Southern Daily Echo
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the echo is a scum paper
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SCUM&SKATES
SCUM !
This term originates from the rivalry between Portsmouth and Southampton.
Other football teams have now adopted the term to refer to fans and residents
of their rival city.
The term originates back in history with the Portsmouth and Southampton docks. There was a strike, and Portsmouth agreed with Southampton to close both ports
to improve conditions and pay for the workers. However, the Southampton port secretly opened whilst Portsmouth was striking, and took all of the trade.
Portsmouth workers then referred to the workers as 'Scum', which soon evolved to 'Scummer'.
The choice of the word 'Scum' is specific, as it is an acronym of the Southampton Port workers Union at the time, ''Southampton Community Union Members*''
Take the nicknames the two sets of fans reserve for one another. 'The popular theory in Portsmouth about the Scum thing,' says Nick Illingsworth, a Saints supporter and fanzine editor, 'is that it comes from the Southampton Company of
Union Men and that there was a dock strike in Portsmouth which was broken by Southampton dockers.
'This sounds a great story until you realise that up until about the 1980s the commercial port in Portsmouth was very, very small.
It was virtually a quayside. Portsmouth is mainly a naval port and you can't just employ a
hundred hairy-arsed dockers from Southampton to march into a Royal Navy establishment, for security reasons for a start.'
Another theory goes that Portsmouth look down on Southampton as scum because that is a naval term for merchant seamen, as scum floating on the water.
More likely it springs from the general use of the word at the time between football supporters everywhere.
And Skates?
'When sailors were miles from home with no women in sight, they used to use skates to, uh.... But it's never caught on in quite the same way as Scummers.
' Illingsworth admits to his part in the invention of Skates as a derogatory term for Pompey fans. It was well known that Portsmouth people delighted in calling
sailors skates, so a fanzine in which Illingsworth was involved, Ugly Inside , ran a competition to find a rebuttal for Scummers.
'The winner of this competition,' says Illingsworth, 'was the guy who pointed out that, whatever we called them, nothing would get up their noses more than the term Skate.' Graham Hurley, a local author of Pompey-based crime thrillers, sees the phenomenon in wider terms. 'I think the story really begins and is shaped by geography,
' he says. 'Pompey is an island, it's the only island city in the country, and that makes it very insular, an inward looking place.
'It is a tribal place, very martial. And this goes back to the time - which is not a cliché - when it was born on blood and treasure.
It grew up around the dockyards, it sucks people in. And those families tended to stay. So you've got this community that grew outward from the dockyards.
And that has led to a very particular culture. I've never, ever lived anywhere like it.
'There's a kind of clannishness within Pompey, built on family after family, which has led to this feeling of belligerence and stubbornness. It's quite a secret place, square-shouldered, right-angled and deeply unpretty.
It has a kind of gruff charm when you get to know it. It's very functional.
And it's uncursed by money.'
SCUM !
This term originates from the rivalry between Portsmouth and Southampton.
Other football teams have now adopted the term to refer to fans and residents
of their rival city.
The term originates back in history with the Portsmouth and Southampton docks. There was a strike, and Portsmouth agreed with Southampton to close both ports
to improve conditions and pay for the workers. However, the Southampton port secretly opened whilst Portsmouth was striking, and took all of the trade.
Portsmouth workers then referred to the workers as 'Scum', which soon evolved to 'Scummer'.
The choice of the word 'Scum' is specific, as it is an acronym of the Southampton Port workers Union at the time, ''Southampton Community Union Members*''
Take the nicknames the two sets of fans reserve for one another. 'The popular theory in Portsmouth about the Scum thing,' says Nick Illingsworth, a Saints supporter and fanzine editor, 'is that it comes from the Southampton Company of
Union Men and that there was a dock strike in Portsmouth which was broken by Southampton dockers.
'This sounds a great story until you realise that up until about the 1980s the commercial port in Portsmouth was very, very small.
It was virtually a quayside. Portsmouth is mainly a naval port and you can't just employ a
hundred hairy-arsed dockers from Southampton to march into a Royal Navy establishment, for security reasons for a start.'
Another theory goes that Portsmouth look down on Southampton as scum because that is a naval term for merchant seamen, as scum floating on the water.
More likely it springs from the general use of the word at the time between football supporters everywhere.
And Skates?
'When sailors were miles from home with no women in sight, they used to use skates to, uh.... But it's never caught on in quite the same way as Scummers.
' Illingsworth admits to his part in the invention of Skates as a derogatory term for Pompey fans. It was well known that Portsmouth people delighted in calling
sailors skates, so a fanzine in which Illingsworth was involved, Ugly Inside , ran a competition to find a rebuttal for Scummers.
'The winner of this competition,' says Illingsworth, 'was the guy who pointed out that, whatever we called them, nothing would get up their noses more than the term Skate.' Graham Hurley, a local author of Pompey-based crime thrillers, sees the phenomenon in wider terms. 'I think the story really begins and is shaped by geography,
' he says. 'Pompey is an island, it's the only island city in the country, and that makes it very insular, an inward looking place.
'It is a tribal place, very martial. And this goes back to the time - which is not a cliché - when it was born on blood and treasure.
It grew up around the dockyards, it sucks people in. And those families tended to stay. So you've got this community that grew outward from the dockyards.
And that has led to a very particular culture. I've never, ever lived anywhere like it.
'There's a kind of clannishness within Pompey, built on family after family, which has led to this feeling of belligerence and stubbornness. It's quite a secret place, square-shouldered, right-angled and deeply unpretty.
It has a kind of gruff charm when you get to know it. It's very functional.
And it's uncursed by money.'
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'It is a tribal place, very martial. And this goes back to the time - which is not a cliché - when it was born on blood and treasure.
It grew up around the dockyards, it sucks people in. And those families tended to stay. So you've got this community that grew outward from the dockyards.
And that has led to a very particular culture. I've never, ever lived anywhere like it.
'There's a kind of clannishness within Pompey, built on family after family, which has led to this feeling of belligerence and stubbornness. It's quite a secret place, square-shouldered, right-angled and deeply unpretty.
It has a kind of gruff charm when you get to know it. It's very functional.
And it's uncursed by money.'
Pompey in the insular respect reminds me of Kingston Upon Hull,another city out on a limb.
On the Hull note i used to work with some ex Hull trawler men who had some very dodgey storys about releaving themselves with fish
It grew up around the dockyards, it sucks people in. And those families tended to stay. So you've got this community that grew outward from the dockyards.
And that has led to a very particular culture. I've never, ever lived anywhere like it.
'There's a kind of clannishness within Pompey, built on family after family, which has led to this feeling of belligerence and stubbornness. It's quite a secret place, square-shouldered, right-angled and deeply unpretty.
It has a kind of gruff charm when you get to know it. It's very functional.
And it's uncursed by money.'
Pompey in the insular respect reminds me of Kingston Upon Hull,another city out on a limb.
On the Hull note i used to work with some ex Hull trawler men who had some very dodgey storys about releaving themselves with fish
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238 Posts
but what about me im a southampton boy now living in gosport with a girl that comes from silverdale in lancsI thought they f*cked fish, hence the fact I call em fish f*ckers!!!
guess that makes us hybrids ha ha ha
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I think your just about safe in Gosport, its close to Pompey but I don't think the infection has spread that far just yet.
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ha ha yep she sure is a hottie id not trade her in for all the tea in chinaBoy from Gosport + Lancs girl = Skate Hot Pot in my book!
Out of disinterest, are some Gosport Post Codes SO and others PO????
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