NOW the new City of Liverpool Cruise Terminal is up and running, attention has turned to whether it will be used as a proper terminal, whereby cruises can actually start and finish there, rather than a call-in for cruises from elsewhere.
Officials from Fred Olsen Cruise Line and Thomson Holidays are under the impression this will happen next year.
There is the knotty problem, though, of baggage handling and check-in, but there is even the suggestion this could be done at Liverpool John Lennon Airport (oh yeah!).
The obvious and ideal place for this is the empty Plot Seven, occupied by the Steam Packet’s Portakabin.
But this is owned by Peel, who might not want business taken from their glorious Langton Dock Cruise Terminal with its unrivalled views of Europe’s biggest scrap heap, the Sierra Metallica.
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WHEN she was PM, Margaret Thatcher never arrived in Liverpool in such style as her daughter Carol will enjoy aboard QE2 for the liner’s 40th anniversary (although we think the Leaderene might have visited Ford Halewood’s works canteen). Does Carol, famous for winning I’m A Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here – realise she’s entering a Tory-free zone? A case of I’m A Conservative Get Me In Here.
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OPTIMISTIC tourist of the year: American passenger disembarking from Seven Seas Voyager, the first ship to moor at the new cruise liner landing stage, asked how she felt, having walked three yards from the gangplank: “Well, it’s OK so far.�
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PERHAPS Mr Brocklebank is being unusually acerbic. After all, there was a massive clean-up around Princes Parade and the new landing stage before the arrival of Seven Seas Voyager. Curiously, one of the skips contained a box of wigs. The mystery deepens.
HOW ironic that the very last slice of EU Objective One dough will be used to pay for the over-sized new three-storey Mersey Ferries building on the Pier Head and last manifestation of the Curse of Lady Doreen, whose final act as planning committee chairman allowed this to go ahead. For a short time, ferry passengers will enjoy an uninterrupted view of the Three Graces before this grotesquerey is thrown up. Why on earth does Mersey Ferries need such a large building anyway?
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AT A special Liverpool council meeting last week to debate the vote of no confidence in dear leader Cllr Warren Bradley, like a prize peacock former leader Cllr Mike Storey rose to the occasion, making the most of his impressive oratory skills.
This caused even some of the most hardened “seen it all before� Lib-Dems to wonder to themselves if they were looking at the Come Back Kid rides again.