August 2007 Archives

It has been a strange sort of week for Liverpool, hasn't it, between the highs of our 800th birthday celebrations and the desperate lows of the deeply shocking murder of young Rhys Jones.
As a newspaper, we have faced quite a balancing act in terms of wanting to seize the opportunity for celebration of a historic day for the city, while trying to adequately reflect the sense of bewilderment and outrage generated by the shooting of an innocent 11 years-old boy.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the opening ceremony of the 2007 Southport Flower Show yesterday.
There was a bit of rain around in the morning, but these days there is so much going on under canvas that the rotten August weather is really only an inconvenience rather than a block on enjoying one of the real highlights of the Merseyside calendar.

Today's announcement that the Mathew Street Festival has been cancelled on safety grounds is an unmitigated disaster for Liverpool's credibility.
You can't take chances with public safety, and it would have been madness to fly in the face of the consultants' advice and go ahead with the event at this point. What is unforgivable in my view is that things were allowed to reach the point where this decision had to be taken.