Being born in Bootle I was always instilled with a hearty sense of distrust for government and in general the rich who are seemingly left to run this country.

As I was growing up it was de-facto agreed upon that I would vote labour to keep the tory bastards out of government. As I have grown up, I now see that all politicians are basically unconcerned with the suburban areas surrounding cities, and sefton (which includes Bootle, Litherland, Waterloo, Crosby, Netherton, Maghul, Formby, Southport etc) is as good an example of this as any.

I’m not going to sit on here and basically slag off the scal or ‘chav’ population of this borough – I think that’d be cowardly as well as pointless, but what I will say is our local area that stretches from Bootle to Southport is one of the most deprived in the country – surely?

For me the real crooks are the politicians who have seemingly made it their duty to royally f**k up everything in sight round here. No jobs, no culture, barely anywhere decent to get anything to eat – except for the Subway and McDonalds that litters (pun absolutely intended) Stanley Road.

Widescale re-development underpins the council’s aims, but as you take a stroll through any given area you are quick to find thousands of homes closed down, boarded up and desolate. Great! Kids and adults alike hang around scared of people who are slightly different than them, threatened by people who actually get on the number 52 bus into town to look for work, better prospects, or a ticket way the hell out of here.

I’ve spent quite some time in pubs round here, namely the Red Lion, the Merton, and the god-awful hellhole that was ‘Sullys’ (thank f**k it’s closed, half of it is now a Costa coffee – which is often still treated with suspicion and distrust) and every single one of them is a huge f**king shithole. My local ‘The Netherton’, (which is great for informal and unexpected school reunions) plays ABBA on the jukebox all Friday night, and is now completely teeming with small time coke dealers who hang around in the toilets drinking Stella asking if you’re ‘after anything lad’. One time I was in a taxi on the way home from town and I saw a huge trail of blood outside ‘Sullys’, I jumped out to see where the hell it had originated from, I found a bloke down an alleyway with his head caved in, a bottle of Peroni in his hand, desperately trying to find a lighter or match for his shittily rolled cigarette. He looked at me and asked if I had a light. I gave him 5 cigarettes and my lighter.

The cultural hub of the borough is undoubtedly the Strand. Here you can see 40 year old women who look 70 years old waiting in endless lines at Halifax, just itching for the chance to complain about the length of queues, the number of ‘poles’ who have ‘infested’ Liverpool, and still trying to smoke indoors. Shops numbered 5:1 in favour of ‘knock off boutiques’. The people who populate this barren wasteland of nothingness are some of the most strange, bizarre and downright frightening that England has to offer. Be careful as you zip past it on the bus, do not look any of the feral twats with overcoats on as they will sit next to you, stink the place up of piss, and chat to you about Snooker or Football or something else scousers are supposed to be interested in. There is not a shred of culture here – really, unless you count a GAME which is always full of little twats just playing Fifa12 on the Xbox 360 for free, until they are chased out, to which they often respond ‘c**t’ or something equally eloquent. There used to be a musiczone here, which I loved, and was in all honesty an escape from the totally shit, depressing surroundings – I used to spend hours every Saturday afternoon picking out a few CD’s with my £10 of pocket money. Looking back on it, I honestly think that without a passion for music, I would have long went mad or just sucumbed to the peer pressure and became a toothless fucker arguing about which of my 7 kids are cutest.

Bootle boasts quite a few names though, actor/poet/DJ Craig Charles, snooker player John Parrot, footballers Roy Evans, Steve McManaman, and Jamie Caragher, TV presenter Keith Chegwin, rock star Billy J. Kramer all hail from here. They were all part of a Bootle that was thriving and seething with righteous political anger – and now they’ve moved the f**k away, because it is shit. During the recent ‘England riots’, the city centre (and Toxteth in particular) seemed to just go mental for no reason, well they did it here in Bootle too. Some complete c**t drove a JCB digger into the local post office cash machine and got it stuck. Some of the people round her are that thick they can’t aim a 2 tonne building device to break a piece of metal. I weep.

It makes me sad to think that my family have accepted, and in a way CHOSEN this shithole as the place they want to live, I certainly don’t want to live here. I want to live somewhere good. It really is hell on Earth.
By: Craig