The Daily Mirrors Sue Carroll has made a big mistake in yesterdays Daily Mirror. In her column she often puts on the verbal bovver boots in an articulate manner with added humour, fair play if she is dishing out the dirt to those who deserve it, but it seems her latest comments are a throwback to the anti Scouser sentiments the anti working class southern based media seem to enjoy .

Yesterdays Daily Mirror (30 June 2004) saw the following 'witty' little remarks by Sue Carroll. The remarks are still up today as of 14.25 pm on Thursday 01 July 2004...........

"Having read different stories of the story about Stephen Gerrard's decision to not move to Chelsea, I'm not sure what's behind the England stars determination to stay with his home town club, Liverpool. His love for his family. Or his families love for there kneecaps"

Pen Pushing Freaks

From the Sun(Scum) to the Guardian, there's always some journalistic little pen pushing freak who wants to give the middle classes, the brainless and the Southern and Home Counties snobs the convenient scapegoat of Scousers to have a good laugh at. After all, racism isn't allowed anymore so we need to someone to be the fall guy or girl. Even Claire Sweeney got it when several women journalists pondered the size of her bum and whether she looked like a girl who works in a chip shop. Any Scouser who makes it will always have the cackling middle class and hired hand poison pen merchants queuing up to make reference to 'slum council estates' or 'crime' or 'drugs' and other less than positive references regarding Liverpool. Sue Carroll however is from a working class background, no matter how much she earns, she should remember her roots and show some loyalty like Steve Gerrard. She will reap a bitter harvest indeed if she thinks she can wade in with no comeback.

The Scum

The Sun tried that once and still have people here who would dearly love to discuss the article printed on April 19th 1989 with the journalistic London filth who wrote it. Sue Carroll's remarks are not as low as the Suns, but she is steering into that familiar territory we know so well. The same territory which the gutter Italian fashion outfit Diadora recentely went into, when they made disgusting remarks desecrating the memory of Bradford City Fans. The same territory Jack Straw strayed into when he told a business conference that "Scouser's are always up to something". The same territory which led the BBC to run a documentary showing the Toxteth riots, when the documentary was about Wayne Rooney who was born and lived in Croxteth. Wayne was not even born when it all kicked off in Toxteth and other areas. Still, Croxteth or Toxteth, it's all the same to many journalists. The words rhyme, there both Liverpool, Wayne Rooney was destined to be born, so the lads obviously the type who would have been rioting if he had been there.

Loyalty

Most working class football fans had a different reaction than Sue Carroll to Steve's decision. Liverpool fans were delighted obviously, but so too would any true fan admire this lads decision to stay, because it shows loyalty both to the football team, but also loyalty to the fans who Steve Gerrard grew up with and loves. It also shows the family loyalty and the feeling of belonging which working class people have for there communities. The middle class or the cold upper classes do not have this loyalty or closeness. Few Journalists are 'in tune' with this cultural social trait of working class communities. Few journalists are working class. Maybe Sue Carroll's forgotten her roots, the media, after all, has a habit of turning the poachers into gamekeepers as it were. Her joke could have come from the dinner table of a bunch of deranged bitter Tories in the Home Counties, the sort of sick middle class fascists who cannot really hide there hatred for the working class. Some working class people also turn viciously on there own kind. When they have a column in a big selling newspaper to air there views and barely disguised prejudices, it can be very dangerous.

Gallows Humour

To joke about Steve's relatives being kneecapped is not funny. Not when we have young men turning up dead almost every other week in Liverpool from bullets. Not when we have mothers crying at another funeral from the gun crime which seems to be part of the punch-line in this 'joke'. If the Daily Mirror is going to comment on Liverpools gun crime, it will need an in depth article, not throwaway comments, or puns. People are having there lives destroyed here, and it's not funny. To suggest that there may have been threats made to Steve Gerrard's family had he left Liverpool, even in a joking offhand manner, is insensitive and lets face, Sue Carroll is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Bigger things than money.

Sue Carroll misunderstands people feelings on this matter. In a world where money means everything, we've seen one man turn round and say "there are bigger things than money" - Steve Gerrard hasn't actually come out and said that - but his actions have and they have put loyalty back on the public agenda. Remember loyalty? Steve could have made an absolute fortune with the 'fancy dans' and professional divers and playboys of Chelsea F.C, paid for by questionable Russian Oil money. Liverpool fans would have been upset but would have wished him well, resigned to the sad fact that loyalty was perhaps gone. But now we can smile, we can look at a fellow Scouser who has decided to stick it out here. Loyalty to Liverpool the City is hopefully back in fashion. Steve Gerrard is a role model whose example is a breath of fresh air. He could have 'took the money and run', as the old song goes, but he stayed because some things in life are far more important than money.

Loyalty.

In a sport where loyalty was said to be easily bought and sold, we have seen one man stand up and prove that there are bigger and better things than just earning more money. Steve Gerrard gives us a little bit of faith in these money obsessed times. His example is one Liverpool can be proud of, and it's about time we all showed more loyalty to Liverpool and our communities. We can't all be professional football players, but whatever skills we eventually find within ourselves, it would be far better for Liverpool if we could use these skills here.

As for local gangsters getting upset at Gerrard's move, obviously there are some who would be, but they'd cry into there beers like the rest of us. Any gangster here stupid enough to make threats would hardly win the admiration of Liverpools 'underworld'. In fact, threatening professional football players families and intimidating them, is the generally the task of the English Media. Gazza could tell you all about that, the man never had a life, and his move from Up North to Down South finished him off. Stay away from the fancy dans and the London nightclubs, you'll end up with a crowd of sad hangers on and have to contend with the many snobs and smiling journalists who will knife you in the back one day. In Liverpool, or up North, in the Real Heart of England, you know who your mates are. You know you have a community. You know that family values and loyalty to your community is a good thing. These values are held dear by most of us, but the years of consecutive attacks on Liverpool, be it from Thatcher, or the gunboats on the Mersey in the 1920's or some snotty nosed pen pushing journalist, has taken it toll and helped to belittle the efforts of those magnificent working class people who still try to hold together the fabric of a community.

Football IS Life.

Football may not be much, but for every lad and girl who ever ran there hearts out as a kid kicking a ball around, it was a lot better than sitting indoors eating the pot noodles and watching 100 channels of sheer mind numbing boredom on Sly TV. Footballs not compulsory, but it's as well that kids get out there and learn for themselves what teamwork is. Football offers everything life itself can throw at you - condensed into 90 minutes of play. You'll go through all the spectrum of emotions and keep fit at the same time. You'll have the laughs, the tears, the euphoric heights of emotion as you blast in that shot, or save that shot, or successfully tackle that forward who is racing towards your empty goal like a demented nutter. You'll hit the lows as you lose the balls, and miss-hit the passes and fall onto the muddy turf. As a ball hits you smack bang in your face on a wet cold day, it is a good reminder that life can be a right bas**** sometimes.

Sue Carroll ought to ask Steve Gerrard and the good people of Liverpool for our forgiveness.

Or Judgment will be passed.

If we don't stop the journalists from consistently making Liverpool the object of derision, then wherever we go we will face the same prejudice which, if it was directed at anyone of a different colour or race, would be illegal. We don't need the commission for scouse equality setting up, just a bit of common sense from journalists like Sue Carroll, who, with two offhand sentences, can reinforce this negative image.

Without the working class, the Daily Mirror would nothing. WE made it what it was, we put the poke into the coffers in Mirror Group International and they ought to make sure they don't bite the hand that feeds them. They ought to know that Liverpool has a record in messing up the sales figures of newspapers that think they can print what they want about us.