When the businessman came to Liverpool, he promised us many things. He kept but one promise. He promised to take the land and he did. Crazy Tarpy.
The International Garden Festival site, like the Albert Dock, was established some 16 years ago, and supposedly given to the people of Liverpool, by then Tory Minister Michael Hesletine, in response to the fact that we had the highest unemployment and the most severe poverty in the country and of course people rioted throughout the city most famously in Toxteth.
Wiggins PLC, a London group of developers were given the lease of the site, which like many such sites, had been left derelict.
The positive side of this is that the area became a wildlife site and is now a designated area of natural conservation, with a biodiverse habitat containing many species, some of which are threatened with extinction.
When some 3 years ago a wide section of the local community was consulted it sparked up an enthusiastic response for the site to be developed as parkland with the emphasis on leisure & wildlife educational facilities. There was very little enthusiasm for a commercial development.
But what do we get once again? Business interests overriding everything else.
The current outline planning application from Wiggins PLC - completely overrides the wishes of the majority of the local community, offering instead an integrated development of new (expensive) housing, a four star hotel, 'neighborhood' retail shopping. Its claim that more than 60% of the land is retained as a coastal park is nothing more than a joke, since it says goodbye to any biodiversity or conservation.
The plan, like all the other council/business partnership initiatives is one that will solely benefit the upwardly mobile yuppie scavengers, who seem to be arriving in this city by the jaguar load, here to get some rich pickings - and then leave the rest of us fighting over the crumbs. But merely moaning about the injustices going on before our eyes will not change it: the people of this city must take back this land.