So you want to write a generic ‘Birmingham isn’t that bad’ feature for a broadsheet…

Spaghetti Junction at night

Spaghetti Junction: subs… to the photo library. CC by: Chris Gin

We know that a lot of local journalists look to us for, ahem, inspiration but we were wondering what we could do to help out the hacks on the nationals. Now, the national press do like to show a passing interest in our welfare, but they only really have limited frames available for their stories. We’ve parsed that through our computers to come up with the basic boilerplate you, the national newspaper hack, need to write about the second city*.

To start, lower expectations: Of Birmingham, not your article, silly. The best way to do this is point out that someone ‘right thinking’ said something bad. You could try doing a Google Books search for Birmingham to see if there are any literary quotations, or you could just use the Jane Austen quote. You know the one:

“One has no great hopes from Birmingham, I always say there is something direful in the sound”

And if you like you can forget that it’s not Jane Austen who said it, but a character in Emma. A Character — Mrs Elton — that Jane Austen wrote as a voice of the fashionably stupid.

And talking of fashionably stupid, you could maybe quote Jeremy Clarkson “There are signs directing you away from Birmingham but nothing enticing you in.”  But quote him ironically while you agree with him really (a joke like on Top Gear), which ties neatly into…

Continue reading “So you want to write a generic ‘Birmingham isn’t that bad’ feature for a broadsheet…”

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 47: Infographics

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When we were a city of a thousand trades, we had men to produce thousands of words to tell the story. One such was Joseph Priestley who essentially didn’t ever shut up, producing hundreds of pamphlets and books on philosophy, science, religion and even grammar. But that age of voluminous reason is long gone: our civic leaders now find it difficult to work out that people are unlikely to pony up £35 for having their grass cuttings taken away. They also are more likely to speak like internet cats.

Numbers and facts are hard, so it’s lucky that the power of a thousand words can now be delivered so easily by: pictures of toilet signs at different sizes, circles overlapping, and maps — all laid out like a pastel-coloured ‘30s variety bill poster.

In short, thank heaven for the infographic. Or, thank Birmingham rather.

For you see, Joseph Priestley was not just a writerly polymath but completely lithographically incontinent — and in 1769 he published A New Chart of History in which:

“the horizontal line conveys an idea of the duration of fame, influence, power and domination. A vertical reading conveys an impression of the contemporaneity of ideas, events and people. The number or density of entries . . . tells us about the vitality of any age.”

 

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That’s a clear as it can be, without being in a skyscraper-format GIF and put on Facebook.

And that’s how Birmingham invented the infographic, saving the future communicators the bother of having to work out coherent sentences to put on the Internet. If only Birmingham had invented the Venn diagram too.

Or perhaps it did, stay tuned.

 

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A New Chart of History via Wikimedia , Venn diagram off of all of the Internet.

Help Bill Drummond sue UKIP

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Artist Bill Drummond defaced a UKIP billboard. He isn’t the only one to do this but his intervention has been the most widely reported. The billboard that Mr Drummond worked on is just around the corner from Eastside Projects, where he has been staging a month-long artist’s residency. The painting over the poster was one of his artworks.

UKIP’s West Midlands spokesman Bill Etheridge called this “mindless vandalism” as well as making a formal complaint to the police.

In fact this was a very mindful act, as the artist explained eloquently well before Mr. Etheridge made his comments. Drummond’s statement has been widely disseminated and it provides a clear and thoughtful rationale for the work; this was not, therefore, a “mindless” act.

For a performance artist to be described in these terms is potentially harmful to their ability to work especially when this has been reported in the national media and may be the first contact with the artist’s work for many people.

The action, Drummond admits, is an act of vandalism but not an act of mindlessness. Artists and citizens should be able to enact dissent. Where their act of dissent involves a criminal activity, those harmed should have full recourse to the law but they should not be allowed to denigrate the sentiments of the act.

If you agree please pledge a small amount for us to help Bill to sue UKIP.

Let us know how much you can spare in the comments and we’ll be in touch when we have enough to collect it in.

We should point out that the artist has not asked for this to happen. If, in the event that we hit our target and we have the money available, Mr Drummond would prefer not to sue UKIP we will ask him to nominate an arts based charity to receive the funds.

So farewell then, green waste collections

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First they came for the paper recycling, and I did not speak out — Because it was about 6am and I was still in bed.
A week later they came for the glass and metal, and I did not speak out — Despite them waking me up with their reversing lorry.
Then they came for the landfill waste, and I did not speak out — Because they do it at the same time as the other collections.
They didn’t come for the garden waste — so I took it to the tip on Sunday.

E J Thribb, after Pastor Martin Niemöller

Potty about Paradise Circus!

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When you’re packing, remember to take Paradise Circus with you on holiday this year as you could be in with a chance of winning a wonderful meal for two.

To enter the “Potty about Paradise Circus” competition all you have to do is take a copy of the blog with you on holiday and take a snapshot of yourself reading it in a quirky setting, in front of a landmark or even perhaps with a celebrity that you bumped into and send it in to hello@paradisecircus.com. Continue reading “Potty about Paradise Circus!”

Ghosts

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before: I’m not from Birmingham, though I’ve lived here for some time and I’ve learned to pass myself off.

Over the years I’ve developed a fair sense of Birmingham’s official and folk history and I’ve picked up a Brummie twang and an authentic sense of loss and frustration about my (affected and now apostate) fandom for Aston Villa. No matter what I do though I can never acquire a lived experience and innate sense of Birmingham. Cultural osmosis cannot equip me with a deep down connection to this place in bone and blood, a fact of which I’ve now decided that I’m glad.

You see I’ve been home for a few days, back to Guernsey. I’ve reconnected with my childhood haunts and found them… haunted. Everywhere I go there are ghosts. Continue reading “Ghosts”

Super Prix

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Remembering the Super Prix is a fiction within a fiction.
Going to my Nan’s flat,
180 Elizabeth Fry House,
just to hear the roar and grumble
of the cars from her balcony.
A simulcast of first and second-hand experiences.
Being there but not being there.

Watching the race on TV
with the fringes of town
shown as a kind of alternative, patched up, Monaco,
but never making it
to see the actual event.

Thinking I’d only been on the No. 8 earlier that week, along that same stretch of road, sitting upstairs on the front seat of the bus, no less.

The No.8’s route was an adventure into the forbidden space of the Super Prix.
The excitement started when the bus deviated from the orbit of the inner ring road, on to the Hagley Rd.

First, passing the Oratory with the raised disc of Five Ways at the end of the corridor of traffic.
Either side of me, I thought the office buildings projected a Texan-style flexing of the city’s identity, of wealth made from making energy from fossils. Oil money craned into the sky.

Then, the bus did a grand right on to Islington Row, where motorsport’s slogans of legal addictions – stuck on the the crash barriers and safety fencing – slipped into view on the pavements of Belgrave Middleway.

Everywhere there were Camel yellows, Marlboro reds and a familiar deep, warm orange –
the same colour as the carpets
in the Central Library.

Then to Haden Circus –
and as reality continued to be suspended – there was a pit stop for emergency vehicles, protected by a half-crescent of concrete blocks, like some physical, road-built morse code
Continue reading “Super Prix”