Petition to: Condemn repeated failures of Liverpool's Civic Leadership

A LEADING councillor last night called for an independent investigation into the cancellation of the Mathew Street Festival, claiming that the council’s own inquiry was unsatisfactory.

Liverpool City Council’s Labour’s deputy leader, Cllr Paul Brant, who has already called for council leader Warren Bradley to quit over the fiasco, said the council’s investigation was not independent and would not provide “ a full and frank disclosure of the facts.”

His comments came as Cllr Bradley was due to return from a holiday. He has vowed to rescue the annual festival.

A detailed plan for its resurrection is expected to be made public this week, possibly as early as today.

Outrage reverberated across Merseyside last week after the event was cancelled just three weeks before it was due to go ahead.

A leading expert on health and safety, brought in just over a week ago to examine arrangements, advised Liverpool’s Culture Company and the city council to walk away from the event on health and safety grounds.

Now Cllr Brant said the city council must take responsibility for their role in the “embar- rassing situation” and ensure a totally independent inquiry was held to help restore faith in Liverpool’s administration.

He warned that failure to do so would not only permanently damage the city’s reputation but could impact on private sector confidence in the Capital of Culture year.

He said: “They tell us that the investigation into how we ended up in this shambles is going to be conducted by council chief executive Colin Hilton. That is not independent.

“It does not seem right, in fact it stinks.

“We will never get a full and frank disclosure of the facts unless a totally independent investigator is brought in.

“We need to restore Liverpool’s reputation and faith in the people who run this city.”

Campaigners for an elected mayor for Liverpool also warned that while the festival could be salvaged, the city council’s credibility could not.

The chairman of amayorforliverpool.org, Liam Fogarty, added: “Council leaders have shown themselves to be both powerless and clueless when it matters most.

“ The people of Liverpool won’t forget this shameful fiasco in a hurry.

“Town hall spin that the council is now riding to the rescue should fool no-one.

“While the Culture Company has behaved disgracefully, the council cannot pretend it has had nothing to do with this is utter nonsense.

“Councillors Warren Bradley and Mike Storey sit on the company board.

“Liverpool council tax payers are bankrolling the Culture Company and council employees have been transferred wholesale to its Millennium House headquarters.

“The company is the council’s creation. To all intents and purposes, the Culture Company and the council are one and the same.

“People need to be reminded that Jason Harborow (chief executive of the Culture Company) was recently appointed as the city council’s executive director for culture, media and sport.

“A few resignations won’t restore the council’s credibility. Nor will it heal our city’s damaged reputation.”

 http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2007/08/06/demand-for-new-probe-into-festival-shambles-64375-19576107/

Dear loyal readers,

We have missed you.

That's why we have persuaded the legendary Tony Parrish (alive and well and living in clover, somewhere across the water, surrounded by a bevy of gorgeous followers catering to his every whim, ed) to hand over his blog to his fans (that's us, ed) so that we can carry on his good work.

And there has been no better time for a new, tougher, more uncompromising broom to sweep through Liverpool subculture than now - when the dunderheads at the Culture Company appear to have finally gone bonkers/insane/committed hara kiri - by cancelling the Mathew Street festival.

As we speak, our favourite organ, the Echo is launching a last ditch bid to hold Europe's biggest outdoor music festival (what about Glastonbury? ed) in a pub somewhere off Old Hall Street.

Our current council leader Warren Bradley has flown back from the Canary Islands, muttering "crisis, what crisis" under his breath and has also revealed his own personal 'no booze' rescue plan to save the festival.

At any moment, we are expecting Gordon Brown to divert his attention from boring foot and mouth disease and form a four piece combo with Blair, Prescott and Campbell called "the Spinners" to make a guest appearance in someone's back yard in Kensington and save the Festival.

Oh what fun we are having.

What is clear from this monumental cock-up is that the remnants of the cabal are still in control of Culture.

Bradley has allowed them to take control without the slightest effort at holding them to account.

Arrogant, unaccountable, undemocratic and a law unto themselves, Colin Cover Up and The Harbarrowboy appear to have decided amongst themselves to cancel the Mathew Street Festival.

Just like that. ("Or it could be like that" - Tommy Cooper)

Warren Bradley has professed total ignorance (no surprise there then, ed).

Which makes us wonder why anybody would want to vote Liberal Democract ever again when their leader doesn't have a clue what is going on in the city.

What's the point in voting for him then?

It seems we would be better off abolishing inconvenient elections all together and just letting Cover Up and his band of incompetents run the show forever (and award themselves huge pay rises every month, no doubt, ed)

In the meantime, Liverpool will be left to become even more of a music hall joke, scores of businesses will go to the wall, thousands of visitors will be left with nothing to do and the city will lose one of its genuinely international events.

Whats more, hard-faced Harbarrowboy and Hilton appear to have been a bit surprised by the universal outrage which has greeted their bungling decision.

Which shows how lacking in judgment they are and how little they understand the city of Liverpool.

It's a bit like the Town Clerk of Rio de Janeiro cancelling Mardi Gras and being a bit surprised that people have got just a teentsy weentsy bit upset.

What cast-iron fools we have in charge of our city.

Bradley should resign - the Mathew Street debacle happened on his watch. Professing ignorance compounds his error.

As the senior politician he must take full responsibility.

But before he goes, he should demand the resignations of both Harbarrowboy and Hilton who are complicit in the worst Public Relations disaster for Liverpool since Degsy decided to pack in social work and become a full-time member of the Tendency.

They are clearly incompetent and out of their depth. Their arrogance in thinking that they could get away with such a decision is typical of the cabalist rule.

They treat the people of Liverpool with utter contempt and have no respect for the city's culture, its history or how it is viewed by the outside world.

Time for a clear-out and a clean-up.

And time we had politicians in charge who could get a firm grip of the shower of greedy wasters at the Culture Company and the city council (preferably around the neck, ed). No one would notice any difference if the Harbarrowboy was sacked.

Either that or we could always get Warren to give Chas Cole a ring and see if he can save the day ?

Perhaps we can hold the Mathew Street Festival in Sefton, instead?

 http://liverpoolsubculture.blogspot.com/2007/08/tonys-blog-under-new-management-pity.html

The government - yes, that government which acts on behalf of the rich - created this online petition thing. They know exactly what they're doing, people will waste their time and energy chasing up others to sign their petitions. Even if it ever ends up in Gordon Brown's inbox, you know that one word from Rupert Murdoch or Digby Jones is worth ten million of our names.

The only way we could ever get anything out of the capitalist state would be if our demands were followed up with a believable '...or else'.

And of course the council leaders and execs are a bunch of crooks, they're looking out for number one. It's time we started to do the same, by organising politically in our communities and workplaces, organising to make the government an irrelevance. After all, it is our petitions, letters to MPs and votes which give the crooks power. They are just men and women in suits who sit behind desks. We have the power.