Yes there it is QM 2, registered in Southamptom, arriving in Liverpool. http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2009/10/20/royal-visitor-finally-comes-home-92534-24967751/ Peter Olsen at the Daily Post covers the story under the misleading headline QM 2 finally comes home to Liverpool. It has not been here before. http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2009/10/20/queen-mary-2-confers-new-premier-status-on-liverpool-with-her-maiden-visit-92534-24968607/Unfortunatly due to a serious lack of foresight no passengers can embark or disembark as there is no baggage handling facilities due to a Cruise liner Cock-up by the council that the local press are blaming another city for. I have a client Malcolm, who has got the train to Southampton to embark, then he sails to Liverpool and has been told by his wife, he can go home and do the washing. Then they are off to Cork and Dublin....and then he goes back to Southampton to get the train back home. He said the tour operators are charging the wealthy Americans $90 to take them to the Cathedral and back....which seems a little much. http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/search/label/Cruise%20Liner%20Jetty It will be here tonight until 11.30 and will be seen off by another firework display costing a fortune. Its a shame they never saved all the cash spent on recent firework displays and spent the extra money on the Cruise Liner Jetty and turned it into a fully functional baggage handling dock like what they have in Southampton, with customs facilities for embarkation.
Meanwhile Larry Bartlett, the Daily Ghost and its big bully sister the Oldham Echo gets another leathering regarding the sham way they have represented us as a city in what they call Cruise Wars. http://condensedthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/10/oldham-echo-fight-arranger-round-two.html
read the comments by the Professor Chucklebutty they are consice, I thought he only told jokes.
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I went, like many others, to see the QM2 and what struck me - apart from the ship's huge size and top-heavy design - was just how bleak and crude is the newly emerging Pier Head area. Neptune's "Three Disgraces" are breathtakingly intrusive and arrogant. The Liverpool Museum looks like a Vogon spaceship, so unsympathetic is its design. The so-called Cruise Terminal with its dingy Beatles hop (what a wasted opportunity) glowers at the "Three Graces". Worse of all is the divisive trough-like canal, like a sterile open sewer drain, crossing what should be a public place of assembly. Is this it? Is this the best that the developers, NWDA and Council can come up with? What a colossal disappointment. What a shocking image it must create for any curious cruise ship passenger.
ReplyDeleteAiden I cannot put into words my disapointment to see the european objective one money wasted in the name of regeneration, which has been a misguided despoilment of our best asset, the WHS.
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