Those of us who found out about the meeting had to
sit through boring speeches by the chief of Liverpool
Vision (an unaccountable quango whose job it is to
come up with stupid ideas) and Houston Securities,
a holding company that has been selected to bid for
this construction. Houston has promised that any
cost above the 155 million budgeted for will be paid
out of its own pockets. Since this company has
never published any accounts abd does not tangibly
exist, it is quite likely that it has no pockets
to speak of.

We were shown a short video that was about as informative
as a TV advert. The stadium was going to be multipurpose.
Not just for football. You could wall off different
bits of it so that we could pay to spectate
more intimate sports such as ice hockey and skate
boarding. With the lack of facilities for kids to
play skateboarding (requiring nothing more
than a few bits of ironmongery on some waste ground)
in spite of the demand, how nice it is
that money is available for equipment strictly
for the use of professionals.

Minor details such as the transport disaster area
that would result on match days, have not been
sorted out. They couldn't give any accurate
figures on their plans because they had just made
a major change to the design: the stadium was
going to be rotated 90 degrees to the previous
situation. They expected 60% of the visitors to
come by public transport-- an unrealistically
high proportion given the nature of this country.
The investment in trams, etc is not factored into
the cost. Also, they said, a lot of people could
ride over Mersey on the ferry.

Once all the boring stuff was over with, the
councilors at the other end of the table began
laying into the scheme. Nothing had changed.
Half a million quid of council money had been
paid to "consultants" to verify the plans (come
up with estimates of jobs created, etc), but
their reports have not been made available, even
to other the council members, let alone the public.
The justification of this development is that it
will create jobs and regenerate the city. Now,
the quantity of new jobs is crucial. If you
don't make very many you don't exactly do any
help for the deprived area. The figures vary
from 3,000 to 6,000 depending on the press release,
but the exact nature of these calculations has
been kept confidential.

Some of these guys got pretty loud in their
opposition, and they were articulate, and they
were more interesting, and made more sense than
the bunch of suits with the money and power at
the other end of the table. We've told you enough
times that you can't have a ferry
across the Mersey bring people to this site
because when the tide is out the mud flats go
for 50 metres out! A development of this
nature will pretty much wreck the economy of
the city centre with transport gridlock and
extra hooligans in the evening. The private
money contributions into this development
do not exist, any more than it existed for
the Millenium Dome. All the previous companies
who were interested in this scheme have walked
away, so now we are left with this Houston
Secutities invention.

The leader of the city council, Mike Storey,
who was not there, is a major backer of this
development. As are Liverpool Vision. As are
a raft of private consultants latching onto this
joke like leeches, doing everything they can
to tip it over the limit and get it started.
Then the gravy train really starts to flow.

Meanwhile, buildings fall apart, rubbish gets
privatized and doesn't get collected. Recycling
it, which would create jobs, is ruled out of
the question in favour of building an
incinerator. Extremely worthy community projects
go unfunded for lack of the skills to apply
for the European funding to raise the almost
negligeable amounts of money they need to
survive. The last thing the people in this
city need is a big business owned stadium
where you will have to pay top dollar just to
*watch* a bunch of rich people on a pitch or
on a stage make a performance that has little
to do with improving one's life.

Why is it that huge projects are only ever on
offer? Why is it that the "economies of scale"
really only apply to the fact that a project
of great size can team together enough salesmen
and accountants to give these big ideas such an
advantage that every available penny is sucked
up by them? Why can't the EU grant for a region
do something simple like assign 10,000 pounds
to each of the 35,000 residents in the city, and
we will each nominate our portion of money towards
whatever capital project we choose, ourselves. If
everyone thinks that a stadium is important, then
that will happen. If people can think of
better improvements to be made on each street,
that can happen too.

People at the bottom know very well what sorts
of things will improve their community, get kids
off the street, protect their environment and
safeguard their economy. Big business doesn't
have a clue, and it doesn't care. All they
bring are skills to extract public money for
their own use to the maximum. They spread lies
about bringing in private capital investment,
and the know-how to capitalize on the tourist
potential of ancient history, like the Beatles.
In the process, they make damn sure that such
a phenomenon can ever happen again because we
will all be too busy serving burgers in their
stadium which was built just so that big acts from
abroad can come over and play their crap music
at us. And they call this "Vision".