Paradise Circus

First of all I want to point out that I am writing this at the sacrifice of the three hundred other more urgent writing tasks cluttering my desk top, look grateful internet.

My main problem, as referenced in the earlier post, with the name “Birmingham Bloggers” (clumsy alliteration aside) is not so much with the creaky and antiquated term “blogger”, if I write on a blog then surly I am a blogger lofty aspirations of journalism or no. There is certainly a case to be made that “blogging” has become a default catch all term to do with any content produced for the, or disseminated by the internet that even smell slightly 2.0. So if blogger I am called, then blogger I shall be.

Now this would seem that I have a problem with “Birmingham”, I want to make very clear that I am a massive Birmingham fan, not just the football team, which I was also dragged up to slavishly follow the results of. But the city; its people, culture, colour and character (now THAT’S good alliteration). I’m very proud of coming from Birmingham, maybe not Northfield where I grew up, but defiantly Birmingham.

Unfortunately so is everyone else, we as brummies tend to be so obsessed with competing for the largely fictional “Second City” status, so much that it ends up coming round and biting us in our perfectly formed backsides. One of the symptoms of the “Second City” fever is the curious predilection of naming everything with some permutation of Birmingham or “Brum”. This strikes me as a little short sighted and somewhat restricting considering that all the smaller satellite cities like Dudley or Wolverhampton are within commuting distance and the internet can be said to be making geography largely irrelevant anyway.

If we look at the hallowed London which inevitable people will do, ventures their rarely mention London or any of its boroughs, they seldomfeel the need. Even if by announcing our proud Birmingham roots in our names is a rejection of the London model, it is still a reaction to London, which in a way, placing London on a pedestal. If we are to compete with other cities (which is a weird concept in it self worthy of a more elaborate post) then we need to drop the inferiority complex.

That is not to say the amount of creative amusement we are missing, the best part of being in a school band was the naming in my opinion, limiting ourselves to having to include the schools name into the title takes away fun.

That is not to say there is inherent value in blowing our own trumpets, sites like B:ins made specifically to re-address the balance in a light hearted way are a good example, but lets not it seep into every corner of our creative output.

Que argument; …………now