101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 40: Photocopying your arse

Wanted

 

1779: James Watt patents a copying press or ‘letter copying machine’ to deal with the mass of paper work at his business; he also invents an ink to work with it. This is the first widely used copy machine for offices and is a commercial success, being used for over a century. This letter copying press is considered to be the original photocopier. [Source: Wikipedia]

1779 Dec 15th: At the Lunar Society Xmas party, Matthew Boulton was seen removing his britches in the vicinity of the machine. [Source: Knowledge of how humans work]

Only one of those statements is recorded in the history books, but we’re saying both are definitely true.

 

Happy Christmas.

 

Photo by Martin Deutsch

A Catchphrase for Councillor Bore

We’ll say one thing for Mike Whitby: he was good at catchphrases – very much Local Politician, Global Slogan. You know what a guy with a catchphrase stands for (empty rhetoric and marketing). So we’re surprised that we couldn’t pinpoint what new city boss Albert Bore’s catchphrase was. I mean come on Albert, you’ve had ages – give us something to work with.

Here comes the science

We have taken it upon ourselves to develop a catchphrase for Councillor Bore. We took all of his speeches and reported speech as detailed by BCC News Room from August to today and processed it through Wordle to drill down to his core values.

What Albert Bore says

 

And this leaves us, dear reader, with a new slogan for the Dear Leader:

Birmingham: city, transport, people.

We actually really like it.

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 39: Doctor Who

the-go-gos-im-gonna-spend-my-christmas-with-a-dalek-oriole

Way back in 1963, a children’s educational TV programme aired and not that many people noticed—they were too upset that Aldous Huxley had died (especially Sheryl Crow). It starred an old chap who pottered around the universe in four dimensions. But without a nemesis the story was going nowhere, he wasn’t much of a hero—what he needed was an evil race to battle—one that was flawless, except for the flaw that they needed a level floor.

But how would they perambulate across those even surfaces? They needed some sort of castor that kept the two bearing surfaces of an axle, fixed and moving, apart.

Luckily in 1876, in Birmingham,  William Bown patented a design for the wheels of roller skates which did just this…

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101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 38: Health and Safety

Day 246: Bell

Used as a catch all excuse for not letting people get on with things—in the same way as “data protection” means people won’t tell you things and political correctness means you simply aren’t allowed to be a racist, cisexist, ableist, islamophobe—like you could in the good old days, Health and Safety culture is one of the biggest influences on our lives as we really to take care of our health and even our mental health by using products like the delta 10 product you can find online. It’s terrible that we’re not at liberty to hurt ourselves and others and are given advice on how not to, damn that Health and Safety it’s political correctness gone mad.

And you know who’s to blame? Birmingham, that’s who, er where.

John Richard Dedicoat, an apprentice to the famous James Watt, became a bicycle manufacturer and as well as inventing a spring-loaded step for mounting bikes—that charmingly catapulted riders over the handlebars if they misjudged it—he became the father of the nanny state with the invention of the bicycle bell. In one step he transferred the responsibility of pedestrian safety to the put-upon cyclist rather than the garrulous, attention-deprived, inconsiderate stroller. Damn Dedicoat and his pandering—safety should be the responsibility of the individual.

Although some people think it would be frankly a lot safer if all the cyclists stayed at home.

Photo by Quinn Dombrowski

Five things that I miss now that I don’t live in Birmingham

Two years ago this week we lost the vote (Birmingham lost if I may be so bold) on giving the city an elected mayor,  I got on a train to Bristol that night and haven’t really been back since for work, lovelife, miscellaneous reasons. I visit, and talk to people that live there and do stuff for this site, so the concept of Birmingham weighs heavy in my part of ideaspace (ideaspace can be compared to Jung’s ‘Collective Unconscious‘, or Dawkins’ memes). I’m unlikely to forget King Kong, or discover him again myself, but there are limits to how much the representation of a place in our collective unconscious can be held by just one person.

To that end I am recording these things I miss here, a memetic hope chest for a lost living space, with a view to reconsumating at some point in the future:

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How Brummie are you? Quiz

There are physical limits on the city, but what are the limits to being counted as her son or daughter?

Londoners negotiate their rights to belong through the soundscape of their districts: born within Bow Bell’s peel and you’re a bona fide cockney, anywhere else you’re just mockney. Northerners can define themselves by pies and places named after cakes. If you weren’t at the Sex Pistols gig at the Free Trade Hall then you’re not from Manchester, which is okay as pretty much everyone was there. These are complex rules and systems, and we distrust them. Of course we do for we are BRUMMIES. And what defines us? It’s not space, time, or seminal music experiences. It’s wanting to be here or from here.

As Mayoral Candidate Emeritus Siôn Simon said…

 

It is the best kind of club: something that is worth being part of, which anyone who wants to can join, just by wishing it.

If you feel you belong here, you’re a Brummie. If you’re proud of this place, with all its kinks and wrinkles, you’re a Brummie. If you want to be a Brummie, you are. It’s a simple as that.

 

You can be a Brummie if you want to be. You can be born and shot in Pakistan and be the quintessential Brummie. You can be from Kiddy and pass it off. You can be what you want to be. Just don’t tell anyone, that’s not what we do.

We were going to make a quiz, but then we realised you’re all too modest to tell anyone.

HowBrummie

 

We’ve tested you and your result is:

You can be a Brummie if you want to be.

Tweet your result ** Share on Facebook.

City Limits

280 Stops eBook_ Jon Bounds, Adam Juniper, Leonardo Morgado, Danny Smith, Ben Waddington, Ben Whitehouse, Jon Hickman_ Amazon.co.uk_ Kindle Store

How do you find the edges of a city, the limits on its space and imagination? You could draw a map and give it borders, put one thing in, one thing out (and shake it all about). You could give it a centre and let its gravity draw people to call it home. The bigger the city the heavier the mass the stronger the pull. Keep going until its pull ends and you find the event horizon, the tipping point where we move from belonging to one place and start to belong to another, where our accents change and we have a different name for a bread roll to the people down the road.

Or you can plan a bus route, an audacious bus route that describes the outer limits. The outer circle, the edge of reason, a big route around it all. The bigger your global heart the bigger the circle you’d need. Birmingham has an outer circle, and yet it’s an outer circle that sits well within the city limits and also bleeds into other places and captures stray objects that want to be pulled into its sphere of influence. The 11 Bus runs rings around Brum and cuts through Solihull and Sandwell for good measure. Who lives on this edge? What are they doing or thinking? Last year we found out with a short story called 280 Stops – it tells the story of 11 people on the 11 bus using maths for reasons that will become apparent if you read it.

To celebrate 11 Bus Day, and to kick off a new issue of Paradise Circus in which we will pick at Brum’s frayed edge we have published 280 Stops as a Kindle ebook. Kick back, relax and ride with us.

The Laminated and Blu-Tacked signs of The Library of Birmingham

When Jon H went to see the sparkling new Library of Birmingham for the first time he said:

Somewhere a laminator is waiting to make some signs (set in Comic Sans) to stick up around the place, to clarify functions and to formalise the new codes of the new building, the ones an architect and a designer can’t plan for.

What he meant was that the true test of the building would be when people started to really use it. We’re glad to note that it’s happening (no Comic Sans just yet). Welcome to the real Birmingham, New Library, we’re happy to have you, you’re lovely.

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