Richard Bath at Large: Cultures Clash in a City Following in Glasgow's Footsteps

Summary

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LIVERPOOL and Glasgow are mirror images of each other, two port cities with large Irish immigrant communities and an obsession with the beautiful game; two once-pulsing heartbeats of the Empire that prospered on free trade but were transformed into strongholds of political fundamentalism by industrial decline; a pair of communities with the highest urban deprivation index in Britain, where great wealth lives cheek by jowl with squalid poverty.

Yet it is difficult to fully appreciate just how alike Glasgow and Liverpool are until you've spent some time in the People's Republic of Scouseland. Even the ambience leaves you in no doubt that these are two cities cut from the same cloth. The same gallus swagger and garrulous chattiness that define Glaswegians are evident on every street and in every bar I visit. Everyone asks me to "say something good about this place for once".

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Richard Bath at Large: Cultures Clash in a City Following in Glasgow's Footsteps

Even the two cities' chosen routes to economic redemption have uncanny similarities. In Glasgow the hard-won status as European City of Culture in 1990 provided an invaluable driver for change. Now Liverpool is trying to carry off the same trick. This...

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