Dear Santa,
I’d like you to give me, and thousands of other people in Liverpool a really big present for Christmas. The lovely Sefton Park Meadows. Allow it to stay for ever as beautiful green space for future generations.
We all know you are working hard to manage the spending because those terrible London twins, Cameron and Osborne Scrooge, delivered a nasty turkey last week with their mean spending allocation for Liverpool. Humbug to both of them.
The Meadows is now being marketed nationally by your marketing elves, eager to dispose of this magical piece of Liverpool. They even removed signs put there by the little people to show their disapproval at the sale.
The fact we are being starved of cash by a heartless government makes it even more vital for the spirit of Liverpool to keep the Meadows.
Your team of little elves, beavering away in your Dale Street Grotto, were a little mischievous in the way they cheekily tried to slip the sale through, by pulling a fast one: saying it was incidental open space in Park Avenue, Liverpool 18.
The Meadows is not "incidental" to the many thousands of people who pass this green wonderland every day.
When the council had the vision in the days of Queen Victoria to buy the land from Lord Sefton (not Alderman Bill Sefton but the one who was a proper Earl), the Meadows were part of what were open fields purchased to provide a green lung for the city, a place where men, women and children could gather for fresh air and recreation.
It is so uplifting to just drive past the Meadows, with its glorious wall of trees. If Sefton Park is one of Liverpool’s Crown Jewels, the Meadows must be one of its big gemstones.
Last week you won the court case to allow major events to take place in Sefton Park for up to 40,000 people. Such events make it even more important to protect and preserve the peace and quiet of the Meadows.
I even wonder whether people investing in posh executive homes at the Meadows will take great exception to the noise and disruption of major events.
There are plenty of lovely parts of the city where executive homes already exist, or could be built. Look at West Derby, Calderstones, Allerton, Grassendale, Fulwood Park. The number of large houses that could be accommodated on the Meadows could easily be absorbed here and there.
What needs to be happen is for your visionary elves to get on their sleighs to work at attracting businesses to Liverpool, to create jobs and opportunities. Until that happens I’m not even sure there will be any executives in need of executive homes.
The poor old Meadows is now being marketed nationally by your marketing elves, eager to dispose of this magical piece of Liverpool. They even removed signs from the Meadows put there by the little people to show their disapproval at the sale.
Going, going, gone
As the city grows and improves, and as the population increases under your stewardship, the need to protect areas like the Meadows will be even more essential. Once it has been taken away from us it will be lost for ever.
Liverpool will walk through the storms of the economic plight visited upon us. Saving the Meadows for those days will, Santa, be the best gift of all to us, the people of this great city.
All we want for Christmas is our lovely Meadows.
