I have a dream
I always thought that the Daily Mail was the newspaper to go to for the unusual made up stories, ones where I’m sure I dreaming they are sometimes so weird. This being more the case after the demise of the Daily Star* Sport and it’s London Bus found on the Moon stories.
However, this time round they are reporting a factually correct story even though it sounds totally made up.
The source of this story is from Tourism department of Liverpool Council. They claim that Martin Luther King wrote the first draft of his famous speech in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool (great place by the way, stayed there a few times myself, fantastic lounge). When historians say that MLK never went to Liverpool the spokesperson for Liverpool Council said “Although biographers associated with Martin Luther King may not be aware of such a fact that does not prove it to be untrue.”
The tourism department had the great idea of crowd sourcing ideas for their latest campaign based on famous people who have a connection with Liverpool. Sounds like they got a lot of ideas but the educationally challenged people in the council didn’t do much checking on the “facts” being given to them. Being Liverpudlian themselves they should have known about the well known Scouse humour and not trusted much of these “facts”. Instead of listening to historians who told them where they went wrong, the organisation who produced the pamphlet “Liverpool Discovers” trusted the suggestions from anonymous liverpudlians.
Now they are left with egg on their faces and still can’t stop digging themselves deeper when they say “We do recognise on this occasion that maybe the famous Liverpudlian sense of humour has had the last laugh but this is why we do use the word ‘alleged’ in relation to the information and are in no way trying to rewrite history or make factual claims about information that may or may not be correct.”
But maybe that was the plan all along. Make a deliberate mistake. Get loads of people to commentate that they are a bit stupid. But all along the Discover Liverpool campaign gets mentioned. So Liverpool is in the news. And I’ve just fallen for their fantastically devious plot! Duh!
SBML
* Mistake fixed thanks to Mark & Microdave
-
April 6, 2011 at 08:05 -
Scallies. A strange city, Liverpool, in many ways
-
April 6, 2011 at 11:39 -
Wodyamean pal?
-
-
April 6, 2011 at 08:51 -
XX the organisation who produced the pamphlet “Liverpool Discovers” trusted the suggestions from anonymous liverpudlians. XX
Something here does not ring true.
I doubt anyone from Liverpool is INTELLIGENT enough to pull such a scam. I mean HEL! You could probably count on one hand the scousers that even KNOW who Martin Luther King IS. Even then three of them would mix him up with “dat guy wot runs de grocers next to de bukkees, innit, you know wharra mean like.”
-
April 6, 2011 at 09:15 -
Maybe it was Martin Luther they were thinking about – perhaps they should eat worms.
BTW it is the Sport that has demised – sadly the Daily Star is still being printed.-
April 6, 2011 at 11:25 -
Someone has been reading “1066 and all that” – Chortle
A tourism-thought. They already have the liver-birds , so it must be possible to find the rock where Prometheus was chained?
-
-
April 6, 2011 at 10:16 -
Ah Liverpool ,where the food on the supermarket shelves has a “steal by date”.
-
April 6, 2011 at 10:25 -
With all the wonderful places to visit in the UK I find the entire concept of a tourism department in Liverpool somewhat of an oxymoron. But I suppose someone has to arrange imports of stuff to steal.
-
April 6, 2011 at 11:49 -
As cities go, it really is a wonderful place to visit and I think you’ll find it exports more than it imports.
-
April 6, 2011 at 12:13 -
Liverpool specialises in exporting Scouses in particular!
Since you ask, this writer is born and bred in Liverpool, married a Liverpudlian, and agrees with every word of the article.
-
-
-
April 6, 2011 at 10:31 -
What a bunch of fantasists!
-
April 6, 2011 at 10:35 -
He popped over to check on his investments in the slave trade, a practice that only ended when LBJ led the Union forces to victory at Gettysburg in 1966.
I must nip back in the Delorean and alter the timeline again, there’s a certain James Gordon Brown where his parents need to use a non-leaky johnny. -
April 6, 2011 at 10:36 -
Not all Scousers are scallies, you know. Liverpool was The City of Culture a few short years ago, and quite right too; Liverpool certainly has a culture.
-
April 6, 2011 at 11:11 -
True. It has always been a strange City for me. The women are often very lovely (all that Irish )and it has some of the most spectacular buildings anywhere in the country. But they all seem to be falling down. The buildings that is, not the women. Well, then again…
-
April 6, 2011 at 11:46 -
Gildas, this a load of tripe or perhaps blind scouse would be a better description. When were you last in Liverpool and where did you go? And don’t give me any old rubbish about hubcaps! The buildings in and around the city put most other major UK cities to shame in terms of grandeur and beauty. The extent of city centre parks and the foresight of the city ‘elders’ in creating so many is amazing.
Liverpool is a great city with fantastic, warm, friendly people. And no, I do not work for the tourist board.
You need to visit again but next time take off your blindfold.
-
April 6, 2011 at 12:01 -
Liverpool has a vibrant and modrn centre; the rest is a dump. The people are a mix – some are OK, some have chips the size of a dock gate on their shoulders. If you don’t have a Scouse accent, you’re fair game.
Half my family were born and brought up in Liverpool (one grandfather born just off Parliament Steet, one grandmother in Edge Hill), so I know the place and the people. Personally, I’d rather avoid it – Manchester is friendlier, more go-ahead, has just as much beauty grandeur and culture, and Mancs doesn’t have the huge sense of injustice that many Scousers carry around with them.
Liverpool gets slated in the media a lot, but the likes of Boris Johnson wouldn’t say what he did unless there was a grain of truth in it. Liverpool needs to grow up and recognise that the world doesn’t owe it a living. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but in the lands around Liverpool, you’d find few who disagreed.
-
April 6, 2011 at 14:12 -
I was brought up in the south end of the city, there are 5 virtually adjacent public parks running from the south edge of the centre within a total of 5 miles. How many other cities can boast something similar? Hardly a “dump” as you suggest and far better than anything Manchester has to offer. Manchester certainly has more money now and a wealthier group of individuals who mainly live outside the city in Cheshire.
You are no better or worse than Boris as you damn a complete city and its inhabitants with smidgens of fact or half-truths about ‘chips’ or ‘injustice’ which is indeed harsh and stereotypical.
I think you’ll find that Liverpool knows full well the world owes it nothing but whilst notions such as those you hold are perpetuated then people will always object and feel aggrieved at how the city is misrepresented by those outside.
-
-
-
-
April 6, 2011 at 12:57 -
I thought “culture” was something vile and deadly that a biologist from Porton Down was working on in a petrie dish.
Maybe I got the location wrong?
-
-
April 6, 2011 at 11:14 -
youse are all knobheads like
-
April 6, 2011 at 11:53 -
As a scouser, it’s amusing to hear all the old, cliched comments about Liverpool. When I read them or hear them I always wonder where the writer or speaker is from? Have they ever been to Liverpool, or is it a case of believing everything produced by the media and are they all really Harry Enfields?
Obviously as everyone has a view on Liverpool then Liverpool must have made an impression on them, positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. The fact is, as stated in the article, you all want to talk Liverpool……Come on you Reds…
-
April 6, 2011 at 18:54 -
Why the negative stereotypes?
Where else can you find a population of such prolific thieves that they can even steal history and call it a sense of Humour.
(Only Joking…or am I Starting!..Possibly you should Calm Down!)
-
-
April 6, 2011 at 12:50 -
Maybe somebody else wrote Michael (known as Martin Luther) King’s speech there.
Somebody else certainly wrote his doctoral dissertation: Dr Jack Boozer.
-
April 6, 2011 at 13:12 -
As a Scot who lived in Bootle for five months in 1988 and had a wee office in Rice Lane, Walton, I can say that I only ever experienced warmth from the people. My next-door neighbours, on finding out I was a bachelor, brought me round a hearty Sunday lunch every single week.
-
April 6, 2011 at 19:00 -
They were just checking whether there was anything worth stealing. Being Scottish there wasn’t, so they kept coming back each week to check.
I watched the Bill for years so I am well qualified to make the assessment.
Eg: Thieves are most likely Scousers. Violent Drunks are Scots.Unemployed Are Irish. All three are also potential for being wife beaters along with Geordies.
-
-
April 6, 2011 at 16:30 -
Calm down, calm down. The story is now World-wide. Someone in the Tourism Department certainly knows how to pull the punters in.
Peter
-
April 6, 2011 at 18:39 -
And in late breaking news, the Essex Tourist board have announced that researchers at Essex University have proved that Faraday bought the coils of copper wire and magnets he used in his experiments in Romford Market, that Archimedes bought his bath from the second hand store in South Street, and Mao Tse Tung ordered food from the Chinese restaurant in High Street during his long march.
They have now applied to the EU for a grant of 10billion euros to build a Romford culture centre.
-
April 6, 2011 at 19:26 -
“Although biographers associated with Martin Luther King may not be aware of such a fact that does not prove it to be untrue.”
The Urchin is now busy adding a modified version of this sentence to his English essay; he feels it entirely justifies his assertion that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was inspired to write ‘the Ancient Mariner’ by a visit to the local chippie.
Incidentally, did anyone else enjoy the ‘Come Dine With Me’ footballers’ special featuring a WAG pointing to the three-foot-high portrait of Martin Luther King on her designer-papered wall and saying, “That’s…er…Martin Luther King; he was…er…I know him…that is, I’ve heard of him….”?
-
April 6, 2011 at 19:33 -
Snivelling point of order – it’s the Daily Sport that’s gone bust, not the Daily Star…
-
April 7, 2011 at 08:04 -
There is no significant difference in actual crime levels, whether theft or violence or fraud or drugs etc, in Liverpool than any other major UK city.
What there is, is a strong sense of character, humour, self respect in the face of abusive authority figures, and an earthy honesty about oneself. This is hated in many other places, in Yorkshire as well as Humberside, particularly by the men concerning Liverpudlian males. Even more so futher south often, particularly by the colder, more analytical Germanic-style Anglo-Saxon mentality of southerners, and more particularly those who have no real depth as people and are pretentious and insincere. Often who think they are intellectual but are in fact pseudos, harbouring irrational fears and xenophobia of the most uneducated and unevolved kind.I actually have come to use people’s reaction to me after hearing my accent, as a test of their character and mindset. Admittedly it’s a bit more obvious with working class folk, the middle class are more subtle but soon let it out one way or another, if they are hiding poisonous hatred or derogatrory opinions about me. If they turn out scouser haters, they usually turn out not very nice as people generally, whether they turn out racist too, or odious snobs ignorant and detesting the proletariat in a disgusting Basil Fawlty like ludicrously snotty way, or are just general arseholes to anyone they think are vulnerable in some way, or whatever.
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }