No. 7: The best of local racism on the local internet

It’s your weakly, Birmingham-related, freemium email with everything you need to know. It’s like the video tapes of 10 mins of Eastenders and Pop Idol that Alistair Campbell used to make for Blair so he could seem ‘with it’. Everything in the zeitgeist is here…

Birmingham in internet history

The Brumternet has had it’s own Boaty McLackofimagination internet moment this week, with the people who are destroying Central Library thinking a competition to name some of the wrecking equipment would be a good idea. As the clickbait-ers in training at the Birmingham Eastside blog are collecting the ‘best repossess’ from Twitter we don’t have to. Our favourites are ‘Cliff’ and ‘Richard’ or ‘Child Protection Services’ and ‘The Missing Capita Contract’.

This left us thinking what would be the best clickbait internet headlines in Birmingham history. We got this far and gave up:

  • Enoch Powell Hired A Function Room On Stephenson St And You’ll Never Guess What Happened Next
  • These Actors From London and Liverpool Were Hired To Play Brummies In A Gritty Period Drama. What Happens Next Will Surprise You
  • What is your Birmingham Quarter name? Connect your Facebook account to our content farm to find out
  • 101 Things Birmingham Gave The World

We’re closing our whimsical local nostalgia archive to free up commercial space for the local press to exploit with their copies of our work, so expect to see this on a site with adverts near you soon. You can sign our petition against us, here.


Up the bum no bouillabaisse

For the past six months or so professional telly cookery twat Marco Pierre White has been terrifying people who walk from town to Millennium Point with huge photos of himself looking like an axe murderer.
All this to advertise his new joint at Hotel La Tour. It doesn’t have the views of the Cube and, presumably, it has a better food hygiene rating.
Apparently that hasn’t done enough to entice folks into his restaurant because now they’ve replaced his haggard visage with much bigger and more literal arses*.

If you’re going to take a leap back into the 70s with your advertising, then probably best not to do it on the main pedestrian walk to a school of media and cultural studies. Led by BCU’s Dr Gemma Commane there’s been a bit of a Twitter storm in a tea cup (filled, one assumes with foam and jus) about these posters, but given that at least one budget holder from the uni has announced they won’t use the Hotel La Tour to host visitors, this one could have legs (we just won’t show you a photo of them).

Of course, crass advertising and general visual pollution aren’t the worst of Hotel La Tour’s crimes against Brum-anity—that would be them being complicit in the tearing down of Island House to make a fucking car park.
*they’re much nicer though. Is it ok to say that? I think we’re being postfeminist about it if that helps.

Once you see the Capita contract in this photo you can’t unsee it


Make your own jokes: Snapchat for councils

Council comms blog Comms2point0 have written something about snapchat for councils. So our joke contains pictures of Albert Bore basically. And mixed use developments. With weird meme slogans like squad goals. Use double sided sticky tape for speed.


10 of the best casually racist Tweets following Chinese businessman Dr Tony Xia’s Aston Villa ‘takeaway’.

Or a few, anyway.

Barely even the right continent, onwards…

Of course in China, they just call it ‘food’…


Want to mine that seam, do you? Mind we seem to be having our No. 39 and eating it…

Maybe, of course, having a Chinese owner might lead to the Villa fans expanding their cultural horizons and knowledge. Although the smaller-scale pilot of this in Small Heath didn’t work out like that.

Has this one got a deeper football supporting meta-reference in it?

We didn’t think of any of these ourselves, our first thought on hearing the name of the new Villa owner was something different…


Stop the planet of the japes I want to get off


Dr Xia, Dr Xia / Dr Xia, Dr Xia / Dr Xia, Dr Xia / Oh oh ohhh, Dr Xia…

Have the Holte got the voices for that one?

In case you missed it

And finally…

If, like us and Andy Burnham, you’re still listening to the new Stone Roses single you might find it useful to know that “Roy Hattersley, Les Battersby, Anne Hathaway, Arsenal’s Bertie Mee”, fits perfectly over the lyrics in the verse. Sorry.

“The Birmingham accent is sexy,” says Peaky Blinder Cillian Murphy according to the BBC. We’re just surprised he’s heard one, la.

No. 6: But where has Samuel L Jackson wheely bin?

Hiya bab,

Hope Samuel L Jackson remembered to put his bins out this week.

Ward boundaries: consultation re-opens

The Local Government Boundary Commission is to alter recommendations to proposed ward boundary changes following receipt of public responses and will do further consultation. This is likely to involve further soul-searching about just what constitutes something that ‘feels Stirchley’, which is apparently a state of mind and not a type of rough-napped cloth that you can’t pick the sticky stains off.

We’ve got an exclusive proposal from the Estate Agents Association of Birmingham to the Boundary Commission:


Birmingham, 400 years and 1 1/2 hour from culture

Marketing Birmingham are never ashamed to play on the relative location of the city in comparison to Shakespeare’s home town, and on the 400th anniversary of his death they’re no doubt upping the ante. We don’t think they’ll ever top the promotional tour they took of sister city Chicago in 2008. A tent was set up, and some local resting actors were hired — to promote our love of the bard, and also of law and order.

Not sure which of Shakey’s opus contained a rollocking fool with a fleshlight. Couple that with the stripogram-quality London bobbie outfit and rather than the home of olde English culture Chicagoans may have got the impression that Birmingham is a centre for the low-grade sex-work economy. Which is right when you come to think of it.


It’s Peaky Friday

But remember it’s not a fashion just anyone can follow.

101 Things: The Movie

We just read Steven Knight’s bit of trumpet blowing in The Guardian and it turns out he’s pretty enamoured of things like the Lunar men, and Brum’s industrial heritage… so much so that we reckon he’s been reading 101 Things Birmingham gave The World.

Steve, the movie rights are available, and we can do the accent (except for Jon H, but that’s just part of his character’s back story) and you won’t have to film it off away somewhere for tax breaks: just shoot it all in one car going round and round the inner ring road. Tom Hardy can drive, if Midge isn’t available.

ICYMI

And finally…

Don’t worry villa fans, he’s available.


And if you fancy knowing what life will be like in the Championship, then Villa fan Haz here is quite impressed. In fact it’s a bit of a Harry lauder.

Ta-ra a bit

Howard,

Director of Satire
Paradise Circus

No. 5: Money for nothing, and chicks for free


Hiya bab,

Welcome to the latest issue of our weekly* freemium** email*** that is always first with the big cultural news****!

“Which Campbell Brother Are You?” quiz

We couldn’t be bothered to write the quiz, so just take some personality questions from any of the millions on the web and assume you’ll be assigned one of these scores…

  • You’re good looking, a natural front-man, but your temperament makes you etc, you’re Ali.
  • You’re loyal, always willing to step up to the plate etc… you’re Duncan
  • You’re the other one
  • You’ve admitted to robbing a bookie’s, you’re the other other one
  • Erm, are there any more?

– – – – –

What are people seeing from the WM Police roflcopter?

The porcine eye in the sky reports seeing word ‘help’ make out of discarded season tickets on the pitch at Villa Park, meanwhile at St Andrews back-room staff made an arrow pointing the Villa down out of some of Barry Fry’s signings that are still hanging around. Baggies fans didn’t seem to be doing anything much from the air but they were all laughing a lot so that’s good. There are rumours the best display is at Walsall but nobody cares.

– – – – –

Press here: Brainstorming ideas for the Mail

  • A list of B’ham residents with zero-rated hygiene. They could start with the front bar of the Prince in Moseley.

MP’s Partners Top Trumps. No 1

Name: Tom Phillips Pic from: https://twitter.com/IAmBirmingham/status/596551631031955457

Cooking: 7/10 Makes his own sourdough.

Administration Skills: Limited 5/10. Mrs Phillips said: “He has all the skills I need to do that. It’s about setting up the office, making sure the IT works and I need someone with the skills to do that.” But “can’t plan anything ‘more than three days ahead’” Guardian.

Job: Constituency Support Manager.

Cultural interests: Comics

Political interests: None. “He has no interest in politics – he isn’t even a member of the party” Guardian.

– – – – –

In case you missed it…

  • Danny Smith has been writing for us, in all our forms, for as long as we can remember.  He’s a blue-haired gonzo with a habit of going misty-eyed over cute kids, and having a red mist descend when seeing how privilege fucks those same kids over. In prose he can find the mould in the corners of even the most ‘laughing with canal-side salad’ press event. So much so that we as editors have a stock response to anything we don’t want to go to: “Send Danny.” But now he’s sending himself way.  Read his farewell letter to Brum here.
  • We made a joke about Star Wars and the Archers. 
*unlikely **this means nothing ***yes, yes it is ****also unlikely

And finally…

We’ve no idea what this is, but I think it crapped on my car last time I parked in Digbeth.

Ta-ra a bit,
Howard,
Director of Satire
Paradise Circus

Paradise City #1 – the early adopter edition

Welcome to Paradise City #1. We’re as surprised to be here as you are. We just put a sign up form up for a joke, but lots of you wanted to sign up for… for what? We’re not sure. You are our early adopters. You’ve stood outside our shop from 5pm the night before to get your hands on this newsletter. As you stumble out of our boutique into the street, feeling a little guilty and sick, perhaps, the man from the Evening Mail is there asking you “Why?”. “Why did you have to be here?” he says “What does it mean to you?” “I just wanted to be here” you say “it means everything”. That guy is not very good at interviews, or rather he is so long as what you want is the most banal consumerist platitude.

And then off you go, clutching the prize and you open it and… it’s alright. There’s loads of things missing though, really. It’s like the start of a good idea. They’ll get it right next time, and when they do… you’ll be here. It means everything.

via @ChrisBeanland

Bring Back Kong

There are plans afoot to for NatWest tower to be replaced by temporary giant balloon model of a poodle. If any temporary public art is going up in town then King Kong has the pedigree — if only we knew where he was. (Saved you a click, he’s in Penrith).

Brum, Brum

Bobby Alden has thrown  his mane into the ring to be new head twat on Top Gear by suggesting cycling is just for quiche loving tree huggers. By the way, Birmingham Gave The World Top Gear.

Total Eclipse of the Heart of England

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Eastside got a rebranded again as the Solar Eclipse Quarter (via @craigfots) but Sadly City TV didn’t cover the eclipse quite as well as their predecessors did (via @therealsoundhog)

Lost & Found

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She has her father’s eyes, doesn’t she?

Surely it won’t be hard to track down this distinctive looking family of Back to The Futurecosplayers@just_ade found their memory card on the Parade in Sutton.

Hyperlocal Corner

Infamous Erdington nudist hotel The Clover Spa is having a “clearance sale” — they’re stripping the place bare apparently.

Poetry Column, with EJ Thribb

World Poetry Day

So hello then #WorldPoetryDay
You are a day
For poetry
And also trees
And Downs Syndrome
I wonder what colour they’ve
Lit up the
Library?

BRMB’s kinda town

Occasional author of brummicana Chris Beanland spotted this lovely promo video for the second city — we ran an extract of his book a while back.

So that’s it for now. Let us know if this is the right sort of thing by tweeting us and tell your friends if you liked it.