22/3/2006

Liverpool: The Yuppie Takeover

By Mike Cotgreave

Lord, in a bourgeois town
It's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around
- Leadbelly

The yuppies are coming! The scum are taking over! Nothing and no one is safe. The local authorities are in on the act. The government too. Everything we’ve been taught to love and trust has sold out to this dark force. It’s Vichy France all over again – so you better stop worrying and learn to love the new regime.

Yes readers, Liverpool is a city in the grip of immense change. More precisely, Liverpool is a half-city/half building site in the grip of immense change. Numerous cranes now adorn the historic skyline, arching like giant Meccano vultures over the commercial centre of the city.

The rich and the beautiful are desperate to bask in the glory of the 2008 Capital of Culture. For the politician’s hell-bent on extinguishing the last remnants of working-class culture and identity, this is a golden, jackpot opportunity. They hope the yuppies will bring their money and bourgeois values with them – lining the pockets of the local fat cats and helping to turn to Liverpool into a cosmopolitan theme park. It is sign that a city is losing its soul when it becomes defined by the shops it has to offer; how expensive its property is, and the exclusivity of its culture. This is the inevitable fate of every urban district in the neo-Thatcherite era.

What about the natives? Over the years, millions of pounds has been thrown at Merseyside, some of it used well, much of it misspent and squandered on bureaucrats and ill-conceived schemes. Amongst the growing number of luxury apartments there are run-down areas of neglect and dereliction. One such area is Everton. The community is tight-knit; the strong look out for the weak, and everybody knows everybody else. The proximity of the area to the city centre has made it a prime location for development, making the existing tenants somewhat of an inconvenience to the city council. Mandy, a local council tenant, remarked, “this house is falling down, the windows, the heating, everything is faulty but I can't get repairs done because the council will not spend money repairing properties earmarked for demolition.” On a walk around the estate, Mandy showed me the rat holes in her front garden; the dank dens frequented by smackheads evidenced by their discarded hypodermic trash; the lone, elderly residents living in otherwise empty, boarded-up blocks of flats. Who’d have thought Paradise Street was just a stones throw away?

So what options are we left with? 1. Lie back and wait for the tide to wash over us; accept colonisation as a sign of ‘progress’ and maybe get a nice, cushy new job as a yuppie collaborator. 2. Resist the takeover, oppose the invasion.

Only a counter-cultural explosion of grassroots guerrilla resistance can slay this particular beast. Quiggins, Liverpool’s quasi-bohemian grotto facing yuppie eviction, hosted a punk night opposing the emergence of a ‘city of capitalist vultures.’ It’s a start, but a mere drop in the ocean when only a tidal wave will suffice.

Raise the stakes or the beast will prevail.

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