Kicking the Geordies when they're down

I was intrigued by this article because its account of the North East (my adopted region of work and residence) is not one I readily recognise. Here's the heart of what I 'incomprehend':
"political and economic developments have been paralleled by a resurgent culture of stereotyped nastiness directed at the region's inhabitants."
You see, I look at the media and see Geordies being used in advertising in a way that seems to presuppose that the accent connotes solid family values and fun-loving-ness. Or have I missed something? This is far from nastiness towards the NorthEast, rather a kind of role-modelling.
"As the British working class has increasingly become an object of ridicule for a technocratic London elite, public figures from the predominantly working-class north-east have become special targets for media humiliation. From Gazza, the archetypal proletarian drunk, to Cheryl Cole, who risks becoming a Jade Goody for the 2010s, Geordies are consistently portrayed as half-articulate buffoons – figures of fun at best, ritualised scapegoats at worst (witness the glee with which certain members of the media followed the 'manhunt' of gunman Raoul Moat in July 2010)."
Again, I'm not sure I'm seeing it. Admittedly Gazza was pitied and reviled, rightly so; but I'm not sure that it was particularly associated with his Geordie-ness -was it? (Maybe I missed it). I get the impression that Cheryl Cole is still widely liked and the recent USA thing brought something more like amazement over the USAmerican supposed inability to cope with the accent and some sympathy about that and some sense of identification with the plight of a Brit in the miscomprehending States. But again, I may be missing something.

And as for Raoul Moat, I don't think the Geordie-thing was part of the glee -after all the heroic police officers are also Geordies for the most part. Where I think that the article may be right is with the portrayal of the working class. Though I'm still not convinced that this is the right label for the phenomenon: I think that the term 'working class' is obsolete and that there are several cultures represented by what would once have earned the label including some that pretty much buy into "middle class" values. Where, then, I think that it gets it wrong is trying to make a full link between the term 'working class' and 'Geordie' or 'north east'. I won't wash. This is an article ostensibly about the North East but mainly about perceptions of certain kinds of economically disadvantaged groups in Britain.

So there is some truth in this:
"In a politically correct era, light condescension and Little Britain-style caricature stands in for outright bigotry, a process that mirrors the discreet economic bias visited against areas such as Tyneside and Teesside by shrewd Westminster policymakers."
There is some truth in the accusation of bias and it may be that the London chattering classes are disdainful of anything regional. Only a thorough-going decentralisation to the regions can combat that. I think that what has happened in Scotland over the last 10-20 years begins to tell us what can be achieved. If Scotland becomes independent, I'm wondering whether the ancient Northumbria should be re-united (it once stretched from the Forth to the Humber) this time looking to Edinburgh rather than London.

Kicking the Geordies when they're down | Alex Niven | Comment is free | The Guardian: