GLOBACORP 1 : BIRMINGHAM CITY O

A couple of years back I took a taxi ride in Birmingham; the driver was an Asian Brummy, fiercely proud of his city's retail and leisure facilities.

They is even 'avin' a Bentleys, man, for Bentley cars, know what I'm saying, Bentleys in Brummagem, what a great place, I come from Pakistan but Birmingham is me 'ome. He meant it, too, there are lots like him, more than we often think.

He was a lovely guy and stuck in an expensive traffic jam we or rather I got talking. I told him about how, once, this place was the Workshop of the World, about how his city was once a hotbed of trades and skills, of heavy and light industry of electronics of tyres, of beers and ketchups, of clocks and jewellery, of guns and motorcycles, of how the surrounding towns and cities had shared this idustrial bonanza, chains and needles and springs, nuts and bolts, gadgets and gizmos, handles and knobs and saddles and cars, cars, cars and I told him of George Cadbury, a teetotal Quaker industrialist, shocked at the squalor and consequent inebriation of his workers' inner-city living conditions, built a model village, in which no home might occupy more than a quarter of its plot and so its inhabitants had room to garden, how the houses were light and airy, the streets wide and the whole place, in perpetuity, was to be devoid of licensed premises. If I lived in a two-up and down slum in Small Heath and went home to cramped-up, dirty, screaming children, I'd be on the gin, too, said George, at the turn of the nineteenth century and he built the Bournville Village Trust, for his workers, and in the factory grounds he laid out playing fields and bowling greens and down the road he built a lido with diving boards: Cadburys flower beds, laid by a large team of Cadbury gardeners, beautified the surrounding areas, many were visible from the Bournville/Cross City line.

Other industrialists from all over the world visited Bournville and copied it, Lever built Port Sunlight and local authorities encouraged the development of Garden Cities across the UK.

The Bournville Village Trust still exists today, flanked by less salubrious Birmingham suburbs, Cotteridge, Selly Oak and to the South West the open prison that is Northfield. Today, oddly, many of the Trust's houses are occupied not by fourth or fifth generation Cadburys workers but by precious American academics and media luvvies but overall it offers a way of living - clean, healthy, spacious and uplifting - which generations of professional planners have failed to replicate.

And then there's the work, of course, the employment that so many have taken for granted, one man's sweet tooth another man's honest day's work.

Yeah, man, CadburyWorld, I love it, my kids love it. An' how comes, anyway, that you, down from Scotland, knows so much about Birmingham? A long story, my man, pity the poor immigrant, fresh from Belfast, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish, a popular 1950s Birmingham street sign. Wow, you is kiddin', innit, really? No, Man, really. But never mind that, get yourself down the Art Gallery, look at the Pre-Raphaelites. what's the damage?

And many of Ahmed's generation will be mystified at the fuss over Cadburys, what-the-fuck, the city still has Selfridges and Centenary Square, innit, it's canal basin lined with high-security whores' and gangsters' apartments. And then there's the Bull Ring shopping and New Street shopping and just down the road is Merry Hill Shopping. Ahmed's German-owned Bentleys are retailed close to what was Fort Dunlop but is now another retail mall, Heartlands Shop Til You Drop or some such.

In the commons this afternoon a gang of the oiliest wankers I have ever seen, the Select Committee on Business, indulged in an orgy of mutual admiration with His Grace, The Lord Mandelstein, born, as he modestly says, to govern.
Just a poor gay blackmailer, me;
can't even fill-in a mortgage form.

Nothing he could do about the Kraft takeover - and just as well considering the cack-handedness over Rover, of his predecessor, the blundering Blairite, Byers. Not my job, he oozed, although we would prefer it if companies and shareholders took a longer view. But in every other respect, as everybody knows, I am wonderful. Did I mention that a finger of fudge is just enough..?

Mandelstein didn't say that NewLabour was still intensely relaxed about people being filthy rich but we can judge that one for ourselves.

South West Birmingham recently lost The Ostin - Austin, Morris, BMC, BLMC, Leyland and fuck knows how many other names - as well as all the suppliers of that once-mighty manufacturer. Cadburys is, really, small beer in comparison and we shouldn't cry into our Milk Tray, except that if all the traditional industries and employers fall victim - as most of them have - just what on Earth will people do ?