About a year ago, Liverpool’s main newspaper (there are two, both from the same stable) the Liverpool Echo, owned by the same Labour supporting group that publish the Daily Mirror, stopped being printed locally, and instead was printed on a centralised press in Manchester.

Journalists and Editors remain in Liverpool producing the daily newspaper, but around a hundred people involved in the printing side lost their jobs.

Recently a rash of professionally produced stickers have appeared all over Liverpool on bus stops, walls and lampposts, telling people to boycott and not buy the Echo because, they have decided, it is no longer a local paper. Their twisted logic appears to be that despite all the copy being put to bed by people living and working in Liverpool, the location of the printing plant makes it no longer a local paper.

The ultimate aim appears to be to make everybody stop buying the paper, which in turn would force it to close putting the remaining employees out of work. Clever.

Everybody knows that local newspapers are struggling and losing ground to the more instant media, and there’s not a week goes by without the knife-edge economics failing and a local paper somewhere disappearing forever, despite having sometimes survived for centuries.

Historically, Liverpool is quite famous for its bullies taking charge of what residents are allowed to read or not read, with newsagents stocking the Sun having been fire-bombed and had their windows smashed, once war was declared against the Sun. There are still pockets of areas where the newsagents fear for their lives and so don’t stock the Sun. I wonder if the same treatment is on the cards for anybody stocking the Liverpool Echo?

Newsagents are right to be nervous, as are those writing for the Echo. The bullies rule here and always get their way.

Christopher England just printed that!