Posts Tagged ‘ Brummie ’

Say it loud, say it proud: I am a Brummie

Nice rumination on the meaning and importance of 'Brummie'—never 'Brummy' remember. "Like generations of Brummies, I wasn’t born here. My family moved here a week after my sixth birthday. My parents were teachers whose first language, like many incomers, wasn’t English (it was Welsh). My dad would have been about 32 when we came. He died thirty years later having therefore lived far more of his life here than anywhere else. We scattered his ashes on the canal near Witton. He loved this city and was militantly proud of it. For his fiftieth birthday he made us walk around the newly built ICC, marveling, then go on a canal trip"

Brummie of the Year 2008 – Nominations open

Who will follow in the bootsteps of landlord extraordinaire John Tighe, blues hobo Charlie Mitton, dancer-under-the-stars Malik, cricketer Jason Furnell and red panda Babu? Only the people of Birmingham can decide — after the nominations have been assessed by a panel. But nominations are now open and you’re welcome to list any Brummie or Brum resident that has put Birmingham on the map this year. How about “world’s worst boxer” Peter Buckley (although I’m sure he’s better than me)? Or Brummies for Obama leader Adam Smith? Maybe there’s an old dear who’ll be so excited by Kilroy in the Jungle that the orange man of British politics will triumph? Or is this the year that Metal will force it’s denim and leather clad way into the forefront? Wouldn’t it be great if concrete won out and we’ll recognise John Madin architectural genius behind the Central Library? All that we know is that the nominations wil close at 9am Sunday 23rd November and the voting will open the next day. Leave your nominations, with a reason, in the comments — and feel free to discuss amongst yourselves. NOMINATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED

Bad Press, Bad Science (?), Bab

If I was the sort to decide on New Year’s resolutions, then one would have been making a concious effort not to get upset about this sort of thing: Why it may be better not to speak up if you’re a Brummie – BBC NEWS “The study, which matched accents with perceived intelligence, found speaking in a Birmingham accent gives a worse impression than saying nothing at all.” Lazy headlines, lazy articles, easy shots – at least for once it doesn’t seem that it’s just a press release form an insurance company (or similar) – Let’s look at the evidence, or lack thereof: 48 people were involved in the study, do you think 48 is a particularly large number, the sort that might extrapolate well to making generalisations on the population of Britain (60M?) as a whole? No-where that I can find are the methods or the details of the study available – I’ve emailed Dr Lance Workman so I’ll see what happens. I don’t think I’m alone in just being fed up to the back teeth of this coming up every six months or so, in different forms. People do it because the media fall for it every...

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: 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:

Brummie of the Year 2007 – nominations open

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!

It’s that time of next year again, when in a flagrant attempt to pay for all the incidental costs of B:iNS we unleash the Birmingham:It’s Not Shit Calendar on the suspecting public. It is, we’ve seen calendars in the shops. As always it features 13 shots of real Brum, with no spin and only a tiny few adjustments in Photoshop to try and make it look warm in the summer months (well did you try getting pictures of the sun this year?). While it isn’t all pretty, it at least isn’t 12 shots of canalside living. It includes, the beach under Spaghetti Junction, Mr Egg, The Pantomime Horse Grand National and you can see tiny versions of the inside pictures here. We’ve got two versions for sale from Lulu.com, a full height version at £12.99 (cover pictured) and a slightly cheaper folded version at £7.99. Both include all your Bank Holidays, as well as a few special B:iNS chosen dates and anniversaries. (There’s also one in our Cafepress shop might be cheaper with the dollar exchange rate being over 2-1, have a look see what you think. This one doesn’t have special dates, just normal holidays.) It’s a perfect...

Balderdash and Blartin’

After a hectic week rushing round promoting TLAB Day (I’ve just this minute got back from doing Radio Five on a show with Danny Kelly*) can we relax here? Course not. One of the legacies of TLABD, we hope will be an online Brummie dictionary – there were hundreds of phrases added to the TLABD site and it would be such a shame to lose all that work. So we’ve set up a wikipedia-style ‘Brummie dictionary’ for all of the good people of the interweb to contribute to. It’s empty at the moment, although we’ll start to shift the submitted stuff across asap, so if you want to get in first and make sure it’s your definition of ‘crash’ (as in the rocks) that makes it – get over there. In true wiki stylee if you search for something and it isn’t there, you’ll be given the chance to add it yourself. There’s a link to the proper wiktionary help pages on the site should you get stuck. *Fascinating (and possibly untrue) fact from that link, Danny was once briefly married to Hazel O’Connor.

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Posts Tagged ‘ Brummie ’

Say it loud, say it proud: I am a Brummie

Brummie of the Year 2008 – Nominations open

Bad Press, Bad Science (?), Bab

Brummie of the Year 2007 – vote now

Brummie of the Year 2007 – nominations open

Buy 365 days of Brum, get one free

Balderdash and Blartin’

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