SO you want to know about the cruise business on the south coast?

Who you going to write to?

Portsmouth, the Navy city, with its pitiful handful of overblown passenger pedalos or Southampton, which is home to the mightiest ocean going liners afloat?

Exactly.

Liverpool’s craven decision to seemingly ask everyone except Southampton what might happen when they start exploiting their £20m taxpayer handout to hive off chunks of its business, is typical of the way it’s behaved right from the start.

Looking south with envious green eyes, dock chiefs drooled over Southampton’s cruise business, the jewel in the city’s crown and, to paraphrase children’s favourite Burglar Bill, said: “I’ll have that”.

But when they pleaded for the public’s money to build a glittering new terminal it was as though the thought could not be further from their mind.

“Turnaround cruises? Not us.

Noooo.”

It was nonsense then and so it’s proved less than two years after the ribbon was cut.

Now they want to tap into the real money, which is understandable but why should the taxpayer fund Liverpool’s expansion ambitions?

That’s your PAYE and mine putting people out of work in Hampshire.

The city on the Mersey had a great cruise industry and lost it.

With grit and determination and massive investment, Southampton has ridden-out stormy waters to become the leading cruise port in northern Europe.

The Liver Bird that now aims to fly away with that hard-won title on wings feathered with public funds should find instead only shame stuck in its craw.