Robert Hampton

This week has been a rollercoaster ride for gay rights advocates in America. On Tuesday, an unpleasant and discriminatory anti-marriage law was approved by voters in a referendum in North Carolina. Less than 24 hours later, President Obama, presumably tired of the splinters he’d been getting from sitting on the fence, finally confirmed what almost everybody suspected: he supports marriage for same-sex couples.

This was big news in the States. The ABC network, which conducted the interview, went to extreme lengths to safeguard their exclusive, and then interrupted their normal schedule to carry the newsflash.

It’s a largely symbolic announcement: the issue of who can or cannot get married is largely decided by the individual states, and an intervention by the federal government would be difficult for many different reasons. Even so, for Obama to make a statement now is a brave move. Few issues arouse more passion than LGBT rights, and same-sex marriage in particular is guaranteed to get people riled up. The numbers are moving in the right direction, though: Gallup’s figures show that 50% of Americans support same-sex marriage – down slightly from 53% last year, but a significant increase from the 27% who were in favour the first time the question was asked in 1996. That is a massive shift in just 16 years.

Just before Obama’s announcement, the Guardian crunched some numbers and concluded that the President’s re-election campaign has nothing to fear from his announcement. That’s not a view shared by other pundits, but whatever the numbers say, there’s little doubt that Obama is on the right side of history. As gay people leave the closet behind forever to live openly and proudly in society, the question of equal marriage rights is a matter of “when”, not “if”.

The endorsement of the most powerful man on earth is also a welcome boost to the gay rights issue elsewhere in the world. The timing is very apt for us in the UK, where reports are circulating that the coalition government’s same-sex marriage plans are in turmoil and could be postponed. I have some more thoughts on the pro-marriage campaign here in the UK, but I will save them for a future post. In the meantime, you might want to check out the new campaign (Out4Marriage) which has been set up to complement the existing C4EM petition.

Stop what you’re doing and take ten minutes to watch this video (embedded below). It’s the story of Shane Bitney Crone and Tom Bridegroom, a couple who were torn apart by Tom’s sudden death, and of Shane’s bereavement, which has been compounded by ugly prejudice and an unforgiving legal system.

It’s a story from the US, where gay rights can be patchy, depending on which state you’re in. As Shane says: in the eyes of the law, he and Tom were no more than roommates. In many countries the situation is much worse – in many parts of the world there are no legal protections for gay people at all.

In Britain it’s important to remember how fortunate we are to have a full raft of gay rights legislation, especially civil partnerships, which confer most (but not all) of the protections and rights of marriage. We should not settle for second best, however, and as certain factions wage a bitter war against full marriage rights, stories like the one above should be foremost in our minds.

Marriage is a right and a privilege – it must be opened up to all couples, regardless of gender. And even when that battle has been won, there is still a mammoth task of stamping out ugly prejudice like that described in the video above.

Tomorrow, Liverpool (or at least, the percentage of the electorate that can be bothered) goes to the polls to elect a mayor.

The campaign has been a fairly rum affair. One candidate pulled out the day after announcing his intention to stand, citing “dirty politics”. Two candidates have been arrested. One lives in Wrexham and is only eligible to stand thanks to a shed he rents in Wavertree. A showpiece mayoral debate at the University of Liverpool was cancelled because of fears that trouble would flare between rival sets of protesters outside the hall. Another debate became farcical after one of the candidates was thrown out.

With all that in mind, it’s hard not to sympathise with independent candidate Liam Fogarty when he calls for an end to “politics, Liverpool-style”.

The campaigning has been complicated by the fact that voters don’t seem to know what the new mayor will actually do. Fogarty, interviewed by Sevenstreets, said that the people on the street are expecting an “ambassador” for the city. That is one aspect of the job, but there is much more to it than that. He (and it will be a he, as shamefully none of the parties could find a female candidate) will have sweeping powers over a number of aspects of city life, with powers being devolved from central Government to the mayor’s office.

What powers the mayor will actually get, however, is not entirely clear. Liverpool City Council’s web site is vague on the topic. Polly Curtis, writing on the Guardian web site, points out that the Government has suggested that the powers will be “tailor made” for each area, and that it is for the mayors themselves to make the case for devolved powers. Cities minister Greg Clark told the Echo, “it will help propel the city’s economy and attract international investment.”

One thing Liverpool will definitely get is a new £130m investment package. According to Liverpool City Council, having an elected mayor was a requirement to obtain this funding. In other words, we were bribed/blackmailed (choose whichever one of those loaded terms fits your world view better).

I’m in favour of elected mayors, but this past month of politicking has not been as inspiring as I hoped it would be. At least we can be grateful that it hasn’t turned into a vacuous battle where personalities are prioritised over policies. Surely no great metropolis would stoop to such levels?

Once more I have stared awkwardly at the camera while talking.

Since moving to Aigburth, with its attendant Merseyrail station, in 2003, I’ve become quite accustomed to being whisked off into the centre of town in just 9 minutes. A total of 15 minutes door-to-door commute time? That’ll do nicely.

I think it’s the hallmark of a good service that you only notice when its not there. Over the nine years that I’ve been using the service, the problems have been rare but disruptive: a strike, a blizzard, a misbehaving sewer and, most significantly, a six week shutdown to work on the tunnel. By and large however, Merseyrail get on with it with quiet efficiency, taking me to work, the shops, days and nights out, or just delivering me to Lime Street to start a longer journey.

It’s fair to say that Merseyrail is almost as essential to me as oxygen or photos of Gareth Bale with no shirt. Now Liverpool Central has closed for six months, I feel like one of my legs has been chopped off – sure, I can still get about, but it’s not as easy as it was. I mean, come on: Moorfields is at least a five minute walk from Liverpool ONE!

At least Central went out in a blaze of glory at the weekend, with more people passing through its doors than it has ever had to cope with at any time in its existence.

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When I first read of the plans for the Sea Odyssey Giant Spectacular, I was sceptical. These big set-piece events cost a lot of money and effort, but do they have any lasting impact?

My cynicism was increased further when Merseytravel published a list of bus diversions which ran to 12 pages, but could have been succinctly summarised as, “if you use a bus, you’re in trouble”. Was it worth causing this level of disruption to the normal life of the city?

As it turned out, yes it was.

For the uninitiated, The Sea Odyssey is a show based on the story of three giants: a little girl, her dog, and her uncle (a diver) who end up roaming the city in search of each other before finally being reunited. The giants are extremely sophisticated marionettes, animated by a squad of talented French performance artists who operate numerous ropes and pulleys to make the giants move. The show has been developed and designed specifically for Liverpool’s streets, and is a one-time-only event.

What set Sea Odyssey aside was the sheer scale of it. The Guardian previewed the event and noted that “Sea Odyssey will be – the Olympics aside – the largest outdoor event staged in the country this year.”

It started on Friday with events centred around Stanley Park in the north of the city, but I was in work so missed out. I took advantage of my lunch break, however, to stroll down to the Albert Dock, where one of the giants – the Diver Uncle – sat in the water, waiting…

He was due to wake up at 2pm, but I was expected back at the office by then, and to miss even a second at my desk would violate my strong work ethic (stop laughing, you).

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Last month, when the Government launched its consultation on equal(ish) marriage, I predicted “three more years of unpleasant rhetoric from opponents of equality until the law is passed.”

I’ve been proved right, but I didn’t expect it to get this unpleasant this quickly. I’ve previously mentioned Cardinal O’Brien calling gay relationships “grotesque”. We’ve also had a Kent MP claiming that Shakespeare’s plays will have to be rewritten, and the Daily Mail screaming that terms like “mother” and “father” will be replaced by “progenitor”(?!).

The campaign took a new twist on 3rd April, when gay rights group Stonewall relaunched their “some people are gay, get over it!” ad campaign on the back of the current push for equal(ish) marriage rights. The advert is on 1,000 of the capital’s buses, ensuring that the equality message is brought to every community of London.

A response came today from the misleadingly-titled Anglican Mainstream, a Christian organisation which claims to support “traditional” teaching on the family (and you know what that usually means). They booked a smaller ad campaign on 26 London buses, claiming that sexual orientation can be changed with therapy. The ads, which were due to appear from next week, were a spoof of Stonewall’s design and slogan: “NOT GAY! EX-GAY, POST-GAY, AND PROUD. GET OVER IT!”

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Alan Davies is in trouble after making comments about the Hillsborough disaster on a podcast. He criticised Liverpool for refusing to play matches on the anniversary of the tragedy. A clip is on YouTube here, if you want to judge his choice of words.

I don’t for a second think that Alan Davies is an offensive person. But get a man to talk about football, and for some reason common sense goes out the window and angry nonsense seems to be the default level of conversation (check out the comments on the YouTube video I linked to, which make normal YouTube comments look like the Frost/Nixon interview).

I kind of get the nation’s obsession with football, but there are lots of things I don’t get. For example, I don’t understand why rivalries get so nasty and personal. I don’t understand why Liverpool and Everton fans are such a volatile mix that police feel it necessary to enforce segregated pubs in London for the FA Cup semi-final on Saturday.

I don’t understand how a stall in Clayton Square Shopping Centre thinks it’s amusing to sell baby-grows that say (paraphrased) “I’ve only just been born but I hate the red shite”.

I blame Sky Sports for hyping up every match they show as being the most important event in the world ever (clip below is a David Mitchell spoof, but scarily close to the real thing).

I don’t understand. Someone explain it to me.

Ben Bradshaw MP has got it badly wrong by mocking the Government’s same-sex marriage plans.

“This is pure politics on their part. This isn’t a priority for the gay community, which already won equal rights with civil partnerships. We’ve never needed the word ‘marriage’, and all it’s done now is get a bunch of bishops hot under the collar. We’ve been pragmatic, not making the mistake they have in the US, where the gay lobby has banged on about marriage.”

One part of what he says is true – I think this is a political move on David Cameron’s part. However, while he’s entitled to his view I wish Bradshaw would have thought a little bit before speaking out and making comments that anti-marriage campaigners would jump all over. Like other prominent gay people who have opposed marriage equality – Christopher Biggins, Brian Sewell et al – he seems to have looked at his own life position, where he’s happy and settled and doesn’t want or need to get married, and concluded from that that no other same-sex couple anywhere could possibly want or need it.

It’s also worth pointing out the civil partnerships do not confer exactly the same rights and responsibilities as marriage – there are several important differences, mostly in the areas of inheritance and pension rights.

Oh, and you have signed the petition and submitted a response to the Government consultation, haven’t you?

Penzance station on a Thursday evening is a quiet place. In platform 3, a Sprinter sits silently at the buffer stops, lights off and engine powered down, waiting for the next morning’s rush hour (or what passes for it at the extreme southern end of Britain’s rail network). In the ticket office, only one of the four windows is nominally open, occupied by an extremely bored-looking booking clerk. Eventually even he gives up and pulls down his Position Closed blind.

Trains are few and far between at this time of night, but there is a service for Plymouth due to depart soon. A train arrives but the guard doesn’t unlock the doors immediately, instead disappearing into the mess room for a well-earned cuppa. The handful of intending passengers are forced to wait on the platform. They are an unsavoury bunch: among their number I notice an unwashed man with an aggressive-looking dog in tow and a young couple who have clearly had too much to drink.

The driver and guard finally return and release the doors for the grateful passengers. Within a few minutes the diesel engine revs up and the train disappears into the night. This causes some chagrin to a teenage boy and girl who arrived at the station just as the train was leaving. They are convinced that the timetable shows a different departure time and spend some time arguing with the point with the train dispatcher. Eventually they concede and disappear – no doubt to find somewhere comfortable to wait: the next train to Plymouth leaves two hours later.

On another platform, a few people are milling around. They are waiting for the late evening arrival from London, which left the capital some five-and-a-half hours earlier. The HST duly pulls in. Its journey has taken it through inner-city grime and dreary commuter towns; it must be a joy to finally reach open countryside, where the driver can open the throttle and speed along the tracks for mile after mile. Upon reaching the southwest, the train will have slowed down again, giving passengers a chance to appreciate the scenery flicking past their windows. Then, every twenty miles or so, there has been a stop at one of the characterful stations that make Devon and Cornwall’s railways such a pleasure, before it finally reached here, its final destination, some 300 miles away from where it started. An epic journey, but just another day’s work for the pinnacle of British Rail train design.

On the platform, a plethora of mini-reunions take place. A daughter runs up to hug her father; a middle-aged woman gratefully hands over her oversized suitcases to her husband. A man in his early twenties proffers a bouquet of flowers to his sweetheart. The station briefly bustles as people stream out in search of onward transport.

The alighting passengers, in their eagerness, have neglected to close the train doors behind them. The guard walks along the train slamming them shut. With all doors secure, the platform staff signal “right away”. The InterCity 125 reverses out of the station and heads for the nearby depot where it will be serviced and refuelled. Tomorrow morning it will head back to Paddington and the whole cycle will begin again.

The roar of the powerful diesel engines recedes into the distance, and the station falls silent once more. The Cornish rail network is undoubtedly beginning to wind down for the night. However, there are two or three trains left on the departure board and I am here to catch one of them: the 2145 to London Paddington, better known as the Night Riviera Sleeper.

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