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Nerve 10 Letters Page

Email us at: mail(at)catalystmedia.org.uk
Write to us at: Catalyst, 85-89 Duke Street, Liverpool, L1 5AP

Dear Nerve,
What a great read your mag is, history, politics and real culture. I've just started reading issue 9 and I was so impressed I had to write and let you know.
It is near impossible to get anything decent to read in here and was hoping you would be so kind as to send me some back copies and maybe a future copy or two.
I was made up with Colin Serjent's article on Liverpool City Council's turbulent past and think John Hamilton and co were spot on. Today's politicians and councillors are all Tories except in name.
In 1987 whilst residing at HMYOI Stoke Heath I penned a little verse which went

She sold off BA
She sold off BP
She sold off a lot more
For a measly fee

If I took yer telly
And hi-fi too
I'd go to jail
On a 6 to 2

If I sold ya them back
Would yer know the score
Maggie done the same
And ripped off the poor

It goes on and on mostly about the miners and nurses but I don't want to bore you too much. Keep up the good work and I hope you can keep printing further issues. Maybe you might find space for some artwork or creative writing from inside here. The place is full of talented lads and it is NOT like anything the local media make out. The art dept is big and we have a lady in charge of Big House Arts called Delilah Brady-Jacobs who brings in local writers and actors and music producers. Anyway cheers for reading and I hope you can send me your next issue.
Yours sincerely, Eddie Marriette
HM Prison, Hornby Road

Dear Nerve,
I wish to bring attention to the situation regarding Mersey Care's Windsor House Psychiatric Hospital on Upper Parliament Street, Liverpool 8.
Windsor House is a stand-alone unit which has been serving Toxteth, Aigburth, Garston and central Liverpool areas for decades. It is situated within the most multi-cultural area of the city.
With the objective of closing 26% of their mental health beds in the next few years Mersey Care has already closed a ward at Stoddard House (Aintree NHS site) and is proposing to close Windsor House within the next year. This will leave Toxteth and its surrounding areas without an in-patient mental health resource, no Day Hospital (this service has been eroded over the past year) and no adequately compensatory community mental health service.
For decades Windsor House, situated at the heart of a multicultural population, has provided treatment, refuge and safety to its service users. Well known to the population as a community resource it has helped to alleviate the stigma attached to mental illness and been accessible to past and present service users as an ongoing support system.
Ironic, is it not, that at a time when the NHS champions a community based approach, a facility that has been a model of this very approach for decades is under threat of closure?
Ironic too that in the 'Year of Culture' our health service intends to deprive the city's multicultural heart of its much respected and needed mental health resource.
Surely we cannot allow this to happen?
Mary O'Reilly, Windsor House Service User

Dear All,
I have filled in a standing order mandate for the sum of two pounds per month.
I enjoy your magazine, and find it a very interesting read. I particularly enjoyed the article on Mary Bamber, what a woman.
Thanks, Karen Mason
Branch Secretary 6/553 T&G

Dear Nerve,
Ray Physick's article in Nerve 9 (Stanley Park - Birthplace of Liverpool Football) was all well and good, but what about the present-day situation in Anfield? Since George Bush's friends Hicks and Gillett bought out Liverpool FC, our future looks worse than ever.
If the club succeed in getting permission for a 60,000 or 80,000 capacity stadium complete with mega-mall, about half of Stanley Park will be buried under concrete. This will make the air quality much worse, since there are few other green spaces in Anfield, and trees are essential to absorbing harmful pollutants.
Speculators have been gradually buying-up property close to the ground for years, which have been left unoccupied and derelict, at a time when over 20,000 people are on the Liverpool housing waiting list. This has led to a severe drop in housing prices. Those of us whose homes stand in the way of the bulldozers are likely to face compulsory purchase orders, like those recently seen in Edge Lane, where occupiers are paid a pittance to up sticks and relocate to somewhere less profitable!
Those that remain will face even more problems! The thousands of extra people create enough disturbance on matchdays, without adding another fifteen to thirty-five thousand!
Anfield residents must unite to fight back against these big business bullies! For more information visit www.theanfieldvoice.co.uk.
Angry from Anfield

Dear Nerve,
Francis Boyce's excellent article on George Garrett (Nerve issue 9) provides a timely reminder of an unjustly neglected and undervalued aspect of Liverpool's literary history. The Collected George Garrett, however, is published not by Nottingham Trent University but by Trent Editions. Details of the book can be found at http://english.ntu.ac.uk/trenteditionsnew/default.htm. Readers interested in Liverpool's literary past and present may also be interested to know that Writing Liverpool: Essays and Interviews, edited by myself and Deryn Rees-Jones, will be published by Liverpool University Press in summer 2007. Writing Liverpool looks at the city's contribution to British writing from the 1930s to the present day, and contains contributions from critics and writers from across the world. As well as individual chapters on George Garrett, James Hanley, Malcolm Lowry, Beryl Bainbridge, Jimmy McGovern, J.G. Farrell, Brian Patten and others, the book will contain recent interviews with writers such as Terence Davies, Levi Tafari, Alan Bleasdale and Linda Grant.
Yours sincerely, Michael Murphy
Nottingham Trent University

Dear Nerve,
I am collecting used stamps, postcards and picture phone cards for Guide Dogs for the Blind. I was wondering if any of your readers would be kind enough to send me any of their used stamps. Please send all stamps, postcards and picture phone cards to:
Mrs Diana Ashton,
66 Highbank,
Roe Lee,
Blackburn,
Lancashire, BB1 9SX.
Yours, Diana Ashton