It's tribal innit..

I passed a pair of teddy boys last week. Not aul fellars, yer usual ted vets or the revivalist rockabilly mob from the early 80s. These were young lads, decked out in cartoon ted outfits, drapes, brothel creepers, big DA Swedes; the works. At first I felt a guffaw raising in my throat but then I kind of felt a glow of warmth towards them. At least they were trying, at least they were DIFFERENT. Walk down around any city centre and everyone looks the same. Apart from Manchester and Liverpool’s ninja scal community, each city and town has its own standard variation on the scally and then there is the ever increasing tribe of Goths/emos/alternatives who are of course every bit as conventional and identical as the ’chavs’ they ridicule for all looking the same.

Then there’s the Topshop mob; that inbetween middle ground of gel headed whoppers in Chinese dragon stitched kecks and the equally preposterous mob of neo-student bohemians in comedy charity shop outfits. Magazines devoted to ’street style’ often feature photoshoots in cities across the world and with the exception of Tokyo, all the people featured dress similarly, atleast the ones who the photographers select. There’s a uniformity of fashion that is truly global, an accepted aesthetic of ’cool,’ a homogenous uniform that reduces all notions of style to an easily marketed range of seasonal ’looks’ which don’t really change for years, decades even.

In Liverpool, idiosyncratic styles still occur now and then, particularly with the girls. That big hair with big flower look of the summer was peculiar to junior scallettes and as far as I know didn’t happen anywhere else in Britain, Likewise the big fuck off rollers and jim jams tucked into Uggs of the daytime Blag Wag brigade seems to be a scouse phenomenon. These things may seem ludicrous but still prove that Liverpool’s youth is self-confident enough to go their own way, do their own thing no matter what the self-elected ’style gurus’ dictate is ’hip.’ Just as in the 80s, when the style press ignored ‘casual’ for years until it reached Oxford Street, so these parochial fashion phases are either ignored altogether or ridiculed by pompous fashionistas who won’t or can’t accept that organic trends can happen without either their input or approval.

So, even though I don’t like that Showaddywaddy ted style but loved the original neo-Edwardian look of the 50s, I still smiled also at seeing those teds as I did spotting a young skinhead outside the local cinema. In amongst the usual gangs of ninjas, emos and skaters, he stuck out like a sore thumb in his green MA1, braces, half mast Levis and oxblood DMs. Maybe ’This Is England’ has brought back that Oi Skin look of the late 70s, itself a mutated, uglier version of the original skin/suede head look, to a new generation. In a nondescript world where everything is up for sale, every style and culture chopped up and shipped out for mass consumption, let’s hear it for the dolly birds with the beehives and the pyjamas eh?

1, 2, 3 fuck the BBC...

BBC Footy Presenters – look it was bad enough when that cunt Lineker replaced Lynam but atleast the obesity encouraging twat had played the fuckin’ game. Now we’ve got fucking kids tv presenters, radio one cast offs and fuckin weathergirls on the screen. Fuckin’ Chappers! He makes a few cracks about being a ‘Man U’ fan (no self-respecting Man United fan EVER calls em Man You you fuckin phoney cunt) on that cunt Moyles’s radio show and next minute he’s doing a fucking Jeff Stelling. They’ll have that plazzy fuckin Liverpool supporting whopper, Spoony presenting MOTD 2 next or Colin fuckin Murray anchoring Five’s fuckin entire output. Maybe they think they’re reaching a whole new audience here, the kind of cunt who thinks lager adverts are funny, the kind of cunt who watches Sky games in the alehouse wearing an old skool replica kit and screams ‘get in my son’ when his pet team scores. And maybe they’re right!





BBC footy pundits – either they’re ex-Liverpool or Arsenal defenders all arse licking each other with their chummy old pals act or they’re eager young pups looking to replace the chummy vets brigade. Either way, they’re all a bunch of say nothing fence sitting boring cunts who look as if they’ve all been asked to dig into the BBC Footy Clobber Box and pull out a shite shirt and kecks combo in no particular order; grey, white, beige, black, just no big colours OK, nothing denoting individualism or personality, just stick to safe neutrals, don’t want to frighten the viewers, the Points Of View crew, just stick on one of those shirts, remember your poppy, don’t want the fucking Daily Mail brigade on our backs do we and please, please please don’t ever try to say anything controversial eh?





BBC6 continuity announcers – it’s either the same fuckin’ bird who does the voice-over for fuckin’ Masterfuckinchef and used to do those fuckin annoying Woolies adverts before they laid off that stupid fuckin sheep or else they’ve genetically engineered an entire generation of continuity announcers to all sound the fucking same with that fucking appalling last syllable dipping down at the end of each and every fucking word……you know her:



‘At breakfast it’s (drops an octave) Moyles at supper it’s Mao Tse (drops an octave) Tung’



‘At three it’s the Freak (drops an octave) Zone with Stuart Mac(drops an octave) onie, at five it’s Fish (drops an octave) fucking with Fearne (drops an octave) Cotton’



She’s on CityTalk too, she’s on every shite radio programme across the land, she’s talking on the tv, on the radio, she’s reading the autocues, the security announcements at railway stations, the telephone numbers on 118, she’s everywhere, the girl who talks like (drops an octave) that even when she comes…’you’re the best (drops an octave) ever!’ radiating insincerity and smug middle English contentment. Continuity Announcing Has Never Been (drop an octave) Shitter!





BBC Industrial Dispute Reporters. OK, for all their hysterical talk of the BBC being a hotbed of lefty liberal values, the Tories really know that they can rely on the BBC to uphold the establishment when it comes to the crunch. Especially when it comes to strikes. All this bullshit about the BBC being ‘unbiased’ ‘balanced’ and ‘fair to both sides’ flies out of the window when there’s a strike. It always comes out against striking workers whether they’re miners, dockers or posties, allowing reporters to voice their own opinions instead of simply reporting facts (hence the word ‘reporter’ not ‘commentator’), interviewing several people with the same opinion usually government ministers, bosses, outraged members of the Great British Public (posh people!) then giving union bosses a hard time whilst allowing bosses an easy ride. That half-arsed Alcibiades, Peter Mandelson has set a trap for posties, an obvious trap but one he’ll no doubt reap the rewards off once the mail is totally privatised and he ends up with some fancy consultancy or directorship with TNT following the Thatcher model of privatise then profiteer. Ofcourse the ‘balanced’ BBC will help him do his bidding because they can’t afford to rock the boat, they’re tied into the system, they ARE the system. Cunts!





BBC iplayer. It’s fucking boss! I love the BBC me, imagine a world without it, adverts all the fucking time, lowest common denominator, Celebrity Whelk Stall programmes for grinning halfwits and senile racists. iPlayer makes the unmissable unwatchable, atleast it does on my fucking iphone! 70 trillion quid’s worth of tax payers dough and what do we get Jonathan Ross arse licking Roland Rivron on Jools Holland and Strictly Come Dancing with Dale fucking Winton. That’s what we pay our licence fee for, top quality family entertainment with no homos, wogs or poor people to spoil our viewing pleasure. Cunts!