Robert Hampton

He had a dream — as did, apparently, the person who came up with this:

Organisers of an art project have apologised over claims Martin Luther King Jnr’s “I have a dream” speech was penned in Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel.

Liverpool Discovers, set up to “celebrate the greatest stories seldom told” about the city, published the claims in a tourist pamphlet.

The report goes on to say that the information in the Liverpool Discovers leaflet was based entirely on contributions from members of the public — a research technique known as “The Wikipedia Method”.

Martin Luther King Jnr is such a revered figure. This event’s organisers should really have been a bit more careful about using his name so casually.

The house where Ringo Starr was born is scheduled to be demolished as part of a regeneration scheme for the “Welsh Streets” area of Toxteth, against the wishes of campaigners who are battling to save it.

There has been a new development about the redevelopment:-

THE campaign to save Ringo Starr’s birthplace was today given a glimmer of hope by Housing Minister Grant Shapps who has called on Liverpool City Council to allow the property a reprieve while the public have their say.

The question I have to ask is: WHY?! This is a different situation to Lennon and McCartney’s childhood homes, where the pair actually wrote and rehearsed some of their early songs together. Starr only lived in this house until he was three years old, so there is no Beatles history of any significance here.

All this is doing is delaying a hugely important regeneration scheme. I hope Liverpool City Council stand firm under the pressure and press ahead with the scheme, so the people who actually live in the area don’t have to put up with the the grot any longer.

July brought big changes to the newspaper industry, as The Times started charging for access to its web site. This was supposed to ensure a steady income stream for the newspaper, putting it on a secure financial footing for the future. However, it also resulted in the Times being completely removed from the online chatter of the blogosphere, as its news coverage and columnists were no longer accessible to the internet hoi-polloi. Still, I’m sure this decision made sense to someone somewhere.

The Supreme Court ruled that gay people facing persecution are entitled to claim asylum in the UK. I welcomed the decision, although my blog post is curiously vague about precisely why I welcomed it. Hmm…

In other gay-related news, I reviewed, with sadness, a booklet from the US Military discussing its anti-gay don’t ask, don’t tell policy.

Elsewhere, health and safety went mad as one person suggested banning rugby scrums. I felt uncomfortable on a train full of Orange Lodge marchers and I defended the traditional sitcom from an onslaught of criticism from trendy TV reviewers.

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What a year 2010 was! It had twelve months, each consisting of at least 28 days. On some of those days I made blog entries. Here are the highlights.

I began the year in January fretting about an alleged Crystal Maze remake starring Amanda Holden. This story fortunately turned out to be utter bollocks. Ginger people again proved that (yours truly excepted) they have no sense of humour or perspective. Britain experienced a deluge of snow, and Merseyrail impressed everyone by soldiering on throughout, a feat which they would surely repeat next time we experienced awful weather… right?

I finally joined the Wii owners’ club, just as the console stopped being cool. My rekindled love for video games did not result in me getting rickets. I also celebrated my first Twitterversary and cautiously welcomed the iPad.

I also took time to blog at length about a US comedian no-one has heard of over here, illustrating my post with YouTube clips which have now been removed for copyright infringement.

In more serious matters, the Haiti earthquake occupied people’s thoughts as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded in the devastated country.

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Snow is falling in parts of the UK and more is forecast over the coming days, with Liverpool expected to receive its first dusting over the weekend. Last time this happened, back in January, much of the city ground to a halt, with buses sliding comically on untreated roads.

The January snowfall was particularly severe because Liverpool, like several other local authorities, ran out of grit. They assure us that this time they are more prepared. We shall see.

Photo: St Michaels in the Snow by adebâ“žnd on Flickr. Photo license: Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike

Happy birthday to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened 180 years ago today. There were other earlier attempts, but the L&M was the first proper railway as we would recognise it today, with all trains working under their own power rather than drawn by horses and using fixed stopping places and timetables.

What an adventure it must have been for the early travellers. Those first nervous passengers travelled aboard rickety four-wheeled carriages, with uncomfortable seats, low speeds and poor ride quality. We’ve come a long way since then.

The line contains several engineering marvels, including the crossing of Chat Moss and the Sankey Viaduct. The route is of course still in use today, with Earlestown station having the distinction of being the oldest railway station in the world. A few stops down the line at Rainhill, a plaque and exhibition commemorate the famous locomotive trials which proved that steam power was the way of the future.

Despite some early hiccups (killing the guest of honour on launch day is the sort of PR snafu that would make even Max Clifford’s palms sweat) the L&M’s success inspired a swathe of copycat enterprises. Within a few years, a vast network of lines criss-crossed the country, opening up areas previously inaccessible without an arduous journey. Trips that previously took days were reduced to a few hours. The railways created tourism and introduced the concept of commuting.

Do many people riding the overcrowded Pacer into Lime Street in 2010 recognise the historical importance of this section of the City Line? Probably not, but the world would have been a very different place without it.

This doesn’t seem at all over the top:-

MERSEYSIDE’S emergency services joined teams from across England today to take part in a major exercise simulating an earthquake hitting Liverpool.

The massive event, one of the largest to have been undertaken, is aimed at testing the response to an “unthinkable” disaster.

So in other words they recreated a bad Sci-fi Channel movie? Hm.

The notion of Gay Pride arouses much tedious harrumphing from some sections of the public, usually along the lines of, “if we had a Straight Pride event we’d be arrested for bigotry. It’s PC gone mad. Loony left, asylum seekers, Daily Mail, BBC Have Your Say”

This opinion (it’s an overstatement to call it an “argument”) ignores the fact that Pride is possibly the one day each year that LGBT people can live their lives completely openly without fear of intimidation or violence. One could easily argue that the other 364 days of the year are de facto Straight Pride days.

Such thoughts were in the back of my mind as I travelled into the city centre for the inaugural Liverpool Pride celebrations. Accepting my sexual orientation has been a long and difficult road of turbulent emotions and long phases of denial and self-loathing. Until very recently, I was out to hardly anyone. Truth be told, I felt like a bit of a fraud for even thinking of taking part in a Pride march, because for a very long time, my feelings were of shame, not pride.

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This weekend Liverpool is hosting a variety of events based around the Albert Dock / Pier Head area, in Liverpool on the Waterfront. I spent a few hours there with my friend Andrew on Saturday afternoon. Despite the variable weather, we had a really good time. Liverpool is getting really good at these showpiece events, and it was good to see so many visitors in the city.

I also had the chance to give my new digital camera a workout and some of the best pictures are reproduced below for your viewing pleasure.

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Today was Orange Lodge day or something and the streets of Liverpool were filled with marchers, parading through the streets and holding up rush-hour traffic.

I remember, years ago, being taken along to the parades by my Dad. 8-year-old Robert was fascinated by the costumes and music and enjoyed it. Then, as I got a bit older, I did a bit of research, realised what these parades were actually about and I didn’t like what I discovered one bit.

The whole event makes me decidedly uncomfortable. I’m not talking specifically about the drunken rabble, returning from Southport, that held up my train home at Moorfields this evening by starting a small riot on the platform — although they are, obviously, awful. But in a supposedly modern, forward-looking, 21st-century city, is this sort of sectarian throwback really something to be proud of?

It appears, ultimately, to boil down to: “MY regressive religious faith is slightly better than YOUR, slightly different but equally regressive religious faith.” And if people still feel the need to declare their perceived superiority over others, in this day and age, well… I’m just happier than ever to be an atheist.