Birmingham less shit than Manchester or London: Official

A whopping 65% of people in a recent poll said that Manchester was the shittiest city in the UK, beating London into second place. Birmingham, for once, came nowhere—proving that it’s the greatest city in the World, officially. Yes the city famous for its rain and dull football rivalry edged out the home of black snot and fat bicycling Tories to be first place as Britain’s worst place.

Manchester markets in the rain
Manchester, yesterday (CC: Rachel D)

When asked about Birmingham a whopping 96% of people agreed that it wasn’t shit—4% didn’t answer the question—with 21% getting quite defensive and angry. A person who was not interviewed for the survey, but was asked later to comment on our spun version of the results said:

“Of course Birmingham is better—it’s about time people realised.”

Boris with bikes
Boris Johnson has black snot. (CC BackBoris2012 Campaign Team)

The full results of the Internet poll, conducted by a website to boost its popularity and newsworthiness, are not available.

What do you think? Comment, please.

Your opinion on Birmingham’s place in the World needed

After yet another survey created to create news and prop up a failing business (this time Trinity Mirror itself) ‘slates’ Birmingham, it’s time to have a proper scientific survey that will produce proper results. So we’ve made one, please take it here:

Continue reading “Your opinion on Birmingham’s place in the World needed”

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 34: The Vacuum Cleaner

CleaningElephant_1955

Freddie Mercury liked using one while in drag, and it makes an awful mess when you empty the bag. Apocryphally they end up in casualty departments all around the country attached to blokes’ private areas and make a lovely rattling sound when they suck up a coin.

Yes, the vacuum, it sucks but we can’t live without it.

And of course the manually powered domestic vacuum cleaner was invented in 1905 by Walter Griffiths of 72 Conybere Street, Highgate—Birmingham. It is originally patented as ‘Griffiths’ Improved Vacuum Apparatus for Removing Dust from Carpets’. A better name than Dirt Devil, I’m sure you’ll agree.

So Birmingham gave the World the first proper vacuum, and yet again transformed our lives: or at least those of our mothers. Although an electric cleaner was patented before in 1901 by H. Cecil Booth, Griffiths’ design is more similar to modern portable cleaners. Mr Dyson will no doubt soon improve on it more—before moving the manufacture to India and then making pronouncements on the British economy and the lack of jobs—but it was invented in Brum, and we’re having it.

Image cc: Nilfisk-Advance

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 33: The Internet

Sir Tim is Watching You

We are under attack. Our very way of life is threatened. All because of the fucking Internet. Make no mistake, we are at war with the machines now, today. It’s already started. And there’s one sure fire way to stop a war: KILL HITLER. Continue reading “101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 33: The Internet”

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 32: The Weather

Michael-Fish-the-weatherm-001

“Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way…well, if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t!”

Oh, Michael Fish you were a weatherman. And so was John Kettley, and so was Bill Giles, and so was Ian McCaskill. And with one slip of the tongue and your magnetic cloud things you failed to prevent Britain being warned of a storm that nearly killed Rene out of Allo Allo. This really is one for the teenagers, who with their smartphone weather apps know that it’s bloody hot right now without even needing to look up. Magic. We used to have to take the word of some amusing suited men pointing to bits of Scotland.

In January 2007 Blues needed to re-lay their football pitch. Thrifty as ever they bought second hand: a pitch going spare from the new Wembley Stadium. The club consulted John Kettley on the weather for that week who predicted there would  be the average amount of rainfall. The torrential storms washed the pitch away.

And if this piece isn’t taking you back into the past enough, let’s look at where ‘the weather’ comes from. Is it round here, maybe? Well,yes: the use of weather charts in a modern sense begin in the middle portion of the 19th century and Birmingham’s Sir Francis Galton created the first weather maps in order to devise a theory on storm systems. These were printed in the papers, and people loved them—leading to the way we get weather information right to this day.

Brum, phew what a scorcher.

Embarrassing Public Bodies

I don’t think I’ve ever taken a book out of the Central Library in Birmingham, nor used one for reference. I’m not really a library person. I used to copy CDs from there like everybody did before mp3s, and I’ve wondered around looking at the shelves, breathing the mites and the refreshing book dust. I’ve stroked the static and brushed the peeling selotape from the yellowing computers by the escalators. I’ve been frustrated by trying to use the photocopiers, toying with the intense flaccidity of the coin reject button.

I’ve done pretty much everything it’s possible to do in a library. And, like a good boy, I’ve done it all quietly.

But the prime function, no. While I love words I have an old fashioned compunction to own them. Imagine being in love with a story and having to give it away to be intimate with others who maybe wouldn’t love it as wisely and well. A library is nothing but a fountainhead of potential heartbreak. And Central Library had the potential to be the worst.

Central Librray

So maybe I shouldn’t care about what’s happening to Central Library: but I love the building, I love the size and the shape, I love the angles and the implausibility. I love the incongruity and placement most of all. Where-ever you stand it’s not possible to get straight on to its parallel lines. So whatever your view the building flows away from you, meeting at a horizonal distance, pointing toward the future and the past.

Continue reading “Embarrassing Public Bodies”

Shelf sacrifice

The thing about anywhere you consider ‘home’ is that you never really start considering it that way until it’s not there any more.

Walking into Central Library on its last day I found it devoid of books, mostly partitioned off, infused with dour atmosphere and dotted with cheap furniture. It looked for all the world like a second world abortion clinic. And it felt like being punched in the back of the head.

But even then walking out of the doors—knowing it’ll be the last time—bought a lump to my throat the size of a child’s fist.

Sometimes home is stolen gradually. Changes adding up slowly between each visit until you look around one quiet afternoon and wonder where the fuck you are and who these fucking people are anyway.

Other times you’re standing outside the charred remains of the club that defined your young adult life noticing that even days later the heap that was Edward’s Number 8 is still kicking off heat and smells like Bonfire Night.

Being dyslexic meant that learning to read was difficult. But my mum not only more than prepared me for school, she sparked a love of reading that meant I quickly burnt through the children’s section of the local library. Then, because I was a regular in there, the adult section. So I was allowed on the bus to go to the other local libraries. And when I had inhaled the contents of those, my parents relented to my nagging and allowed me to go to the Central Library.

Continue reading “Shelf sacrifice”

So farewell then Central Library…

 So. Farewell
Then
Central Library

John Madin’s ziggurat
You were a huge
Building
With books in.

But that was not
Your only purpose.

You stood for
Ambition and
Birmingham’s ideals.

But you weren’t
Neo-classical.
Or “iconic”,
Apparently.
So the philistines
Pulled you
Down.

Brutal.

 

E J Thribb (40 years into a 100 year lifespan)

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101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 31: Whistleblowing

The Acme Thunderer

If there’s one thing you learn at school, and if the current Education secretary gets his way it many be soon the only thing, it’s this: no one likes a tell tale tit.

Watching The Sweeney, you may have picked up this: nobody likes a grass.

In fact the only positive cultural representation of an informer that is easy to find is Starsky and Hutch’s Huggy Bear: and you can bet that he had to run the gauntlet of hate from the other boss pimps in the area.

So, given that we don’t like people what ‘tell’ how do we make sure that those in the know can reveal terrible problems in institutions without undue opprobrium? Back in the early ‘70s US civic activist Ralph Nader coined the phrase “whistleblower” to avoid the negative whistleblower charges and also negative connotations found in other words such as “snitches”, “grasses” and “bastards”.  He took his cue from the practice of giving a healthy toot on a whistle when there was a problem—be that a referee spotting a running back smacking a quarterback blind-side, offside, in the bastardisation of rugby that the yanks play or the lookout on the Titanic seeing (all too late) a metric shittonne of ice.

Those metallic tooting machines—they came from Birmingham. The whistles on the Titanic were the famous Acme Thunderer, designed by Joseph Hudson’s company who also supply refereeing aids worldwide. Hudson was a farm worker from Derbyshire who moved to the city like so many during the Industrial Revolution, and trained as a toolmaker.

He converted the wash house at the side of his end of back to back home in St Marks Street into a workshop where he made many things to help increase his family’s income. The company are still making a racket to this day—in Hockley.

 

Photo CC Alison Clarke