Thursday 15 July 2010

Dr David Fleming-The Five Faces of Liverpool Museums.

Lets imagine the scenario yesterday by 12 am a full two page letter would have been received at the editors office, of Trinity Mirror complaining about the days press coverage of the museums being, effectively sued by AEN, the new architects, after the previous ones, 3XN were sacked. David Fleming will have expressed concerns about where the news came from and what sources had given the news over to the papers. He will have been sick as a Dodo.

Trinity “Smoking” Mirrors had tried to delay it, purposely in my opinion to give them a chance to put some more fluffy stuff in, but they were never going to get around this one. Ben Schofield will have put his tin hat on again for fear of being sued, Fleming has threatened him before.
Last week at a Union meeting staff discussed the impending cuts to the museum services. All this while David “Fuzzy Felt” Fleming wastes more public funds. It is now generally accepted that this big White Elephant-On-Sea is lurching from one disaster to another.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/07/trinity-smoking-mirrors-advertorial-for.html
The new press officer at NML, Dicky Felton, yes you heard it right, would have chipped in with a few e-mails, "it wasn’t adjudication, it was arbitration" he would have said. Really who gives a carrot about this rubbish trying to scare the papers into not reporting the truth? Bullying Mark Thomas and it worked last time when the major story about the £750,000 covenant pay off the Port of Liverpool Building owners, when Phil Redmond had it suppressed with personal intervention. Alastair and Phil get quite close at times.

Will Alsop declared last week http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/06/two-faced-liverpool-museums-will-alsop.html  saying I feel that the Liverpool museums who were stakeholders in the project always had their own agenda and were not helpful. Indeed, you could say perhaps even two faced. 

Dicky Felton was not even told by Fuzzy Felt Fleming about this £500,000 dispute, and now extra pay-off to the architects. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/07/museum-of-liverpool-cock-up-work-stops.html
At a time when nursing homes are closing all over the city, our museums waste millions.
How many faces do you need to be a museum director? How can you be a press officer and not be informed about such a disaster. Where did Dicky used to work? At Trinity Mirror, thats a coincidence.

So on 2nd July Museum Chairman, Phil Redmond had used his column in the Daily Ghost to announce that the staff at our once great institution are under pressure in recent times. Click the picture to enlarge.
It says
"Teamwork is something we are all going to appreciate, and perhaps need help, in the coming months, if not years, as the full impact of the budget starts to sink in. Already the public sector has been told to look for cuts, sorry efficiencies, of up to 30%, as we have at National Museums Liverrpool, alongside the rest of the cultural sector".

And then they waste £750,000 paying off a covenant, half a million to the architects, then the floor needs to come up. And then they are telling the staff to tighten their belts, it does not seem right.

Morrissey Lover, Dickie Fenton has been brought in, at extra expense to try and smooth out all the extra cock up money, how much is he being payed while staff worry about their jobs. This combined with visitor numbers being down significantly, because, NML sources say, of Grosvenor-pool taking the footfall in a differing direction. Some-one needs sacking and, in my opinion, he has got five faces.

Wayne Colquhoun

1 comment:

  1. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/architect-aew-wins-£500000-compensation-over-museum-of-liverpool-job/5002716.article
    BD magazine and a comment was left which said
    Mark Jones | 14 July 2010 9:38 pm

    It really is time architects understood how to develop a brief properly to prevent this sort of thing happening.

    This means a "design freeze" beyond which Clients are fully aware of the cost impact of change. All too often architects go on their merry way either swallowing extra costs or shrinking in sheer terror from acquainting clients with the consequences of change.

    Architects should ensure this is written into Terms of Appointment and fully explained to clients BEFORE DESIGN WORK COMMENCES.

    However, too many architects lack the knowledge or the courage to take this first step because they are afraid of losing work.

    All to often this is the basic reason small practices go out of business.

    In this case it sounds as though the clients just pressed ahead without a full understanding of the eventual results of their actions.

    It is surely no coincidence that not one but TWO architects studios have clashed with this client.

    Somebody, somewhere, has been pig-headed and reckless.

    ReplyDelete