Feeling cut off.

Byline: PHIL REDMOND 

MAROONED. Usually more associated with tales of pirates, shipwrecks and desert islands, but it's a feeling people are beginning to experience more and more in our towns and cities. Cut off. No link to the wider world.

Three events this week highlighted this theme. The now infamous beach ball leaving Pepe Reina, and perhaps LFC's Premiership challenge marooned, the fleeting visit of QM2 and news that the region's tram scheme may be faltering, again.

While we will have to wait a few months to assess the real impact of that beach ball, and while QM2 was impressive, there was an eerie sense of historical metaphor when some of its passengers went to visit the HQ building Cunard left behind. Perhaps they experienced something of what the people in the once industrial suburbs felt when they too saw their industry and their jobs sail away, leaving them left behind. Marooned.

The trams setback, though, probably has the greatest symbolism, not least because it may once again seem to indicate that the city-region still hasn't got its act together in bidding for these large infrastructure projects. If not, it needs to.

The original tram scheme was hoping to attract gover nment funds for social inclusion, which would have seen the first line going out to an obviously marooned community, Kirkby. At the time, I was of the opinion that the first route should actually have been to the airport, to help stimulate business and holiday traffic and therefore stimulate the wider economy.

That was then. That was before I learned so much about disconnected communities through the Capital of Culture saga. That was pre-credit crunch. That was a top-down approach. This is now. And the people of Kirkby are still marooned.

Marooned because, like parts of Norris Green, Croxteth, Halewood, Tranmere, Ellesmere Port, Bootle and Crosby, to name just a few, the populations grew, or were imported, to provide the labour force for the then busy industrial estates and docks. But that was then. This is now. The work has been exported. The imported people left behind. Marooned in housing estates. Perhaps postindustrialist Scouse Family Robinsons? And no matter how much we talk of things like high generational unemployment and/or a benefits dependency culture, or this, that or the other traditional scheme to promote educational attainment, skills and employability, if there are, actually, no traditional jobs to be had then we are simply dealing in smoke and mirrors. And, of course, running up higher and higher social costs whether through policing or health and social care.

Just as last week I asked if it was not time to, if not start, then at least energise the debate about political and policy-making disconnect, then this week's poser is: How do we start throwing lifelines to the marooned?