Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Liverpool: Some Sense at Last
The only thing wrong with the Policy Exchange's Cities Unlimited is its apparent moderation. One must be grateful, however, for its recognition of the shortcomings of Liverpool with its drunks, its sinister statues of John Lennon and its compulsive need to wring apologies out of people. A little more thought would have led them to the obvious policy recommendation which I feel sure would have been wholeheartedly embraced by David Cameron - tow it out to sea and nuke it.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
i was pleased to see they included Bradford and Sunderland in their list of irredeemably damned cities.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's just me being grouchy but i reckon London should be turned into some kind of amusement park for psychotics. Oh wait, they did that already.
Very Swiftian Bryan. You'll be on a train to apologise to the lovely scousers. The Tories are trying to get votes in the North. The parallel utterances about Georgia suggest politics like nature abhors a vacuum, which only mugs fill.
ReplyDeleteCan’t comment on Liverpool, but so far as the sinister statues of John Lennon are concerned, he was definitely overrated.
ReplyDeleteWhat particularly appeals to me is the fact that he was shot without trial, deliberation, or due process of law!
I heard the bod in question on the radio at lunchtime, all together now one, two, three "he sounded German". He said that the media had misquoted him, possibly he only intended to shove Zyklon B down Liverpool's chimney, if some scouse doesn't nick it first.
ReplyDeleteElberry, my Lithuanian Jewish antecedents escaped the pogroms in the mid-nineteenth century by taking a ship which was supposedly going from Vilnius to New York. In fact, it only went as far as Sunderland. (This is the sort of thing that still happens to members of family.) Anyway, they decided it wasn't so bad and stayed on, breeding like crazy and enjoying a free and relatively prosperous life. I can't help feeling fondness for the place which welcomed them, even though I've never been there. My 98-year-old granny is staunch in her defence of the city where she was brought up. Maybe it just needs a lovely bridge, like the one Kevin McCloud had built for the citizens of Castleford.
ReplyDeleteWhy waste money towing it out to sea, where there would be a real risk of Dublin being damaged-why not nuke it where it stands. I remember the first time there,30 years ago, the theatre sold fresh fruit in the lobby, but there was change in the air, none of it good, and a sense that old would soon become olde, and it did. Passing through recently (why hang around?) the same vinyl smiles that have become so much a part of London life were everywhere. I didn't know whether to kill myself or go bowling. I think Bayley needs his engine tuning.
ReplyDeleteGetting back to this German sounding bod on the radio, one of his wacky ideas was to "increase the land area of London by one mile in every direction, increasing the land value of the new territory from £10000 per hectare to £40 million per, freeing up money for infrastructure." Eh?
ReplyDeleteLook out Nige, if this one gets his way then Carshalton will be re designated as part of central London.
Bolton-on-Thames ?
ReplyDeleteBy chance I was in a part of London today for the first time in a long, long while. Dirt, litter everywhere, plenty of drunks, the pavements broken, clumsy roadworks which made the going harder. In among the shoppers a few phlebitic old ladies shuffled about, their stockings round their knees. Just outside the flow of the crowd shifty-looking men waited in doorways, touts probably - minicabs, rooms to rent, dope, girls. Returning later in the evening, I found the night people out and about, more drunks, druggies and a few wraith-like girls standing around I took to be crack whores. I'm sure if I lived there I'd stop noticing any of this in a week.
ReplyDeleteI suppose hell is wherever you find it. But this part of London - Notting Hill Gate, in fact - did absolutely nothing for me and I was relieved to get back on the bus and, eventually, reach the meadows and cornfields around my home town.
That's what city-dwellers lack, a home town. Cities are simply too big and too pitiless to allow any kind of intimacy. In this regard, London and Liverpool strike me as exactly the same. Both are miserable experiences in their own way and both are places to leave as soon as possible. Get out while you can, I'd say.
I'm stuck in the middle of Manchester. A nuke about now would probably cheer me up.
ReplyDeleteGreat writing, Mark. It sounds like the city stayed true to its infernal nature as recorded by Eliot 90-odd years ago. "London, your people are bound on the wheel"...or perhaps his borrowing from Dante: "so many, I had not thought death had undone so many".
ReplyDeletei've never seen Sunderland though having studied at Durham i know the locality a bit, the kind of hopeless, thick-neck, no-forehead, psychotic tattooed Stella-artois drinking, burger-eating people who we called 'the natives'. i did temp once with a beast from Sunderland, who was witty, bright, and competent but had spent 10 years on the dole up there and said his best job was "grill man at McDonald's". He said he decided to leave when he went into a pub and saw a man in a trench coat, a machete poking out of the coat.
Try Ian Freeman's 'Cage Fighter' for a sample of Sunderland life...grim stuff.
Malty - never! Carshalton shall always stand - and it would cheer Mark up to pay a visit. So near to London, yet so far...
ReplyDeleteWhy no aggrieved scousers so far? Oh of course they're all down the dole office. Or the pub...
ReplyDelete...or the 'Turf Accountant', Nige, a favourite of scousers, after they've 'been paid' at the JobCentre, and just prior to the local Wetherspoon's.
ReplyDeleteLiverpool - a city built on the proceeds of slavery and prostitution. Sadly, those days are gone...
ReplyDeleteThe policy exchange bloke came across as a weird hermaprodite nerd. But his arguments were not as ridiculous as all that. Merseyside has had EU Objective 1 funding for years becuase it's GDP was less than 70% of the EU average. Following it's introduction, it's GDP fell even further. Great Waterfront and sundry other buildings - though ruined by that ugly dual carriageway behind the Pier Head and the St John's precinct monstrosity.
I recall positioning a sausage roll under my chin while at toilet visiting Anfield's Kop many years ago. Seeing it. The bloke in the next urinal said 'Hey lads, look where this fella's got his dick'. Famous scouse wit and all that.
"i've never seen Sunderland though having studied at Durham i know the locality a bit, the kind of hopeless, thick-neck, no-forehead, psychotic tattooed Stella-artois drinking, burger-eating people who we called 'the natives"
ReplyDeleteelberry, my brother in law has taken extreme umbidge at your comments and says that "he would come down there and remove your goolies but obviously anyone who writes stuff like that has already parted company with them"
In reality the bit that he found so offensive was the remark about Stella Artois.
he sounds like Ian Freeman, check out his autobiography 'Cage Fighter' for a hideous portrait of the North East.
ReplyDeleteelberry, for an even more hideous portrait check out any novel by my mothers old school chum, Catherine Cookson, East Jarrows template for Jeff Archer.
ReplyDeletea favourite of my mother's, who otherwise is incapable of reading non-diet books. Imagine my joy listening to my mother recommend i read 'She Was Only A Poor Lass' or 'She Was Born Without A Penny'.
ReplyDeleteApart from bone gnawing poverty, hunger marchers and my cousin Jimmie, Cookson is Jarrows only claim to immortality. I was born in the nieghbouring town and we thought that we were upmarket, oh boy.
ReplyDeleteBy Brother would love it.Two worse tragedies in modern football history and co-incidentally they involve Liverpool football supporters.
ReplyDeleteI am naturally less accusational,after all I work with a scouser and a Liverpool supporter.
Can you actualy condemn a city?
I like Liverpool, the bacon sandwiches they make there are delightful. Sunderland has the best crack whores outside of Moscow as well as a National Glass Centre which is an excellent place to practice your air rifle skills.
ReplyDelete