Showing posts with label Liverpool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liverpool. Show all posts

Wednesday 13 April 2022

Two FA semi-finals at Wembley this weekend and Euston Station is closed.

Bus replacement services - Easter Weekend

 It is going to be a busy Easter weekend in Wembley with the Emirates semi-finals taking place on Saturday (Manchester City v Liverpool k.o. 3.30pm) and Sunday (Chelsea vs Crystal Palace k.o. 4.30pm).

Euston Station will be closed throughout the weekend and this will prove particularly difficult for Manchester City and Liverpool supporters who use the West Coast line.

Mayors and supporters of both cities called on the FA to change the venue to no avail. The need for Wembley Stadium to hold as many events as possible to recoup the £757m cost of rebuilding the stadium. Hosting the FA Cup semi-finals was part of that day.

Network Rail say that the FA was given warning of the closure back in 2019.

The upshot is that 50,000-60,000 fans could be heading down to London by road on a Bank Holiday weekend.

On their website Network Rail say:

Over Easter (Friday 15 – Monday 18 April), Network Rail will be carrying out major upgrade works on sections of the West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Scotland. As a result, there’ll be no trains to/from London Euston, some journeys will take longer and may involve a rail replacement service.

We strongly recommend you travel either side of the Easter weekend (15 – 18 April). If you need to travel, please make a reservation, plan ahead, and check the Avanti West Coast website before travelling.

  Fans travelling to the FA Cup Semi-Final are encouraged to consider alternative modes of transport to get to the match at Wembley. Any fans who need to travel by train should plan ahead, allow extra time for their journey, and check the National Rail website before they travel

Things will be easier for Sunday's semi-final as both teams are London-based.

Meanwhile Brent Council states:

We want everyone to enjoy their visit to Wembley and the match. However we will not tolerate anti-social behaviour, so please behave responsibly.

Brent Council and its partners are enforcing a No Street Drinking Zone on Olympic Way and the surrounding area for the Emirates FA Cup semi-finals weekend on Saturday 16 April (Liverpool v Manchester City) and Sunday 17 April (Crystal Palace v Chelsea) as part of the current Public Space Protection Order.

Fans drinking on Olympic Way and the surrounding streets will be asked to hand over their alcohol and enforcement action may be considered.


 

 

Thursday 17 September 2020

Victory as electronic arms fair cancelled in the face of broad-based Liverpool campaign

Liverpool Against the Electronic Arms Fair declared victory today  after organisers of an international weapons show cancelled plans to use the city’s Exhibition Centre in November.

The Electronic Warfare Europe show, organised by Clarion Events on behalf of the Association of Old Crows, was due to be held at the Exhibition Centre from November 16-18. Organisers declared that the exhibition would now be moved to Seville, Spain in 2021.

Campaign founder, Green councillor Lawrence Brown, said: 

‘We are delighted that these merchants of death have recognised that there is no welcome for them here in Liverpool.

‘In just a few short weeks we brought together peace groups, local councillors from across the political spectrum, faith groups and anti-war activists to demand that the council, which owns the Exhibition Centre and manages it through the ACC company, close the door on this event.

‘This cancellation is testament to the efforts of all the people who have signed our petition, sent emails to our MPs and councillors, and planned for online and public demonstrations in the coming weeks.’

Electronic Warfare Europe blamed the threat of a further British government Covid-19 lockdown on the decision to move the exhibition to Seville in Spain next year.

However, the announcement followed a public call from Right Reverend Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool who signed the cancellation petition and said:

‘In this time of pandemic the nations of the world should be helping one another, not shopping for clever new ways to kill and oppress people. I hope that Liverpool will say no to this Fair, and will say yes to life.’

Campaign chair Martin Dobson pointed out that the cancellation was made after plans were announced for a national Day of Online Action this Saturday and mounting pressure on Mayor Joe Anderson, who sits on the Exhibition Centre Board.

The Green Party had put down an emergency motion to be debated at the next Council meeting, Labour MPs had pressed the Mayor to cancel and Labour councillors were planning to force a debate at the Labour Group.

Mr Dobson added: 

 ‘Whatever, the reason, we’re pleased this arms fair has been cancelled, but we will be contacting our friends and colleagues in Seville and offering to support any campaign they launch to close it down there.

‘This must also act as a wake-up call to the Mayor, Council and Exhibition Centre Board to develop an ethical booking policy to ensure such a damaging event is never allowed again.'

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Natalie Bennett: Narrow schooling for a failed economic model betrays pupils

This article by Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party, was first published yesterday by the Huffington Post, LINK  under the title:

Education Reform - Why It's Time to Abolish Dictatorial, Oppressive Ofsted

When I talk to people in the schools system, there's a huge and growing concern that we are on entirely the wrong path in terms of institutional structures, teaching practice and direction. These were all issues addressed when we updated the Green Party education policy at our Spring Conference in Liverpool.
The policy calls for the abolition of Ofsted, which has become unduly dictatorial, oppressive and rigid in its views, while also being subject to political meddling.

It calls for its replacement with continuous collaborative assessment and for national council educational excellence working closely with local authorities. To further encourage local accountability and reaction to local needs, the policy calls for education authorities to encourage schools to set up parent councils or forums, providing a mechanism for direct local input, and also for representatives of older students to be able to attend governing body meetings and have input into their decisions.

This all reflects the fact that a general revolt against Ofsted is growing, with schools around the country (and their communities) saying that its processes are not fair or reasonable, its criteria arbitrary, and its inspections incredibly stressful and destructive.

From Hogarth Primary in London, to a range of Stoke-on-Trent schools; from Oldfield School in Bath to Sandy Lane Primary in Reading, and many more, there's grave dissatisfaction at Ofsted's behaviour and a failure of transparency and apparent fairness in its decisions.

Schools that serve disadvantaged communities, and community schools that the government wants to convert to free status, often despite the wishes of parents, seem particularly vulnerable to negative Ofsted inspections, despite the views of parents and their communities.

That's in part a function of the increasing pressure on all schools to produce test results at the expense of any broader quality of education, and to follow narrowly prescriptive recipes for teaching, of which perhaps the worst example is the phonics test.

The ideological attachment of our current education secretary to this single method, based on an extraordinarily narrow evidence base, is possibly the worst single example of 'goveism' - the attempts to decide the nature and content of what our children are taught according to the whims, prejudices and preferences of a single man.

It's telling that when I talk to sixth formers and university students around the country, one comment that invariably gets enthusiastic support is my call for pupils to no longer be treated like the material in a sausage machine, shoved through a series of gauges to force them into a uniform shape and size, with 'failure' penalised by them being thrown aside into the 'waste' bin. That's why we're calling for an end to the current testing regime and rigid age-related benchmarking.

Our new policy also highlights the way in which free schools, like academies, lack local democratic accountability and oversight, and calls for them to be incorporated back into the state system, with oversight from local authorities.

That reflects growing signs of collapse in the free and academies school systems, with disasters ranging from the E-Act education charity, which is to have nearly a third of its 34 schools taken off it, to the frankly incredible disaster of the Al-Madinah school in Derby.

There are huge numbers of empty places in free schools, and the lack of planning for future pupil numbers is having disruptive impacts around the country. The government certainly won't admit it, but this is an utterly failed policy. It was always clear that the free school programme was an attempt to open the way for private companies to make profits from teaching our students - threatening the same kind of destruction and chaos that companies like G4S, A4E and Atos have brought to so many other public services. But there's increasing hope now that the whole system will fall apart before getting to that point - which is great for the long-term future of our school system, but dreadful for the many thousands of pupils and parents caught up in this Govian mess.

There is an even broader problem with the nature of our education system that needs to be tackled. We're increasingly being told that its purpose is narrowly instrumental - to prepare pupils for jobs - despite the fact that many of the states we're now trying to copy - from Singapore to China - have released the limitations and problems of that approach and are frantically seeking to improve their students' creativity and general skills development.

Training pupils for jobs that often don't exist now, or may well not exist in the future, is an obvious, enormous waste. We're in a fast-moving world, and young people need to develop their ability and desire to learn throughout their life, to have flexible skills, whether intellectual or hands-on, to deal with what is going to be a rapidly changing economy and society. To prepare pupils for the narrow conditions of our failed economic model is a massive error that betrays our young people.

For more details on Green Party education policy and reforms follow https://twitter.com/GreenEdPolicy

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Look out for lost Liverpool supporters this weekend

It looks as if we will be seeing lots of coaches in Wembley on Saturday for the FA Cup Final or lots of lost Liverpool fans trying to find their way home after this statement from the British Transport Police:
Virgin Trains is warning Liverpool football fans that there are no realistic options for return train travel from London after the FA Cup Final on Saturday 5 May. 
Major route improvement works by Network Rail over the Bank Holiday weekend will mean extensive route closures.
Passengers from Liverpool to London on Saturday 5 May will need to travel via Manchester or Chester, or use Stoke-on-Trent station but the decision by the Football Association for a 17:15 kick-off means there are no options for fans to return north the same day after the game.
With the route out of London closed on Sunday 6 May, the earliest that fans could return to Liverpool would be on Monday 7 May.
A Virgin Trains spokesman said: "We always try and help football fans get to and from matches on our network, and did this very successfully for Everton and Liverpool supporters travelling to the semi-final. However, on this occasion, as we explained to the FA, the choice of both a 17:15 kick off and the staging of the FA Cup Final on a Bank Holiday weekend when Network Rail had already planned essential route improvement works means we cannot offer fans the level of train service they have come to expect."
There appear to have been no advance warning to fans from the police, Brent Council,  the FA or Wembley Stadium about the street drinking ban as there was for the the semi-finals. On that occasion the police turned a blind eye to the public drinking but the late kick off on Saturday gives more than 4 hours extra drinking time compared with that much earlier kick off.