Mr Brocklebank's World Wide Web Log

THE many people outraged over felling Canada Boulevard’s memorial maple avenue at the Pier Head can relax. Some axed tree trunks have been ecologically recycled – propping up a sign warning of men at work. So that’s all right then.

IT LIFTS the spirits to hear that being goalkeeper at Liverpool FC caused Pepe Reina to exclaim the Chelsea match was one of “the nights that you live for”. But equally inversely depressing to learn that during his greatest moment thieves were clearing out his home.

CLOGGING up Speke Boulevard with special provisions for airport buses serving new transatlantic air services not only spoils Liverpool’s only free-flowing dual carriageway, but prompts the big question: “Do any transatlantic flyers use such buses?”

Airline passengers are making a bad start if they have to use the 82A. It reminds Mr Brocklebank of the old joke: how do you get a bus to speak? Send them on the 82A (sonic boom-boom!). Or should the updated gag be: how do you make long-haul passengers speechless? Send them on the 82A.

LIVERPOOL could be excluded from a special edition of the board game Monopoly unless support surges in an online vote. Our once great city port is being trounced by the likes of St Albans, leading with 22,222 votes.

The 22nd and last place to guarantee inclusion is currently occupied by St Andrews, while Liverpool languishes at 33rd position. To stop this laughable bid for publicity by St Albanians, the Scouserati and Kopnoscenti must vote at www.monopoly.co.uk

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MR BROCKLEBANK’S deepest fears, that reports of the death of afternoon tea in Liverpool are not exaggerated, have been realised. A national newspaper promotes special offers for this most civilised of British institutions, with one notable omission: Merseyside.

Readers may be surprised to learn you can still buy a decent afternoon tea in Liverpool at the Adelphi – providing you can catch a waitress’s eye.

AS TIRELESSLY detailed here, St George’s Hall has been opened twice, firstly by former Lord Mayor Lady Doreen Jones and again 20-plus years later on April 23, by the Prince of Wales. Now a brouhaha has erupted over leading Liverpool solicitor and cultural benefactor Rex Makin being snubbed with no invitation to meet HRH.

HARD on the heels of the appalling snub dealt by Liverpool Culture Co to the city's greatest living benefactor, solicitor Rex Makin, at the reopening of St George's Hall when he was not invited to meet the Prince of Wales, Mr Brocklebank learns of another disgraceful breach of protocol.

WHEN Liverpool's rich and famous want legal redress, there is one lawyer they turn to - Rex Makin. So who does Rex Makin, himself the very best, look to for help? After all, his spat with the "Liverpool Vulture Co" (as he calls it) is set to run and run until justice is done - and seen to be done.

IN A blistering post-local election speech at the Lib-Dem group meeting, Liverpool City Council leader and firefighter of this parish, Cllr Warren Bradley, thundered to his troops that, if ever Labour Group leader Cllr Joe Anderson became leader of the council, he will "leave the city". It seems this town isn't big enough for the both of them.

WE NOW know that Cllr Mike Storey will not be Capital of Culture Lord Mayor of Liverpool (it will be Labour's Cllr Steve Rotheram) or stand again as leader. So whither our one "A List" politician? Could Mr Brocklebank's former descriptions of him as Lord Storey of Paradise Street be prophetic?

LOVERS of Liverpool's history will quail to know the bulldozers are set to destroy Manchester Dock's ancient oak gates at the Pier Head to make way for the new Museum of Liverpool.

Already, demolition progresses at the adjacent Mann Island site, in a Northwest Development Agency deal to bankroll the new museum. In the city's history, promised within the new museum, will there be an exhibition detailing the Massacre of Mann Island 2007?

AT THE cutting of the first sod to begin building the new museum, National Museums Liverpool director Dr David Fleming said: "Thank you to everybody who has come, some might be mortal enemies for all I know. There have been a few voices saying do not do this and do not do that, but thank you to all who've stuck by us because we're not finished yet."
Who can he mean?