June 19th, 2008
12:57 pm by bounder
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Despite the speed of the web, and my anal skim-reading of absolutely everything that mentions Brum, I still end up finding out things from the Evening Mail (or it’s 15 at a time, title only RSS feeds at least). Today I learnt that there are two projects in Brum up for Lottery Funding in one of these dreadful public votes (leading to lottery idol TV show).
Nechells Baths are looking for help with the restoration, the Lottery web-site says £1.6M (but seems to talk in the past tense) while the Mail article talks about two thousand pounds [Edit, as Dave Harte says below, this isn't a vote for funding? I can't make head or any other body part of it]. You can vote just with a click, without registering (think it looks at IP address, so if anyone was to continually reset their router and are on a ISP with dynamic IP addresses…).
There’s a link through to an organisation called the Birmingham Foundation, a charity I’d never come across before, they obviously do a lot of good work but don’t like to talk about it.
(photo by ray_wilkes2003)
April 11th, 2008
5:00 pm by bounder
Catherine O’Flynn won the Newcomer of the Year award we asked you to vote for. The award cermony that will be shown this Sunday on Channel 4 at a quarter to five presented by Richard and Judy.
March 18th, 2008
6:29 pm by bounder
We interrupt usual cynicism about awards to bring you this plea from the lovely Luke at Tindal St Press:
Vote for Catherine O’Flynn as Newcomer of the Year!
Tindal Street Press is very proud that Catherine O’Flynn has been shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards, for her novel What Was Lost. (You may have seen her on Richard and Judy last Friday.)
What Was Lost is a novel growing strongly through word-of-mouth, and so we’re delighted that there is public voting for Newcomer of the Year. It would mean a lot to us if you would log on to the Galaxy British Book Awards website http://www.bookmarketing.co.uk/surveys/awardsvote2008.htm to vote for Catherine O’Flynn (and enter a competition to win £200 of book tokens).
This is a great opportunity to register a vote for a proud and very gifted Brummie!
The Award ceremony, presented by Richard & Judy, will be shown on Channel 4 at 4.45pm on Sunday 13 April.
To that we would add, don’t vote for Clarkson.
January 28th, 2008
1:40 pm by bounder
Vale Mail reports on the criterion for becoming Birmingham’s best bar – in the “pub oscars”, Best Bar None – “Birmingham organisers are setting their entrants an extra task… landlords have to explain, in no more than 250 words, how their establishment contributes to Birmingham’s vision of being ‘a global city with a local heart’.”
What an awful lot of shite, guaranteed to produce all entries with some variation on “welcoming to everyone, beers from around the globe, we watch villa when they’re on sky”.
Applicants will also be assessed on “door and security policies, first aid, how they deal with abusive customers and how they deal with alcohol related crime”, be nice if there was an award for cleaning their pipes too.
January 22nd, 2008
11:44 am by catnip
Having won the Costa first novel award, Catherine O’Flynn’s What was Lost is now in the running for the Costa Book of the Year award. The winner will be announced later today at a posh do in that London.
This morning, BBC Breakfast had a feature on Catherine, who talked about her inspirations which include growing up in Nechells and a fondness for gas towers; and also a chat with her Birmingham-based publisher, Tindal Street Press.
Fingers crossed for Catherine for tonight’s award!
November 1st, 2007
12:00 am by bounder
It’s not every year that you get to vote for your favourite locals, except it is. So here’s who you’ve nominated for the 2007 Brummie of the Year Award:
Pete Ashton - blogging evangelist to the creative community.
Lisa Meyer & Jenny Moore of Capsule - bringing much needed gigs (and cake!) to Brum.
Carl Chinn - larger than life local historian.
Condori : Big Chief Busks With Recorder - on behalf of all our buskers and street entertainers.
Soweto Kinch - Mobo award winner and Town Hall associate artist.
Martin Mullaney - Camcorder Councillor, trying every which way to involve people in local politics.
Catherine O’Flynn - First time novelist who’s wowed the literary world this year.
Richard Pawley - Wants to build a 600 foot tower - and jump off it.
John Tighe of The Spotted Dog - Keeping Digbeth noisy, or so we hope.
The results will appear here:
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.
Voting closed on the 1st of December and the results will be announced soon. No correspondence will be entered into and all that.
Learn more about the nominees, with links: Read the rest of this entry »
September 30th, 2007
1:37 pm by bounder
Okay then, nominations are now open for the 2007 Brummie of the Year award. Last year Jason Furnell narrowly beat Danny Reddington to the top spot, and the year before Babu wiped the floor with all comers.
Just add your suggestions here in the comments to this post and we’ll consider all suggestions. Nominations are open for a month and the vote will start from 1st November.
You can nominate anyone, anyone at all, but the idea is that they’d be someone, from Brum, that has done something worthy in the past year. You’re welcome to discuss each others nominations, but keep it civil.
And so, in the words of the late Ron Pickering, away you go!
August 24th, 2007
5:32 pm by catnip
Friend of BiNS Catherine O’Flynn’s novel “What Was Lost” has made it onto the longlists of two awards: the long-running Man Booker Prize, announced earlier this month and now also the Guardian’s First Book Award, announced today.
The Guardian prize rewards the best new writing from all genres and allows readers’ groups to play a part in deciding the result. This year the groups are based in Waterstone’s stores.
