BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool

Subject: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 10:36 AM

What do people think of the Spectator's comments on the people of Liverpool. After reading the piece, I must admit, I found myself agreeing with it. The people of Liverpool do take a pride in being Liverpudlians that borders on arrogance; while conversely, they wallow in the status of victimhood. Of course, morbid wallowing in grief is not restricted to Liverpool. You need only look at the irational outpouring of grief at Princess Diana's death which came close to mass hysteria. However, Londoners, while maybe annoyingly cocky, do not take an arrogant pride in being Londoners. Am I being unfair to the people of Liverpool? I speak as a Londoner by the way.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 10:57 AM

Speaking as a Yorkshireman, I gather the article was published without a byline, but that arse Boris Johnson the editor has accepted responsibility [ very strange thing for a tory MP to do ]
and had his arse kicked by Michael Howard.

Every decent person grieved for Ken Bigley and his family.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 11:10 AM

Everyone felt sorry for Ken Bigley, but did they grieve? I didn't. I only grieve for those I know personally and am close to. I feel that this is the appropriate way to behave. Quite honestly, I was more upset when my cat died that when I heard about Ken Bigley. I felt angry at the man's treatment and at his execution, but I did not grieve. Anyway,the article was about public grief and it's mawkish display. I am always suspect about people who emote over the death of a public figure-and that is what Ken Bigley became. It suggests a lack of perspective. This attitude seems particularly widespread in Liverpool.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 11:25 AM

I do not recall Boris being as derisory when the people of Soham mourned their loss,or when the people of Bradford or Dunblane mourned theirs. Liverpool however, seems to have been a target for any amount of derision over the years. I suggest if you mourned the loss of your cat over that of Ken Bigley, then it may be you who needs to examine your perspective.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 11:36 AM

Dunblaine was a small community and therefore different, but you are right about Bradford and Soham. As for Liverpool, all I have said is that a mawkish display of grief is more likely to happen there than elsewhere. I did not know Ken Bigley. I knew my cat. He was a part of my life. I'm just being honest. People are dying every moment whom I don't know. Am I suppose to show my grief for all of those as well? I think disgust and anger are the most approriate forms of emotion than grief, which just seems pointless except to his friends and family.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 11:48 AM

Wherever Ken Bigley was from, be it Manchester, Birmingham or London, his local community would have mourned him. If that is how people choose to comfort others and themselves, then what is your problem? Your feelings end at your cat. How very humanitarian of you.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 11:56 AM

Liverpool is not a small community. It is a huge city. MOst of the people "mourning" him wouldn't know him from Adam. Why would you want to be comforted over the death of a person whom you never knew? No. My feelings - or grief, which is what we are talking about here- do not end at my cat. They end with the people I know personally, such as friends and family. What I, and the Spectator, is the inappropriate display of emotions, or the wallowing in grief. Disgust and anger are far more proper to the ocassion.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 11:58 AM

Yes they do border on arogance sometimes but Penguin I think you have some personal issues to sort out.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 12:11 PM

I had no feelings one way or the other for Princess Di while she was alive. But I do have to disagree with your description of 'near mass hysteria'upon her death.
It was immensely moving for some people for all sorts of reasons...

1. The shock of a celeb unexpectedly dying.
2. The loss suffered by her family and the kids were young at the time.
3. The tardiness of the Firm to issue a statement, bearing in mind their attitude towards her prior to her death.
4. The realisation that she had actually been a figurehead for numerous charities, and they would have a knock on effect by her departure.

and so on and so forth. The out pouring of grief was always going to be as large as her presence had been in public life. That IS perspective.

As for Ken Bigley being mourned by people who didnt know him...if it gave his family any comfort at all, then why is it wrong?

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 01:20 PM

I think I know what the article was trying to say, but it went about it in an inept fashion, perhaps a little more time should have elapsed before this article was published. I would like to see this amount of empathy and public grief shown more often, and for more causes, it was mawkish and OTT in this instance.
I couldn't understand the Diana hysteria myself, but then I didn't like her, so I look at it from a different angle.
If only this amount of anger could be harnessed in the cause of world pollution etc.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Raedwulf
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 01:30 PM

Is Penguin Egg wrong? He never said anything about the comforting of Bigley's relatives. If they have been comforted by the love & sympathy of countless people, then that is good.

It doesn't affect the validity of P.Egg's various questions about how people identify with, & grieve for, people they have neither known nor met. As opposed to the thousands of people who die in equally horrible circumstances, whose names you never know & whose faces you never see.

Did those of you attacking P.Egg grieve for the individuals (not the mass, but each & every single person) killed in the Rwanda massacres? What about Cambodia under Pol Pot?, The mass rapes & murders in Serbia/Bosnia/ex-Yugoslavia? How do you feel about this?

All that moral outrage because one elderly man whose name face & begging video was shown to you got murdered. But I haven't seen your views expressed on what's happening to those, like Disa, who didn't have a choice about where they were in the world... (Remember, Mr Bigley, was where he was taken from by his own choice)

Like PE, I don't grieve for Bigley. I am (yet again) appalled that people will take & treat individuals in this fashion. Disgust & anger at this utterly pointless, ineffective act would certainly be a better description of my feelings than grief.

I don't think P.Egg has any 'personal issues' to sort out. I think a rational & intelligent point-of-view has been presented. Several intelligent questions, well worth intelligent answers, have been asked. Sadly, intelligent answers have been lacking, particularly from the anonymous, abusive, Guest fraternity. So nothing new there then...

Eric - I'd consider myself a decent person. I haven't grieved for Kenneth Bigley. I'd be happier if he was still alive though. It's not the same thing as grief.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 02:06 PM

I suggest if you mourned the loss of your cat over that of Ken Bigley, then it may be you who needs to examine your perspective.

I'd probably agree with the perspective. I felt a lot of emotion including anger, saddness as well as sympathy for the family but I didn't mourn. The cat could have touched my life in a very personal and direct way so I could find myself mourning the loss.

I find the whole business of mourning people you don't know quite weird. At times it seems to me more a case of mass hysteria than anything else. I wonder whether some of those who mourned for those who mourned for Ken Bigley who they had never met and had not even heard of or know anything about did the same for thier neighbour down the road who they had at least met in passing and said hello to, who lets say died after a 2 year long battle against cancer. Somehow I doubt many would.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 02:12 PM

People seem to feel the need to rationalise their lack of compassion. We can only have feelings for what we know, no matter how tenuously. Some people have those feelings and some people don't.It isn't a major personality flaw, just a difference.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 02:15 PM

"Am I being unfair to the people of Liverpool?"

Is that meant as a rhetorical question? Yes, of course you are. And being a buffoon as well. Which is Boris Johnson's stock-in-trade, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: mack/misophist
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 02:29 PM

Over the years I've known a number of people who were ernestly, omptionally involved in the tragedies of those they had never met and knew nothing about. Some suffered nervous breakdowns, more experienced a kind of emotional burn out. Close involvement in such things in unwholesome and unhealthful. Offer aid and support when appropriate; act when it's possible. Anything more is not a bad idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 02:46 PM

I think it was entirely appropriate for the people of Liverpool to offer their support. If the family in question haven't condemned it, why do others feel they have the authority. Some people just love to bitch.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Raedwulf
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 03:14 PM

Another coward who has bitched without the balls to offer a name...

Who was condemning what? P.Egg asked a question, & didn't condemn anything. Who are you, an anonymous coward, to think you have the 'authority' to twist PE's words?

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 03:32 PM

And it takes balls to call yourself penguin egg? LOL.

If he had a shoe horn he may just have found room to squeeze in one more sweeping generalisation into his opening thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 03:35 PM

I smell anti Conservative leanings in McGraths post. Boris Is a sort of Tommy Cooper character, affecting a clownish exterior, which masks a very astute politician underneath. we have no proof as to whether or not he wrote the article, but at least he was honourable enough to adopt the Hairy Arse Truman diktat, and accept that the buck stopped with him.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 06:17 PM

"Anti Conservative leanings"? How did you guess. (Though if it's small "conservative" that's a different matter. As Tony Blair recognised, there are plenty of small c conservatives well to the left of New Labour.)

But as it happens, I rather like Boris Johnson far more than most politicians in any party, and think the Tories would be very well advised to give him a go as leader of their party some time. (And bizarrely enough, that is quite on the cards.) He's a card, as well as a buffoon, and pretty sharp at the same time. He doesn't take himself too seriously.

He ballsed this one up all right, and he's got the sense to know when to admit it. And since it is the lead editorial in the magazine, and billed as such, he could hardly deny responsibility for it.

Though it might not have been such a balls-up - he might have been thinking in terms of all the media interest this would generate, and the fact that there aren't too many issues of the Spectator sold in Liverpool anyway.

I don't think "honour" really enters into it either way.

But for all that, this was a shoddy bit of dishonest and nasty journalism, whoever wrote it. If you want to read it, and aren't in reach of a hard copy, you need to click on this and register - it's free.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 06:21 PM

You're right there Kevin, the saddest thing about that is there's an awful lot of room to the left of this incarnation of the Labour Party.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: mooman
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 06:42 PM

For my part, during my varied and numerous visits and stays in Liverpool, I have found the people amongst the warmest on the planet. A lot of the "attitude" non-Liverpudlians attribute to Scousers is very much tongue in cheek and actually directed against themselves.

I haven't read the Spectator piece and am unlikely to but it sounds like I might have some issues with it from what previous posters have said.

(By the way I grew up in London.)

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: akenaton
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 08:14 PM

Have to agree with Penguin here, This outward show of grief by strangers is to my mind a symptom of our hollow society.
Meaningless lives made real for an instant....All so sad ,and so frightning...Ake

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST,John O'Lennaine
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 09:00 PM

Observing from Australia, I suspect that such massive outbursts of grief are not spontaneous, but orchestrated by a third party for a purpose.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Oct 04 - 09:12 PM

There is such a thing as solidarity, and some cultures are better at it than others.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 01:01 PM

how the hell does the spectator keep going. its total crap, and theres not much of it. I dont know anybody who reads it. Does the cia help them or something.

how can anybody be surprised or devastated by something a complete tit like Johson is responsible for.

I think we should be told.....

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Chris Green
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 02:37 PM

I think we need to define what we mean by "grief". To me it means a deep sense of personal loss, the departure of someone who I'd known and loved, which incidentally is something that I have experienced on more than one occasion. To me, the idea of experiencing a similar emotion towards someone who I never knew or met at all is rather bizarre. I think what happened to Ken Bigley is monstrous, and I can understand the public feeling anger and disgust, as well as demanding that something should be done to ensure that the like doesn't happen again, but to claim that, for example, that you're too grief-stricken to go to work because someone who happens to live in the same city, county or country as you has died is preposterous.

As far as Liverpudlians and "mass grief" go, I can't see that they're any more prone to it than anyone else. Getting away from the Ken Bigley situation which is slightly different, I was stewarding at Diana's funeral in 1997, and found the whole experience frankly rather frightening - line upon line of people in floods of tears for someone who they never knew and who, as far as I could see, had made no meaningful difference to their lives at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 02:56 PM

I gather Boris Johnson has been ordered by his party leader to go to Liverpool to abase himself and apologise. That could be worth seeing.

The whole business of what public grief is all about is an interesting one, and the Diana episode bears examination. But I don't think that that this rather cynical bit of Liverpool knocking has much useful to say about it - it's just a diversion.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 02:59 PM

Grief, happiness, sorrow, love; all emotions that can have numerous levels depending on the circumstance and the individual.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 03:37 PM

Has anyone got a link to the full article. I'd like to read it. I have visited the Spectator's web site but it appears you need to register there and I'd prefer not to.

I've only read extracts in places like the bbc news site and feel a need to get the full context. There seem to be points he raised that I could agree with but on the other hand, I could not agree with using tragedy for an excercise in Liverpool bashing.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 05:52 PM

Penguin Egg.....had it been a member of your family who was executed....would you then have grieved and what would you have felt if no-one else in the whole of the country grieved.
I personally grieve for anyone who dies in such a situation as it could have been someone I am close to!!! Think about it....or are you so uncaring that others don't matter to you at all??.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 06:30 PM

Georgian Silver, how on earth do you cope with life? I could have been close to everyone who died in road accidents (have lost people I knew that way), people who have lost thier lives to natural causes (I can even claim a former classmate who died from an anurism at 18 or maybe the chap who in his final month of life I managed to get Internet access for), I could indirectly claim to know murder - a girl who until last week was working in a pub near to me was recently going through a court case involving the murder of her 19yr old brother and so the list carries on...

To suggest being uncaring is pathetic. All these things have touched me. I want to know:

1. How you might manage to put yourself in every situation that you could relate to anywhere in the world and grieve for every individual involved.

2. Why it seems to me that when a an event gets media attention there is great mourning but lets say if someone just got stabbed to death in Liverpool (or elsewhere) rather than attracting the same obvious emotion countrywide, it would be "one of things" - horrible but such is life...

My own theory is that with many people, life is so shallow that they mourn when told to mourn and the mass hysteria caused by media attention is the real reason. I'd love to be convinced otherwise.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 07:12 PM

Georgian Silver, to misquote the old song,"Smile, and the world smiles with you, Grieve, and you grieve alone." To be honest, if it had been a member of my own family that had been in Ken Bigley's situation, ofcourse I would have grieved; but I would not have expected you to grieve with me. In fact, I would consider it an intrusion into my own grief. Now if you wanted to feel anger or outrage at his murder, that would be more natural and appropriate. I did not grieve at Gigley's death, but I felt disgust and anger. I also felt a sense of helplessness as I felt the situation was much larger than the death of one man. Another perspective was that he went out there knowing the danger. He gambled and lost. That does not excuse his murder but we should not lose sight of the bigger picture.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Oct 04 - 08:19 PM

I'd suggest popping down to the local library, Jon, they should have a copy of the Spectator.

Grief comes in many forms and degrees. It happens when something gets through to us, so we feel it personally, and it can happen in all kinds of circumstances, typically when for some reason we feel some commonality with the other person.

In fact there always is an enormous commonality with any suffering person, but in order to survive we maintain barriers against recognising at an emotional level. Sometimes those barriers break down, and sometimes that happens collectively. There's nothing artificial or shameworthy about that.

And it's also true that it's possible for this to be exploited in various ways - just as this can also happen sometimes even within grieving families. People can fake it, and people can milk it. But the suggestion that we can't be truly overcome by grief for people we never knew just isn't true.

There's a sense that when we grieve, at some level our grief always reflects a sharpened awareness of our own mortality, and the mortality of everything around us:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: GUEST,Chris B (Born Again Scouser)
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 08:09 AM

One of the most telling reactions was Nicholas Soames on BBC Radio saying that he thought Johnson had apologised 'gracefully and handsomely' and that should be the end of the matter (I paraphrase).

You probably had to hear it to get the full effect but the sub-text of what he said was that these jumped-up scousers had a confounded nerve expecting an apology in the first place from such a ripping chap as Boris Johnson. Which only confirms that the tories still contain plenty of overgrown public schoolboys who have nothing but contempt for ordinary people, regardless of where they come from.

Still, never hurts to be reminded what a bunch of c**ts they are...

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 09:39 AM

I'm from the eastern end of the East Lancs Road so don't expect me to symapathise with Scousers;-)

Seriously though. How can anyone who didn't know the unfortunate Mr Bigley realy grieve for him? I have grieved for my Grandparents, my step-Dad, my friends, my sons friends, my cats and numerous other entities all with one thing in common. I knew them. They affected my life. My world was not as complete as it was before their demise. I cannot grieve for Ken Bigley his death has not affected me in the slightest.

I can be saddend by his death and more so by its circumstances. I can commiserate with the people who did know him. I can understand their grief because I know how it feels. But come on, people die every second of every minute of every hour. A lot in more tragic circumstances than Ken Bigleys.

Now, that out of the way, to the article. The Spectator is a magazine. What is it's job? To inform people? To entertain people?? To sell copy??? Well, it seems to have suceeded on all these fronts! I very rarely agree with anything in the press simply because I don't buy it. I refuse to buy anything that is purposely trying to tell me how I should think. I have enough of that without paying for it!

However, if I have the gist of the artilce right it is criticising the 'people of Liverpool', or shoud we say the handful that chose to say anything out of the many millions that didn't. Is this right? If so, well, yes. I agree with it. Those people who are making these claims of grief and solidarity are not doing so out of the goodness of their hearts. Only Bigleys close friends and family can do this. Anyone else is just jumping on the bandwagon for their own nefarious purposes. Usualy political in my experience.

Too cynical? Well, perhaps. But that's the way I see it. I'll publicaly declare my grief when it is real. But to declare grief that you don't feel for someone you don't know? Come on! Who is being cynical now?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Gervase
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 09:51 AM

I have to agree with the tenor of the Spectator's op-ed piece. I remember being in Liverpool covering the arrest and pre-trial hearings of the two boys who were later convicted of the murder of James Bulger, and the coupling of mawkishness and malevolence I found there made my flesh creep.
The same folk who would be screaming like harpies at the prison van and wanting to lynch the terrified children inside would start weeping buckets at the mere mentions of the death of a 'poor little babbie' they'd never met.
I've also covered a couple of other emotive court cases on Merseyside, and I have to say that nowhere else have I encountered the sort of 'getting off' on raw emotion I foudn there. It's as if it's not enough to wear your heart on your sleeve'; you have to whack people in the balls with it as well. If lynching ever makes a comeback in the UK, my money's on Merseyside as the place where it starts.
Maybe I'm an up-tight, buttoned-up southerner, but I found that the Scousers reacted over-emotionally to every imagined slight - or at least the Scousers on the streets did. I'm sure that there were plenty of decent, self-effacing Liverpudlians who cringed at the antics of their fellow citizens, but it was the keeners and wailers on the streets who got the attention.
And look at the whingeing that has followed the Spectator piece. Take the piss out of Crouch End or Camberley and it's a nine-minute wonder, but take a tilt at Liverpool and you'll never hear the end of it. What's interesting is that there seems to be more noise about the perceived disrespect to Liverpool than the possible disrespect to Ken Bigley, who hadn't lived there for some time.
Yes, his death was disgusting, but maudlin inarticulate mass-hysteria isn't going to help.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: s&r
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 10:13 AM

In the original post PE said he spoke 'as a Londoner'. Would that be working class or Yuppy class? I fancy the cockneys I know would wish to disown him.

Stu

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 01:01 PM

well maybe Gervase......but you've got to admit the tories ARE bastards, The Spectator is awful, Boris Johnston as an editor is rather like leaving a whelk in charge of the whelk stall.

As for Liverpool. take a look round God sake, See the quid shops in the centre where most cities there would be, the usual load of places where middle classes can splash out and flash the plastic.

Wouldn't you be a bit aggrieved to see the place you lived so far away from the goodies counter. What is it they say to jack Lemmon in the apartment - be a mensch, for godsake......show some humanity.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Oct 04 - 01:32 PM

Maybe I'm an up-tight, buttoned-up southerner.

Maybe.

I have a feeling a lot of the sneering at Liverpool that gets periodically given an airing has more than a suspicion of jealousy and resentment at the base of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Gervase
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 04:42 AM

Maybe...but I'm not sure it's jealousy and resentment - with me it's more a sort of embarrasment. Liverpool's like the uncle that the family never speaks of and who you only see at weddings and funerals; the life and soul of the party but you know he's going to get pissed, break a few things and probably end up lamping the priest.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Gervase
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 04:56 AM

...and no, I'm not going to stoop as low as to suggest he'd leave the hearse propped up on bricks! That's a sterotype too far...

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 05:42 AM

My case rests...

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 08:08 AM

I have just heard this debated on Radio 2 during the Jeremy Vine show. I now agree with The Spectator.

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 08:58 AM

Fancy on Stu. Speaking as a cockney I agree with PE. My great-great-aunt Norah was a Liverpudlian (indeed the whole family had been at one time). We used to visit her in Liverpool 8 and had to worry about where to leave the car so that it was safe. The streets were littered with glass and rubble and graffitti was everywhere. Even at the age of 10 I could see that this was wrong - we didn't live like that and we came from the East End of London, an area that has been cited as being more deprived than any other part of the country. It's surely something in the local character and not in the environment.

Pound shops? We've got loads where we live and loads of people drive their BMWs to shop in them!

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Chris Green
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 09:09 AM

They do have a natural sense of rhythm though! And people from Yorkshire all have ferrets down their trousers. And people from Glasgow are all 5'1" and carry razors. And Cockneys are cheeky, lovable rogues who sing "Have a banana" between phrases in music-hall songs. And Welsh people all eat leeks and wear daffodils and sing like opera stars.

For Christ's sake, this is the 21st century! Haven't we got to the point yet where we can do without regional stereotypes?

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 09:19 AM

Probably, db, but where's the fun in that? And it's us in Lancashire that can keep ferrets down us kex best...

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Chris Green
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:12 AM

I stand corrected!

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:44 AM

Some stereotypes are easier to adhere to than others, like the one about Scotsmen being tight ¦¬]
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:48 AM

100!

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 11:53 AM

Only halfway Ted.

Or would Giok not lend you the other half?

:D

Subject: RE: BS: Spectator's comments on Liverpool
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 19 Oct 04 - 07:37 PM

I am neither working class nor Yuppie, but a member of that strange white non-class that dwells on the outskirts of cities, called Suburbia. I was born in Orpington, a place with no character at all. However, we do have one thing of which we, or at least I, are/am proud - it is the birthplace of Nic Jones. My attempt to rename Orpington, Nicjoneston, has met, incredibly, with indifference.