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Did anyone see Panarama on Monday? It wasn't very flattering towards Birkenhead. It was about single mum's, apparently we're not quite top of the league on that one but close. Blody hell, didn't know that some were getting upwards of 250 smackers a week and the rent paid on top. Anyway, they picked the most unflattering shots of the town and really made it look like an ongoing bombed site.

I didnt see it, this is an ongoing problem with documentary makers coming to the North West to make sensationalist TV, Anfield had it with the secret millionaire last year, where there were reports of the makers putting broken bottles and half a skip of rocks in the road to add a little frisson of danger and ambience. Sensationalist sh**e.
K

It saddens me, and I'm not even from these parts. The area isn't anything like as bad as people have made out, though some people I meet are still quite wary of me, which I assume is because I'm a southerner

Watch it here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xxl5q/Panorama_Britains_Missing_Dads/

It's repeated on Thursday night/Friday morning at 0:25 BBC1.

Sorry to hear that Dan,but we do experience southerners looking down their nose at us. We should not expect them all to be the same,just as they shouldn't 'pigeon hole' us. Glad you thought that we are a good enough place to 'lay your hat'

I've found that it is certainly true when they say that they are more friendly in the north than down south.
I'm always speaking to people when out shopping or on the bus - I wouldn't dream of doing that down south

Thanks Softy,that's nice of you.My sister lives in Kent in a tiny village which is friendly,but away from there it's a different story.

My Step Brother,lives in Reading and works in Windsor.He has tried to lose his accent to get along with neighbors etc. He worked in Canary Wharfe before that in the computer gaming industry. He went to uni'but still had a lot of predudice toward him.He said that when they hear your accent,they assume your 'thick'.

I seen this and I totally agree.Everytime they want to use an example of a bad situation or a social problem they head up north,especially to Merseyside.
I was watching it with my other half (a geordie who's never been back home with me)and had to explain that it's not that bad, and as Kamakazi9 quite rightly pointed out,it is sensationalist sh*t.
At first I was ambarrassed but then just got annoyed with it.They made every single shot look grey and gloomy,in the most run down places.

If you can press the bbc red button > bbci player > factual and scroll down until you find mondays panarama.

Best wishes
Chris

I was gobsmacked when I saw it as I know Jill qual (one of the young people advisors, talking on it about the problems we have. Very informal program though. credit to the makers.

Mild Rant

I don't look down my nose at anyone, as I firmly believe I am no better or worse than any other human being. We're all in the same game of life together, so I am sickened by a lot of my fellow Southerners that really do think that all "Northerners" (blanket term for anyone above Birmingham), are idiots, whiling away their days until their slot on Jeremy Kyle to discuss which members of their family lifted grandma's savings. I moved to these parts a year ago to be with my Wallasey born'n'bred girlfriend, I had no expectations or pre-judgements of what kind of people I would encounter. I take as I find, and do my part to try and help anyone and everyone. People are just people, and there are good and bad everywhere in the world. North/South/East/West has nothing to do with it.

I am actually half of Northern descent anyway, my mum was a Yorkshire girl, and her dad was a Sheffield Steel worker, and her mum a Yorkshire home maker and good house wife! I only ended up being born in the south as my grandfather was moved from Sheffield when the works closed (part of the industrial decline in the North), and was offered resettlement at Enfield works (North London), as a result my mum met a Southern man, and I became a North/South Hybrid.

I feel a great deal of sympathy with Merseyside, the decline in the shipping and industrial sectors is a crying shame, and even though I am not from these parts, I feel sad whenever I'm biking around at the docks, they are an edifice of a once bustling and rich past. I love the architecture of the area, the "Victoriana". I have grown a fondness for the area in the short time I have been here, and can often be found staring out over the Mersey with the same thoughtful expression as any local!

I've watched all the old panorama documentaries about the decline in these parts, decent family men and women from Birkenhead and Ellesmere Port scouring rubbish sites for things to sell, and I feel lucky to have not had to witness such things - I don't look down on the people of those times or areas, I actually respect them for doing what they had to, to survive. I'm actually dead keen on the re-development of this area, I want Wirral Waters to work, and I can't wait to see Neptune and head to the cinema, I cry if I watch the fire at the New Brighton tower, and while I don't feel anger looking at the book "The Last Resort" (as some do) I do see it as a sad pictorial of an area allowed to rot by an ignorant government that ploughed most of its investment into the south.

This is an area of proud, and hardened people, and their ways are entirely understandable. As such, when people give me sideways looks for my "funny accent", I don't take it personally.

Wow, not going to 'quote' all of that but welcome to the friendliest place on the planet dan0h. You sound like a local already.

Haha, thanks bud