Author: admin

There’s something moderately alarming about seeing objects from my childhood which are now in museums, as I refuse to accept any evidence that I might be getting older. But, with my very happy memories of the Amiga, it’s always positive to see one. The relevance here is that Striker was made by Rage Games, who were a video game developer from Liverpool who were in operation between 1992 and 2003. Apparently one of the things that brought them down was the David Beckham franchise of games, evidence that they should have focused on a Neville Southall franchise instead which would have been far better.

On a tangent, a few of us visited the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield several years ago (that was one of my rather good ideas if I may say so), which led to me wanting to visit the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge although I haven’t quite made it there yet. I suppose I should visit with my friend Richard, as one of his many claims to fame is that he wrote software for the Amiga in the 1990s (he’s much older than me, and he has found evidence that he is getting much older, but I digress in case he reads this). The Cambridge museum appears to have a lot of Amigas in their collections, I can relive my youth once again.

I was busily learning plenty of things at the Museum of Liverpool, not least that the great Dame Patricia Routledge has a long history with Liverpool. It’s 50 years next year since she appeared in Steptoe and Son (still my favourite TV programme), but it’s already 33 years since she was the star of Keeping Up Appearances. Routledge was educated at Birkenhead High School and then the University of Liverpool, making her first stage performance at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1952. She’s currently 94 years old and she’s still making occasional television appearances. So there we go, everyone will be fascinated to know that I’ve learned about her connections with Liverpool.

I was though already aware that Ziggy Greaves was from Liverpool, that one was more obvious.

It was unclear at the Museum of Liverpool whether this was the original ceramic hen which was used on the BBC programme Bread in the 1980s and 1990s. Unfortunately, after some checking, it’s not the original one which is a little disappointing. There’s still some authenticity to it as it was presented to Katy Carmichael, the actress who played Connie, by Carla Lane, the writer of Bread. I hadn’t given much thought about this before, but the museum addresses the negative stereotypes about Liverpool presented by the programme, which was at one point was watched by over 20 million people.

There’s a surprising amount of commentary about the whole matter of the city’s portrayal and Bread, not least at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-36425330. I still wonder what happened to the actual ceramic hen used in the show though.

This ticket is on display at the Museum of Liverpool and I thought that it was one of the most powerful items that they are currently exhibiting. It’s already inevitably an emotional reminder of the 97 people who lost their lives at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, a tragedy where so many lost their lives just because they wanted to watch football.

However, this ticket is even more poignant as it belonged to Andrew Sefton, a 23 year old who had travelled to Sheffield with four friends to watch the match. He was in pen three of the Leppings Lane end stand and he lost his life in the tragedy. Sefton’s favourite football player was Tottenham’s Gary Mabbutt and he attended the funeral on behalf of the club. The BBC have some more information and final pictures of Sefton at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-34452149.

This poster dates to 1947 and called for the nationalisation of the docks, which wasn’t an unreasonable demand given that the new Labour Government had started on a widespread process of bringing services under public control. I have limited knowledge of employment practices at the docks after World War Two, but casualisation was still a thing at this point, namely that workers weren’t guaranteed a fixed wage as there were multiple companies employing port workers at the time. It wasn’t until the 1960s and the Devlin Report that it was agreed that the port would guarantee hours, or instead pay a top-up payment, and the unions would drop some of their restrictive practices.

Shirley Williams said in the House of Commons in May 1966:

“As the House may recall, this goes back to the Report by Lord Devlin’s Committee of Inquiry last year. That Report was generally recognised as a major landmark in the troubled history of labour relations in the docks. Its basic recommendation was that the time had come to put an end to the present casual system of employing dock workers. Of course, the dock labour scheme as we now have it was a considerable advance on the completely casual conditions which existed before the war.

The present scheme does not go far enough. The majority of dock workers are still engaged on a daily basis. They may be working for a different employer every day of the week and their earnings are likely to fluctuate substantially from week to week. As the Devlin Report showed, it is impossible in these conditions to build up stable labour relations or to secure progressive and efficient management. It is to the credit of both sides of the industry that they immediately accepted the main recommendations of the Devlin Report.”

Dotted around Liverpool are these Superlambananas, smaller versions of a much larger artwork on display in the city. These two are located outside the Museum of Liverpool and were my favourite two designs, for obvious reasons for anyone who listens to me droning on about how great Poland Ukraine are. There were 124 of these mini versions placed throughout Liverpool between June to August 2008, most of which are still on display in some shape or form.

Decked out in the colours of the Polish national flag.

Slava Ukraini.