In Labour

With the announcement of a West Midlands mayor just a day or so before, this hustings started to feel a little bit like bald men fighting over a comb. But that’s not true; one of the candidates is a woman. We sent Jonathan Todd to see what went on at the Birmingham Labour leadership hustings.

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Worst. Kraftwerk. Gig. Ever. Pic by Afzal Hussain

79 Labour councillors will on Monday vote to decide the next leader of Birmingham City Council. Some of these councillors were in the CBSO last night, including the four standing for this office. They were joined by about 100 of the great Brummie public, who questioned the candidates after they’d presented their pitches.

Female, young, and non-white demographics were underrepresented in the audience (and, in the non-white case, on the stage). Perhaps we can’t blame the four leadership candidates for this (or for being white). It reflects a broader malaise of political disengagement.

The candidates commendably made themselves available for a grilling from those who, for the most part, do not have a vote on Monday. The candidates had, therefore, little to gain and much to lose. Poor performance would be punished by the watching media (BBC West Midlands filmed from the floor as the event was ongoing), while strong performance would largely not be witnessed by those who hold their fate in their hands.

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Hate the German market? Buy a candle and shut the fuck up

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People complaining about people complaining that Christmas gets earlier every year gets earlier every year doesn’t it? And as well they might, it seems the only thing stopping the lights going up as soon as the kids go back to school is Halloween.

One of the biggest proponents of this christmas creep in Birmingham is the Frankfurt Market, known locally as the ‘German Market’ the ‘Christmas market’ or just ‘the market’ by most of Birmingham who seem to unwilling to split hairs at that point but will delight in telling you that most of the people that work there are “Polish anyway”. The Market has been a fixture of Birmingham since 2001 and time was you couldn’t say a word against it without being labelled as a grinch the equivalent of a 60ft mecha-Scrooge with orphan-killing eye lasers. Of course I publicly coated it off every chance I could get.

Stuck for a present? Why not try the new Birmingham: It’s Not Shit the book, or 101 Things Birmingham Gave the World.

But recently people have started grumbling, the odd bad sausage here, the occasional commuter gripe there. So taking advantage of Twitter’s new ‘poll’ function I asked the public.

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Labour councillors: Stop gagging Brum

Despite calls in the media, old and new, and noises from some quarters (not as many as we’ve got, like but…) it’s being reported that the Labour group on Birmingham City Council is actively against having an open debate and a hustings event for the election of a new leader of the largest local authority in Europe.

With five candidates now declared that leaves 73 people voting on who leads a city of over a million. And they won’t even be open about the process.

They’re gagging the people of Birmingham and that’s not good enough.

Sign our petition for an open process. Add a gag to your social media profiles in protest. Read more.

Chamberlain Square features still a statue of Birmingham’s great campaigner for electoral reform, Thomas Attwood. One wonders what he would make of it.

Tom

Satan over Birmingham

A dark force is at work in industrial Birmingham. The evidence is there before us in our streets, in our museums, in the halls of power, our entertainment venues, our dark mills. Yes the devil himself pervades the fabric of Birmingham culture.

Nowhere is this presence felt more than in the imposing effigy in the main atrium to the Museum & Art Gallery in Chamberlain Square – the Civic focus of art and tradition in Birmingham. It is the first ambassador to welcome the casual visitor or tourist to the culture of Birmingham.

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Bladerunner

There are spaces in the city which are designed to be a terminus. Shops are a terminus. Pubs are a terminus. We run to them. We pop to them. We are at them, we are in them or perhaps we are down them. We never travel through them.

Run with me now, run with me through the pubs.

One of my regular city centre running routes pushes me through—never to—the Arcadian.

The Arcadian. Image cc: El Bingle.
The Arcadian. Image cc: El Bingle.

Launched as a confusing architectural proposition of East-meets-West in the city’s China Town, time and use have added to the Arcadian’s cocktail of ideas. Originally its anchor tenant was a cinema which enjoyed a symbiosis with chic bars, chain pubs, High Street restaurant names, and hole-in-the-wall Chinese cafés.

The cinema is now an apartment block stuffed into a multiplex outline whilst those chic drinking holes, still wearing their first fit out, stand as a tired testament to spent 90s optimism—Blair’s Bars. Even the few pubs which have changed hands recently wear this tired air on top of their fresh decor, as though a consumption sits deep in the development’s bones.

The Arcadian is a split level open air mall. I run across first floor wooden walkways, and plunge myself down steel staircases. I choose the path through here because sometimes a runner seeks a certain distance or must complete their exercise within a certain time and we pick the paths that give us the outcomes that we most need; I choose this path because it feels transgressive, to enter a destination but always with trajectory, to derivé but never to arrive; I choose this path because its mishmash of signs and ideas lend a dramatic backdrop to my run, because running through here is weird, like running through the set of Bladerunner.

Review to a Kill: The Resorts World Birmingham Is Not Enough

Editor’s Note: The PR Who Loved Me.

We have rules, you have to have rules or everything falls apart. But you can bend them…

Despite our rules, we still get offers — a lot of offers: “Come to the opening of this”; “Help us celebrate that”; “Hot new band blah blah”. We normally bounce them back: “nope”; “read the manifesto”; “in the nicest possible way, please fuck off”. Sometimes we bait them for a bit, for lols, or just to prove a point. And on a few occasions we are just brutally honest “we love free lunch, and will come to your launch and eat but you are not going to get a write up out of it” (PRs normally say “fair cop, in the nicest possible way please fuck off”).

So what did we do when a PR type invited us to a ‘premiere’ of the new James Bond film at the launch of casino-hotel-shopping-thing Resorts World Birmingham?

Well, we are interested in Resorts World Birmingham because we don’t really get it and because it’s in Solihull not Birmingham. So we thought it would be fun to send our Special Features Editor. You see, when we’re offered something we don’t want to do we ask Danny. Danny said yes, but then he disappeared into the deep cover of his day job, leaving us with tickets to an event which promised the chance to rub shoulders with “important Solihull and Birmingham MPs, Dion Dublin and Jasper Carrott”.

So we thought about it again and then thought “Spectre is a spy movie. We could send someone pretending to be Danny instead” so we asked Harry Vale, who spends quite a lot of time pretending to be Danny anyway, if he’d like to go to the pictures with the tab being picked up by some venture capitalists. As he’s a good lad, he said yes.

We gave Harry a secret mission to go with his secret identity, and it was all going swimmingly… but then things got serious and the PR types offered to send a limo. This was clearly a big deal.

We were nervous but, like Bond, now too balls deep in the deception to pull out. So we decided to keep the British end up and carry this thing through. And now here is a report from the field agent, who is most definitely called Danny Smith, 0011A, license to thrill.

After pro wrestler, video game designer and astronaut, secret agent was definitely what I wanted to fail at when I grew up. Endless Bond marathons on ITV had promised exotic adventures and beautiful ladies (Danny Girls I would call them, as I am Danny Smith) all of which convinced me that spying was what I had to do.

My credentials include beating GoldenEye on the N64 on the second hardest difficulty, and managing to talk at least one woman into bed, so when Paradise Circus offered me a top secret, for my eyes only infiltration job at Resorts World Birmingham (It’s Definitely Not Solihull™), I couldn’t say no.

For Your Lies Only

The day began with J sending me my mission by email. This message will self-destruct, I was told, in a confusing mixture of spy franchise universe references. My job was to infiltrate the exclusive (Birmingham) IMAX premiere of Spectre and see what the new shopping centre was like. I donned my best and only suit, grabbed a plus one, a beautiful femme fatale (or designated driver, as she’s known in the biz) and waited for a driver to pick me up.

Would Genting – the Malaysian lads making this wonderful new addition to Birmingham’s growing range of shops and spas and casinos – send a limo, or hire a local Uber? Bit of both, it turned out. A lovely chap called Azeer showed up in a fancy Mercedes Something, which did look a bit like a car that Bond would have driven in the Dalton years. Flashy, lots of buttons, but ultimately forgettable. No ejector button or champagne, but a bottle of Nestle mineral water and free mint imperials; I was already feeling like the member of high society I was going to pretend to be.

The driver dropped us off at the parking for plebs, not the VIP parking I was promised/demanded, and I sat awkwardly as I decided whether to open the door for myself or wait for him. I decided Bond would wait. Or snap his neck and shag the nearest parking attendant with a pulse. Out of respect, I waited, awkwardly thanked him and went looking for the red carpet.

Quantum of Solihull

Resorts World Birmingham is a shopping centre (in Solihull) with some luxury extras. There’s a hotel, a spa, none of which I was allowed into or bothered to sneak into. I accidentally missed (or stealthily avoided, if you like) the red carpet and went looking for the cinema. I passed many wondrous sights, like a Next, and a Thornton’s, and a Nike shop. A shop that sold tiny red telephone boxes and post boxes. Small replicas of England that only exist in the backgrounds of Bond films and the minds of soon to be disappointed Birmingham (not Solihull, guys) tourists.

There are fancy touch screens, that are basically massive iPhones turned sideways. They didn’t work. None of them worked, but they looked cool. Empty units promised bars with a million beers from around the world, and even a future branch of The Works, in case you need to find a closing down sale whilst in between gambling and watching a film.

Genting Casino Royale With Cheese

Ah, the international casino. We were directed here after being refused entry to Cineworld because we didn’t have tickets. It’s the night of the Spectre premiere, so I was hoping this was going to be something special. Instead, it’s basically a high street bookies, but with way more machines. The clientele are slightly more higher class than the ones in your average Ladbrokes, in the sense that they’re fully dressed and aren’t shitting on the floor, but it’s not exactly Bond. Remember that scene in Casino Royale when Bond loses all the money to Le Chiffre in a tense game of Lucky Larry’s Lobstermania 2 (the best of the long-running Lucky Larry series in this spy’s opinion)? Remember when a very angry-looking, but well dressed member of security approached him and asked him to stop making a scene and if he’d consider filling out a self-exclusion form? DER NER NER NEEERRRR.

Bored croupiers desperately tried to grab my attention, but I only had coins on me, and this didn’t seem like the sort of place that had minimum bets of 5p. We finally managed to escape the grip of the flashing lights and depressing drone of the gamblers, and went to meet our Spectre contact on the red carpet. A lovely, excitable chap, who kept asking me about my blog and my work, and because I’m definitely Danny Smith, I had to talk about “my blog”, which they were very excited about (and I was happy to thank him and take credit for) and my book, Pier Review, which is a book about piers and a travelogue about childhood memories of the sea? Or something? He bought it, because I am an awesome spy.

Live and Let Dine

We got to the High Line bar, which was really nice and dark and had loud techno music, which really set the mood for an intimate, VIP Bond setting. They had an ice block with “Spectre” and “Cineworld” written on it for some reason. Attractive women with not many clothes on kept giving me wine and tiny pieces of food.

“Would you like an artisan sourdough flatbread slice with basil and crème fraîche?”

“What?”

“It’s a tiny pizza.”

“Yes. Yes, I would.”

Soon I’d created a small cardboard graveyard of various miniaturised snacks. Taking them down like nameless henchmen. I headed to the bar and asked for a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, and got a laugh from the barmaid and a look that told me she’d heard that 50 times already that night and wanted to die. I felt awful and empty after that, like I’d just watched Quantum of Solace, so returned to my femme fatale. My contact showed up again, and was again lovely and laughed at all my jokes. The innate pressures of the spy business were getting to me now, I was too inexperienced, it was exactly like the bit in Casino Royale where Bond had bitten off more than he could chew and was getting his bollocks pulverised by Hannibal, but in a socially anxious sort of way in a dark room surrounded by Q-list celebrities.

I made a bad joke, that he was contractually obliged to fucking love, and escaped to the rooftop bar to get some air and check out the amazing views. If you like trees, motorways, and red neon, you’ll love Resorts World Birmingham (Because No One Knows What Solihull Is™). Unfortunately the bar wasn’t finished and was taped off, and various bits of the floor were unfinished, knackered-looking and wobbly, a bit like Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again. A tiny, shit green laser spat out the 007 logo and a gun the that looked like it was drawn by a child. Bond themes played over the roof speakers, but the crap ones, and now the celebrities started pouring in. TV’s Dion Dublin – star of Homes Under The Hammer – was there, as was Jane and the Lost City star Jasper Carrott. They really helped give the evening a shot of glamour and style that you just couldn’t attract at a non-Genting backed gala.

Spectre? I hardly touched her!

After more tiny food and free drinks, it was time for the film. Or rather, it was time for 8 people to stand in line and talk about how awesome Genting, Cineworld, Resorts World Birmingham (Because There Isn’t A Casino In The Bull Ring, Is There?™) and Hollywood blockbusters are. Everyone from Genting’s IT people to the chap who arranged the free popcorn got a namecheck and round of applause and it was at this point that I realised this was less a VIP gala event, and more a couple of celebrities who had literally nothing else to do, the lord mayor, and the employees of Genting at this thing. Sales figures for Spectre and Star Wars VII got cheers and applause. The design of the building, which honestly screams first draft, got a round of applause. It was all a bit sad, but I’m a guy writing this in his underwear, surrounded by empty crisp packets listening to Nobody Does It Better on repeat, so it’s hard to judge. Not impossible, but hard.

Bond wouldn’t be here. Bond would be at the Everyman Cinema, or the Electric Cinema, pretending to like the uncomfortable seats and tiny screens. Alas, I’m merely Danny Smith 00 agent for Paradise Circus, so I watched everyone talk about how revolutionary and beautiful the place was.

The urge to scream “THEY’RE JUST SHOPS” was pushed back down my throat by not wanting to upset Karen from marketing, who worked her arse off for this, and by the free popcorn and miniature box of Celebrations.

Spectre, then. Take the worst type of fan service-y references from Die Another Day, add a dash of Star Trek Into Darkness’s pointless attempt at a plot twist, and a sprinkling of Bond pretty much raping a grieving woman, and you’ve got a classic Bond film. Nothing made sense, the CG was shit, the main henchman was shit, Blofeld (spoilers, idiots) was shit, the theme song was shit. If you liked the old Bonds where he was basically a racist cock, you’ll love it. If you liked Casino Royale, you’ll probably hate it.

I left feeling like I should have a refund, even though I didn’t pay anything, and settled for nicking some more free popcorn, like the bit in Tomorrow Never Dies where he steals the GPS encoder, but nothing like that.

Never Say Never Again?

I don’t see the point in Resorts World Birmingham (SHOPS. CASINO. SPA. HOTEL. COME ON™), but then I don’t see the point in a lot of things this city does. If you’re ever in town and think “this is okay, but I wish this looked more like a dystopic, neon wasteland”, then Resorts World Birmingham is for you. If you wish the Pallasades was still a thing, but bigger, this is for you. It’ll create lots of jobs, I hope, and it gives the poor plebs of Solihull somewhere new to go, but otherwise it’s a bit like The World Is Not Enough. Looks fine, lots of pretty ladies, but I never want to experience it again.

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 77: The kitchen-sink modernist novel

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Two o’clock, 1929, Tyseley, Birmingham, Henry Green walked Warwick Road, near current DFS, Foam Cut to Size, Hollywood Monster.

Standing in Tyseley, son of Mr Yorke, thought in mind and it seemed to him that these factories were beautiful and he reached out feeling to them and he touched them; he thought only in Birmingham now was honesty left for in the county and Oxford and Eton, in society, words were like sheep while here men created what you could touch, soft like silk, flowing without definite article, which would last, although not as well as those of contemporary Orwell or Oxford tutor C.S. Lewis.

He thought, he declaimed to himself, this was life to lead, making useful modernist novels that were beautiful, and glad for making them, which you could touch; but when he was most sure he remembered. He remembered how it has all been said before and experience of father’s bottling factory became basis for great work of modernism; first to use working class experience. And then what had been so plain, stiff and bursting inside him like pumps at Mermaid on Stratford Rd, died like fun at Acock’s Green Wetherspoons, and he felt embarrassed standing as he did in fine clothes.

Apologies to Henry Green’s great modernist masterpiece Living which is set in Tyseley.

A hundred thousand tables

This guy only needs to get up there to ask for an exchange on a shirt from Ciro Citterio.

 

A hundred (or more) tables but I’m not hungry.

How hungry can one town be? How much lunch can one town eat?

But here they are and here they eat. Here where the echo of a phone shop rings. Here, where the escalators drew you up into the Aladdin’s Cave of Sports Direct. Now: above us only sky; domes and light — but in the light the spectre.

Pallasades.

This space is still anchored in its past. I can see it as through Google Glass: ghosts of shops — shops we never loved, not really. Enough remains (the ramp, Tesco, the Bullring link) to place me in space/time. For now though there is lunch.

I am not hungry. Why am I not hungry? Because the shops are not the ghosts. I am the ghost. I am the past. This map is only mine. At Foot Locker, turn left. Vision Express where I first became blind (or rather, had my failing eye sight certified). And on. Nickelby’s. As a Birmingham ingénue, an England ingénue in fact, I bought some terrible clothes there. Just beyond, they had Internet once. An internet café where (I think) my wife sent a reply to the email that sparked our marriage, sparked my life.

I am a ghost. Ghosts do not eat.

But Grand Central lives. Grand Central eats.

Birmingham: let’s do lunch.

Birmingham and leadership: A challenge to democracy

Birmingham is to have a new leader. And we don’t get to vote. No-one does, apart from the outgoing leader and 77 other Labour councillors.

The leader of Birmingham City Council is potentially the third most important figurehead in the county: after the PM and London Mayor. There is control over millions and millions in council budget.

But: the majority of the one million people in Birmingham haven’t a clue who they are.

And that’s not least because they have no direct say in how they get there.

Sir Albert Bore, who is to step down, may have deserved all the plaudits he’s got for his work — but the truth is that who ends up leading Birmingham is decided behind closed doors. It’s luck, and friendships when it should be democracy and accountability.

We have a democratic deficit in the city: power is devolved to unelected groups of ‘business leaders’, council services are tied up in monolithic commercial contracts, there’s talk of wider bodies to which the public have no access. To have the leader of the council also ‘unelected’ is too much.

We believe that true power should only come with accountability and openness. So we ask those who have the power currently to work to change the system, but also to do what they can now.

We ask Labour Councillors, pledge to:

  • Be open about your positions on the leadership.
  • Take soundings from your constituents.
  • Listen to the people of Birmingham before you vote.

Leadership contenders, we ask you to pledge to :

  • Produce and publish a plain English manifesto with your vision for Birmingham and how you’d get there.
  • Commit to open hustings.
  • Talk to the public directly, your national party’s leadership understands the power of social media — use it.

Other public figures, both inside and outside the Labour party, also have a duty to encourage openness and change in this process. MPs, you have a platform, please use it for democracy.

Let’s make Birmingham democratic. Please ask your elected representatives to commit to these pledges, sign this petition.