The move to the new Merseyside County Council in 1974, following the reorganisation of local government, made little visible difference to me. It was a huge relief to be rid of direct responsibility for housing cases, although I still did my share of the ‘surgeries’. The pace was leisurely, the style curiously old-fashioned after the rough and tumble of Liverpool City Council. My new colleagues came from all over Merseyside, some with no previous experience of local government, and only a few displayed anything like the aggression characteristic of Liverpool politics. We maintained considerable pomp and ceremony. There were potted plants on the dais of the Town Hall where we held our Council meetings. Our offices occupied the top floors of a tower block down by the Pier Head, with views of such glory that I had to choose a seat with my back to the window to avoid distraction. True, the river was a shining sheet of water empty of all traffic and the cranes of the shipyards pointed skywards in their parking places, but structure planning would remedy all that.