Beaches

I have always wanted to create a Meme, and I can’t think of anything better than DVD’s in a fridge.

The idea is to choose a DVD which has hurt you in some way – made you cry or scared you.  Then, a la Joey from Friends, put it into the fridge because there it is safe………  First up, Beaches……

Unfortunately the building is suffering from being perfectly designed at one point in time for one purpose, and struggles to be adaptable for the modern age and has been completely empty for four years, but Norgas were slowly moving staff out for years before.

For me the photos are a great homage to what was and the empty spaces, inside and out, are almost haunting.

The course is run by the Workers Education Association, and I chose it in part because the course is run at 92.1 7Waves Community Radio in Leasowe on the Wirral at a purpose-built training facility, quite possibly the best in the region.

Our first real assignment – write, record and produce an advert.  I went a little crazy, wrote three and produced two.  You can hear them below:

In part this is because I could never work out whether I had spelt polcentre right(?)

However, there are some serious misgivings about the direction of this promotion.  Capital of Culture was a great success at creating Liverpool as a visitor destination.

But let’s be clear, the permanent re-organisation of Liverpool’s economy didn’t happen.  Any hopes as to the reorganisation of our structural economy were seriously let down and a great year for tourism was the main/only accomplishment.  On many other counts our hopes were not achieved, and any progress that did occur has been seriously fucked by the recession and the coalition government.

So, there needs to be some thought.  Including some consideration as to what the future of our city is.  And it isn’t about talk and hype, like 2008 was.

This time, things need to change.

Given the total lack of calamitous panic, I take it everyone is ok with 0% growth over six months.  People were primed to look for evidence of two quarters of negative growth which would have meant the UK was in recession again – cue stories about Osborne’s economic package hurting too much, etc.

But…… What if parts of the UK are still in recession, but we just don’t know it?

The ONS doesn’t research regional growth figures quarterly, like it does nationally, but we do have some evidence about how the North is responding to the national picture.

According to the North West Regional Intelligence Unit, GVA growth in the North West and North East since 1990 has averaged 1.5% – six points behind the UK average of 2.1%!  (Yorkshire was only 4 points behind on 1.7%)  On this basis, arguably the last quarter of 2010 affected the NW and NE by growth of -1.1% and in the first quarter of 2011 at -0.1%, giving us two quarters of economic growth and our Northern Recession.

However, the fall in GVA during the last recession affected the region differently, losing 4.2% in the region against 4.6% nationally.  This comparison is only a 0.4% differential, meaning the North (just) scraped by with only 0.1% growth in 2011.  This is also using figures from before the Comprehensive Spending Review, which may be enough to wipe out that 0.1% glimmer of hope.

The CSR is the reason the NWRIU’s economic forecast panel believes that there will be a 0.5% differential between the NW’s and UK’s growth, but probably not for a couple of years yet when the impact of the CSR really kicks in.

Probably.

As I frequently tell people, taking an accurate picture of the economic story in the UK is a relatively new phenomenon.  The new Labour Government in 1997 came in to power bringing in not just regional policies, but also the analysis to inform them for the first time.

Picture this – we are one of the 8 largest modern economies of the world and until the year 2000, we simple never bothered to count the size of our economy in the 9 different regions of the country.  It’s the equivalent of the US saying “I know, just divide by 52 and that’s what each State’s economy is worth.”  If it had been France we’d be laughing at them.

Yet, that is the situation we were in.  And it appears there is no sign of improving that situation.  The ONS produces a snapshot each year which tells us how each regional economy did over the last 12 months, but is it really too much to ask that as the UK figures come out we know how our region is doing as well?  Maybe then we would know how our region is really doing in the face of real economic change.

Personally, I still find it morally bankrupt that we as a developed nation are willing to know so little about how our economy works and monitor its progression.

I’m not advocating regionalism – I’m advocating a truly national approach.  You fix a house by tackling the individual problems in each room, not replastering all the walls when we need a new window in the bedroom and a new lightbulb in the bathroom.

SH

First, how she got the job: (courtesy of the daily seinfeld)

Every constituency in the UK will be reviewed, while the Boundary Commission rejigs the political map to make sure each is within 5% of the UK electorate quota of 76,641.  Therefore each constituency must have between 72,810 and 80,473 voters.

In Merseyside, only Knowsley, Liverpool Riverside, St Helens North and St Helens South & Whiston are currently within this range.

Across Merseyside there is a total electorate of 1,010,822, which if divided by the electorate quota gives us 14.01 seats, compared to the current 15 we have now.  Therefore, we can expect to lose one seat within Merseyside.

What is not clear is how the boundary commission will reach its conclusions – will it create constituencies that cross county boundaries? There is an expectation they will, but with Merseyside managing an almost perfect divisible number of 14, it’s still possible that won’t happen here, except for one awkward problem – the River Mersey.

Looking at the numbers there are severe deficiencies in seats such as Birkenhead and Wirral South on one side and Liverpool Walton and Liverpool Wavertree on the other – each only managing a touch over 62,000.  But they’re on different sides of the Mersey.  When sticking to county boundaries you reach the intractable problem of cross-river constituencies which almost nobody in their right mind thinks is a good idea.  The solution therefore will probable mean seepage into the surrounding counties of Cheshire and Lancashire.

Ellesmere Port and Neston, with 66,965 voters has got to be worrying about whether it is a sacrificial lamb to both Wirral and Cheshire Seats, sitting in the middle as it does.  This would protect Eddisbury and Tatton (both just over 65,000) from change and leave unharmed two Conservative frontbenchers.  (Is Stephen O’Brien a frontbencher?  Haven’t seen him in a while….)

Or we could just abolish the seat with the fewest voters, Wirral West (only 55, 077) removing the Wirral’s only Conservative MP. If not, savvy Labour seat-seekers should start showing an interest in Wirral West as it absorbs an almost 40% increase in voters from nearby, more labour, areas……..

A final note – the electorate figures for Liverpool are 315,865 in contrast to the population of 441,900 at the last census – just 71%.  No other evidence should be necessary that this is a flawed methodology for calculating how people are represented.  It isn’t hard to use our imaginations to work out why a Conservative government would want to restructure the whole democratic system in this way.


You can see the numbers and news release for yourself at http://www.boundarycommissionforengland.org.uk/