Thursday, August 02, 2007

Mathew Street Festival axed!

Below you can read the Labour Group press release issued today, what a total shambles. This crew are totally incapable of organising, managing, negotiating anything at all. It is so awful, I dont really know how to respond to this, so many people will be angry and disappointed...

Echo story available by clicking title of this entry.

Liverpool Labour Group calls Mathew Street Cancellation a catastrophe for the city

Liverpool City Council’s last minute decision to cancel the Liverpool Mathew Street festival is a catastrophe for the city’s national and international reputation to deliver public events leading up to the city’s year of Capital of Culture 2008.

Says Councillor Paul Brant, acting Leader of the Labour Group “millions of pounds will be lost to the city’s economy and this last minute cancellation will come too late for many of the travel plans for visitors from as far away as Japan and America.”

Councillor Paul Brant said “the construction work at the Pier Head has been planned and known about by the City Council for years and the decision to cancel the Mathew Street festival because of the resulting crowd control and safety issues demonstrate an appalling ability to properly foresee the consequences. Many thousands of visitors and local businesses will pay the price for the Council’s incompetence.

The holidays of many thousands of people will be ruined by this decision and I am calling on Councillor Warren Bradley, the Leader of the City Council, who has responsibility for this issue to return to the city and sort out the mess”.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shouldnt it be renamed the Jason Marborrow memorial festival, because like Kennedys assination everyone will remember where they were when "Jason dropped the ball".

Newcastle 10 Liverpool 0

Warren put that bloody fire out

Anonymous said...

Shouldn't we do the decent thing and give it back to Gateshead?

At least that way we would emerge from this debacle with some dignity.

The average salary among the 90 Culture Company staff is £40k - and Jason is on four times that.

Anonymous said...

Reading the newspapers, it apparent that no councillors were aware of this - I think they should t ake control of whatever is (or isn't) happening at the culture company.

We elected our councillors (mine's Labour btw, and I voted for her) and they should run the city.

Louise Baldock said...

Anonymous, it wouldnt surprise you to learn that I agree with you totally.

The point about politicians in local government is that they are meant to be in charge. They are meant to have the vision, the sense of direction,the strategic plans and then ask the officers to put those into practice, to put the detail in.

In Liverpool it seems the officers are in charge and the LibDems merely bystanders

I know it always winds up the LibDems when we talk about Manchester, but in truth, the Labour council and the Labour leader there would never have allowed this to happen.

Let's hope the people remember this come next May and elect a Labour council so that we can wrest the control back, not from the LibDems who clearly dont have any, but from the officers who dont seem to have the experience to manage on their behalf.

Anonymous said...

Remember that phrase Lamont used about Major - "in office, but not in power"... seems apt for Liverpool today.