During Liverpool's successful bid to become European Capital of Culture the first time a lot of the people who feel a major part of the city's culture felt the impact of the bid was to find their activities discouraged or outlawed. If you want a clear indication of the way mindsets within the city council were about to work then you could see it no more clearly than in an Echo article smugly announcing that skateboarders were about to be cleared off the streets. This is a culture that has grown up completely organically and does not make demands of people who are not involved. Its crime is not to 'look right'.

The way most people in bands, or putting on bands have been hit is to find it harder to advertise the events they are putting on.

Flyering has now been made illegal, except for bizarre loopholes that the big chain stores, will find a way through. Flyposting has always apparently been illegal, but nothing too heavy handed has gone on to stop it, until recently. Now that Liverpool has won the award of capital of culture it looks set to get even worse.

The larger more corporate posters that appear to be above the law, seem to have become even more single-minded and the smaller organisations generally putting on not-for profit events have found themselves being dealt with even more harshly.

The hypocrisies surrounding flyposting laws are too detailed to go into properly, but it does seem that a wall that would be ugly and bare that is instead covered with increasingly well designed posters about events actually being organised by people working in the city is considered more offensive by the council than massive billboards advertising large productions.

These productions are normally all over the papers and TV anyway and the content can be often quite offensive to the average person. At the time of writing St. George's Hall is literally covered on one side with an unsightly car advert.

We are asking for freedom to flypost in areas where you are not affecting peoples' day-to-day business and not providing a nuisance value to anyone. If the Council made some effort to provide space and support for smaller organisations then there would be less problems for everyone involved and more and more cultural events would be properly advertised and attended.

If you want to get involved in the campaign and organising a protest against LCC policy contact  defconradio@hotmail.com