With rather beautiful synchronicity/serendipity we received the above poignant Martin Parr-esque photograph from Wirral Leaks very own Weegee and a moving comment upon our Poppy Appeal story from ‘The Prof’ with which we would like to do a bit of a mash-up.
The photograph was once taken in front of yet another another piece of land on the corner of Church Road/Liscard Road in Wallasey that Wirral Council have just sold off to developers. Like our photographer and others we’re having trouble making sense of this frantic off-loading of random pieces of land to developers (be it brownfield or green belt). It seems to us that with Wirral having a declining population it is rapidly turning into buy-to-let heaven but , might we suggest, what better way is there to launder money – other than poor quality ‘care’ homes?
Which brings us on to ‘The Prof’s lament for lost land and a lost land …
Gentlemen this week has been a moving time for the many families whose loved ones fought in WW1 and WW2. My own father fought in Normandy and was severely wounded in the Netherlands. I felt surprisingly moved …to anger…that our council friends could not even manage to raise a poppy at the Town Hall. I looked up again the patriotic deathbed speech of John of Gaunt in Richard the 2nd. Act 2, Scene 1. Every English school child knows the famous beginning:
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle…”
But few know of John Of Gaunt’s final,dying despair of his political masters: