenStreets 47 min ago1 by David Lloyd History will not look kindly on former mayor Joe Anderson. The man who had it all to lose. And lost it. The man who presided over a “toxic culture” that wanted development at all costs, and gave us shit cladding and retrospective planning approval that led to tumorous growths on elegant buildings. Of course, there are some who’ll say “who needs UNESCO”? Well, maybe some places don’t. Venice doesn’t need UNESCO - I’d say its tourist future is pretty well secured, but it recognises the value of paying things forward. Of development that enhances and preserves, rather than removing and replacing. So when it was threatened with its delisting from UNESCO’s World Heritage list, it set to work, and banned all cruise ships from squeezing through its Grand Canal. It didn’t need to. The tourists would have come either way. Us? We green-lighted another “bold and ambitious” residential tower block that’s currently being delisted too, as the property developer fights insolvency claims, and investors struggle to recoup the millions sunk into yet another ailing scheme. We put our trust in shiny new castles in the air, we remove public realm open spaces at the waterfront to make way for new car parking bays for Merseytravel staff, all while pretending to support a greener city (what’s that all about anyway?). How many tourists will come to see these? How many guide books will rave about the Hilton Liverpool ONE? What happens when we wake up and realise we had something special, and we sold it down the river for a handful of schemes that make us look like Leeds, or Swansea or anywhere? The stripping of our UNESCO status - blamed on years of development causing an “irreversible loss” of our historic Victorian docks and mercantile heart - was anything but inevitable. New buildings don’t have to be anathema to heritage. This is not about us “preserving in aspic”, as Steve Rotherham suggests. The Copper House for example, newly completed along The Strand, shows how a confident, elegant new arrival can enhance the city’s curb appeal, with its garden courtyard entrance and cool white window reliefs. It’s a painful truth - but a history worth remembering - that it was a Tory, Michael Hestletine, who’s done more for our waterfront since Jesse Hartley. The Merseyside Development Committee could have bulldozered the docks and built something akin to the Crowne Plaza hotel, but they didn’t. Will Everton’s stadium, taking over Bramley Moore Dock, suck the life out of the North Docks area, or give it the vital shot in the arm it needs? Well, let’s go and visit Anfield. Stroll along any of the well-worn streets around Oakfield Road and let’s talk about regeneration, or of how a super-stadium seeds life in its community. Rafa was wrong to call the Blues a “small club”, yet there’s no doubt Anfield will continue to be the real tourist Mecca. But how many of the thousands of fans shuttled in and out spend any money in Booze and News? Not a fair comparison? Anfield not very touristy? Not very well connected to the city? It’s the same distance from the Pier Head as Bramley Moore Dock is, the new home of Everton. So why not? It could be. Instead, we tin-up the terraced streets and let the bins go uncollected. Look at the London Stadium, aka West Ham’s home ground, in East London. Hermetically sealed, like an implanted cell, sucking life out of its host, giving nothing back. A monument to social cleansing. All compulsory purchase orders and displaced housing. Close your eyes and imagine the vendors bidding for business around the new Everton stadium. A Costa, perhaps? A cheeky Nandos and a KFC drive-through, perchance? Go take a look at what’s happening there now, or at least within its orbit. The Ten Streets area is bubbling up with incredible energy. Enjoy a zingy espresso at Cafe Riccado’s, browse in the market, hear about what creators and inventors are doing at MAKE’s workshops, enjoy jazz and grub at the Social, and feel the sense that something special is happening here. The irony is that the Council got behind Ten Streets. But they got behind the Baltic Triangle - another regenerated warehouse area - too. And hands up who thinks that narrative is progressing the way we wanted it to? With venue Constellations dying, giving way to another identikit residential block, and 24 Kitchen Street - probably the city’s most progressive dance music club right now - in a seemingly endless stand-off with looming developments. The approved Everton stadium The use of stadiums as regenerative catalysts has been investigated by numerous academic studies. They’ve all found that five, ten or even 20 years on they’ve contributed little or no economic uplift for their local areas. Clubs will argue the opposite, of course. Everton-supporting ex-Mayors too. But it’s the clubs that reallybenefit. In the ten years since they moved to the Emirates Stadium in 2006, Arsenal’s annual match-day revenue almost tripled, from £33.8m in 2004 to £100.2m in 2014. One thing that’s undeniable though is a super-stadium’s effect on local property and land values. So if driving up land and property prices is called ‘regeneration’, then we’re home and dry. But what will the start ups of Ten Streets think about that? For us, the idea that inserting a massive stadium into any area in need of regeneration is automatically going to be a salve for all its problems is naïve beyond words. It takes collaboration, creativity, integration and deeply-connected planning to make a place work and bring it to life again. So this isn’t really about UNESCO after all. It’s about us. Our future. What is it we’re fighting for, anyway? What are we good at (hint: take a look at Ten Streets)? And how do we - all of us - protect our past while encouraging the new? Liverpool is an old city. So why have we forgotten the art of playing the long game?

At one point one third of the world’s shipping was registered in Liverpool. It’s rich merchant class built the parks, mansions and buildings we love today. At the same time, the “scousers” lived in some of the worst slums in Europe which meant Liverpool had a long list of world first’s when it came to public health reforms. Tourism is more than going to your hotel, quick shufty on Trip Advisor and go from there. Even the story of its decline is up there with Detroit, but if no one is selling it because they think shite quick build Lego apartments for Steve from Singapore to dodge tax in is the answer to regenerating a city then quite frankly they can get fucked, the massive sell out cunts. Even in the comments on FB there was a Yank lamenting this saying over there it’s “ here once stood” as some neo yuppie has put up some monstrosity. The blame lies squarely with Liverpool Labour I’m afraid and I hate having to say that because the other pricks are just as complicit. Maybe things would’ve been different if they’d knocked up a Canary Wharf in the early 80s like they did for East London. Bastards the lot of them.