Oh dear...

The backlash has begun..
http://www.sevenstreets.com/city-living/feature-city-living/total-eclipse-of-the-heart-mann-island/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/is-liverpools-world-heritage-status-in-ruins-6260430.html

"Honest John Motors" said on the Independent site:

Wayne Colquhoun (O'Loon as he's known locally) is a bitter, twisted anti-development extremist who lives in a fantasy world where everything built after 1900 is rubbish and
Liverpool is perfect like Florence. He does not represent
the opininon
of Liverpool people who know we need jobs more than anything and that
the historic north docks will continue to rot if we don't develop them.
He has no real alternative plan. As a rampant egotist he seeks only to
derail and attack and lives to be quoted by naive national journalists.
His Trust doesn't even exist as a Trust, it's just him and about three
friends. He's such an extremist the local Civic Society will have
nothing to do with him. Independentdent, don't give him a platform! Ask
people on the street in Liverpool what they think of the Liverpool
Waters plan. New and old buildings can exist together in harmony.

"Chas" on Sevenstreets said:

Liverpool preservation trust, HELLO Wyane is that you all on your lonesome my god man how do become a trust all by yourself. we are a growing dynamic city not an antiques shop get it.

"kj" said:

me, and many others like me are sick of cranks like Wayne O'loon determined to drag our city back into the dark ages. Since when has margy Clarke been an arbiter of taste? The trouble is people who like these buildings are usually too busy getting on with there lives to post in things like this, so bitter old weirdos like Wayne dominant the debate.

"Ellis" said:

Liverpoolpreservationtrust, you really are a boring troll.

There's extremes to everything, you're a little left or right of centre and everything is okay, you hit either end of the horseshoe and you're just another blinkered idiot.

You're just as bad as those who want to knock down everything and turn the space into ugly new-builds. I'm admittedly not a fan of Mann Island (I am of the new museum though) but hell you hate everything!

(I've a horrid feeling that's my ex-friend, Ellis Woodman, who used to publish anything I said to Building Design magazine...)

How dare they!!!
I'll have you know I have my own footnote on page 22 of the UNESCO report (which finds little wrong, but doesn't like Liverpool Waters - who does?), where I'm "WC = Wayne Colquhoun". How apt.

Florence Gersten was there at the 30 minute meeting I had with them, she was credited as representing "Save Our City", which unlike the LPT, really does exist.

Sadly there wasn't time for UNESCO to mention the Liverpool Preservation Trust, or all my hard work in flying to Paris and storming into their meeting room to tell them to hot-foot it up to Liverpool and save the city from survival. Ooops, sorry, from staying alive.

I'm now reduced (since the local papers have rumbled me) to waiting to be asked by the likes of the world-renowned "Liverpool Confidential to supply rentaquotes to the masses (all of whom are far thicker than me).

www.liverpoolconfidential.co.uk/News-and-Comment/Unesco-tells-city-to-think-again-over-Liverpool-Waters


Oh, I'm so important, despite being so wrong...

Who lives in a house like this?

I just ask the question, like Loyd Grossman used to

Daily Ghost

Looking at the other LPT blog, I seem to have lost my temper a bit with the Liverpool Daily Post, despite them calling me a "leading antiques dealer" (Sotheby's eat your hearts out) back in January when I was stood next to Florence Flewelyn Bowen.

I wonder if the volte face has got anything to do with this:
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/views/liverpool-daily-post/2011/07/13/should-our-heritage-put-jobs-at-risk-92534-29042493/

Now, there's a lot that's questionable about that article, but one thing that really isn't is this bit:

Liverpool Preservation Trust spokesman Wayne Colquhoun appears to be quite happy to let Peel develop their spectacular complex in Amsterdam, instead. We want no part of any such manoeuvre – we want to speak up for Liverpool instead.

How dare anybody but me speak up for Liverpool? I know what everyone wants. More Clarice Cliff.

When is a Trust not a Trust?

When it's the Liverpool Preservation Trust, of course.

Apropos nothing at all...

...yes, completely off-topic, a hilarious exchange of legal correspondence from 1974:

How to succeed in blackmail...

1. Make sure your victim's "guilty secret" actually is:
a - guilty, and
b- a secret.

It doesn't help if you yourself have revealed the "secret" to the public over a year ago.

2. Don't accuse your victim of stalking you when:
a - stalking isn't defined in law
b- they aren't stalking you

3. Don't confuse fair comment on, and legitimate questioning of, your motives, methods and legitimacy with stalking or harassment

4. Don't engage in making claims of stalking and harassment, with threats of legal action, when you yourself have:
a - a proven record of making malicious communications to your intended victim, and
b - a publicly visible record of making repeated threats of physical violence against your intended victim

Bully for Me!

Extraordinary scenes over at the always fascinating "Yo! Liverpool" Forum.

http://www.yoliverpool.com/forum/showthread.php?14066-Liverpool-Preservation-Trust/page2

Someone dared to question my Liverpool Preservation Trust, and my little David Swift, and is now reaping the rewards:

Quote - "Back in February 2011, a user calling themselves "Quentin Hughes" (who has otherwise made no contribution to Yo Liverpool) sent me this PM via YoLiverpool - somehow I've only just picked it up. I can't think of a better thread to share it on. The signature is interesting, as is the language:

Originally Posted by quentin_hughes
How's it going xxxxx/xxxxxx xxxxxx ...

Do your employers [he names them] know about your ****-stirring using [their] computers during office hours ?
I suggest you disappear from this website and any other sites connected with the Merseyside region.
Wayne"

Take that as a warning, anyone else who doubts the power of Wayne. Cross me, and I'll get you sacked, or at least send you threatening messages, demanding you revere the Great Wayne, OR ELSE.

Sadly a later poster, called Ged, has called me "Loupy Lou". He's next.

But continuing from the Yo! Liverpool post:

Just as a matter of purely coincidental interest:
The Theft Act, 1968 defines blackmail as follows:
(1) A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief: (a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and (b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand.
(2) The nature of the act or omission demanded is immaterial, and it is also immaterial whether the menaces relate to action to be taken by the person making the demand.

the word "menace" is to be liberally construed and not as limited to threats of violence but as including threats of any action detrimental to or unpleasant to the person addressed. It may also include a warning that in certain events such action is intended.

I see it carries a maximum sentence of 14 years, but hey, I know I won't get that much, not with my record of exposing fraud and corruption in high places. Still -lucky I'm not as pretty as I was. Pass the soap.

Top of the Fops - and Delusion of the Day

As readers of some of my increasing number of other blogs will know, I was recently asked to film a episode of Auction Party with Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen at Liverpool Town Hall.
I wasn't too sure at first, but they said the fee was £150, and that convinced me so off I toddled on a cold winter night the whole 100 yds stretch from my shop to the beautiful Liverpool Town Hall.

It was great fun the programme is all about raising money for charity and I struck up a relationship with St Johns Hospice afterwards and sell some of their donated objects for them.

And of course, the £150 fee was gratefully received by another “charity”, the Liverpool Preservation Trust. It will pay for a nice lunch for the Chairman. Naturally I was a bit annoyed that the "Style Guru" in the headline was Lawrence and not me.


However, on to other delusions. Delusion of the Day here in Wayne's World is that whenever anyone says or writes anything, they do so in the name of their employer, because clearly an employer has total control over the private lives of their employees, just like I do over my gofers Charles Korsham and David Swift who are on standby 24/7 to agree with me on whatever forum I choose to add one of my famous pearls of wisdom to.

Among several people who are currently learning this to their cost is Paul Finch, the Chairman of CABE (constitution and accounts available as public documents, just like they are for any reputable organisation). He dared to criticise neo-traditionalist architects.

He did so in a magazine column for which he is paid, not by CABE, but by The Architects' Journal.

Needless to say, a bit of a row blew up and was the first to comment on the story as reported at Building Design:
http://m.bdonline.co.uk/news/cabe-hits-back-in-row-over-chairmans-swipe-at-traditional-architects/5022646.article


My opinion is that Paul Finch is a foul mouthed man, with far too much power.
I attended an AJ conference in Liverpool where I raised legitimate questions about the risks to Liverpools World Heritage Site to the panel he provided.
The Architectural Review had done a Liverpool special edition and he lined up Broadway Malyan and all the usual suspects in a fait accompli.
CABE had supported several schemes such as the Three Black Coffins on Mann Island, which in my opinion have no place in Liverpools WHS.
These views had been echoed in publications he edited.

"Stuff Unesco he said what has it got to do with them, send them packing"
With this level of foul mouthed debate it is little wonder he is in trouble with traditionalists.........and Liverpool with Unesco

Well, of course, I know a foul-mouthed man when I see one, having quite a bit of form on that myself. I'm not sure about the “too much power” bit, as I still don't have nearly enough.
But obviously, in a column written and paid for by one employer, any view expressed must be that of all his other employers, and expressed on their behalf. It's a simple fact and anyone who doesn't realise it must be some sort of Heritage Fruitcake from Bonkersville.

Nothing worth watching on TV, again...

Last night the BBC showed a programe about Georgian and Victorian civic buildings.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tnw4p/Peoples_Palaces_The_Golden_Age_of_Civic_Architecture_NeoClassical/
(available on iplayer until 20 September)

It was a DISGRACE!!!!!!

At no point in a programme about Georgian and Victorian buildings did it bang on for hours, with no effect at all, about the buildings put up in Liverpool in the last ten years. Can you believe it?!?!?

It didn't slag anyone from Liverpool City Council off, didn't slag anyone from Liverpool Museums off, and worst of all, I wasn't in it!!!!!

They just asked people who actually know about Liverpool's historic buildings to talk about them in calm, measured tones. It's no wonder it was rubbish, they had some posh lad from the World Monuments Fund presenting it and we all know they're part of the Heritage Mafia. And one of the so-called experts was blind!!! How can he know anything???

They just showed historic buildings that got saved from the bulldozer, or were never under threat in the first place, and didn't once mention how it was me that saved them all and restored them single-handed. Although if I'd been around in the 1840s I'd have stopped them being built in the first place.

In other news, I got mentioned in Building Design last week, but just a quote off the prestigious message board that anyone can use, talking about the Carbuncle Cup (yawn). Even then I wasn't given my full title, Wayne C O'Loon, Chairman, Liverpool Preservation Trust., Just Wayne C O'Loon. I hope they haven't rumbled me too ...

It wasn't Liverpool's greatest Edwardian church...

... but it was good of its type and date. It's gone to landfill this month anyway

http://www.monfaroad.info/#
Of course, it also wasn't anywhere near my shop, and it was being championed by the Heritage Mafia

http://www.savebritainsheritage.org/news/article.php?id=135

Planning specialist Jonathan Brown from Merseyside Civic Society [remember them? - I refer you to my earlier posts about heritage collaborators] said:

"This church was the work of a man associated with some of Liverpool's finest mercantile buildings, and dedicated to the owner and editors of our great city newspapers, the Post and Echo. If English Heritage accept James Doyle is 'regionally important', from what is after all World city, why isn't that of 'national interest', the criteria for listing? Would the same be true if the connection was with famous buildings and newspapers in London? Of course not - these are simply double-standards. It's one rule for Bootle and another for Bromley."


So the LPT did nothing about it - except slagging off the people who brought it to a wider audience. How great are we?