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.

Let Me In, Whisper The Watermelons

Our Julian and Our Jane are apparently on a mission to pretend the local elections that took place nearly three months ago never happened.

That was when both, standing as Green Party candidates for Wirral Council, were utterly humiliated at the ballot box.

But like all aspiring politicians, they’ve resolutely refused to stare punishing defeat in the face and are back on the trail.

As our hysterically called “climate boiling” (even though, while clearly climate change is a thing, literally nothing is “boiling”; but it sounds kinda catchy, and the UN nobodies in their fine suits and fancy HQs and endless private jet-setting to talk with other finely suited and private-planed contemporaries, all paid for by us, try to justify their own existence less anyone realises the whole self-serving shambolic mess is not fit for purpose) continues to see us considering the need to put the heating on in, er, July, and the usual suspects flit around talking about mostly arson-fired blazes in continental Europe as the Beginning of the End of the World that they’ve been predicting every ten years or so since long before I was born 50-odd years ago, and yet still spectacularly and stubbornly refuses to play ball, they have produced a new leaflet.

And as much as we detest the idea of giving them any publicity at all, it’s worth pointing out what’s in their promo material, and what isn’t.

First: “Green Community Campaigners”.

Well, yes. Because these two are largely responsible for that hideous green swamp that was once called Hoylake Beach. Them, and that other eco warrior, Our Josh.

I won’t bother with their quotes because they’re too asinine, but look at the strapline at the bottom mentioning “Working All Year Round…”.

Just not on that promised two-screen cinema, fine dining restaurant, arts village, and vortex to Utopia (okay, maybe not that last one) that has already cost taxpayers £3m and we still don’t know why designing a menu costs 8k, eh, Our Jools?

And then this on the back:

Alas, no space for the question: Would you like us to just sod off so we can have our beach back?

So, welcome to The Watermelons. Green on the outside, red, with dark pips, within.

If you should be unfortunate enough to hear an unexpected knock at the front door, or the trembling ring on a nervously-pressed doorbell, don’t say you weren’t warned…

And just to repeat: Where IS that cinema, Our Jools?

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.

Green with frenzy – on a wing and a prayer, Our Jools enters the fray

In what no one anywhere would ever consider exciting news, the local council elections loom.

In Wirral, that means all 66 of the council seats are up for grabs.

There is no point whatsoever in any parties or their supporters or indeed voters at large getting excited about it, though, because we all know, through dreary experience, what is going to happen.

Thanks to the block-voting in Birkenhead, and most of Wallasey, the two largest conurbations we have, Labour – well, Wirral Labour, because there is a difference – will win.

And, tediously, on we will march ever towards the self-consuming oblivion of life in Wirral as we know it.

Not because of the tidal waves and wild fires that the ridiculous “wall” in West Kirby is supposed to save us all from (which it won’t, because it’ll never be needed in any case, and besides, what’s £16m-and-counting of our money between friends?), but because of the moronic quacking robots – think “for mash get Smash” – in the town hall.

They’ll tell you anything you want to hear, obviously, come hell or high water, but this is what you’ll actually get anyway, yet again:

• More pointless £££s office blocks to be built in Birkenhead town centre for the council to move into from, er, another office block somewhere else in Birkenhead, which is always a great investment of public money when many office workers – and most especially civil servants meant to work in town halls or government ministries – now opt to work from home, and high streets grow more deserted than ever.

• Look forward to shiny artist “impressions” of pipe dreams from ambitious young town planners who will very soon realise that their earnest toil has been entirely pointless, because all they’ll end up creating in reality is empty office blocks occupied by pigeons and enthusiastically unused cycle lanes.

• Watch people swap an equally shiny chain each year so they can eat toffee apples, open shops, snip ribbons, glad-hand anyone who asks, and build up a photo portfolio they’ll quickly store in the loft when they can eventually fit back up the stairs, to then be instantly forgotten.

Same old, same old. And that’s it – normally.

But there are of late some new kids on the block in the form of the Green Party, who have started to make inroads into the local political system – albeit as lowly partners, but very much enablers, to Wirral Labour.

This is not in itself a bad thing. More political plurality should be welcomed by all of those who believe in democracy – even way out there on Wirral’s far left, who don’t believe in democracy at all, because in their myopic minds they’re right about everything and that’s that.

So what, you may wonder, has any of this to do with Hoylake Beach?

Well, we note that bagel-loving Julian Priest is standing as a Green Party candidate for the Hoylake and West Kirby ward.

Which means for the next few weeks or so, he or his representatives will be asking for your vote.

Now, bearing in mind there are an estimated 97% of adults in Hoylake and Meols in favour of having a clean beach, rather than the swamp that is down there now because of Priest and his Hoylake Village Life/Vision/Beacon/Blancmange/Mangetout/Doobedoobedoo cronies, we wonder how’ll he tackle that when it no doubt comes up on the doorstep – if, that is, he openly admits who he really is, which is The Man Who Helped Ruin The Beach.

We also wonder how he will cope with questions about the Black Lubyanka monstrosity at the top end of Market Street, an eyesore which still isn’t a cinema and nowhere near close to becoming one despite all the (public) money thrown at it.

Let’s just face it. It’s a block of flats. With six parking spaces.

Our Jools gets quite vexed when any of this is mentioned, because, you know, he’s full of – no, not that – “vision”, just like his Keith Lemon-lookalike pal who appears to have gone relatively quiet ever since settling into his new sinecure down at the old Kingsmead School site.

Vexed, because they simply cannot stand being challenged about anything.

Presenting their “vision” – god help me – for Hoylake beach a few years ago, Priest – clad, as ever, in a terrible, unfitting T-shirt – declared the meeting a “safe space” where no dissent, or indeed impertinent questions, were allowed.

But your doorstep is most definitely not Priest’s “safe space”.

It is, however, most definitely yours.

So I would encourage you to take the opportunity to make your case, while he’s stood there on your property, begging you for support, about the state of the beach which he has championed; or the non-existent “cinema” that he has also championed; to ask him what a woman actually is; and ask if he can deduce that 2+2 equals 4 without breaking out into a sweat because he’s concerned he may have left a different number out.

Also, ask him why he wants to close off the prom to traffic – the only alternative to Market Street, which his cronies would also like to somehow turn into a town square, stifling traffic even more.

These are not difficult questions to ask of people wanting your vote.

So make sure you quiz Our Jools.

It’s your “safe space”, after all.

NB:

• We couldn’t be bothered to get involved in a Facebook thread this week that saw a pro-swamp union guy insist he was speaking in “facts” when saying the beach is, emphatically to him, not a swamp.
• Yet according to National Geographic, a somewhat respected journal of record and discovery, and staffed by people who aren’t in bad T-shirts or questionable biological pedigree, a “swamp is an area of land permanently saturated, or filled, with water”.

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.