Say Hello (To Taxpayer Money), Wave(s) Goodbye (To Pretending You Know What You’re Doing)

Enjoying the weather?

Chances are, probably not, as Storm Kathleen is having a whale of a time bashing up our western coastline today.

It’s been the first test for Wirral’s great impenetrable sea defence at West Kirby that came in not for a snip – this is Wirral Council we’re talking about – but massively over budget at £19 million of taxpayers’ money.

Now, obfuscating about the source of finances for this project or that project is a tedious game all political entities indulge in, presumably thinking the little people don’t understand all this high-brow stuff.

In this case the council will say the £19m didn’t come out of their budget, which is true. But the money definitely came out of our taxpayer pockets, which is also true.

But other people’s money either way, right?

The Great Wall found its way to construction via the usual labyrinthine route only a local council can fashion:

1. Cook up a mad idea to spend other people’s money that you know voters will hate.
2. Hold consultation. Discover voters do indeed hate it. Decide to do it anyway.
3. Find oddities on the fringe of general society to be the local fall guys when it all goes belly up and throw them a stick.
4. Seek out a quango to hide behind when the results typically aren’t what you had hoped for – despite ignoring deafening advice from others.
5. Apply for public cash.
6. Receive public cash.
7. Waste public cash.

Any heathens who dared to question the veracity of this scheme were given a block response from the council which looked (and looks – until about 9am tomorrow, when no doubt it’ll disappear) like this:

So there you have it. All safe. All smashing.

Right up until this morning when the wall got its first actual stress test….

Which is when we got this instead (if you don’t use Facebook, ask someone who can in order to see the video).

Which itself resulted in this complete and utter idiocy:

Then:

1. Scoff at those pointing out the wall is a £19 million chocolate teapot.
2. Furiously stamp up and down insisting the wall has done its job while literally everyone else takes on the little boy role to point out the emperor is wearing no clothes.
3. Thunderously declare that black is white:

Yes, that’s Green Party councillor Pat Cleary claiming, with what seems to be a straight face, that the wall isn’t really there to stop water, just to make the waves a bit less, erm, tidally. King Canute need not worry just yet.

Although Cllr Pat seemed not to notice that the ferocity of the water – you know, the force of it, Cllr Pat – meant staff working at Tanskey’s on WK promenade had to be rescued by lifeboat crew (brilliant as ever).

Meanwhile, Storm Kathleen will cause havoc for the next couple of days before eventually blowing itself out.

As is now tradition, the next named storm will have as usual a female name beginning with L, the next letter in the alphabet.

Odds on Storm Liz, anyone?

PS. Someone else not enjoying the weather will be the Echo, and the idiots quoted in this at only 11.39am this morning…..

You really couldn’t make it up.

In Memoriam

So. Farewell

Then, Bargain Booze.

You were red and white,

Stocked with shite,

For those with nothing to lose.

You were our own little ice box

From Siberia,

Where even the Arctic feared to tread.

Where every customer who entered,

Contributed to their one day being dead.

No more Pickled Onion

Space Invaders,

For just 10p a pack.

They’ve finally run right out of them,

And there’s still “nothing in the back”.

The random crisps

Will shatter no more

Inside your flimsy plastic “bags”.

And no more meter top ups

For those pesky poor old hags.

Now we mourn your passing,

Like the setting of the sun.

But not as much as

A tab ’til end of the month,

And a cheery “You okay, hun?”

Because now you’re just an Evri,

Parcels inside a room.

An Aladdin’s cave

If you like

For people desperate to lift the gloom.

We’ll miss

That annoying buzzer,

And the icicles dripping from our nose.

But this is Hoylake after all,

And this is how it goes.

At least there’s still

The furniture restorers,

Just across the street.

Even if the pigeons

Don’t exactly keep it neat.

There’s always

The closed chippy one way,

Or the shuttered takeaway next door.

But don’t dare ask about the cinema

As they’ll brand you a repetitive bore.

So now we can’t have a beach

Or even watch a film.

No slap-up, sit-down feasts in

A dining experience bar none,

With no answers to those questions t’whether it’s all really just a con.

But if you wouldn’t all mind shutting up

As you’ll find HVL are on to a winner.

Not for them those buckets and spades

Or family time,

Or even a fancy sit down dinner.

The usual suspects will carry on,

Though only if we let ’em.

“Close it all down and shut it off, keep Hoylake for the righteous:

“The Mad, the T-shirts, the Swampies,

“The oh-so-perfectly pious.”

• With apologies to ER Thribb.

Fawkes It

The bad news is that, despite all the evident increases in technology and online research capabilities, despite Attenborough researchers finding a way of filming inch-long translucent jellyfish miles below the sea surface, and despite even Elon Musk (possibly) waking up for the traditional 5am middle-aged gentleman’s visit to the bathroom in between sending rockets into space, there still doesn’t seem to be an available image of a real bulldog licking the proverbial wee off a nettle.

The good news, though, is that we don’t need one, thank goodness.

Instead, we can satisfy ourselves with the thought of the self-styled Hoylake saviour that nobody ever asked for, wandering around Melrose Hall today quietly snarling at people supporting the return of the beach from the absolute stinking and visually appalling swamp he’s helped and encouraged to create.

The sign above, on the advertising hoarding board on Melrose Avenue opposite The Ship, has proved troublesome for Our Jools.

He doesn’t think people should be encouraged to disagree with him, you see.

But this notice was probably a bit too high to destroy, so it stayed up.

Not that it needed it, but the attendance today proved what Julian Priest and his equally fantastically unpopular “sorry if we missed you” mob (it was on every leaflet they swiftly shoved through letterboxes before the local elections earlier this year where they nevertheless drastically failed) simply cannot seem to fathom, a bit like those kids at school, the ones who smelled of malted milk biscuits, when asked to contemplate the idea of shoelaces:

We. Want. Our. Beach. Back.

Not your sand-yachting beach, Our Jools.

All of it.

Today’s lesson for you, OJ Simpleton, was staring reality in the face.

Real people who really disagree with you – and, also, wonder, quite fairly, when did you get put in charge? Who voted for you? Who on earth are you?

Another lesson, also, should be whenever you gaze at that monostrity you helped (with Our Mark Howard) to create at the top (or now bottom, thanks to you guys) of Market Street that now taints the vista of the entire village.

All of these people are now running as fast as they can in their too-small T-shirts and hideous Hawaiian shorts seemingly somehow pretending that the swamp and the Lubyanka are nothing whatsoever to do with them.

But there’s still a swamp.

And there’s still no cinema, no fine arts village, no five star restaurant.

So, thank you to Hoylake Sailing Club and all involved on both creation and clear-up for a magnificent bonfire display on Friday evening (criticised, as ever, by the usual suspects, for “endangering sand” or whatever, and thankfully ignored).

And thank you to the Hoylake Beach Community for today’s undoubtedly successful event.

But the real fireworks should start now with simple answers to simple questions.

When we attended the original launch of the utterly ludicrous beach plan, ironically at the disused building site once known as the town hall before this lot got their hands on it, we were told – instructed – that the event was a “safe space” where dissent was not allowed.

Well, Our Jools, that was many years ago. And the gloves are now off.

So:

Where’s the cinema, Julian?

Where’s the high-dining restaurant, Julian?

Where’s the arts’ village, Julian?

And why did hardly anyone vote for you, Julian?

And, most importantly, after wrecking things most people actually from Wirral hold dear, why on earth are you still even here?

PS. Can’t wait for their, um, PR “wordsmith” to come back at this.

Wirral West MP to stand down at next general election, but will anyone notice?

Margaret Greenwood has signalled her intent to stand down as the Member of Parliament for Wirral West at the next general election, widely expected to be held next year at the latest.

By then she will have been the constituency’s representative for nine years, after first taking her place on Westminster’s green benches after winning the seat from the Conservative incumbent Esther McVey in 2015.

We’re not entirely sure why Ms Greenwood ever really wanted to represent the area, though, as she doesn’t seem to care for it very much.

She supports the swamp, which is now spreading outwards to both West Kirby and Meols, with cunning plans to eventually not-so-stealthily also ruin the beaches of Leasowe, Moreton, Harrison Drive, New Brighton and Egremont, too, all in the name of dodgy ideology.

Even so, a near decade in the corridors of power is something only a rarefied few get to experience, so here’s a list of Ms Greenwood’s greatest achievements as our local MP:

1. Getting voted in.
2. Deciding to quit.
3. Er, that’s it.

Why the sandy beach versus the creatures of the swamp local election results really do matter

Much has been made over the last couple of years about the Chris Packham effect.

It’s where the telly star’s fans leap onto things he says on Twitter and agree with anything he chirps.

Amiable, presentable and intelligent, Mr Packham comes across as the environmental equivalent to what Harry Styles is to teenage girls.

His BBC-funded profile means he’s guaranteed to put bums on seats and get people like Deborah Meadon, off of Dragons’ Den, that we also have to pay for under threat of jail, who has seemingly never met a weed she doesn’t like, in a froth.

It was because of Mr Packham’s intervention into the Hoylake Beach debate – a beach he has, as far as we’re aware, never put his mossy, ever so sensible boots upon – that got the swampies ever so excited.

Finally, they figured, a bloke off the tellybox with a Starmer-esque bouffant and southern accent, resplendent in a yellow puffer jacket, could lead them towards the eternal Gaia glory that they seek – and hopefully take the rest of us along with him, too.

The only problem is that Chris Packham, for all his qualities and aims, is not a politician.

He leaves that stuff to others.

And one of those others, smack bang in Hoylake and Meols ward earlier this month, was none other than Julian Priest, who stood for the Green Party.

His aim, we can only assume, was to show how much support there is locally for him and his odd little tiny band of swampies who apparently detest sand and family fun and everyone else in Hoylake and Meols but absolutely love weeds.

Now, clearly, we’re not chums.

But even we can praise him for having the cojones to stand for public office and along the way, giving the public a chance to support him, or not. It takes balls to do that, so fair play.

Sadly, however, it did not work out so well.

“The league,” my friend always tells me, albeit only ever during that brief period every year when his Everton team spends a nanosecond above my Liverpool, “doesn’t lie”.

And what the league of local election results tells us here is that out of all possible voters in Hoylake and Meols, where voters are most acutely affected by the state of the beach, Our Jools, crusader of a still non-existent cinema, enthusiastic supporter of a swamp, and of course aficionado of bagels, was supported by a mere 3 per cent of them.

Nor did his Green Party comrades draw realistic support in the ward, either. As you can see above, 5, 4, 3 per cent, in that order. With Our Jools last.

They did manage to beat the Liberal Democrats, though. And something called the Freedom Alliance.

But has it stopped their insatiable desire to pretend everyone agrees with them?

Not a jot.

They’re back posting unprovable nonsense about people digging their weeds up from the beach.

Sure, someone might have dug it up. If they were absolutely crank-a-thon bonkers.

Because why pluck just one when there’s a massive former beach packed, thanks to these extremists, to the gunwales with them?

Or then there’s the actual “sea”, which still comes in twice a day, though not high tides all the time, which could also be responsible.

Will our wannabe botanists spend any time at all shouting at the waves?

But still, on it goes.

Jane Turner, one of the leading swamp campaigners, also stood for the Green Party (who overall did relatively well in the local elections) in the Moreton and Saughall Massie ward.

She also managed only to attain a 3 per cent share of the vote.

But what’s actual numbers and facts between friends?

The lovely Jane appears to think her ideology is countering “the wrong side of the biggest issue in human history”.

We suggest, given her woeful lack of voter support, she now attempts at least to grow up, and maybe spends some time listening to people who really have witnessed “the biggest issue in human history” – the Holocaust.

You never know: The great sage herself might learn something.

Plaque Attack

It’s not exactly news, but what a palpably miserable lot the tiny group of swampies really are.

Last weekend, someone, for a laugh, put up a plaque on an otherwise empty bench on Hoylake promenade, lamenting the loss of the legendary sands thanks to barely a handful of obsessives.

We blogged it, not because we had anything to do with it, and nor did the (massive majority) pro-sands group, Hoylake Beach Community, but because it made us smile.

It reminded us that, beneath that entirely invented veneer of We Love Weeds, where butted-in-for bagels and the occasional if inexplicable caretaker job rule, that real people are still there.

As they always have been, and always will.

The shrieking swampies, resplendent in their organic dog-wee sodden nettle underpants (okay, I made the underpants bit up – but still, eh?) slammed the light-hearted joke as “vandalism”.

Two screws into the timber of a bench that every single council taxpayer on Wirral has already paid for.

A bench that was emphatically not a memorial bench, as the faux weeping cretins are now trying to insist. (It’d been clear for at least three months, so there was none of the so-called desecration the walking dead will insist upon until their cis-balls finally drop.)

And on a bench staring stoically out at the worst act of vandalism that has ever happened in Hoylake – right there, festering, just a few stinking feet away: Their swamp.

But the swampies – Stig, T-shirt, The Other One – couldn’t see the irony in complaining about the plaque, which I’m reliably told was cheap and easy to buy off that pesky internet thing.

They just wanted to shout about something.

What else can we say, but well done – as now everyone, everywhere, can see you for what you are.

Humourless. Fact-free. Cancel-culture censors.

And really – do all three or four of you get together to decide on this because it now seems a theme? – bad dressers.

Back benchers

The blank-brained, sourpuss killjoys of the swamp are never more enraged than when their hypocrisy and utter intransigence are laid bare for all to see.

Last week it was yet again the turn of Liz “Honoured to meet Extinction Rebellion” Grey and some of her political colleagues confirming how much they really don’t care what happens to Hoylake beach, as long as they win.

It’s not about the beach. They clearly don’t give a toss about that.

Because if they did, we’d be enjoying a clean beach again and we’d also all happily put this entire saga behind us and move on.

But no, forget about the golden sands and glittering sunset vistas, because this is all about power.

That is: Their power over you.

It’s taken right out of their political playbook and it’s not exactly new.

There used to be a time when whoever or whatever you voted for was a personal issue, kept between you and the polling booth. Not anymore.

Now, unless you publicly declare absolute adherence to The Rules of the Righteous, then you are, to all intents and purposes, “wrong”.

Can’t define a woman? Come on in.

Can define a woman? Racist!

Vast, overwhelming majority of local people wanting their beach back? DEMONS.

Weeny little group into weeds? ANGELS.

This is just how they work.

It’s not quite bullies in the playground stuff, because bullies can be reported to the headteacher.

But when the bullies actually are the people in charge, simply because someone in Birkenhead voted for them because their dad did, they make their own rules.

Then, later last week, it was a further pile-on from a minority party that is basically a local Labour party offshoot in different coloured gilets, firing off intimidating missives as if imbued by the magnificently malign malevolence of Ming the Merciless himself.

Let’s be in no doubt – while the local Labour outfit continues its decades-long, scandal after scandal-enfused stranglehold of Wirral Council, which shows no sign of letting up, Hoylake beach, as once was just three years ago, ain’t coming back anytime soon.

As Our Liz admitted publicly last week, it doesn’t even matter what you say.

If you don’t agree with her – and she is, after all, a teacher, so even though you left school tens of years ago, you’re still bizarrely expected to kowtow to her boundless knowledge of everything that is correct – you’re dismissed.

It is depressingly evident.

They asked for written questions in advance of last week’s meeting.

That normally gives them a chance to formulate a reply, probably with a team of advisors and council lawyers checking every word before they semi-politely tell you to bugger off.

Now they don’t even bother with such niceties.

Pre-sent written questions were replied to with “I’ll write to you” back. Then why call a public meeting in the first place?

Oh, no, sorry. It wasn’t a “public meeting”.

It was, as Our XR Liz withered, “a meeting in public”.

Jeepers!

They will argue that black is white, oranges are lemons, dogs are cats, knights are dames, and if you dare to challenge their outright, childish nonsense, then you are every slur they can muster from their well-thumbed, dog-eared copy of Our Righteous Complaints R Us/Them/They.

More worryingly still, they actually seem to believe it.

So thank heavens, then, for a little brevity provided by some excellent wags in Hoylake who have hit the nail on the head. And on a bench, too.

It’s on the prom.

Find it for a selfie before The Usual Suspects spark up their typically tiresome organic fire and environmentally friendly brimstone.

Here’s what you won’t read in the Echo, the Globe, or from BBC Radio Merseyside.

Just this

Five Go Madder in Hoylake

Julius, Dick and Panned, Not-so-Gorge and Timid the dog looked down disconsolately at their trusty Jesus sandals, the necessary faux leather jailers of their sensible socks.

The tallest one, resplendent in an ill-fitting T-shirt designed for three-year-old girls, sighed, “They really don’t like us, do they?”

“Woof,” agreed Timid, enthusiastically, his fluffy tail suitably a-wag.

“But we’ve still won – we’ve still completely buggered up their beach,” said Dick, while wondering if he needed either new sandals or more Hawaiian-style shirts to cover his strangely beri beri-inspired belly.

“Woof,” Timid concurred, as he cocked a leg over the lifeboat ramp.

“Would anyone like me to make a springy heather bed and prepare a splendid picnic feast of poison leaves, effluent, dodgy green stuff, Margeret Greenwood flyers, and weasel droppings?” asked Panned.

“You may think it’s dreadful and potentially life-limiting, but if you try to persuade yourself to believe any old rubbish, it’ll be a lovely place to sleep and dream of actually nice places to sleep and dream.”

“Woof, woof,” said Timid.

“It’s not really heather, though, dear Panned,” interrupted Not-so-Gorge, the perennial doom-monger whom Julius was starting to really wonder whether they were a real sand-yachter or not.

“Unless you think rat-infested, potentially child-dangerous, non-native weeds would make for a more comfortable repose?”

Julius erupted.

“Excuse me!” he squealed. “I think you’ll find that IS heather. It is! It is because I say it is! Why do you have to be so mean?”

“Sorry,” said Not-so, without meaning it. “I always thought telling the truth was the right option.”

“And it is!” retorted Julius, “as long as it’s my truth and no one else’s!”

“How about some water everyone,” said Panned, ever the peacemaker. “Maybe we could compromise?”

“Never!” raged Julius. “I won’t stop until this vile place is completely much more vile!

“There are unbelieveably still some businesses in operation on the main road, for Gaia’s sake!

“And while we’re at it, what about those islands over there?

“Is it just me, or are they completely evil racist transphobe islands?

“Mark my words, Bird Island is clearly a sex discrimination case waiting to happen.”

“Piss off, you offence-seeking moron,” sighed Not-so.

“Woof,” said Timid.

“Beer?” suggested Dick.

“Only if it’s organic dolphin-friendly seahorse wee,” blasted Julius, verging on a hissy fit.

Timid then felt the call of nature, and wandered into overgrown, overly-pungent grasses so rare they are found all over the world, where he emptied his bowels for the benefit of unsuspecting swamp lovers to slide in later.

“Woof,” he said, after a quick sniff of his wares.

“Woof, woof!”

Still no cinema. Still no 5* restaurant. Still no *nothing* that Hoylake Village Life ever definitively promised. But the obscure organisation’s immediate legacy other than empty buildings is an individual they promote who laughs at children falling ill.

We don’t know what has happened to Hoylake Village Life.

They’ve disappeared from Facebook, which is odd, because that’s the only place they were liked.

Normally by people who simply hate the world and raise their angry fists to the wrong sort of sunrise.

That’s up to them.

But this may – or may not – have something to do with people who aren’t completely enamoured with their mission to ruin Hoylake in the process of turning it into its own vision of woke loveliness…

Oops – we mentioned “vision”.

Because HVL’s other guise – one of many – is Hoylake Vision, which is the exact same thing but with even less scrutiny.

As is the Beacon Project, which used to be Hoylake Beacon.

People might think they make these names up as they go along.

We couldn’t possibly comment.

But something we will comment upon is the rather unappealling individual that is Josh Styles, the self-styled eco-warrior of the Hoylake foreshore.

It’s not news that he loves weeds and mess.

Nor that he seemingly finds human beings enjoying their own clean beach somehow distasteful.

In a democracy, we’ll take all that on the chin.

It’s fair enough, no matter how much we disagree with Our Josh.

But Our Josh also has a disturbing little troll habit of putting laughing emjois at the end of any comments or posts he disagrees with.

This elevates him, you see, to an all-knowing sage, with make-up on, who knows better than the hoi poloi beneath his loftiness.

But then a little girl fell ill after tumbling over in his and his supporters’ beloved Hoylake swamp.

The youngster broke out in a disturbing rash.

Commentators either wished her well or hoped she had a speedy recovery.

But not Our Josh.

Oh no.

It was a moment to put yet another laughing emoji, dismissing the little girl’s affliction.

Even a kid getting ill is apparently funny to Josh.

So, don’t be Josh.

Let’s get the beach cleaned up.

And stop trying to appease the swampies who think otherwise.