Citytalk rang me just after the 6 o'clock news to talk about this. They'd previously had Mike Storey and Dean Sullivan on championing Liverpool as a brand name and the latter stating how the Beatles and LFC put Liverpool on the map. I corrcted that bit by stating we were once the 2nd city of the British Empire, though we've always believed ourselves to be the first anyway and whilst it's not p.c. to brag about our imperialistic past, nevertheless, the name Liverpool was known throughout the world through this and through the many ships in every worldwide port bearing the ports name, EFC (in the 20s) The Beatles (in the 60s) and LFC (in the 70s and 80s) merely kept our name in the worlds eye.
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They also put a lady from Wirral on the line at the same time as me saying that she doesn't want to be part of liverpool (though I bet when she's on holiday and asked where she's from, they'd never hear of Pensby, yet say Liverpool....)
Anyway, she wanted to be re-called Cheshire, it's on her birth and marriage cert after all, She said 'Oh i'm not a snob by the way' as by now she was obviously realising that that's how she was coming across.
I said try telling Phil Thompson from Kirkby and Steven Gerrard from Huyton that they're not scousers, not from Liverpool and see what they say?
In the 1960s large swathes of Scotland road residents were shipped out to Kirkby and Halewood, suddenly at the stroke of a pen in 1974, they were suddenly no longer Liverpudlians, how daft is that?
I mentioned that unlike Manchester, we are not trying to incorporate other cities under our wing and rob their identities like they tried with Bolton and Oldham for instance and that these are just outlying regions.
Yes, I like the idea of a Greater Liverpool but even better if all these regions were just under the Liverpool umbrella.
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