.jpg)
"Would you like to be a hugger?", an ernest-looking chap with an accent which owed more to Surrey than Sandhills asked me.Barely five minutes earlier I'd been accosted by a smartly-dressed woman whose accent suggested she'd stumbled into the city by accident after coming off the M62. She posed the same question.
I smiled at both people & commented that I didn't live in One Park West.
"Oh, that doesn't matter," the woman replied as I inched away.
With less than ten minutes to go before the "group hug", the area outside the One Parked Without Our Say-So was deserted, save for a forlorn-looking soul brandishing a placard which bore the slogan, Hugs Not Hate. Yes, I'm sure the anti-racism campaign Hope Not Hate won't mind their slogan being adapted by wealthy business interests in the city.
As 12.30 arrived, however, enough faces to make the stunt just about work, with the assistance of Photoshop, had shown up, including an entire party of school-children & a few tourists fresh from the Albert Dock, one of whom later claimed to have received a mug for her participation.
Says it all really.
As the TV cameras caught the moment & the cameras clicked away, the suits hovering on the margins muttered furiously into their mobiles while remembering to smile at the kids.
Stunt duly captured for the media, the motley knot of participants dispersed while representatives from Grosvenor congratulated themselves on a brazen act pulled off without any mishaps.
I bumped into Wayne as the moment of distinctly self-conscious hand-holding approached (http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/2009/08/one-park-west-balloons-arrive-for-group.html ).
We looked on, appalled & amused in equal measure.
3 comments:
Well done to you & Wayne for bringing us the truth behind the tripe. It really is appalling how the media happily publish unadulterated corporate PR rubbish, and then complain about 'spin'.
Pity the poor harassed citizen: one eye on the job, the other on the kids, occasionally lifting their head to find out what's going on in the world. And the stories they get from Press & TV are just stage-managed bollocks like this.
Journalists should be ashamed of themselves
what's wrong with people with accents from outside of liverpool? how amazingly parochial are you guys? british jobs for british people, up the bnp etc. etc. i bet you'd rather liverpool was still making it's fortunes from the trade in slaves, eh?
Can't disagree with you. Silly season is upon us. If there was something more interesting in the town centre yesterday than 100 people hugging a building described by a university professor as the type of design that sprang from the destruction of the blitz, then get in touch and I'll thank you gladly for the tip!!
Post a Comment