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The Chestnut Horse/Black Horse/Hilltop/Collingwood/Viking/Leaf West Kirby/Black Horse Hill Tea Bar and Restaurant is boarded up, has been close since the beginning of 2025.

Yes Longnails ,as long as your income is under a certain amount {aprox £30,000} and the boiler is over a certain age 20years ?.
A lot of companies on line .Hope this helps .

Hi

Can anyone recommend a tree surgeon who can work in the Prenton area? We have two big leylandii which we'd like to get rid of. Many thanks in advance.

There have been 718 posts between your last two posts but yes, like most forums it struggles to compete with the plethora of social media platforms.

Is this site alive now. I just found it again. Seems to have been no movement

I'll put these scrappy notes together in one place, I thought there was already a thread somewhere on the site?

Built 1881, closed as a Church in 1938. Being a church it was not numbered so was allocated 295B, 295A having already been taken because 1 Eastbourne Road was subdivided, 295 is the adjacent house to the right.

It was a general venue for events (community, clubs, company and social parties etc) since at least 1951. Labour May Day Rally 1951, OAP Tea Party 1954, MANWEB North Wirral xmas party 1967.

Used to be pop concerts there in the 1960s when it was called McNaught Hall, the concert venue officially opened in May 1964 but was operational from at least 1962 partly due to the Cavern Club being temporarily closed and the promoter being in the lurch, last concert date I found was 1967.

The new Methodist Church across the road and further east (Charing Cross Methodist) tried to retain the name McNaught Hall for their youth club etc so we had two McNaught Halls for a period of time.

At some time between the 1940's and 1970s it might have been a Birkenhead & District Co-operative Society Store as it is in their database of shop front photos.

Since then its been a furniture shop, carpet shop, bed shop, flooring shop etc. Bought in 2023 for £160,000, it is and already was on lease to the various shops.

I have it in mind that one of the theatre groups used it before it became the current succession of home furnishing shops (1980s?), I remember being disappointed in the change of use but I can't remember what it was, or was it a Co-op then? Can't be the Carlton Players because they got the Grange Road West Church in the 1950s.

https://www.myunitedmethodists.org....re/birkenhead-claughton-road-umfc-chapel

Methodist Church

Not sure this has been asked before. Possibly a church?

I've worked out what the big yellow thing is. It is the sill at the bottom of the new gates. The clue was the two tall columns rising from each end. These are the hinge pins for the gates. Anyway, its disappeared now and is presumably underwater waiting for the gates to be hung.

It looked hollow but the steel used was probably thick enough to give it slight negative buoyancy so it could be accurately maneuvered. I expect it would be filled with concrete once in place.

"AN infamous bodybuilder dubbed "muscle squeezer" has died at the age of 64.

Akinwale Arobieke was found dead at his flat on Devonshire Road in Toxteth.

Officers discovered his body at around 8.30pm on Tuesday, August 26, after reports of an unresponsive man.

Merseyside Police confirmed his death is not thought to be suspicious."

Hi, are there any grants available for a new boiler?

Kind regards

Out of desperation and experience I have brazed steel lines back to life in the past (one was snapped in two, the other was badly corroded through) but its not something at my competence level I would tackle for a third party on a high pressure line, there is no reason a competent brazier couldn't do it, perhaps someone from a model/small scale steam train/ship/engine society could help? There are more steam modellers in Wirral than you would think.

As with much of small repair welding, its a matter of getting metal in there then machining/grinding/sanding it back to the required shape/finish.

I'm pretty sure rules have been relaxed on what Councils were allowed to sell off, including allotments, sports fields and green belt. In at least one case the allotment is to be relocated and "enhanced" but that is a vague description similar to that used by Wirral Council about Birkenhead Market even though it is a huge reduction in size.

Needless to say, the date this relaxation process started appears to be during a Conservative Government (even though nothing about the current Labour Party would surprise me).

Private eye have also been a bit misleading as they only reported on Raynor's role in this, not her predecessors other than through indirect reference. So while the basic report of falsehood of "Raynor's Sell-off" may be true, that doesn't mean the sell-off isn't happening.

I will be rapping Ian Hyslop's knuckles next time he pops in for tea and biccies (an equally misleading statement).

Sorry to interrupt the dialogue which has wandered entertaining off the subject, but it appears that this allotment sell off is just a Daily Telegraph invention, presumably dreamed up to damage teh Labour government, and there appears to be little or no truth to it.

The latest edition of Private Eye has the details in its 'Street of shame' column which seeks out the more egregious antics of our national press and I uge you to buy it if you want an account of what went on.

The Telegraph used to be just boring and a bit stupid, but it seems to have embarked on being even more poisonous than the Daily Mail these days. It should go back to campaigning against LED light bulbs and wind turbines which were daft but relatively harmless.

Hi. Thanks for the response. Not for a Passat. It's a short section of tubing with one end O ring and one end inverted flare from a Kia 06. Seems no one is able to fabricate these. Spoke to pirtek seems they need both ends intact. And one fitting is rusted. So unlikely any joy there.

Pirtek in Bootle might be able to do them, I've only had hoses made by them.

Is this the steering rack lines with banjo ends on 4th/5th generation Passat?

Hi. Car developed power steering leak from rusted hard line (metal pipe about 6-8 inches long with fittings either end. The part is no longer available. Any ideas on places that repair or would be able to make or supply a replacement ? Thanks in advance.

That is an ideal, in our limited resource society you have to prioritise and ensure spending is proportionate. The difference between repairing a pothole or resurfacing the whole road for a consistent finish.

Nothing is optimal in this world and the strive to perfection creates madness and chaos.

Think we have drawn this one out enough ......

Found an interesting website https://thisvsthat.io which is pretty good for comparing political philosophies (as well as anything else) eg "labour vs socialism", one unexpected result came from "conservative vs reform"

To the Eastham Ferry hotel for a quiet drink in the gathering dusk last night. It was warm enough to sit outdoors and it was possible that the we might even hear an owl hoot in the woods as the moon rose.

Fat chance!

Furiously over revved motorbikes from next door made conversation difficult, and in the gaps in this activity, the loudspeakers relaying mindless pop music everywhere, inside and outside, thoughtfully placed to make any antisocial activities such as enjoying a quiet evening impossible.

A pity, as the location is good, the hotel has been extensively and well redecorated and the staff appear friendly and helpful.

We were interested to observe a group of bikers who had evidently left their pub, on their machines, but paused outside the Eastham Hotel for a chat, all with engines running and very audible thanks to the use of silences chosen for their ineffectiveness. Occasionally one or other of them would ree their engines into a deafening scream for no apparent reason.

Eventually they left, to be replaced by another group, and so did we.

I followed the advice of the notices one sees everywhere along roads to 'Think Bike!' but will not relate what these thoughts were.

By prioritising some crimes and misdemeanours over others what could be deemed as the lesser problem is turning a blind eye.
Ignoring such activities helps them spread like a cancer. Every bit of fraud, cheating, etc, reflects on us all, we all have to pick up the bill, whether it be Benefit fraud, Tax fraud or shoplifting, the decent people of this country have to pay. I'd rather my taxes go towards cutting out the cancer than letting them get away Scott free.

I've no problem with ID cards, I've nothing to hide.

Criminality is controlled by the Government, they are allowing open drug use as the norm yet the majority of crime is related to drugs.

Backing people into a corner is never going to have a good outcome (eg taking money off poor people), I haven't suggested turning a blind eye, I have only said to prioritise resources by severity instead of cherry picking the easiest.

A huge advantage of UBI is that it can't really be fiddled, the only way of fiddling is by creating non-existent people, while this is already done for benefit fraud it is relatively easy to contain if that is the only fraud you are looking for.

We need a national ID card, only those with something substantial to hide have got any reasonable argument against it. I've often been in the position where I can't easily meet prrof-of-ID requirements. Better still is the option of a multifunctional card, which was proposed in the early days of National ID cards, it would be your ID, debit card and credit card all in one.

Not sure how many people your method of turning a blind eye will convince, it will never convince me. Give an inch take a mile, the lawless society is on its way.

You would spend the same amount of money on detecting and prosecuting someone that drops a bit of paper and a an individual that is a triple murderer?

There are 22.6 million people receiving benefits, the average amount of fraud per claimant is £345 a year, less than half a butty a day but you want to check all claimants for fraud.

How can you investigate 22.6 million people? Its impractical and hugely expensive.

Yes, I agree with you that you need a deterrent but like speed limits, you accept a bit of flexibility, you don't routinely prosecute for 20.56 mph.

What is fraud is the number of people unknowingly or unwillingly under claiming benefits, despite the law saying they are entitled to those benefits. The executive does their very best to avoid paying out those entitlements. The state should be following up and helping those that appear to be under claiming, in many cases it is blatantly obvious, they can rattle off a list very easily.

The amount of unclaimed benefits is huge, estimated at £23bn for in-work benefits alone, then there are various other out of work benefits.

In the last 3 years I have enabled others to claim more than £100k in benefits they didn't believe they were entitled to, its not something I do a lot these days, that was less than 7 hours of my time and their time in total. The hardest part is convincing the individual they are entitled to something, they expect some indication from the state, its one hell of a kick and a relief seeing them going from total disbelief to joy.

I have seen people get fined for benefit fraud even though overall they were under claiming.

I've never been involved in industrial injury compensation but I have come across many people that didn't claim it despite being obviously entitled. They often go from "its too much effort to claim" to "its too late to claim now" after the impacts of the injury combined with age takes hold. A number of industrial injury compensations are administered by the state.

I think a lot of people would like a solution to shoplifting but other than investigating every person in the country, there is no legal solution. Just like there is no solution to incoming boats. However I'm sure the laws would change if the boats arrived in the super rich's lakes.

No it's not, cheating is cheating and fraud is fraud, they should be addressed equally. If loopholes need closing then close them. Look at shoplifting, turn a blind eye and it increases, go easy on benefit cheats and it increases. Leave loopholes open and an accountant drives straight through them. Society benefits when you treat them all the same and clamp down on it, not treat it as one is worse than the other.