Howard Wilkinson – Page 6 – Paradise Circus

Ready or not: What Brum is doing for the refugee crisis

Even the shyest Tory has been moved to action over the refugee crisis this week leaving only David Cameron—who seemingly still has one eye on the dwindling UKIP surge—badly out of step with a country gripped by Corbyn-mania and finally finding its heart.

As the country awakened to the truth (of the scale of the crisis and the indifference of UK PLC’s chief executive), its people have moved into action and a grass roots aid movement has emerged. The Guardian gave a flavour of this movement today in this “round the grounds” piece which details some of the things people have been doing… But they’ve missed Birmingham out altogether. Here’s a summary of some of the things that are definitely happening and a few that are almost possibly happening too:

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Nuisance phone calls: the best of the things people have rung us up to ask us

Like our emergency services, we get a lot of phone calls that we don’t really want to deal with. We’re nice about it though. But one nuisance call we got the other day really tickled us, “have you got a list of the top amusing calls that you’ve had in the past year, that will make a highly shareable piece of content for the ‘press’ while getting your message about not calling you a mention?”. “That,” we said, “we have.” And then we slammed the fucking phone down, because we were busy.

“Is there anywhere we could get an artisan burger for brunch? None of the hyperlocal news outlets seem to have any information on this.”

“Is that the library? Do you have Great Expectations?” Well, we used to…

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8 things to do whilst you wait for your 1 hour Amazon delivery

What a time to be alive. We are the second city to get one hour Amazon deliveries. But what can you do while you wait for your package? Here are a few ideas

Wait for the Library of Birmingham to open on a Sunday, whilst imagining what it looks like inside

Wait for a drink to be served at The Botanist — where the dream of the 1890s is alive

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What happens one hour after drinking a Brew XI?

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The best of abusive subtweets from the West Midlands emergency services

Back in the days when Chris Evans was an exciting broadcasting newcomer, The Big Breakfast used to buffer ad breaks with a sort of competition that wasn’t. “Don’t call us, it’s just for fun,” they would shout — not only saving money, but keeping them out of any scandals involving giving the prizes to Ant and Dec or fiddling with David Kid Jenson or something.

That was ace, but what they didn’t do was set up a non-emergency phone call centre — and then make social media lols out of the people who called them. That’s what WM Police do, however. For a call centre, they seem to be rather pissed off at having to answer the phone. Personally, we think the non-emergency local number for your police might be a good first point of contact if you thought you spotted a dangerous animal, a potentially dangerous traffic incident or essentially to report a crime: but then we’re not a public service having fun at the expense of vulnerable people.

Help @WMPolice and @WMPcontact to support you by only contacting us to report crime and other genuine concerns #thinkbeforeyoucall

— WMP Force Contact (@WMPContact) July 30, 2015

So here are the best fictional subtweets sent out by the WMP Force:

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The Ruin Under Water — our perfect Birmingham Pub

The latest Birmingham PLC press release — painstakingly recreated as news by the local paper — makes many proud boasts about the planned redevelopment of the Christopher Wray lighting factory. It includes the usual lauding of new shiny buildings and a shameless brag about how much the land has gone up in value since the owner bought up the previously undesirable site for cheap and banked it until HS2 was a dead cert.

But the thing that stood out for us was the claim that they’re going to make Brum’s first “ruin pub” — they’ve been ruining pubs all around town for years now, so how can this be a first?

There are actual ruins like the Fox & Grapes, just a few hundred yards from Christopher Wray, which is surely only one more stray match away from joining Island House in becoming a car park for new builds of Snow Hill. And then there are the more prosaically ruined pubs, like The Dog on Hagley Road which had its rabbit warren of snugs hollowed out to make a generic cavern to house an Ember Inn — the sort of pub ruin that is happening somewhere near you right now, no doubt.

And then there are the trendy pubs, of course, they’re the real ruins. But what should a real pub be like? We asked Andre De Orwell to describe his perfect watering hole..

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BRUMHOLE: 6 Birmingham Pubs for party leadership hopefuls

Still available for booking tonight.

If you’re a member of the Labour Party you’ll be inundated right now with texts and emails from the various comrades who want to lead the party, or even stand around in the background while someone else does.

From the triumphalist Andy Burnham campaign, whose emails read like they’re shouting “we’re alright” at you in a hall in Sheffield, to the terse, Hemingwayesque prose of a Jeremy Corbyn text message* (“Running for leader. Text STOP, messages will be ended”) via Caroline Flint and her amazing x-factor-emotive backstory VT (“growing up we had it tough, me mom taught me to work hard”).

And then this week we had an email from Liz Kendall, asking us out for a drink in Moseley at “the Dark Horse public house”. Yes everyone knows that the working class likes a drink (just ask Nige), so it’s good for Liz to have a go at reaching out to us proles. Her researchers have let her down a bit though as “public house” is the language of someone who might have an occasional Campari at the golf club but wouldn’t really be found propping up the bar at The Gate, in Sutton Coldfield, talking about the latest transfer news from local boys West Ham. It’s a strange choice of pub too, unless you’re keen to appeal to an aspirational slate-as-a-plate gourmet burger munching third way metropolitan voter type. We suspect it was the name that attracted her to the venue. Well you may think you’re a Dark Horse, Liz but we all know you’re a shy tory.

Here’s a rundown of some of the other political events happening in Birmingham pubs this weekend:

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An open letter to Jess Phillips, the camper van beef over

An open letter to Yardley’s new MP. It has to be open as we’ve not got a fixed address to sent it to.

Dear Jess,

Congratulations on the election. We were chuffed, never big John Hemming fans, and we had a good joke lined up for when you beat him. You’re a breath of fresh air. Much like the fresh air you say you intended to camp out under in protest at the cost of London accommodation.

But we’ve got a question to ask, about your methods. Nice van, but the plan is dodgy.

Were you planning to:

a) camp illegally? In the UK camping is controlled by several pieces of legislation, including the Public Health Act of 1936 and the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960. And well – it’s not going to be a restful night with all the undesirables that live locally. There’s that Cameron chap for one.

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BRUMHOLE: 57 jokes we would have made about the Heinz – Kraft merger if we’d noticed it happening in April

It turns out that while we weren’t closely watching the big financial news earlier this year, Kraft — who own Cadbury, remember* — were sort of absorbed into the third largest food brand in the world: HP stealing bastards Heinz. And so now all of it is owned by a load of the 1% including Warren Buffet. Maybe. It’s all hellishly complicated and driven by profit.

We had such fun when we make jokes about Philadelphia cheese flavoured chocolates during the Kraft takeover that we’re really annoyed to have missed this opportunity to mash up Heinz’s huge variety of products with Cadbury’s in a whimsical way. So we’re going to do it anyway, here’s 57 jokes we should have made back in April:

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BRUMHOLE: Vote for the 7 balloons you’d like to see save Birmingham’s cultural infrastructure

We all love the minion thing, but what would be the best shape of a balloon to represent Birmingham and be filmed deflating in all of our cuts-threatened institutions?

Could a video of escaping hot air around Fort Dunlop save the Post and Mail? How about one of those balloons that goes weeeeeeee and rushes around. Maybe that’s what the library needs. Within office hours.