icouldtelltheworld

3 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Even the South has plenty of very deprived towns. Places like the Isle of Sheppey in Kent or Plymouth in Devon.

In England, at least, the Leave vote in the Brexit referendum is a pretty good proxy for it.

When the Indices of Deprivation gets published every four years or so, coastal areas around the south east and south west of England always feature heavily in the lists of the most deprived neighbourhoods/local authorities.

Coastal towns are interesting because in the UK urban poverty tends to look very different from rural poverty, but coastal towns and cities generally have features of both

16 hours ago, VillaChris said:

 

Edit - quoted wrong post

1 hour ago, Villaphan04 said:

I would be very underwhelmed if we signed Gordon for 45m tbh

Especially if we signed him in Jan when looking to push on and secure a CL place 

Can anyone give me a clue as go what Anthony Gordon has done to be worth £40m?

Has a lot of similarities with Howe's past transfer mistakes tbh

20 hours ago, Don_Simon said:

On a scale of 1-10. One being there's absolutely no chance he's at Villa in September of this year, requesting a transfer in a fit of rage because Emery gave him a dirty look six years ago, and 10 being he's signed a new 100 year contract and we've named the new North Stand the Martinez Monument, where do you think we stand?

I'm am eight. I'm sure he'll be here still, but I'm very slightly concerned. 

I look at it the same way as I did with Jack when we got promoted. Think he's here for a few more seasons but will likely move on in a couple of years if the club is unable to match his ambitions.

Do think Emi is genuinely grateful to the club and feels a sense of loyalty as a result

1 hour ago, Marka Ragnos said:

That Detroit comparison does make sense in some ways, for sure, with carbuilding, but Detroit, well, it's a different planet, sadly. It has roughly half the number of people as Brum -- and more than 20 times the number of murders. It's far more traumatised by neglect, economic decline and stunning, weird depopulation. It has a Mad Max feel, literally a wasteland in places with lots of abandoned housing, crumbling buildings. It's also far less diverse, overall, compared to Birmingham.

Yeah any comparison between UK and US cities/regions is obviously going to be limited by the sheer depth and scale of contextual differences between the two countries.

It's all relative though - homicide rates are obviously much lower on the whole over here. However, at 24.5 incidents per 100,000 people, the West Midlands police force area has comfortably the highest rate of gun crime per capita of anywhere across England + Wales

Data from the England and Wales crime survey here in case it is of any interest. 

Don't blame me, I voted Lee-Kodos In

2 hours ago, Marka Ragnos said:

Very interesting. I will definitely read it.

Fascinating. That reminds me of some large American cities, the giant city councils that can’t seem to get anything done. I think Los Angeles is a good example of that, according to my relatives who live there.

I've not been to America but I've heard that you basically need to drive to get anywhere in LA. That's true of Birmingham as well, and a lot of the current work going on in the city that people are talking about in this thread is geared towards making the place easier to navigate without needing to drive.

I'm sure you are already aware, but we tend to get compared to Detroit because of the importance of the car industry here and its decline over time

I am utterly convinced that everyone is just pretending to like The Smiths as part of some inside joke I'm not wise to

6 hours ago, Marka Ragnos said:

Well, there's that, yes, can't disagree one bit. But have cities such as Manchester or Leeds received more investment from central government and/or enjoyed better local governance? Honestly haven't the faintest idea of that, would be interested in learning.

Greater Manchester has had devolved powers for 5 years longer than the West Mids which probably makes a difference. The GM elected mayor is a once quite prominent politician who might have once fancied himself a future PM and is enjoying a fairly successful comeback special. WM current (and only) elected mayor is a guy who made his money in retail.

I would say they probably have more cohesive local governance up there in general as most of the region would generally vote Labour, whereas the West Mids has traditionally had a few more Tory voters than you might expect for a large English conurbation, and so possibly a bit harder here to get things done and work collectively. I've never lived in Manchester though so that might be bollocks.

Yorkshire has a longstanding and fairly unique identity and Leeds perhaps benefits a bit for being its biggest city. Tbh though I've always thought Leeds is the most similar city to Brum, my sister lives just outside Leeds and travelling from the city out to the smaller industrial towns of West Yorkshire feels a lot like going from Brum to Walsall or Dudley.

Birmingham is also a ridiculously large city council. It's by far the largest local authority in the UK and I believe in the whole of Europe. Whereas London has lots of different boroughs, the whole of Birmingham comes under one very lumbersome and inefficient council, which has to deal with lots of the issues that arise from having high rates of poverty. By comparison, even what most people would consider to be part of Liverpool, a city with a population a third the size, is split into different council areas.

On 24/01/2023 at 23:06, villa4europe said:

I thought there used to be a website that counted how many people were shot in Chicago each weekend and that the number is insane

ABC has Chicago down as 30 shootings this weekend, 7 fatal, weekend before was 26 and 5, new years was 27 and 7, its completely normal and no one cares

New York Times reporting there's been 39 mass shootings with 69 dead already this year

They are bat shit crazy... There are literally countries at war that have less people killed by guns

There was a study recently which proved that US soldiers deployed to Afghanistan were less likely to be killed than men in certain areas of some American cities

Quote

The researchers found that compared to the risk of combat death faced by US soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan, the more dangerous of the two wars, young men living in the most violent zip code of Chicago (2,585 individuals) had a 3.23 times higher average risk of firearm-related homicide, and those in Philadelphia (2,448 people) faced a 1.9 times higher average risk of firearm-related homicide. Singling out the elevated dangers faced by the US Army combat brigade in Iraq, the young men studied in Chicago still faced notably greater risks, and the ones faced in Philadelphia were comparable

Link 

1 hour ago, ender4 said:

He’s been decent for a back-up defender who we got for free. Probably better than Hause who we paid a few million for. 

Thing is Chambers has probably cost as much in wages in his one year with us than Hause has since he signed in the Championship 

16 minutes ago, Marka Ragnos said:

Love that idea so much, as a half-American -- the heard of England, Mericia, etc. I think I just meant Greater Brum and a bit of the areas around it? But I don't know how it could best gain a distinct identity most easily.  For me, the real substance of Birmingham is its industrial heritage but I don't know how well that works in 2022 as a marketing asset.

It doesn't 

5 minutes ago, Rolta said:

That home shirt was a weird shouldered abomination. It's literally the worst shirt since we had a sponsor that looked like the word 'COWS'. Even then that wasn't the shirt's fault. 

Christ mate, must be painful being this wrong

Even the COWS shirt was better than this season's offering, which reminds me of the weird Under Armour purple abomination from our time in the Championship.

Anyway, massively off topic. Calum Chambers, eh? Remember when Arsene Wenger spent like £20m on him as a teenager with hardly any first team experience, as if he would solve Arsenal's defensive issues? Whatever happened to that Chambers lad anyway?

4 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Fabio silva has cancelled his loan to anderlecht and gone to PSV, good player in there wolves just used him too much too young

 

Now he's chained to the cooker making currant buns for tea

1 hour ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Won’t say I’ll lose too much sleep if he goes. But despite falling out of favour and his form not being too hot, my abiding memories of him will always be these two moments, which were pretty much the only highlights of the second half of last season.

 

Shout out for that home shirt as well, easily the best we've had since Luke's offering in the promotion season

34 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

Here's Hayek talking about inflation and trade unions:

 

Christ he really did talk some shite didn't he.

Hard pressed to think of anyone who's played as large a part in our current societal mess, given his role in influencing the politicians who have implemented his ideas as economic orthodoxy

3 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I agree. 

Will Internet shopping kill it eventually. 

I'd love to see Brum with lots more smaller independent shops.  

Agree 

Final point: I think part of the issue for Villa as a club might be that Brum (and the wider region) has never really been quite as mad of a football city as Liverpool, Manchester or Newcastle. Outside of the main conurbation, there arent any major professional clubs in the surrounding counties, some of which seem to be bigger on rugby and/or cricket.

Might be changing though, lots of very talented youngsters seem to be coming from here of late, whereas we've definitely lagged behind other cities in that regard previously

1 hour ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Market itself to whom?  

A place to site businesses?  A place to visit?  A place to hold conferences?  A place to shop?  A place to live?  

West Mids try to do all of this. I wonder if it needs to narrow down its marketing into a few key areas. 

Blackpool is for stag parties.   Bath is for day trips.  Lake District is for scenery.  Cornwall is for summer holidays and expensive seaside homes for the rich.   Milton Keynes is for businesses.   Middlesborough is to make you realise there are people worse off than you.  Etc.  

Birmingham has definitely gone all in on retail. Mate of mine was at some event with leaders from the council a few years ago, who were keen to point out that purely in terms of how much money is spent here, Birmingham remains comfortably the second biggest UK city over Manchester.

Whether betting on retail turns out to be a smart choice in the long term remains to be seen

One consequence of the economic model we've pursued over the past few decades is that pretty much all of our major cities are doing really well. That's not to say Birmingham doesn't have issues, we have the highest child poverty in the country, but in purely economic terms the city does pretty well for itself and is clearly on the up.

I think the move towards home working will benefit Brum as a city that's fairly close to London, and lots of big businesses seem to be moving their headquarters here. Also a fair bit of investment into infrastructure with the metro and old train lines being reopened etc. Brummies tend to be a bit more understated than Londoners and Mancs, o the city probably doesn't shout about itself as loudly as it could.

However, the wider West Midlands region massively needs investment and regeneration. You compare Walsall or Wolverhampton centres with Brum and its almost like another world these days. Same is true across the country though - replace Birmigham and Walsall with Manchester and Rochdale or Newcastle and Gateshead, almost like-for-like comparisons.

Agree that rebranding the West Mids conurbation as Greater Birmingham would probably help, but black country and Coventry folk would never accept that, which is fair enough really

Voted yes by accident because the poll question is literally the inverse of the thread title.

Maybe YOU need to do better @Marka Ragnos

6 hours ago, SuperTed said:

God Bran it Xela! 

Cant stand it when VT descends into mindless puns.

There's a couple of posters who really stand out as cereal offenders

Pepe Reina just for his confused celebrations after we stayed up on the last day. And his nonchalant jog back to goal after going up for a corner, while the other team were on the counter attack. Legend.

41 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I think it would only be worth it if your life was so bad you had nothing to lose. 

Yes