Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Fiction & Fact

Taking as his cue Jonathan Margolis' volte-face in yesterday's Daily Mirror, Liverpool-born journalist & author Paul Du Noyer pens an upbeat, though mercifully hype-free piece for Liverpool Confidential:
http://www.liverpoolconfidential.com/index.asp?Sessionx=IpqiNwT1KaqiNwF6IHqi&realname=Reputation,_reputation,_reputation .
Du Noyer touches on the, ahem, haphazard start to this year of culture (Ringo's paean of praise, which went down like a wannabe WAG in a bar full of footballers) & the civic chaos which preceded 2008, & seeped through into the year itself like a nasty-looking stain.
Du Noyer's missive does contain a few inevitable truisms, but is no worse for that. Most encouragingly, though, he urges Merseyside to respond to unwarranted jibes & hatchet-jobs in the right manner:
"This city is different to other cities, in good ways and bad, and difference will always polarise opinions. Deep down, I think, Liverpudlians enjoy their city's 'exceptionalism'. We don't want to be just like Norwich. But standing out gets you noticed, and to be noticed is to risk attack. If that's the price of our city's individuality, I'd say it's worth paying. We should refute the lies that are told, but do it calmly and with confidence. Let us not seem shrill, defensive or thin-skinned."
Let that be the approach for the rest of 2008.

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