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Nice try on behalf of the scousers, but they are truly a
race of their own :-) I mean you cannot understand a word these people say!!
Enjoy a bit of Britsh North-South mickey-taking of each other's cities!
Manneh
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'My Scouse pain'
by Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Online
It's International Scouse Day, a time for Liverpudlians to celebrate their
unique heritage. But hailing from Merseyside's capital is not without its
irritations.
Historically, scouse is just stew. But peer into the murky depths of the pan
and you can see the outline of a much-maligned city.
The word itself is derived from lobscouse, a corruption of a Scandinavian term
brought by the sailors during Liverpool's mightiest maritime years.
But Merseyside no longer conjures up images of shipbuilding excellence, big-
spending cotton barons and a gateway to the Empire.
Latterday Liverpudlians travelling or settling elsewhere in the UK seem unable
to avoid an altogether more negative reaction to their birthplace.
If I had a pound for every time I have encountered "calm down, calm down" or
hilarious gags about stolen hubcaps and car stereos, I would own Liverpool.
Butt of jokes
It seems the Liverpool of the southern imagination is a place full of shellsuit-
wearing rogues who prowl the streets looking for houses to burgle, their hands
bedecked with glistening sovereign rings.
Not just for laughs: Liverpool has seen serious unemployment and deprivation.
While Manchester has turned into the de facto capital of the North West, in its
shadow, Liverpool has become the butt of a thousand jokes.
But the city sometimes does itself no favours.
Scouseness covers everything that is unique and amusing about Liverpool, yet it
also provokes a morass of infuriating, introspective tweeness.
You may be surprised to learn that some of the most patriotic Liverpudlians
cannot abide talk of jam butty mines and listening to Norwegian covers bands
As a fundraising exercise for Alder Hey Hospital, International Scouse Day is
highlighting the work of an outstanding children's hospital that has endured
some difficult times recently. But it is hard not to groan every time there is
an opportunity for professional Scousers to come out of the woodwork.
Because of the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside, Liverpool is the city of "dey do
doh, don't dey doh", "sound as a pound", and a place where you can buy books on
how to Lern Yerself Scouse.
But we don't all speak like the cast of "Brooky", calling each other Tinhead
and Growler, and we don't all think "civilisation ends at the Runcorn bridge".
Despite Liverpool's occasional insularity and reliance on the past, it has a
buzz rarely matched by other cities.
Easy target
Much of the knocking that has created Liverpool's stereotypes emanates from a
London-centric media.
Jack Straw said Scousers were "always up to something"
When newspapers need a feature on juvenile crime, poverty, drugs or the
inefficient workings of the criminal justice system, the lazy journalist looks
no further than Liverpool.
Never mind that crime figures in Liverpool, still riven by genuine deprivation
and unemployment, are not that much different from London's.
Some people still see as fact the fictional city evoked in the 1980s sitcom
Bread, a place of work-shy, dole-cheating chancers who love their mum.
And the negative portrayals keep coming, with the police fly-on-the-wall Mersey
Blues giving us "meeeerder", another stick for anti-Scousers to beat us with.
Culture capital
To be fair, it is not just Liverpool. For the most part, the metropolitan media
has a mental map of the UK that features London and a large area of northern
wasteland marked "here be dragons".
Never mind that Merseyside's capital is a strong contender for European city of
culture.Or that Liverpool's small population has produced the foremost pop band
in pop history and a host of other cultural pioneers over the years.
The paintings of George Stubbs, the photography of E Chambre Hardman, poetry of
Roger McGough and plays of Willy Russell show a city that has been a creative
hub throughout the last 300 years.
The music of the Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen, the La's and Shack
have bubbled under great shifts in alternative music in more recent years.
Big hospital
Liverpool, as a city of fewer than 500,000 people, has punched above its weight
culturally, scientifically and in sport.
It has one of the largest hospitals in Europe, a renowned school of tropical
medicine, England's most successful football team and enough theatres and art
galleries to shake a stick at.
Despite the economic destruction wrought on it, and the decay of its
spectacular architecture, Liverpool remains a magnificent and powerful city
which is a party capital and a good place to walk around.
Liverpool is not the city of thieves, dole cheats, drug dealers, rioters and
strikers.
So stop giving us a hard time.
And one more thing... Scousers really are funny.
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