Here is a small selection of photos from the last day of the Air Show, which took place on Sunday, 30th August.
Monday, 31 August 2026
Sunday, 30 August 2026
THE CONCRETE INVASION NEAR TO RAF WOODVALE: THE CORPORATE DESTRUCTION OF THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE
Ongoing bureaucratic arrogance and unchecked corporate box-ticking are currently driving the concrete invasion of our pristine, natural wildlife corridors right here at the Woodvale boundary lanes.
As one looks toward the boundary lines of the RAF airfield today, the ongoing construction work is already underway, and the construction fencing is locked down into the turf. The administrative machinery wants us to look at this destruction and believe it is a fait accompli - a done deal that is simply too late to be stopped. That is a favourite authoritarian psychological ploy. They rush the diggers onto our turf to breed compliance and quiet defeat among the local population. But even if the concrete cannot be physically clawed back, the fight for absolute accountability is only just beginning. If this vital, natural wildlife buffer zone is to be permanently sacrificed, then every single brick laid will stand as a permanent public monument to the distant planning decisions that betrayed our borough's heritage. They might have started the physical work, but we will ensure the community never forgets the system layout that signed the land's death warrant.
But the most heartbreaking cost of this concrete encroachment isn't measured in traffic delays - it is printed on the tarmac in blood.
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The failure spreads directly off the turf, onto our local highways, and into our skies. The Formby Bypass is traditionally a fast, 60 mph dual-carriageway, yet the current layout has locked motorists into confusing, temporary 30 mph restrictions outside the housing site entrance. The physical reality on the tarmac today is frequently chaos, with drivers actively ignoring the 30 mph signs out of pure frustration and continuing to fly past the site entrance at 60 mph. The long-term reality is even worse. To accommodate the massive influx of vehicle movements from these 286 new properties, the planning layout demands a permanent reduction to 50 mph alongside a completely new signalled junction sliced right into the main artery.
Furthermore, the infrastructural failure spreads directly off the tarmac and into the skies above. The visual layout reveals that this targeted construction zone sits underneath the active operational flight paths for RAF Woodvale. During the planning discussions, the Ministry of Defence itself raised serious concerns, explicitly reminding the planners that the site sits squarely within the airfield's bird strike safeguarding zone. By forcing artificial wetland features and drainage ponds onto this marshy plot to cope with displaced water, the developers are creating a massive ecological draw for large flocks of hazardous birds right on the approach line of military training aircraft.
When you combine this bird strike risk with the fact that the developers are actively seeking to radically alter the topography by raising the physical ground levels to escape the active floodplain, you create a logistical nightmare. They aren't just creating an unsafe environment on the ground; they are squeezing the safety margins of our local airspace. The system planners can ignore these physical boundaries on their computer screens, but a fast dual-carriageway and an active military runway do not bend to corporate spreadsheets.
Predictable as clockwork, the architects of these top-down schemes will attempt to wave the flag of "progress," claiming that high-profit estates are an essential necessity for housing and local employment [1.56]. Let us expose that spin for what it is. No one is standing against legitimate local jobs, nor are we blind to the authentic housing needs of future generations. But true progress does not demand the systematic destruction of our natural defences, nor does it require paving over low-lying floodplains right across a critical watercourse like Wham Dyke. Building expensive developments on an active marshy buffer zone isn't "progress" - it is a calculated corporate calculation that prioritises short-term developer margins over the long-term safety and infrastructure stability of the existing community. To label the defence of our rare ecosystems, protected wildlife, and established drainage layouts as "anti-progress" is a desperate attempt to deflect from poor planning. True ecologically-minded progress builds with the landscape, not on top of it.
The proof of my own connection to this landscape is stamped right onto my Gran Rhoda’s 1890 birth certificate. While she was born on Shaftesbury Road in Birkdale, her entry was legally registered under the historic Formby Sub-District. Her mother, my great-grandmother Margaret Rimmer, belonged to the ancient, traditional Rimmer lines whose generations of labour shaped this entire West Lancashire coastal plain - from the sandhills to the mosses. Whether her specific cradle sat on Formby farmland, the low-lying Altcar marshes, or the fields bordering Woodvale, the historical conclusion remains identical. I am not an outside commentator footprinting on this turf. I am a direct descendant of the traditional agricultural workers who nurtured this sub-district soil generations before modern corporate developers or distant council planners ever sat at a desk.
The very same administrative layout that lectures everyday residents about saving the planet - telling us to abandon our vehicles and go to work on a bicycle—is the exact same system that happily signs off on pristine green space the moment a heavy corporate housing spreadsheet lands on the table [1.21, 1.56]. It is a massive misdirection of public priorities. They pour energy into superficial green box-ticking press releases to satisfy distant quotas, while the living heritage of our coast is systematically flattened under a sea of concrete and steel.
They can easily find the bureaucratic focus to manage dead, non-functional infrastructure, yet our historic Southport Pier has sat locked up and decaying, and beloved community hubs like the Botanic Gardens aviary are starved of basic resources. This is not progress; it is an ideological shell game. They may have the piling rigs, the legal teams, and the grey fencing on the field today, but they will never possess the history, the heritage, or the unyielding voice of the people who actually belong to this coast.
ADDENDUM: THE OFFICIAL RECORD CONFIRMS THE RISK
For those corporate apologists and distant box-tickers who still attempt to brand these infrastructure, drainage, and wildlife concerns as simple "hyperbole," let us anchor the truth firmly into the public record. Official Sefton Council Planning Committee files for application DC/2018/00093 explicitly document the severe, low-lying flood risks across these fields, noting that extensive "ground re-profiling" is mandatory simply to cope with the displaced surface water layout.
The official records confirm that the community did not sit back in silence; the council received 11 separate local petitions explicitly detailing the catastrophic threat to drainage networks, local highways, and delicate coastal ecology. Furthermore, the council's official Late Representations files expose that the planning committee chose to override the explicit, structured objections of local representatives—including Councillor Bob McCann, who formally endorsed and led the massive community petitions on behalf of residents. While even distant political figures and the Formby Parish Council were forced to acknowledge the threat, it was the dedicated local independent network that held the line, explicitly warning the borough about the severe long-term dangers to the drainage layouts on Brackenway and Hawksworth Drive.
The administrative planners can ignore these deep neighbourhood warnings, but their own public documentation stands as a permanent indictment of the risks they chose to override.
Ultimately, this entire masterplan farce remains a stark, heartbreaking case study in the corporate destruction of the English countryside. It represents the permanent sacrifice of precious local heritage assets—all to satisfy distant bureaucratic spreadsheets and developer margins—through an avoidable environmental tragedy that leaves the community to bear the long-term cost.
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Saturday, 29 August 2026
SOUTHPORT AIR SHOW - 29 AUGUST 2026 - A FEW PHOTOS OF THE EVENT
Here's part of the Southport Air Show layout today - we present the physical evidence and let the public decide for themselves.
Your opinion matters...
Wednesday, 26 August 2026
Sandgrounder Guardians of the Coast vs. the Grey Suits in Bootle - The Fight for Southport’s Heritage
On the other hand, you have the main administrative powerhouse miles away in Bootle, where policy is drafted by grey suits looking at spreadsheets and 'Income and growth' targets instead of local reality.
This isn’t just a matter of different postcodes; it is a total clash of values.
To a Sandgrounder, our green spaces are a sacred heritage. They are the majestic greenhouses of Hesketh Park, once meticulously tended by local hands like my dad, Head Gardener Bill Regan, for 50 years. They are the fields bordering RAF Woodvale, and the wild dunes around Birkdale Common, places where local lads spent their summer holidays exploring spots like the beloved 'Round Hill', finding native Sand Lizards and Natterjack Toads out in the wild.
But when viewed through the scrutinising lenses of the executive offices in Bootle, these precious spaces are stripped of their human and natural history. Instead, they are reduced to mere disposable 'assets' to be commercialised or sold off at 'fair market value' to balance the council's wider books. The corporate playbook is glaringly obvious, and it relies on a multi-generational strategy to push these deals through:
1. Corporate Smokescreens
They invent convenient administrative or ethical excuses to mask raw financial choices. They will aggressively lecture us about animal welfare to shut down the historic Churchtown aviary, loudly claiming the decision is 'not about money' while their own official spreadsheets frame it as a £60,000 cost-saving measure.
Even worse, they cower behind disingenuous phrases like "10% net biodiversity gain" to justify letting heavy diggers rip up natural, wild dune slacks and replace them with managed, synthetic layouts for golf elites.
Councils are great at promoting government-indicated climate alarmism measures, yet they tend to drop the ball fast when 'real conservation' of wild places is an issue!
2. The Local Cost
While the council celebrates Hillside tournament revenue from their desks down south, the permanent loss is borne entirely by northern residents.
We are the ones who lose our public right-of-way, watch 6ft permanent fences fragment vital wildlife corridors under planning application DC/2025/00750, and see our prime retail parking spots (such as at Matalan) replaced by non-functional, hooded ghost chargers that wait patiently for absent electric cars.
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Above: Southport's forever-covered SEA-GULL-LOVING chargers at Matalan taking up valuable parking space.
Perhaps a 'warning sign' is required?
WARNING: ECO-SYSTEM (SEA GULL LOOKOUT POSTS) IN OPERATION
Do NOT attempt to use these charging stations without proper protective gear.
- The Local Residents: This ultra-rapid charger is now the official nesting ground of the Southport Super-Gulls. They have lived here since the plastic wrap went up, and they do not pay for parking.
- Pecking Hazard: Approaching these chargers will be viewed as an act of war. These gulls are heavily territorial and highly caffeinated from scavenging discarded Ocean Plaza chips.
- The System Boot: If you manage to distract the birds (that is, if they ever pull the covers off), please note the screen is currently frozen on a Windows 95 Fatal Exception Error due to damp moss clogging the floppy disk drive.
3. The Echo Chamber of the Local Media 'Yes-Men'
The corporate propaganda machinery in Bootle doesn't work in isolation; it requires a specialised class of local media gatekeepers to survive.
Over the years, traditional community journalism has been completely hollowed out, replaced by local outlets that function as little more than sub-contracted public relations arms for Sefton Council and big development syndicates.
These platforms operate on a strict diet of compliance. They will happily copy-and-paste official, glossy press releases celebrating the 'eco-credentials' of non-functional charging hubs or the massive financial windfalls of exclusive golf tournaments. Yet, the second an independent local writer provides raw, uncensored, boots-on-the-ground truths, whether exposing the manufactured moral smokescreens hiding a budget deficit or tracking the industrial decimation of protected wildlife habitats - the editorial panic button is hit.
The playbook of these compliant outlets is as predictable as it is cowardly:
- The Sanitised Narrative: They prioritise keeping their cosy, institutional relationships intact over printing unedited community frustrations, ensuring local politicians are properly shielded from genuine accountability.
- The Gatekeeper Lockdown: Rather than facilitating open public debate, they would sooner lock out independent, multi-generational Sandgrounder voices from their columns than risk upsetting their political masters or local authority contacts.
- The Public Relations Smokescreen: By actively choosing to ignore the destruction of our green belts near RAF Woodvale or the literal fencing off of public common land, they become complicit in the very enclosures they refuse to investigate.
Above the horses of Blowick Moss before they lost their land and a more recent shot of concrete and glass, which now replaces that rural landscape...
4. The Frontline Face
The authorities hire frontline grassroots workers with deep, multi-generational heritage, descendants of local park keepers, moss-farmers, traditional tradesmen, fishermen and shrimpers, etc, using their valid, authentic pride to put an eco-friendly face on 'Green Sefton.'
Yet the orders these workers are forced to execute are passed down from a calculating bureaucratic machine that has been repeating the same old elite land-enclosure and profit-over-wildlife-habitat diktat since magistrates first issued the 1893 Little Ireland eviction order.
Southport's precious natural heritage should not be managed, carved up, or sold off by an administrative big city machine that hasn't had the salt of our sea or the soil of our mosslands on its hands since the corporation was dissolved in 1974.
True natural stewardship of the land does not exist in a corporate office, nor does truth exist in compliant local yes-man media. It lives in the independent, grassroots community that remembers what was here, knows what is being destroyed, and refuses to let the grey suits or their media protectors quietly erase our old Southport heritage.
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