December 2007 Archives

By Deputy editor Andrew Brown

The Visiter staff are all in today, working on the Midweek Visiter for this Wednesday.

And like everyone else in Southport, we are looking forward to 2008 - and what itn will bring for our town.

A couple of superb new hotels will be exciting to see, and as a news team we hope that we will be bringing you more positive, celebratory and heart-warming stories in the new year than sad ones.

If anyone hears of any news that Southport people should share, please get in touch!

And best wishes to everyone in Southport, Banks, Hesketh Bank, Tarleton, Scarisbrick and Halsall for a great new year.

CHRISTMAS has been enjoyed by thousands of people across the Southport area this year – but for an unfortunate few, the festive season has been one of despair.
Dozens of people in Banks were left without electricity after a power failure on Christmas Eve, meaning no heating – and no way to cook the Christmas turkey.
A huge cascade of congratulations should go out to the workers who forewent their own Christmas dinners to work tirelessly to restore supplies, but this is an area that keeps suffering from blackouts.
United Utilities should make a new year’s resolution to see what it can do to stop the situation happening again – like the army of angry residents told the Southport Visiter yesterday, the dark ages (literally) should be a thing of the past.
Let’s hope homeowners there can make up for this year’s disaster with smiles on their faces next year.
Also distraught were volunteers from the Soup Kitchen and the RSPCA charity shop in the town centre, both of which were hit by mindless yobs who left parcels for the needy showered with glass in the first instance and stole much-needed charity cash for neglected animals in the second.
If anyone knows who was responsible, please let the police know – and if anyone has some spare cash left over after Christmas, these are two charities that could do with some support from local people to make up for their loss.

PUTTING smiles on the faces of Visiter staff – and our readers! – over the past few weeks, have been the many superb photos people have sent in of their ‘festive pets’.
What a fantastic response to our appeal, thank you to everyone who has sent in their images.
Don’t miss your Southport Visiter in January, when we launch our new Pet Idol style contest looking for the best pets across the area.
Let’s start 2008 with some animal magic!

IT is sad, but true – Scrooge seems to be getting more and more control over Christmas.
Over the past few years other towns seem to be increasingly toning down the traditional meaning of the event and instead promote ‘winterval’ or other ‘non-offensive’ ersatz replacements.
This week, environment minister Lord Rooker said that people should not put so many festive lights outside their homes because they are adding to greenhouses and threatening to cause climate change.
And stars in some pantomimes have been told to stop throwing sweets at people in the audience for ‘health and safety reasons’.
How ridiculous!
At least here in Southport people know how to celebrate the festive season in glorious style.
Today, we celebrate some of the best Christmas illuminations in the Southport area, with people having made remarkable efforts to light up their homes like, well, Christmas trees. They’ve certainly brought smiles to the faces of many people driving past.
Equally delightful are the army of readers who have sent us their festive pet snaps.
For the real ‘ahh’ factor, the superb talents of local pupils and their teachers are celebrated in our four-page schools’ Nativity play photo special, with some of the young stars ‘telling the greatest story on Earth’.
And, of course, local churches are busy preparing to welcome people determined to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas with a series of wonderful services.
Christmas in Southport, we are glad to report, is alive and well – and as the town’s local newspaper the Southport Visiter, as ever, is delighted to celebrate what everyone has been up to.
A very merry Christmas to all our readers, advertisers and newsagents!

SEVERAL Southport pupils were disappointed to miss out on their school Christmas lunches this week.
No big deal, their parents should have completed and returned the requisite form on time to order the lunch and didn’t.
But what a sad sign of the times and of bureaucracy that portion control should be of such paramount importance that there is such inflexibility in the school meals system on one day of the year.
Children can be off school ill on the day the forms are originally sent home and school offices probably too busy to check up on missing returns.
Innovative parents decorated home lunch boxes to soften the blow for their children, some schools promised parents that if another child didn’t turn up on the day because of illness their meal could be offered, but others had no solution for those children left out through no fault of their own.
Bah humbug!

IT’S GREAT to see that Dan Dare comics are still proving a popular draw more than 50 years after the character was created in Churchtown.
Just like the recent success of the Doctor Who revival, it shows that youngsters can get as much enjoyment out of a well-told story of good and evil than they can with the latest game for their console.
Let’s hope this latest comic series turns into a lengthy voyage for our favourite ‘Pilot of the Future’.

‘PARIS by the sea’. It’s an analogy that has often been frittered around as a lazy comparison by tourism officials in the resort.
But the age-old tale that Napoleon was so enamoured by the sweeping Lord Street vista that he recreated the tree-lined boulevards in the French capital may soon become more than a quirky footnote in history.
Sefton Council has drafted a blueprint for Southport over the next decade that could transform Lord Street, and indeed Southport generally, beyond recognition.
In addition to the ongoing £5m remodelling of the street, the council and the Southport Partnership have suggested a raft of changes to our main thoroughfare.
The Southport Investment Strategy outlines plans to remove much of the traffic from Lord Street, potentially creating an arterial route for the A565, with Lord Street possibly enforcing one-way regulations. It is one of the options due to be examined, with members of the public due to be consulted before any changes are made.
Council chiefs have also mooted implementing continental diagonal parking bays along the thoroughfare.
It may well be blue-sky thinking but those drafting these proposals must be applauded for thinking outside the box.
These tentative initiatives, and their associated pros and cons, should be debated in the corridors of power and the corridors of the supermarket.
And if the SIS can spark debate amongst townsfolk on how best to develop our town, then surely it has served its purpose.

‘PARIS by the sea’. It’s an analogy that has often been frittered around as a lazy comparison by tourism officials in the resort.
But the age-old tale that Napoleon was so enamoured by the sweeping Lord Street vista that he recreated the tree-lined boulevards in the French capital may soon become more than a quirky footnote in history.
Sefton Council has drafted a blueprint for Southport over the next decade that could transform Lord Street, and indeed Southport generally, beyond recognition.
In addition to the ongoing £5m remodelling of the street, the council and the Southport Partnership have suggested a raft of changes to our main thoroughfare.
The Southport Investment Strategy outlines plans to remove much of the traffic from Lord Street, potentially creating an arterial route for the A565, with Lord Street possibly enforcing one-way regulations. It is one of the options due to be examined, with members of the public due to be consulted before any changes are made.
Council chiefs have also mooted implementing continental diagonal parking bays along the thoroughfare.
It may well be blue-sky thinking but those drafting these proposals must be applauded for thinking outside the box.
These tentative initiatives, and their associated pros and cons, should be debated in the corridors of power and the corridors of the supermarket.
And if the SIS can spark debate amongst townsfolk on how best to develop our town, then surely it has served its purpose.