One of the many problems associated with Liverpool City Council (LCC) is the sheer number and scale of the unanswered questions which are outstanding, concerning how it has been conducted over the last ten years or so. The Caller Report dealt with some rather narrow areas of council activity, but its findings were shocking to many. The police are plodding along with Operation Aloft – they have twenty officers full time on the case – investigating a relatively small number of nefarious transactions involving the council. The Labour Party is yet to show what it will do about those councillors who have, either by their actions or their complicit silence, brought the party into disrepute.

I thought of these matters when I read that Alistair Machray, former editor of the Liverpool Echo, had been appointed a board member of the Liverpool Arena and Conference Centre (ACC). The ACC is wholly…