• Page 1: The Free Press has held an unofficial opening ceremony for a new footbridge that cost £40,000 and leads to nowhere: "It begins in St John's Precinct and comes to an abrupt end in mid-air above a car park." The bridge was intended to link the precinct to the Civic Centre which is now unlikely ever to be built. Some background ...

In 1965 the council had embarked on a hugely ambitious plan to redevelop the city — a plan that was later described as "notorious", "a nightmare" and "a cautionary tale". It was the work of Graeme Shankland, a consultant whose vision for Liverpool was to tear down most of the city centre and replace it with "robust and manly" new buildings circled by an inner motorway on stilts. Vast areas were designated for car parks, and pedestrians would be consigned to "walkways in the sky" (i.e. footbridges).

The economic downturn in the 1970s made the plan unaffordable and it was abandoned bit by bit. The network of elevated walkways was never completed and those that had been constructed were removed a few years later. Pedestrians didn't like them and one had become known as "Muggers' Alley".

The Churchill Way flyovers — another part of Shankland's plan — won an award from  The Concrete Society [sic], though their construction was not only flawed but turned out to have been unnecessary because the traffic projections were wrong. In 2018 the flyovers were declared unsafe and removed.

One unfortunate effect of the Shankland plan was that it blighted much of the city. Areas scheduled for demolition became twilight zones while others - already cleared - remained empty in the absence of funds for new construction. This prompted acerbic jokes that the council was continuing with the task that Hitler's Luftwaffe had left unfinished.

Other items ...

• The new Inland Revenue Office (IRO) building is Bootle is nearing completion but the government is wishing it had never started. Meanwhile, a strike by 17 electricians on the IRO site has entered its 15th month (page 1).

• Industrial and trade union news is almost entirely about men, so the new "Women at Work" series (page 5) is an attempt to redress the balance.

• Page 8 highlights some more thoughts from Echo editor George Cregeen. This time he's concerned about schoolgirls visiting a sex advice clinic without telling their parents and kids demanding money to wash people's cars.

• "At certain times of the night no more than five doctors are responsible for coping with the emergency needs of over three-quarters of a million people." The Free Press investigates the stand-in doctor service that provides cover for GPs wanting a night off (page 4).

• Six black teenagers in Toxteth were arrested and charged with "causing an obstruction whereby a breach of the peace might be occasioned" after police spotted them playing with a ball in the street. An astonished magistrate later dismissed the case which came amid growing complaints about police harassment of black people in the area (page 6).

• Generous government grants, plus support from the city council, have prompted a rush to build new luxury hotels. Altogether, there will be 900 new bedrooms, though it's unclear who will stay in them (pages 6 and 7).

• Lennie Cruickshank, who accused the police of planting drugs on him, has received a letter from the Director of Public Prosecutions saying there is not enough evidence to justify criminal proceedings against the officers concerned (page 10).

Looking for a particular story? Try searching the index.