Photo Post- Liverpool River of Light 2025

Some pictures taken at the annual Liverpool light display which took place last week, this year's theme being the Science of Light.  Alot of these look better in live footage and there's some video clips on my Instagram page, johnconnors100 (unfortunately Blogger no longer enables film only photos)

Liverpool River of Light 2024 Photo post

 Some highlights from this year's River of Light festival, held in Liverpool each autumn.

Stuff: Soggy Sunak, Liverpool (Taylor's Version)

 

Why are political correspondents so often quirky? Is it because they have to listen to nonsense day in day out? I ask after watching both Chris Mason and Robert Peston’s attendance at Wednesday’s General Election announcement. They both, in their own way, tried to cover all possible ground eking out the time as the 5pm scheduled speech slipped by almost twenty minutes and I thought how unusual both of them were. What they do convey though is the excitement that ebbs around political circles at this kind of event. It has been a while. We’ve had leadership changes but the last actual General Election was four and a half years ago and current PM Rishi Sunak has decided now is a good time to go to the country. For Messrs Peston and Mason plus the cohorts of other correspondents and presenters this is, as one of them said, their `Cup Final`. As such it is treated with similar predictions as to what the speech might say. The difference from football is that the commentators do seem to know in advance what it will say and in some ways are part of the choreography of the whole thing.

 

Wet, Wet, Wet: Rishi wishing he was lucky

Liverpool River of Light 2023 Pix

 This week is the annual River of Light festival with displays dotted around the River Mersey waterfront and here's some pictures and videos from the event...

Hanging out on Olympus...Photo post

 

Checking out the Return of the Gods exhibition @Liverpool World Museum 

Before I was old enough to read science fiction novels, the stories that fascinated me were those of the old Greek and Roman Gods. I had no real context as to how they came to be created or what they symbolised because there are two aspects. One is about what they represented for the people who worshipped them. The other- the one that captivated me as a child- is that of the myths themselves. The thunderbolts, the turning to stone, the ordeals, familial rivalries and all the other behaviour. Looking back it was really like a soap opera, indeed I am sure some soaps have filched storylines from the tales of the Gods. Course I was too young and naïve to fully understand what was going on but, you know, it’s all fairly sordid for beings considered as Gods. I imagine this is because when creating religious myths societies do so within the confines of what they know. So, I was interested to visit this exhibition at Liverpool’s World Museum which opened in April. Most of the exhibits date back to the time when people believed in the Gods and were originally collected by the eighteenth century antiquarian Henry Blundell of Sefton. Its rare for so many of them to be collected in one place so the display is well worth a visit if you’re in the area. It runs at Liverpool World museum till 25 February 2024.

Liverpool River of Light 2022

 Each year, Liverpool hosts the River of Light event in which ten works are displayed around the area near to the Mersey bringing art into the public domain. These are free, some of them interactive and you can wander around them in any order. The 2022 event opened on 21 October and runs till 6 November with displays switched on from around 5.30 till 9.00pm. Here's some photos and video clips from the various displays...

What to do about Liverpool's shameful history?

The headlines of the past few weeks made me think about my home town Liverpool which played a significant part in slavery in the past. In fact the city’s wealth and expansion was built on it. There were more slave ships running in and out of Liverpool in the late 1700s than there were either in London or Bristol. So is it now time for the city to follow the lead elsewhere and remove evidence  of those people responsible?  Or should we continue to acknowledge it as an example of wrong doing.

Distance.

Yesterday morning as I was walking past the increasingly small number of fellow pedestrians headed for work, the song `Everybody Hurts` was playing through the speakers of the adjacent shopping centre. The song swirled quite loudly around us and I had a sudden filmic moment. I imagined people stopping and acknowledging each other aware that hugging was out of the question due to social distancing but at least everyone understanding we were all in it together, a powerful moment of empathy in the midst of a crisis. Perhaps everyone sang together. It didn’t happen, instead we all just carried on walking our separate ways. Obviously I do not have the power of Richard Curtis.

How to demolish a flyover!

Flyovers are not for life- just about fifty years and the time soon comes round for them to either be repaired or demolished. In Liverpool we have a large flyover called Churchill Way that takes traffic into the centre of the business district avoiding many more congested roads but half a century after it was built it is coming down. The 240 metre long stretch of flyover was opened in 1970 supposedly as part of a larger city ring road project that was never finished. Last year inspections revealed issues involving drainage, barriers, internal support and bearings and the edifice was closed for further examination. So it had to come down!

How the European Union saved Liverpool

I’d like to tell you my EU related tale regarding my home town Liverpool which was saved by the EU. Back in the Nineties, the city was in a tailspin following decades of national and local neglect and the situation was so bad that it qualified for what was known as Objective One status, basically identifying it as one of the poorest places in the EU. While the Conservative government of the time had contemplated allowing such places to slip into what they described as “managed decline” the EU targeted projects into which they donated a considerable amount of money. This was not a handout as such nor was it a magic wand that would cure the city’s ills. It was however a solid supporting mechanism the idea of which was to help the area recover and thus be able to support itself in the future and help create a platform upon which private business could then invest in. This in turn led last decade to the double win of the redevelopment of a large swathe of the city centre known as Liverpool One and the city’s winning the European Capital of Culture status for 2008. Ever since then Liverpool has thrived and grown and now that is spreading beyond the city centre outwards. Yet the seeds of this recovery lie in that EU money. When few UK politicians cared, the EU did,whatever other motives might have gone into the mix. There are no doubt several other places which have had similar about turns.