Liverpool City of No Culture

Well, its Liverpool City of No culture for me - I applied in the online ballot for 2 events, Britten and Taverner, and today got back a "you were unsuccessful" email. I'm sure its all fair and above water, but there's a sense of "why bother?" They add, "there's lots of free events you can attend", like I care about that. I'm not a great one for booking months (years?) in advance so when you try to and still get knocked back you think, "Okay, if that's how its going to be." I'd kind of thought that even though they would be popular, that prebooking would get me in to at least one of them. Perhaps there was a Manchester postcode filter, who knows? Yeah, yeah, just sour grapes I know. But like when I applied for the Commonwealth games ballot it just made me think, if my money's not good enough then so be it. With that, there were tickets going spare much nearer the event of course. After leaving things a little late for the Manchester Festival (lack of meaningful publicity in their case), I was determined to plan ahead this time. Ho hum.