Museum of Liverpool-Were English Heritage Corrupt or Complicit In The Ruination Of Liverpools World Heritage Site?

When the Liverpool Council planners under the Riechmarshal Lee secretly slipped in the plans for the then proposed museum in Liverpool’s world heritage site on 20th December 2005, I could not believe it, I should have been shopping for socks for my Uncle Billy, I did not even know of the proposals despite being very involved in planning matters for some time and specifically World Heritage.

Armed with a report from Icomos UK and my own speech. I SHOT OVER TO THE TOWN HALL TO BE THE LONE OBJECTOR.

No one knew about this even though the Ombudsman later cleared them because a one-inch advert appeared in the Merseymart or somewhere that conveniently nobody knew of. http://councillors.liverpool.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=307&MId=4716&Ver=4

Now click on the picture above and see the flats, in transparent pen on the Mann Island Site.  

IT WAS STITCHED UP WELL AND TRULY BEFORE-HAND.

David Irving as Chair of the planning comittee was standing in for Lady Doreen Jones the Doyenne of Disaster, he nodded it through.

I got the list of letters sent out by the council one was addressed "the Statue Pier Head" another "The Car Park" Mann Island another to a shop next to mine that did not exist and my shop did not receive one. How strange.
I thought that Peter de Figueiredo http://www.defigueiredo.co.uk/index.html  who was English Heretics historic building advisor at the time has something to answer about because his partner was the Curator of NML, Julian Treuherz. (de Figueiredo now works for Peel Holdings on Liverpool Waters)
http://www.debretts.com/people/biographies/browse/t/14373/Julian%20Benjamin+TREUHERZ.aspx
So I wrote to the Heretics under the Freedom of Information act requesting all the documents to show how a reasonable decision could have been made with our world heritage site without public consultation. Something the toothless UNESCO would later confirm was undemocratic. Henry Owen-John was and is real nuisance, he is EH Regional Development Director see picture above
Then by chance I stumbled across a strange bit of information, that the then Chairman of English Heritage Sir Neil Cossons was working for Liverpool Museums…along with ex top knob at the Heretics bureau, Loyd Grossman who was then the chairman of NML…along with the then leader of the city council the now disgraced Mike Storey (who conveniently didn’t tell anyone, in fact it appeared to be a secret)…and the Chairman of the North West Development Agency, Bryan Gray who was to fund the museum by the sale of the land to build 3 huge blocks on the Mann Island site that they owned. They were in the plans but with transparent pen.
http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/liverpooldailypost/news/regionalnews/tm_headline=controversy-as-building-plans-set-to-go-ahead%26method=full%26objectid=17867193%26page=2%26siteid=50061-name_page.html


Copy thereof
149. Declaration of Interest
The Chairman invited Trustees present to indicate whether they had any conflicting or prejudicial interests within the items of business set out below.
Not specific to any agenda items Mr Grossman advised that he may have conflicts of interest arising from his Deputy Chairmanship of the Liverpool Culture Company. Mr Gray advised that he may have conflicts arising from his Chairmanship of the North West Development Agency. Sir Neil Cossons advised the he may have conflicts of interest arising from his Chairmanship of English Heritage. Councillor Storey advised that he may have conflicts of interest arising from his role as Leader of Liverpool City Council.
RESOLVED that the Board accepts that none of these possible interests give rise to undue conflict or could prejudice the proper transaction of the business of this meeting and the Trustees concerned should not therefore be expected to withdraw from the discussions.

150. Decisions of Trustees
Permission to accept offer of £32,700,000 from the North West Development Agency
RESOLVED that the Trustees accept offer of £32,700,000 from the North West Development Agency
The list of conflicts of interest was immense one of NMLs trustees had even had a job done by 3XN the architects the strange occurrence that not a soul in Liverpool had heard of until the plans for the WHS had been approved. Despite the Conflicts of Interest, lets move on, and ignore them, they then decided.

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/about/trusteesDotNet/meetings.aspx?tid=47

http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/tm_objectid=17112292%26method=full%26siteid=50061-name_page.html

How can you have a then Chairman of English Heritage working for the very perpetrators of WHS disaster. It should not have been allowed?

What the English Heritage series show is that if its convenient, it’s a stitch up right from the top down.
Thurley denied there was any conflict of interests after I wrote to him. Well he would, wouldn't he.

But what happened in reality was that Unesco took the nformation that English Heritage had put together as they were the Governments advisors so it was well and truly stitched.

Current trustees

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/about/trustees/index.aspx

Neil Cossons has just written a book about Liverpool's Heritage called Liverpool Seaport City.

I hope this man can sleep at night.

Update 30.9.2021

Liverpool has now lost its World Heritage Site Status.

Don't say we didn't tell you.

Liverpool Daily Ghost-Reflecting Local News and Views.

This is  Mondays Daily Post page 27. The Daily Ghost has been full of the news that a new museum has opened at the Liverpool Pier Head and they reflected the views of, well themselves really.
So here is a half page declaration by Oldham Hall Street that they are reflecting local views and news............then they add a picture of Liverpool views that is 10 years old...........how clever. click on the pics for a closer look.

 Dated Monday July 25th the add next to it says.

One day the person who delivered this newspaper may need our help.

They certainly do need help at Oldham Hall Street, so I just thought I would put them right with a picture of the same view as it now looks like, that the Local papers said would be brilliant for Liverpool because it would be Iconic.  

The advertorial is genuinely for NewstrAid the helping hand of the news trade, it says.

Can I make a few suggestions as to who needs a bit of help, the idiot who edited this.

Museum of Liverpool-Kim Nielson of 3XN Defends His Design.

Well is it his design?
This is a picture of the Rome MAXXI that opened more than a year ago.
Much has been made of how a so called original Scandanavian design may not be the best design for wrapping around a Museum of Liverpool Life.

But here we see its not even an original concept.
Is it a plagarism of a Zaha Hadid museum?
It certainly looks like that to me.

The World Heritage Site bastardised for a museum that looks like a rip off of another museum..........Very clever.
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/8164/zaha-hadid-maxxi-rome-complete.html

Building Design Magazine have taken a big interest in the museum since, well, Will Alsops glass pie in the sky really. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/06/wayne-colquhoun-asks-will-alsop.html

They collar-ed Kim Nielson the sacked architect http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/05/museum-of-liverpool-sues-3xn-architects.html
who is not now sacked, and asked him about his Museum. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/06/legal-row-hangs-over-liverpool-museum.html



http://www.bdonline.co.uk/multimedia/the-museum-of-liverpool-3xns-kim-nielsen-defends-his-design/5022215.article

It is only a couple of minutes long but it may be worth listening to Mr Nielson of 3XN.

Auction Party-Showing Liverpool Town Hall In All its Grandeur

As well as fighting Heritage Battles, I am also an art dealer and was recently asked to film a episode of Auction Party with Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen at Liverpool Town Hall.
I wasn't too sure but they said the fee was £150, and that convinced me so off I toddled on a cold winter night the whole 100 yds stretch from my shop.
It was great fun the programme is all about raising money for charity and I struck up a relationship with St Johns Hospice afterwards and sell some of their donated objects for them.
http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=258450

 click on the link to see the programme or go to your catch up.

 Liverpool Town Hall should look great and although I have not watched it myself yet have been informed that it does the city proud
Picture Courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.


http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/in-the-mix/2011/01/24/laurence-llewelyn-bowen-films-auction-party-show-in-liverpool-100252-28043405/

Click on links for more.

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/the-reading-room/2011/01/24/laurence-llewelyn-bowen-in-liverpool-to-film-new-show-auction-party-92534-28041016/  
 
Without any prompting Lawrence who walked the walk, talked the talk about Liverpool great architectural past and how we are paying too much attention to its new stuff.
 
Wayne

Museum of Liverpool-We Warned You.

The Respected Guardian Architecture Critic Rowan Moore Gives THE MUSEUM OF LIVERPOOL A ROASTING. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jul/24/museum-of-liverpool-review

The Museum of Liverpool's spiral stair: 'Like the ramp of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim installed in a Travelodge.' Photograph: Mills Media Limited

How can this have happened? How could so many positive words – "regeneration", "vision", "culture" – plus so much public and private funding, plus so much scrutiny by bodies such as the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, have led to what now stands on Liverpool's waterfront? How could so many noble titles – Unesco world heritage site, capital of culture, the "Three Graces" – have been bestowed on what is, to use a sophisticated critical term, a godawful mess?
Last Tuesday, the £72m Museum of Liverpool opened to the public, billing itself as "the largest city museum in the world" and "the largest newly built national museum in Britain for more than a century". It contains busy, impressionistic displays of the city's history and culture – the Beatles, football, Brookside, trade, wealth and poverty – that are light on original artefacts and big on videos and blown-up pictures. The pace is frantic. You hardly get a moment to dwell on the horrors of the first world war before you're on to something else. Slavery gets a single 3ft by 2ft panel, with a couple of small exhibits, there being an International Slavery Museum elsewhere in the city that goes into more depth.
The museum's tone is boosterish, albeit seasoned with sobering data about deprivation, rates of heart disease and low voter turnout. You hear much about the city's fast-talking, cheeky, gobby, independent spirit, its perseverance and endurance, its wacky chaos and madness. "In one word, I would describe the accent of Liverpool as brilliant," says one talking head. A more eloquent quote comes from Willy Russell: "The nature of the spoken word in Liverpool" is, for writers, "as the sky and the light must have been to the impressionists."
The exhibition areas are planned by the Los Angeles-based exhibition and theme park designers BRC Imagination Arts and are the bet-hedging mulch of video, exhibit, text, sound, image and 3-D mise en scène that is now standard in museums. It is like a ready-made school project, or a Wikipedia entry made flesh, a warm gloop of unchallenging information.
To judge by the lively opening day crowds, having their memories prompted by this or that nostalgic nugget, the museum's aim of connecting the city with its past is powerful and important, but those crowds deserve more provocative and insightful displays than they are now getting.
But the main issue is not the presentation of the museum's contents nor, exactly, the design of the building that houses them, but, rather, the composition, or lack of it, of the museum building, combined with other new structures that are rising around and the historic monuments that were already there. For the museum stands in a Unesco world heritage site, between the impressive warehouses of the Albert Dock and the Three Graces, the three great Edwardian commercial buildings that define the city's waterfront. One of them, the Royal Liver Building, was a century old on the day the museum opened.

The Danish practice 3XN is credited as "creative architects" of the museum, which means the company designed it, but was later removed from the project, and it has been completed not entirely in accordance with 3XN's wishes. Inside, there's a big spiral stair conceived as a social heart of the museum, which is nice enough, except that it rises towards cheap suspended ceilings that undermine its splendour. It's like the ramp of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim installed in a Travelodge. And it seems to eat space: for all the museum's boasting about how big it is, the galleries feel squeezed.
Outside, 3XN has created a dynamic twist of a building, in pale white stone, that rises at its extremities to give panoramic views of the Three Graces in one direction and the Mersey in the other. There is also a forbidding-looking slalom of wheelchair ramps and stairs at each end, with the idea that people can wander up, through and down again, choosing to look into galleries or not as the mood takes them.
This idea of casually strolling up ramps and stairs seems over-optimistic, as it's easier just to walk round the outside of the building at ground level. Overall, there's a sense of misplaced energy, with too much in elaborate circulation, and too little in the details, in the gallery spaces.
3XN's Kim Herforth Nielsen has overcome his differences with the museum sufficiently to turn up at the opening day and he claims he wanted to be "respectful" of the Three Graces and not "to compete with them, but do something completely different". So in place of their square, symmetrical, majestic repose, he came up with a restless squiggle, which he says is also inspired by both the shapes of ships and land art.
This approach was probably a bad bet, as it is possible to be different from and respectful of the older buildings without being so ostentatiously their opposite, but it might just have come off if the squiggle had been undeniably brilliant and if the other new buildings in the area had been quiet and unified, so as to offset its individualistic dazzle. But they wanted to be clever and different, too, so in addition to the museum there is a block of flats in the form of giant black crystals, by Broadway Malyan architects, and the Pier Head ferry terminal, a sub-sub-Hadid exercise in odd shapes by Hamilton Architects of Belfast. (The terminal won the 2009 Carbuncle Cup, for the nation's worst building, a prize for which the museum is this year shortlisted.)
Further off are the jerky shapes of flats on the edge of the Liverpool One shopping development. It is as if a huge incontinent dog had deposited them on the pavement, except that the latter's droppings would have had more consistency of form and texture, one to the other. There is no coherence, rapport, sense of wholeness or purpose to the ensemble. The older buildings manage to be expressive, varied, bold, dignified and unified all at once; the new do not.
There is history to the current state of Liverpool's waterfront. In 2002, a "Fourth Grace" was proposed – a public-private enterprise whereby a landmark building would house the Museum of Liverpool, some other ill-defined purposes and a money-making development. It would be the centrepiece of Liverpool's capital of culture celebrations in 2008. Leading architects were invited to suggest ideas and Will Alsop won, with a giant blob called The Cloud.
The original Three Graces were classical goddesses and if you were to imagine Canova's marble statue of them hugged by a giant, full-colour Katie Price, you would have some idea of the effect of the Fourth Grace proposals – by whichever famous architect – inflated as they were by their commercial content. The Fourth Grace plan eventually foundered, but it established the idea that the historic buildings could be honoured by blocking views of them and surrounding them with noisy new structures.
The only improvement is that what has actually been built is smaller than the Fourth Grace proposals, but this is a short-lived relief. Close by, an undistinguished, 55-storey tower is now proposed as part of a £5.5bn scheme called Liverpool Waters, which will poke its way into views of the Three Graces.
According to Building Design magazine, members of Unesco's world heritage committee have expressed "extreme concern" and are sending a delegation to urge Liverpool's city council to reject the plans. The council might finally wake up, but if so it will have to reverse a direction in which it has been heading for a decade.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jul/24/museum-of-liverpool-review

We told you so............now read the comments.

Museum of Liverpool-Makes 'Carbuncle Cup' Shortlist.

Representing the bloated apogee in this pursuit of the iconic is the £72 million Museum of Liverpool, the bastard child of 3XN, AEW and several lawsuits. It is the ultimate flashy esquisse executed with the leaden hand of the local authority, a crumpled quilt of stone stretched back and forth until it sufficiently destroys the city’s majestic waterfront.

Well it couldnt be clearer than that from BD me thinks, they dont like it.


The full citation:
“Next to our three gently ageing Edwardian Beauties, The Three Graces, The Port of Liverpool Building, The Cunard Building and the Liver Building, they stick a trashy tart.
“A building that jerks against the restrained classiscism that made Liverpool famous, that escaped the blitz, that managed to survive against all odds……….only now to look alien in their own settings.
“The challenge was to use classical materials in a modern manner but here they have failed.
“Travertine was the first choice abandoned for the cheaper Jura after planning approval.
“Below it is the now destroyed Manchester Dock that was intact and predated the Albert Dock by 60 years.
“Is it only Liverpool that thinks it can get away with destroying its history in a World Heritage Site. It is being bravefaced but it really is like giving a pretty girl a black eye, knocking all her teeth out and saying ’smile you look lovely’.” http://www.bdonline.co.uk/buildings/carbuncle-cup/carbuncle-cup-citation-museum-of-liverpool-by-3xn/aew/5022074.article


Clunky slabs and botched “landmarks” battle it out to win the coveted title of worst building of the year.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/comment/bloated-icons-and-dreary-sheds-go-head-to-head-in-the-race-for-the-carbuncle-cup/5022082.article
This year’s carbuncle nominees fall into two categories: the failed iconic, and the grimly mundane.
At one end of the spectrum we have Atkins and Grimshaw’s Newport Station and Bond Bryan’s Phoenix High School, both bleak attempts at novelty. One is a globular silver swoosh realised with the prosaic flair of design and build; the other has been likened to a pile of liquorice allsorts – because it is lurid and wonky. It is telling that Network Rail’s own promotional posters only show the station in a night-time view from the air, while the pupils of Phoenix now all want to become architects – surely so others may not have to suffer their fate.
Representing the bloated apogee in this pursuit of the iconic is the £72 million Museum of Liverpool, the bastard child of 3XN, AEW and several lawsuits. It is the ultimate flashy esquisse executed with the leaden hand of the local authority, a crumpled quilt of stone stretched back and forth until it sufficiently destroys the city’s majestic waterfront.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have three projects completely devoid of ambition, standing for the worst of the lumpen planner-friendly filler that blights our cities.
In desperately trying to avoid any suggestion of wasting licence-payers’ money, “MediaCityUK” has ended up as a field of mediocrity. An agglomeration of bulky slabs, dressed in cheap panelised systems, it is reminiscent of the kind of flimsy rubbish that airport terminals tend to accrue.
One Hyde Park is precisely the opposite, straining to appear as expensive and refined as possible, yet ending up looking like the product of a volume house-builder. It will not be the last silo of sheiks to sprout up in Knightsbridge, but it will be hard to beat its clunky detailing and mean-minded attitude to the street. Just where did that £1 billion go?
Finally, Brighton’s Ebenezer Chapel housing development by Molyneux Architects represents the depressing reality of most housing today – blunt expanses of render punctured by tiny windows. As our reader’s citation suggests, “It is these mediocre buildings that damage our cities more than bolder failures.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/8164/zaha-hadid-maxxi-rome-complete.html 

Rome MAXXI

LIVER BUILDING LIES-Propagated By The BBC.

I expected a whole day dedicated to the opening of the New Museum but not a day dedicated to slagging off the Liver Buildings.

I was just getting out of my car when the crusty old ‘Soft Alec’ Stephen Guy of Liverpool Museums proclaimed, on air, there was all this controversy, when they built the Liver Buildings a hundred years ago. What a silly man. Then it was all over TV on BBC Northwest.

I don’t know how many times on air I have told Roger Philips that there is no evidence for this rumour designed to justify the new museum.

Stephen Guy who was a journalist, who covered the Miss Morecambe Beauty Competition at the Midland Hotel in the dark days when Miss World was big, is employed by Liverpool Museums as a press officer along with Claire Ryder and Dicky Bird (yes that is the name he goes under) to slag off the Liver Buildings, to justify the fact that next to our three gently ageing Edwardian Beauties, they stick a trashy tart.

A museum of Liverpool designed by a Danish Architect with no place in its current setting.

This propagation of untruths with only one scrap of evidence that Sir Charles Reilly the architect did not like it has now been said so many times on the BBC this last couple of days that people are going to believe it and that’s job done for those people who get paid to propaganda us.

There was no huge controversy, and the BBC should produce evidence, if it is to be a propaganda merchant for Liverpool Museums who are slagging off the Liver Buildings, simply, for a way of justifying the awful carbuncle they have built us, in the World Heritage Site, that should never have been allowed.
Henry Owen John of English Heritage says the same rubbish.
Cllr Paul Brant said something similar last week on BBC Northwest.
You see, they believe that by saying you hated the Liver Buildings once, and now you love them, it justifies them to say, see we are doing you a favour by giving you a carbuncle that you will all love in the future.
No, it doesn’t work like that, it is a carbuncle, part of the whole Pier Head Mann Island Development

(You know, NML wont let the Mann Island developers use a picture of the new museum on their sales brochures, or any advertising so they cant be associated with the three black coffins). The whole funding package by the NWDA is for the whole Pier Head development including the Cut that now breaks the Pier Head Vista in two, is all written on this blog.
It is a real shame that the BBC have been taken in by this, Roger Philips, friend Phil Redmond the Chairman of NML who told me, while I was talking to Tristram Hunt and I quote, “None of this should have been built here” will be very proud of them for helping muck spread lies about the symbol of Liverpool. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/07/mann-island-funds-new-museum-its-fact.html


This rubbish has to stop.
Just remember what they have done to the WHS next time the BBC are talking down to you.

Museum of Liverpool-Next To Our Three Gently Ageing Edwardian Beauties...They Stick A Trashy Tart.

For 100 years the guardians of Liverpool The Three Graces the Port of Liverpool Building, The Cunard Building and the Liver Building have watched over us, and kept us proud.

The previous generation that left us a World Heritage Site on par with the Taj Mahal, Stone Henge and the Pyramids could feel proud.
These Three Graces, even to be mentioned in the same terms as Canova's Sculpture, have shown the pride we had in our city. Through all the darkened days of the blitz they stood there as a proud symbol of defiance to the Germans who bombed the gubbings out of us.

100 years later and we get a World Heritage Site and the morons who run the city do more damage than Herman Goering's squadrons and pillage the very thing that made us great...........our identity.

They promised us Iconic and give us Ichronic.

We have watched, well, we at the LPT have fought, while, the WHS has been carbunculated to a mere shadow of itself.

While the dodgy and corrupted councillors did backroom shady deals with their mates, they spived our spirit away. They sold our skyline.

What good is all the money in the world if you sell your soul, and we have lost the soul of our city.

We now today have the New Wacky Warehouse-on-Sea opening today with the same sort of Liverpool Daily Ghost and Oldham Echo that we have become accustomed to....trash reporting, give them a bit of crepe paper and they can get a thousand words out of it.

To think we once had educated editors who helped to shape our skyline.........that was until this bunch of amateurs who take their instructions from whatever PR company or dodgy lobby group that sponsors them came along.

So the new museum opens today, roll the carpets, unfurl the flags, the fanfares, pages of press.

 The reality is that this is a tacky development plagued with controversy badly run over budget and in the wrong place..and its a sad day for Liverpool.

Combined with its three ugly sisters "the Black Coffins" at Mann Island, part of the same scheme, it really is like giving a pretty girl a black eye and knocking her teeth out and then saying "Smile isn't she pretty".

But you don't have to believe it if you don't want to, the local press Trinity "Smoking" Mirror Group don't.

Did Someone Hack Into The Liverpool City Council Computer System?

That is a question we are looking into at present. But lets be FRANK about it, should it have taken place then it is an illegal act that should be punished.

Liverpool Waters-Back To The Drawing Board.

Liverpool Waters has been kyboshed in its present form after Unesco told the UK State Party that if it went ahead and passed proposals for Shanghai-On-Mersey it would destroy the Overall Universal Value (OUV) of Liverpools World Heritage Site (WHS).
This is a major blow to Peel Holdings who will be very shocked indeed as they are used to getting their own way.

So lets spell out some of the facts for our stupid local press who are owned by Peel Holdings, so they don't go blaming me for stopping the scheme and it may stop the editor Mark Thomas from behaving like a buffoon making elementary mistakes. I may ask for a retraction for some of this weeks scurrilous work by him in the Daily Ghost's OPINION.
Here is the exact Unesco decision, note it refers to a English Heritage Independent report.
118. Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City (United Kingdom) (C 1150)

Decision: 35 COM 7B.118
The World Heritage Committee,
1. Having examined Document WHC-11/35.COM/7B.Add,
2. Expresses its extreme concern at the proposed development of Liverpool Waters in terms of the potential impact of its dense, high and mid-rise buildings on the form and design of the historic docks and thus on the Outstanding Universal Value of the property;
3. Notes that the independent Impact Assessment commissioned by English Heritage clearly sets out the significantly damaging negative impact on the Outstanding Universal Value of the property;
Decisions report WHC-11/35.COM/20, p. 150
4. Also notes that the proposed development is not in compliance with the property Management Plan nor with the Liverpool Urban Development Plan;
5. Urges the State Party to ensure that these proposals are not approved, as failure to do so could lead to consideration of loss of the Outstanding Universal Value of the property;
6. Requests the State Party to invite a joint World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS reactive monitoring mission, as soon as possible, to assess planning procedures and the overall development strategies for the property;
7. Also requests the State Party to submit to the World Heritage Centre, by 1 February2012, an updated report on the state of conservation of the property and on the implementation of the above, examination by the World Heritage Committee at its 36th session in 2012.

http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2011/whc11-35com-20e.pdf

It says that Liverpool is going against its own planning policy!!

So I broke it to the BBC and ITV ahead of the local chip paper and here is their reporting by the rather upset David Bartlett said he would have to put it on the Ghost website.  http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news//2011/07/12/unesco-warns-liverpool-will-lose-world-heritage-status-if-5-5bn-liverpool-waters-plan-goes-ahead-92534-29037287/

The BBC hit theirs in http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-14124577

The next day the most deplorable bit of reporting from the Daily Ghost.
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/07/13/liverpool-council-leader-joe-anderson-hopes-compromise-can-be-found-with-unesco-over-world-heritage-site-fears-92534-29042687/ wih a disgusting front page proclaiming if it was 1911 would we have built anything.
Well in 1911 we had good editors who helped to leave us a architectural legacy that give us a world heritage site, not this pathetic shower.
While Alastair Machray and Mark Thomas have been editors of the local press in 2011 just look what has happened to the WHS. How times change. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-liverpool-daily-post-and-echo-owned.html

They claim they need this awful scheme to create jobs while lording over the fact that Peel are barging our docks to Salford.
Machray who has just made another tranche of people redundant this time in Runcorn, should take a long hard look at himself and ask himself, did he become a journalist to sack people.
Combine with the fact that they recently shipped all the printing jobs down the MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL, OWNED BY PEEL HOLDINGS TO OLDHAM.
We want no lectures from these deviants.

 http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/07/13/liverpool-council-leader-joe-anderson-hopes-compromise-can-be-found-with-unesco-over-world-heritage-site-fears-92534-29042687/

I gave Bartlett a statement that printed, read Wayne Colquhoun, of Liverpool Preservation Trust, which reported the scheme to Unesco, said: “Maybe this will make Peel now look to alternatives such as Amsterdam for more humane sustainable development that works well around its historic waterways because if they don't we will lose the WHS status and suffer the complete embarrassment of doing so in the eyes of the world.” http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2011/07/13/peel-and-liverpool-council-hit-back-at-unesco-over-liverpool-waters-threat-to-world-heritage-site-status-92534-29042688/2/


They then wrote up a Daily Post Opinion.
HOW CAN THEY TURN THIS INTO
We want Liverpool to add to its vitality, and secure the investment and jobs that Liverpool Waters will bring. Liverpool Preservation Trust spokesman Wayne Colquhoun appears to be quite happy to let Peel develop their spectacular complex in Amsterdam, instead. We want no part of any such manoeuvre – we want to speak up for Liverpool instead. http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/views/liverpool-daily-post/2011/07/13/should-our-heritage-put-jobs-at-risk-92534-29042493/

The next day a letter appeared in the letters page http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/views/letters-to-editor/2011/07/14/we-do-not-need-a-huge-vanity-project-92534-29049967/ very well written almost written by a journalist I would say.
I WAS astounded, on reading your editorial comment yesterday.

You reported that Wayne Colquhoun suggested that Peel transplant their Liverpool Water's scheme to Amsterdam: “. . . appears quite happy to let Peel develop their spectacular complex in Amsterdam, instead”.
What you seem not to have grasped is that he, clearly, meant that Liverpool should look to Amsterdam for a model of sustainable growth along its waterways. Amsterdam does not have skyscrapers, but has transformed and developed its canals and waterways very successfully.
You do not have to be a supporter of Mr Colquhoun to understand this is the point he was trying to make.
Whilst not, in general, agreeing with Mr Colquhoun on many of his views, he has got a point about sustainability. Sustainability suggests a model of development which is slower, more organic and responds to natural needs and demand. What Peel are proposing for the northern docklands is grandiose and speculative.
The docklands could be developed in a more gradual way and there does not need to be any skyscrapers, or, indeed, that much new-build. We do not need new apartments or shops or office blocks at this moment in time.
A huge vanity project which is large on ambition but low on practical realities will create a soulless environment.
There is nothing to stop Peel developing the docklands and renovating the warehouses, if they can secure uses for them. In fact, that would be most welcome.
ŠIf Peel wants to invest in Liverpool and is sensitive to the city's true needs then it could show willing by starting redevelopment of key areas now; starting with the Princes Dock – then working northwards. Speculative promises for the future are contributing to a disincentive to develop and improve now.

J Anderson, L19

Even, Reverse Ferret, Bill "Phsyco" Gleeson who Mark Thomas is keeping a particular eye on, said, "the aesthetic damage has already been done. Modernity has alraedy come to the waterfront in the form of the new museum and apartments at Mann island, the tall buildings at Princes Dock and the dreadful architecture of the Hilton Hotel and the One Park West. These buildings would be the reason to withdraw WHS status,"

So what a two faced little man you are Gleeson............I will remind you shortly about all the waxing lyrical you did in your trash column about how wonderful it was to have all this investment for all these monstrous schemes that have got us into this trouble. Its not my fault we have trashed the WHS.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2011/06/liverpool-daily-post-what-price-free.html


YOU HAVE TO SAY THE RUBBISH REPORTING THAT HAS ENABLED THE WHS TO BE DESTROYED SHOULD BE COMMENDED.......for being consistent.

I have now decided to compile a report for Sly Bailey of Trinity Mirror, I wonder who is next to be made redundant, Mark.

Is The Liverpool Daily Post and Echo Owned by Peel Holdings?

 This is today's front page of the Daily Ghost.

Yesterday I pulled the exclusive away from the Daily Post and give it to BBC Northwest and ITV Granada Reports, to which David Bartlett phoned me quite annoyed saying

"You promised me the front page, we were going to do the front page"

"I cant trust your editor Mark Thomas" I said to him.

And today you can see why.

On his watch we have seen the world heritage site be carbunculated, I have to take my hat off to him, he does get it wrong consistently.

He uses the old October communications term "we don't want the WHS pickled in aspic" well its he and his crew who should be pickled in aspic for allowing the cities best assets to be run riot over by carpet-bagging vultures, leaving us a mess.

 The people are fed up with the press, I was made aware of how many lunches Mark Thomas, may, have had with Peel Holdings. 

Why do you have one man and a couple of his oppos able to dictate news on behalf of his friends in high places at Peel Holdings.

So the true colours are now well and truly nailed to the mast. Peel Holding colours.

Peel are shipping the docks to Salford, I did not see a fight against that by the DP. 

There should be laws against that.

One senior journalist told me of Mark Thomas, regarding the editors, close links to Peel Holdings,

"Oh its gone on for two hundred years"

"Yes I said and look what happened to the News of the World  exposed as a parasitic mess".  

 Today the Daily Post opinion is as pathetic as ever, dear I say gutter level.

 I doubt if anyone at the Ghost has even read Stephen Bonds independent report for English Heritage on Liverpool Waters.

Anyway this is what we have Mark, in the WHS...........and its on your watch.

UNESCO SLAM LIVERPOOL WATERS, at the 35th World Heritage Committee Meeting.

It looks like curtains to me for Liverpool Waters in its present form.
Slammed by English Heritage, attacked by CABE (and that says something).
Now Unesco tell the UK government that if this scheme goes ahead it will lose the OUV of the WHS and that will ultimatly lead to the loss of the WHS status.
Note that the decision is not directed to the Liverpool City Council but to what they call the State Party, or the UK government, via the DCMS.
There can be no doubt that the Spivs at Liverpool City Council both past and present will be sick about this, and the arrogant Peel Holdings will now jump up and down like spoilt brats because they cant get their own way.
The reality is that it is a horrid scheme that should never have got off the starting block.
The idea to recreate Shanghai in Liverpool is absurd.
I myself want to see the docks restored, it is not my fault that Peel Holdings choose to ship jobs down to Port Salford and then carbunculate the WHS.
Maybe this will make them now look to Amsterdam for a more humane sustainable development that works well around its historic waterways...............because if they don't.


118. Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City (United Kingdom) (C 1150)

Decision: 35 COM 7B.118

The World Heritage Committee,

1. Having examined Document WHC-11/35.COM/7B.Add,

2. Expresses its extreme concern at the proposed development of Liverpool Waters in

terms of the potential impact of its dense, high and mid-rise buildings on the form and

design of the historic docks and thus on the Outstanding Universal Value of the

property;

3. Notes that the independent Impact Assessment commissioned by English Heritage

clearly sets out the significantly damaging negative impact on the Outstanding

Universal Value of the property;

Decisions report WHC-11/35.COM/20, p. 150

4. Also notes that the proposed development is not in compliance with the property

Management Plan nor with the Liverpool Urban Development Plan;

5. Urges the State Party to ensure that these proposals are not approved, as failure to

do so could lead to consideration of loss of the Outstanding Universal Value of the

property;

6. Requests the State Party to invite a joint World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS reactive

monitoring mission, as soon as possible, to assess planning procedures and the

overall development strategies for the property;

7. Also requests the State Party to submit to the World Heritage Centre, by 1 February

2012, an updated report on the state of conservation of the property and on the

implementation of the above, examination by the World Heritage Committee at its


36th session in 2012.
 
http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2011/whc11-35com-20e.pdf

Museum of Liverpool... Nominated For Building Design Carbuncle Cup Award Five Days Before It Opens

Five days before it pretends to open and its on the shortlist for Building Design Carbuncle Cup Award, The Museum of Liverpool, a giant Dicky Bow in the world heritage site of Liverpool, an anachronism. Yes next to our three gently ageing Edwardian Beauties, the Liver Buildings the Port of Liverpool Buildings and the Cunard Buildings, they stick a trashy tart ..........along with its three ugly sisters at Mann Island, the Three Black Coffins, that I nominated. Not sure who was the nominee though I think it has a good chance. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/carbuncle-cup-2011-—-view-all-the-nominated-projects/5021290.article Have your say..........
http://www.bdonline.co.uk//buildings/carbuncle-cup/
Is anyone sure who the architect is there has been a few and still there is legal battles over ownership.

My understanding from within the organisation is that it is mayhem at the once proud organisation that Fuzzy Felt Fleming has managed to ruin with, his, ambition to build "Flemings Folly", for £80,000,000 when Care Homes are closing left right and centre. pic Rome MAXXI, well they look the same dont they.






http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/10/liverpool-black-history-month-will-dr.html
Apealling to all the dockers umbrella wallers it will be a sentimental journey to what we have lost and my understanding is that they are going to put Manchester Dock Gates in the museum, http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/03/manchester-docks-obliterated.html
Oh and the soft Alec's smashed the Ferry Bell while moving it, that was supposed to go in also.  http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/04/national-museums-liverpool-destroy.html


http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/11/loyd-grossman-lectures-us-on-heritage.html

Oh they have asked for bloggers to visit the opening can I take a bulldozer with me.
http://blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/BeABreakfastBlogger.aspx

Mann Island Nominated For Building Designs Carbuncle Cup Award.

Its that time of the year again when Liverpool's Binge Builders wake up with a hangover and cringe.http://www.bdonline.co.uk//buildings/carbuncle-cup/ click here

Matt Brook the poor excuse for an Architect. He of World Heritage disaster at Mann Island will have to accept the prize there can be no other more worthy winner for the 2011 Carbuncle Cup award than the atrocious Three Black Coffins built by Broadway Malyan for Neptune Developments.

They promised us Iconic and give us Ichronic, an anachronism of bad design plonked bang slappo in the world heritage site despoiling the best views of Liverpool, cherished views, they turn Liverpool's World Heritage Site into World Heritage S*ite.

There is no other way to describe it.

It is like giving a pretty girl a black eye and then knocking her teeth out and then saying now you cant smile anymore.

The Terminal Ferry Building was well accepted as a worthy winner in 2009. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/03/ptolemy-dean-talks-about-liverpools.html

Is it just my opinion, I think not.

http://badbritisharchitecture.blogspot.com/2009/07/pier-head-ferry-terminal-liverpool-by.html

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/08/liverpool-wins-carbuncle-cup.html 

This is what Amanda Baillieu editor of BD said at the time.

Liverpool Ferry Terminal wins Carbuncle Cup 2009

28 August 2009
By Amanda Baillieu

Despite strong competition from a record number of entries, this year’s winning building by Belfast-based Hamilton Architects is a shining example of bad architecture and bad planning

This year architecture’s only prize for sheer downright ugliness has seen a record number of entries: buildings so drab, hostile, or puffed up with their own self-importance they made you queasy, angry and depressed.

Many of you wailed at opportunities lost, egos gone unchecked, or sheer downright laziness, while others wanted the prize to go not simply to the architect but to the clients and the local authority that waved these hideous schemes through planning. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=430&storycode=3147432&channel=783&c=2

The winner is the building that shows how bad architecture and bad planning can combine to produce something truly awful — a building so ugly it can turn human flesh to stone or at the very least make grown men cry.
These arguments only got going when it came to deciding an order for the final three: Make’s Amenity building for Nottingham University, Belfast-based Hamilton Architects’ Ferry Terminal in Liverpool and Queen Margaret University campus, Lothian by Dyer Associates.
In the end the three judges, BD’s buildings editor Ellis Woodman, BD columnist and critic Owen Hatherley and architect Sean Griffiths of Fat were split between the Nottingham and Liverpool buildings.
Both buildings are appalling, they said, but after much deliberation they decided that, given the damage inflicted by the ferry terminal on what is a Unesco world heritage site, it was the more worthy recipient.
“It is such an amazing site, directly in front of the Three Graces, but the architects seem barely to have noticed. It is like letting a bad second-year student build next to St Peter’s,” said the judges despairingly.
“This is bad patronage by an ignorant council which thinks having jazzy architecture is putting the city on the map again.”
Completed this summer by Hamilton Architects (not to be confused with Hamiltons) the £9.5 million building incorporates ferry operations, a Beatles museum and a rooftop restaurant. It is cantilevered on two sides and clad in limestone to complement the new Liverpool Museum next door.
“The architect evidently once looked at a Zaha building in a magazine,” said the judges. “It is essentially a horrible sectional idea that has been extruded like a stick of rock. The long elevations couldn’t be more tedious, the Dr Caligari end facades no more grotesque. When you go there you think: oh no, I can’t believe they’ve done that.
http://nemesisrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/08/liverpools-mighty-minger.html Even the SAVE eccentric Evelyn Cook had a go under the Nemesis "Banana" Republic blogspot.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2010/04/heritage-fruitcakes-from-bonkers-ville_22.html

Mark Thomas did like the Terminal Ferry Carbuncle though he had to print this in his errr, paper.
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2009/08/28/architecture-critics-name-liverpool-ferry-terminal-uk-s-worst-new-building-92534-24551826/







I don't think they will find anyone to hug these ugly bleeders in Mann Island like they did for One Park Gone West.  http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/08/one-park-west-balloons-arrive-for-group.html
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/08/one-park-west-voted-one-park-worst-by.html
http://www.sevenstreets.com/  Our placid friends at Seven Streets had their say.
http://www.bdonline.co.uk//buildings/carbuncle-cup/ To read some parts you may have to register.

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/carbuncle-cup-2011-view-all-the-nominated-projects/5021290.article
Here are the links to the BD website

This is what I said with my nomination.

Citation: “Just what have they done! If there was a plan to build three giant Black Coffins across The Taj Mahal or the Pyramids imagine the world outrage.

“This eyesore is in Liverpools World Heritage Site and obscures what was my most cherished view of my city. Even worse when you consider this obliteration was the view on the front cover of every book and postcard of Liverpool.”

What do you think?

And it really is worth remembering just what it looked like before the morons destroyed our best views.