Central News heralded the V Building item after releasing the results of yet another survey showing that Manchester is perceived by most people as the Second City. Will the V Building change that perception? I doubt it, as in today's Sunday Times Birmingham has plans for 10 skyscrapers and Manchester for 33. (Liverpool - 60!)
Birmingham has experienced short periods or rejuvenation and then slipped into obscurity again. Witness: the NEC, Brindley Place, Rattle at the CBSO. It has been dumped by the BBC as they ran down and closed Pebble Mill and by Central in favour of Nottingham. Even the Motor Show has scarpered off back to London again. We bid for the Olympics and failed. We bid for the national millenium centre and it went to the Dome. We bid for the national sports academy. We bid for a super-cassino.
How long is it, in fact I don't think I can remember when we had a first rate football team that remained on top for years in the same was as Man U, Liverpool and Leeds have at various times?
My personal opinion is that west midland people do not have enough passion in the same way as Londoners and northerners do; Birmingham City dropped out of the Premiership and its support faded away.
Birmingham was the manufacturing power-house of the world. It is no longer that and Brummies have the identity of second rate and failure. We used to make cars,, but we don't any more. We used to be the city of a thousand trades and now we the city of a thousand reminders in the science museum.
I speak generally and obviously there are exceptionns, but it is about time that our authorities got serious about our civic motto "FORWARD" in the same way that Joseph Chamberalain did. And it is about time that Brummies supported bold plans. We have one iconic building, that is iconic to the nation not just to us as with the Rotunda, and that is Selfridges. Vox pop interviews recorded "...oh it looks like a jelly mould" ".... it ay got no winders"!
I rest my case.