You hear news sometimes, and you just feel old. I might be nearly 33, but the final end of Duke Street's (and arguably Liverpool's) best ever club, Le Bateau, makes me lean back and mull over what has been and gone as if I were a Nan in my eighties. I might be a politician now, but once upon a time, I was a teenager, and Le Bateau was a very important place in my young years.

The long nights dancing, the music that changed us, the friendships made, the clothes we wore, happy times we had. For those of us of a certain age, the 90s were our 60s.

Without Le Bateau, I would have never heard the following musical miracles from the past: Stevie Wonder's brilliant re-working of The Beatles' We Can Work It Out, Curtis Mayfield's inspirational Move on Up, Julie Driscoll's beautiful Let the Sunshine In. And many more. It was the place you first heard new music, and it broke down the artificial barrier between 'dance' music and 'guitar' music.

The caring 1990s saw a reaction against this. The people I met at Le Bateau were up for sharing, and being friends. If other clubs were brash and show off, Le Bateau was the place you could turn up to in your vintage cords and Adidas Gazelles and just hang out with whoever happened to be there. You even got given sweets on the door, and the bouncers knew us individually. Boys and girls were equal, students mixed easily with locals, the drinks were cheap, and the chat was good. Though a bit before my time, the night of the election of a Labour Government in 1997 was a big event, and stories of that night are still told long after that momentous day.

People are keen to reference those who made a physical difference to Liverpool's development, and certain Tory lords are ever keen to take the credit.

But less spoken of are the people who changed the view a city held of itself. I felt crushed by the speedy decline of the city in my childhood. But when I walked out of Le Bateau in the early hours of a Sunday morning ears still ringing and feet still tapping, I felt we had something special.

It was a place where classic Northern Soul met US garage bands, where people could be themselves and find something new. Where you might dance to the Rolling Stones followed by the Chemical Brothers. A unique journey, characterised by difference and excitement, where the music that was infectious and spread through the many visitors who travelled from miles around for a night out at Le Bateau.

Liverpool's reputation, its self-belief and pride, has always rested on its music scene as much as anything else and this I think explains some of the sadness we might feel at the passing of Le Bateau. Credit must go to those who regenerated the soul of the city, not just the bricks and mortar.

As Jules Bennett has said, 'it's time to groove on.' Yes Jules, we will. But the ethics and the music will remain.

My top 5 Le Bateau songs:
1. Babies - Pulp
2. Heatwave - Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
3. I am the Resurrection - Stone Roses
4. That's Entertainment - The Jam
5. Devil's Haircut - Beck

More on this - Le Bateau: The boat that rocked Liverpool

I did not mourn her passing and found some of the exultation at her death understandable but distasteful.

What is indisputable is that the UK has seen eight successive general election victories for Thatcherism, three of which she won herself.

I have my own view of Thatcher. Not an exclusive notion I know, but for me the Thatcher governments were a massive Tory conspiracy against the interests of the majority of the British people. I have seen it posited that she was actually some kind of working class revolutionary who saw it has her mission to open up the opportunities of capitalism to much wider numbers of people, especially those from more humble backgrounds. I take the opposite view to such fanciful apologists. I believe Thatcher was the most successful British political leader of the 20th century in bolstering the interests of the rich in this country. You never know - if we wait long enough we might eventually see a Labour leader who looks after the interests of the working classes just as assiduously, though given how gutless they usually are, probably not in this space time continuum.

It was widely anticipated that whichever party won the 1979 general election would have excellent prospects for winning a second term because of the undoubted benefit of North Sea Oil to the UK economy. In retrospect, it is obvious that the main raison d'etre of her governments was to ensure that that benefit would accrue as exclusively as possible to the rich. Almost the first thing Thatcher did on assuming office was to remove exchange controls thus facilitating the wholesale export of capital which soon followed. That decision was significantly responsible for the overly rapid decline of British manufacturing industry, reminiscent of the cure for a drowning man being prescribed as having his head plunged further under water. It has been claimed that in an era of increasing globalisation, it was necessary to do this to enable modernisation of the UK economy. Unfortunately, as far as manufacturing was concerned there wasn't a lot left to modernise by the mid 1980s. It also resulted in a cultural shift whereby British capitalists became much more likely to invest abroad to this day. Given the local governance problems in Liverpool at this time, that had an even more marked effect here.

Having planned the provocation, timing and management of the miners' strike while in opposition, the Tories, in my view, financed it in part (including the prior above inflation pay increases for the Police necessary to get them firmly onside, an integral part of their strategy) by increasing prices to the public of the still then nationalised gas and electric by much more than the rate of inflation in the first three years after her election. Their inevitable victory over the miners (Let's play divide and rule!) paved the way for repressive legislation to attenuate the power of the unions, most of which is unchanged since, despite 13 years of Labour government in the interim. I concede that the unions overplayed their hand in the latter years of the 1970s which played into the hands of the Tories.
The subsequent privatisation of nationalised industries was another gigantic con trick. If Thatcher really wanted to make capitalists of great numbers of people, that could have been done by giving everyone a set number of shares in those industries on reaching adulthood - with certain restrictions regarding disposal - which could then have been used as collateral for securing loans for business or property. Instead we were "sold" something we already owned and today much of the equity in most of those formerly nationalised industries is in foreign hands.

I have already written at length on DSA (posted on 28.1.13) about how Thatcher diverted funding formerly used for social housing into the pockets of landlords via the creation of Housing Benefit, yet another facet of this agenda.

What irks me is that over 30 years down the line, the same mindset and values dominate political discourse and overall economic management in the UK as though - to quote Thatcher - "there is no alternative." There surely must be - mustn't there?

Nonetheless, Mayor Joe Anderson has decided to pander to the petrol heads and suspend the 24 bus lanes.

He has decided that they're not working and not really increasing the number of people using public transport, so he's decided to do what any brave, visionary leader does when faced with a challenge - quit while he's behind.

Some might argue that one of the problems with bus lanes is that the cost of travelling by bus is hardly cheap. Maybe if the firms that are now so enraged by his plans reduced their costs it would be an incentive for more people to travel by bus.

Indeed there may be too many people still using their cars, who no matter what will not venture out from behind the illegally tinted windows of their 4x4s and deign to clamber aboard the 'peasant wagon'.

And it would appear it is to those types, rather than to the low-income families who simply can't afford a car and must rely on the buses to get to work or wherever else it is they need to go, that Mayor Joe is pandering.

What this move says about the Mayor's grasp of the council's financial situation is also intriguing. Bus lanes brought in over £3m between 2009 and 2012 - money that was pumped back into the highways network.

But it seems, rather than motorists be used "as a cash cow", that £700,000 a year is going to be foregone by the ebullient council.

With absolutely nothing to deter people from jumping behind the wheel, putting more pressure on the road network, that money would surely have come in handy.

OF COURSE, there is always a very slim chance that there is a Baldrick-style cunning plan behind this seemingly bizarre move to axe bus lanes.

As with many things the council does, confusion is likely to reign supreme for some time.
The road markings will have to be painted over, and the signage taken down. All this to be completed by mid-October when the suspensions come into force.

Of course, there may be those out there who already think the lanes have been suspended who will, of course be receiving their £30 fines through the door and still be expected to pay.

Perhaps all the chaos and confusion could see quite a spike in the number of fines being dished out between now and late October.

That should take some of the sting out of this audacious move.

BUS company bosses were livid that this decision was made by Mayor Joe on a "gut-feeling" rather than proper evidence.

"Any decision which has the potential to result in such a negative impact on city centre traffic ... should be as a result of serious, professional investigation and discussion regarding the possible outcomes," said Arriva.

But Mayor Joe would argue whatever feeling is rumbling around in his gut was based on some evidence.

Well, it was certainly based on more evidence than the decision to impose an elected Mayor of the city.

But that's not saying much.

Back in the good old days, the system in place meant that almost everyone arrested and charged with a lesser offence appeared in magistrate's court the next day where, if pleading guilty, (which most did) judgement was given there and then with a consideration for early admission of guilt usually reflected in the sentence imposed.

The result was a system where the majority of cases were disposed of very quickly and justice was rather more seen to be done than now.

With clear up rates of about 25% taken in tandem with non-investigation of 60% of crimes, criminals it would seem have about a 1 in 10 or so chance of being convicted. If fined as a punishment, when less than 40% of Merseyside fines are actually collected by the authorities, the vast majority seemingly get away with it altogether in greater than iceberg proportions. No doubt the Coalition government think this is a more efficient and satisfactory state of affairs than the one they inherited solely because the public purse is expending about a quarter less on policing than before 2010 and they have imposed Police Commissioners to take some of the blame. And just wait until they privatise the Probation Service .....

The wonder is not that so few members of the public locally and elsewhere retain any residual faith in the entire dysfunctional criminal justice "system" but that so many still do.