Farewell Bishop Sentamu

The former Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt Rev John Sentamu, has taken up his post as the first black Archbishop of York, the second most powerful post in the Church of England. Now while the People's Republic considers this a demotion, we accept it is not universally regarded as such. Archbishop Sentamu fully deserves his new role after his fantastic service to the city of Birmingham, during which he offered his personal mobile number to anyone who had any information over the Aston shootings.

We wish him all the best.

Another Successful Night for Midlands Football

Birmingham City scraped through to the quarter-finals of the Carling Cup last night by beating Millwall 4-3 on penalties, hardly an inspiring result given that the Londoners are currently bottom of the Championship. Meanwhile city rivals Villa lost 3-0 to the footballing might of Doncaster, the lowest positioned team left in the competition. Every cloud has a silver-lining however; they can now concentrate on their Premiership challenge. Their challenge being to stay in it.

With Chasetown losing 4-0 to Oldham in the replay last week it appears that the West Midlands sides have peaked too early. Time to go further afield, and support Worcester City in their televised home match against Huddersfield in the FA Cup 2nd round on Sunday.

Birmingham Becomes Biggest Fair Trade City

Birmingham became the biggest fair trade city yesterday, a fact which seems to have been completely missed the national press. Perhaps they were still covering the fall-out of Live 8 in London earlier this year which did absolutely sod-all for the poor, but resurrected the careers of quite a few has been pop-stars.

Fair trade can be controversial but is based on the idea of giving the producers a fairer price for their products, rather than it being swallowed up by faceless multinational corporations. On the other hand, multinational corporations can invest a lot of money in the developing world making the countries richer.

I'm sure they won't mind a little competition though.

Richard Burns 1971-2005

The People's Republic was saddened by the news of the untimely death of former World Rally Champion Richard Burns on Saturday. The first Englishman to win the world title, he died on the 4th anniversary of his win after a two year battle with a particularly virulent brain tumour. George Best may have hogged the headlines, but Richard Burns was taken in the prime of his life, at the top of his game and could well have been remembered as one of the greatest rally drivers ever if his life hadn't so tragically been cut short.

Of course football is a bigger game and George Best was more famous, but I think the real reason he got more coverage is because he was a hero of the middle-aged who write the news rather than of my generation. As a result, we also here a lot about housing booms, family credits and pension problems, but nothing about the fact that the rate of inflation used to calculate interest repayments on Student Loans has doubled over the last year.

This is one of the reasons I increasingly use blogs as a source of news.

The Falling Tower of Birmingham

It took me two-and-a-half hours to get home from work on Thursday night, even longer than the usual hour-and-a-half since the clocks went back. It is high time a congestion charge was introduced in Birmingham, along with forcible re-tests for those idiots who think it is ok to block junctions so they can wait two minutes at the next set of lights five second earlier. I doubt that Birmingham City Council will have the guts to introduce the former however - another reason why Birmingham needs its own elected mayor.

The problems on Thursday were caused by panels falling from Beetham Tower, which will become the second tallest building on the Birmingham skyline after the BT tower. This is the second time something falling from the tower (last time it was scaffolding) has brought traffic to a standstill. Major roads were still closed on Saturday as a result of the incident, while a safety check on the tower was completed by abseilers (is that a proper word?). This morning it was claimed Birmingham City Council are threatening to sue the company involved for the problems it has caused.

While the People's Republic agrees that something needs to be done about this, we hope this does not adversely affect any future developments in Birmingham city centre.

Walsh Welches on Resignation

I have been proud to share my name with some great men of the past. Louis Pasteur, famous his work in microbiology; Louis Braille, famous for his work for the blind; and Louis Armstrong, the first man to play jazz on the moon.

Unfortunately I also share my name with a waste of space called Louis Walsh who sensationally quit X-factor this week because he felt "under-pressure". Under-pressure? He doesn't have any problems putting pop-star wannabes under-pressure by slagging them off for no other reason than they didn't do a Westlife song or aren't Irish. On Saturday Simon Cowell had to vote of his own act to prevent Louis Walsh from keeping the Conway sisters in for no other reason than he shares their nationality. Louis Walsh may have sold a lot of albums over the years, but this is mainly because he knows what sells rather than producing anything exciting musically.

Presumably he came back so he can continue to make a shed-load of money for leaching off other peoples talent.

Which is something he is not used to working with the likes of Westlife and Girls Aloud.

Watch it Boris!

Bumbling tory Boris Johnson has a habit of knocking Birmingham when he appears as a guest presenter on Have I Got News for You. The first time he claimed the £3 charge on the M6 toll motorway was worth it to avoid Birmingham, and last night he used the same statement with regards to the infamous RAC route-planner which decided to traverse two places in England via Ireland and France.


We don't want your snivelling apologies here Boris - we've got enough sorry excuses for (would-be) Tory MP's already.

Spend a Penny on the 50

In the Birmingham Mail this week there was an article about a protest by residents of Druids Heath over the drivers of the 50 route using the terminus as a communal toilet. Apparantly they are urinating in the hedges or into bottles which they are then throwing into the hedges.

Is this proof that the service is after all piss poor?

Come on Chasetown!

It hasn't been a good start to the season for the West Midlands Premiership teams. With just over a quarter of the season gone, the West Midlands teams occupy three of the bottom four places, with only Sunderland providing some semblance of dignity for our local footballers. Add to this the recent defeat by Villa, and Robbie Savage smirking that his team are "above the bigger club in the league", it's enough for most Birmingham City fans to take up something less boring instead.

Thank God for Chasetown. They claim to have made £5000 from gate receipts last year, which is according to David Sullivan 1/18 of what Blues pay for their three main strikers (between them) each week. They made as much money from the match against Oldham Athletic as they earned in the last 15 years. A great performance yesterday saw them earn a replay against a team roughly a million places above them in the football league. Chasetown may have a hard time winning the replay, but at least it gives us something to be proud about.

Which is more than can be said for our Premiership clubs.

Cool for Cats

On the local news last night there was a report that said Birmingham City Council were looking for a replacement for Brummie the resident cat, who retired three years ago after catching more than 2000 mice.

Presumably this makes him the most efficient council worker in Birmingham.

The People's Republic is unsure if this is the reason why there are now more rats in Birmingham than people.

Brummie, you are already missed.

Royal Duo to Visit New Orleans

As part of their itinerary of the tour of the United States, Charles and Camilla plan to visit hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

Let's hope George Bush doesn't decide to visit Tornado hit Brum to return the favour.

Death of a Legend

Rosa Parks, famous for refusing to give up her seat on an Alabama bus and sparking off a bus boycott that lasted just over a year died this week and it would be wrong if the People's Republic didn't acknowledge the death of this great woman in some way. She was an inspiration to all of us who are oppressed and unjustly treated; instead of standing there and taking it, we should make a stand up for what we believe in.

It's a pity no one organises a boycott of Travel Wind-Up Merchants. With the Government planning to stop alcoholic drinks being consumed on public transport, maybe it's time Travel West Midlands stopped people smoking drugs on the top deck of their buses. They can stop stereotyping people too; once when an inspector came onto the bus, he grabbed my bus pass out of my hand rather rudely and and gave it a longer look than he did everyone elses. I suppose the Travel WM thugs are trained to treat anyone who looks like a fare-dodger as a fare-dodger.

It's called discrimination, and perhaps next time we should make our own stand against injustice.

US-Style NHS Forum in Birmingham

Birmingham hosted a gathering today at the ICC in which patients gave their views on the NHS.
Apparently others had been held before but certainly this is the first that made the national news and is the biggest.

Birmingham, being in the centre of the country, is the ideal place for such meetings and there should be more of them. The city is famous for being a business conference centre and the Nationwide building society has also recently announced it is returning its AGM to the city following consultations with its members.

Brum's location its greatest selling point and we should be seeking to exploit it to the full.

Violence Hits Lozells

The last couple of nights have seen violence on the streets of Lozells reminiscent of the Handsworth riots 20-years ago when black resentment at the Asian community boiled over and saw shops smashed-up and looted.

The violence 20 years ago was due to a black man being stopped and searched, but the current troubles centre on an allegation that a 14-year-old Jamaican asylum seeker was gang-raped by up to 19 Asian men after being found shoplifting in a store. The problem is there is no evidence of this actually happening. For a start no crime has been reported (apparently because the girl is frightened of being deported due to her immigration status). The only thing I have seen coming close to backing this event up is an apparent family of the friend speaking to a local reporter and claiming that the girl is in no fit state to go to the police. However, the police have since forensically examined the scene of the alleged assault and found nothing.

Any allegation of rape must be taken seriously of course but in this case it appears to be an attempt by pirate radio stations to increase their audience figures. Unfortunately in the process many people have been hurt and two have been killed. The allegation now seems to be irrelevant as idiots on both sides start harping on about alleged injustices that have taken place over the years. There is no doubt however that there is significant segregation and grievances between the communities and hopefully these event will be a kick up the backside for someone to address them.

Interestingly enough, despite all the violence the attendances at City Hospital's A&E department were significantly down over the weekend. Clearly people in the area are being a bit more careful at the moment.

They may have to continue for a few more days although hopefully this won't be the case.

Update 1: The Kaiser Chiefs were playing in Birmingham on Saturday night. They certainly did predict a riot.

Update2: It's alright; David Cameron's now in the city.

Get your Mail!

Over the past three weeks there have been some mysterious changes taking place around Birmingham. The old blue cabins with elderly gentlemen in them shouting "Get your Mail!" have disappeared and been replaced with continental-style tables with umbrellas above them and a more cosmopolitan sales-force. The historic Birmingham Evening Mail is no longer; we welcome a publication called simply "the Mail".

Of course, the reason for this change is declining sales. To its readers, this is not a surprise as the publication has declined in quality ever since being taken over by the Trinity Mirror group. The People's Republic does not want to slag off the publishers of the Mirror, being as it is one of the few national papers to be printed in the region, but the fact is that a previously decent local paper went to the dogs as it adopted tabloid-style reporting.

A fine example of this was how they "reported" the news that a consultant at City Hospital, Mr Stanley Silverman, had left a patient in theatre to help relieve the pressures on the A&E department while it was trying to hit the government target of treating 90% of its patients within 4 hours. They presented it as if they had got an exclusive interview with the consultant himself whereas in reality they had taken the quotes from the minutes of the Trust board meeting. Sh*t stirring, as we call it in Birmingham became the norm, so much so that it drowned out the decent community news that quickly became the domain of the free newspapers.

So apparently the solution is to re-launch the paper as a snazzy read with a new editor and a new reporters. The problem is it looks like something produced by a local sixth-form. The Evening Mail used to stand alongside other local publications such as the London Evening Standard, the Manchester Evening News and the Liverpool Echo. By renaming it "the Mail", Birmingham has lost part of it's history.

So sack the staff, yes. But bring back our (Evening) Mail.

Welcome to the Rudest City

A poll of eight cities yesterday claimed that Birmingham is the rudest city.

P*ss off.

Second Tornado hits Brum

There was another nightmare day yesterday for commuters in Birmingham as heavy rain brought traffic to a standstill on the way home from work, bringing back memories of that snowstorm a year-and-a-half ago. Flooding was rife throughout the city and there is currently a ford outside the delivery entrance of M&S (and I don't mean a Mondeo). To make matters worse, a mini-tornado caused damage in Moseley for the second time in three months.

Any more of this and we'll have to rename the city "Twisterville".

The Natural Party of Power

On the eve of the Conservative Party conference the People's Republic takes a brief look at the contenders for the Tory party leadership and asks if any of them can roll back the years (at least 200 of them) and take them back to where they believe they belong - which unlike the rest of us isn't opposition (or extinction).

When it comes to Conservative Party leadership races, there are a few rules one has to live by. The first is the favourite never wins (unlucky David Davis - despite claiming to be against the politics of envy this rule is mainly due to jealousy). The second is that Ken Clarke never wins (as he is pro-European and will divide the party). So the third candidate (thank you Iain Duncan-Smith) comes through the field and leads the party to disaster (or at least they get rid of him before he can). So the real question is who is the third favourite?

Enter David Cameron. One of the new "Notting Hill" set (although I've never seen him at the carnival) he believes he is part of a natural succession that began with Margaret Thatcher and continues under Tony Blair. Don't rule him out though - unlike previous third favourites he speaks a surprising amount of sense for a Tory and it can appear that he actually cares. Before you think I'm crazy I hasten to add that his wife works in PR, so he doesn't really have to.
Cameron could even be the next Prime Minister. Yes, you read that correctly a Conservative in the 21st century could become Prime Minister by winning a democratic (or the British equivalent) vote. First however he will have to convince the party that he is the right man for the job.

His main problem lies in the fact that Liam Fox is a joke. Unfortunately for Cameron, the current Conservative party are too and so they may think Dr Fox is the perfect man for the job.

Finally of course, there are Malcolm Rifkind and (snigger) Edward Leigh.

Unfortunately for them, even the Conservative Party have their standards.

The Party Line

82-year-old hitherto Nazi-fleer Walter Wolfgang received a hero's return to the Labour Party conference after being ignominiously man-handled out of the arena yesterday by over-zealous party stewards. To add insult to injury, he was held under anti-terror legislation. I gather he was very lucky not to have been shot dead on site by the Police as he clearly bore the hallmarks of a suicide bomber - at 82 he could have given up the ghost at any moment (the fact he probably wouldn't have taken anyone else with him is a moot point). It was interesting to hear the Prime Minister apologise, stating he was not in the centre at the time (and thus implying it had nothing to do with him). The incident came a day after Mr Blair's speech, in which he talked about changing the law's emphasis from making sure the innocent are not wrongly convicted to protecting law-abiding citizens.

I see. Tony Blair is the law-abiding citizen. Walter Wolfgang and Jean Charles de Menezes are the innocent people.

I think I preferred things the old way.

A Bright Future for Motor Sport

Fernando Alonso became the youngest ever formula 1 world champion today, ending the 5 year consecutive reign of the reigenmeister Michael Schumacher. Of course but for a more reliable car it would (and should) have been Raikkonen; however the important thing is that we no longer have to be bored senseless by that clinical German storming home to win every race with his stage-managed team wins. It is my belief that Raikkonen will in the long term win more World Championships than Alonso and come to dominate a more competitive series in the future.

The future certainly looks like bright for international motor sport as the A1 series, which is the equivalent of the world cup of Motor Sport according to its creator got under way at Brands Hatch with Nelson Piquet Junior winning it for Brazil in the first round. The People's Republic believes it has a better comparison; the A1 series is the socialist equivalent of F1. While F1 allows teams to dominate with ever increasing budgets being spent on technological innovations that in the long term benefit us all (e.g. power steering, ABS), it also bores us with the rich teams constantly outperforming the poorer teams and its inherent predictability (in recent years at least). Meanwhile the A1 series forces everyone to race with cars of equal competitiveness, allowing and even encouraging genuine driving talent to win the day.

It will be interesting to see which becomes the more popular genre in the future.