Liverpool‘s central area and Liverpool as a city is brilliant. In the last 10 years the entire place has changed beyond recognition. Those who haven’t been to Liverpool for over a decade will hang their prejudices over what was rather than what now is.
Compared to other cities, Liverpool has character. It has a beating heart. The ever higher-rising concrete jungles meet motorways that ugly soul-less places like Manchester have spun out of control to become are completely outshone by Liverpool.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a danger it might get built on far too much and leave the streets starved of sunlight and limit the view available to the onlooker that blights whatever Manchester might once have been. We currently have an out of control fetish for building enough student accommodation to house the entire teenage population of the country.
For now, however, Liverpool has views and things to see alongside places for commerce to be.
For me, one of the most exciting developments is the New Media and Technology ‘quarter’ where hundreds of smaller young and vibrant start-ups are already building next decade’s replacement Facebook or Twitter.
However, alongside all the positive within the central part of Liverpool is a negative niggling overspill from the cancer that is the outer areas of Liverpool, especially North Liverpool. The cancerous areas of Liverpool are chock full of those who won’t work, expect free houses and expect to be paid to have as many children they want to, and are usually anti-social, thieves, and drug addicts.
Druggies overspill into the centre of Liverpool. Groups of then focus on Lime Street station, either robbing from people, begging, or stealing from shops to make enough to then purchase crack cocaine or heroin.
In little groups, they will sit on walls smoking crack through broken beer cans, arguing and shouting at each other as they get stoned, and then pass out.
Quite often the grounds of the nearby St George’s Hall are used to shoot-up or ‘smoke’. They then wander off oblivious to anything and everything, shouting obscenities and being quite intimidating. “I’m not a bad person” a lot of the female druggies will lurch into your face and slur.
I watched one such female stagger into an alleyway opposite the Wetherspoon’s North-Western pub on the north side of Lime Street station. She was clutching her Lidl bag within which were her tins of cider and who knows what else. The effect of the drug she had obviously just taken was becoming too much for her. She slumped down with quite a force and sat on some steps at the back of the Liverpool Empire Theatre, in front of another pub, Ma Egertons.
Her head sloshed around for a bit, then she let it fall back until she was laying there passed out. I took this photo, because she annoyed me. I mean, what is her function in our society? 
I got talking to a guy who was either a regular or connected with the pub she was now unconscious in front of. I had noticed and been interested in the fact that people were just walking by unconcerned and doing their best to ignore her body. He explained that this was because this was nothing out of the usual, but a plague in this particular area that annoyed the hell out of everybody but they could do nothing about. He told me that she’d come round in ten minutes or so when she’d come down a bit from the high she was enjoying, and would be on her way. Most likely, she would be returning to a nearby Salvation Army hostel where most of the local druggies and junkies slept at night.
As we talked I noticed she was urinating herself through her jeans, the fly of which was also open. The urine ran down the steps she was collapsed on. Lovely.
A few minutes later she was gradually waking and trying to get up to her feet. It took a lot of effort but eventually she was up, and off she shuffled to who knows where.
But, seriously, what is the point of her existence? She obviously costs me money for the handout I’m forced to pay for her to get, she drains resources whether that’s police and security dealing with her theft or anti-social behaviour, or the medical and ambulance people she ties up when she’s overdosed or hurt herself.
When she interfaces with people it’s to beg, to urinate on their steps, to intimidate or to steal. She never gives back, never pays forward, never contributes to a thing.
She and her ilk are the scurrying rats that put a blemish on Liverpool. And like all plagues of rats, they need to be wiped out.
England's England 