Birmingham in the Aus news...is it as bad as reported?

[John Gryphon]

The UK's second-biggest city has been plunged into debt and darkness

Birmingham was once a powerhouse industrial metropolis, but now the UK's second city is a shell of its former self as rubbish lines the streets, the lights stay off and children grow up below the poverty line.

www.abc.net.au

 

[B&W FOX]

That's what labour councils are good at.
Spending money they don't have

 

[John Gryphon]

That's what labour councils are good at.
Spending money they don't have

without exactly knowing I would venture that the other ****s be no better

 

[enfieldspares]

Once upon a time Made in Birmingham was, well, marked on many many things. Webley, BSA, Greener, Midland Gun alone of the "volume" gunmakers. It was a city famous for "metal bashing" but pretty much all that has gone as far as volume production of guns. And with it not only the business rates that these employers paid but the money that recycled into the local economy that then supported other businesses.

But Birmingham is now a city of closed down public houses for example. In other trades Cadbury chocolate is made in Poland, HP sauce made in the Netherlands, and the Birmingham motor industry at Longbridge has long gone...victim of inept management and militant trade unions. So the city's revenue has declined but also the city has wasted money on grand projects such as the Commonwealth Games.

However JG the biggest inflicted wound on Birmingham's finances was self-inflicted. It that which has proved the fatal blow. It avoided paying equal pay for equal work, kept upping the ante and taking it to the next level of law (rather than settle) until inevitably in the top tier it yet again lost that case and it found itself with a bill for £1 billion (!) see below:

Birmingham City Council’s discriminatory pay practices are indicative of widespread problems - HR Magazine

The fundamentally simple idea of paying women and men equally for doing equal work should be hard-wired into every employer; not just private companies, but als

www.hrmagazine.co.uk

The fall of Birmingham City Council and the rise of equal pay claims

On 6 September 2023, Birmingham City Council became the seventh council in the last three years to declare itself in a state of “effective bankruptcy”. The Council issued a s114 notice which confirmed that it does not have enough resources to meet its financial liability relating to equal pay...

www.farrer.co.uk

 

[tozzybum]

Schitt is schitt John in a blue or red tie still wouldn't trust them to open a door.

 

[John Gryphon]

I had Birmingham Rollers as a kid.

 

[tozzybum]

I had wind but don't boast about it John

 

[enfieldspares]

The seed was that to settle a refuse workers dispute (mainly male employees) they paid some sort of bonus or extra rate or whatever. This wasn't paid to school dinner washing-up food bin emptying ladies, office lavatory cleaners, old folk care home bottom wipers and the like (mainly female employees) so was held, as far as I understand the issue, to have been discriminatory against female employees of the council in similar "blue collar" manual hourly paid roles. The women went to law saying that whilst they didn't tote refuse bins that their work was broadly the same so they should also have been given the same bonus or extra rate that the refuse workers were awarded. That the raise should have been across the whole workforce of those, male or female, on the same pay point for the same (manual and mainly physical unskilled in "dirty" jobs) hard work.

 

[pob]

The seed was that to settle a refuse workers dispute (mainly male employees) they paid some sort of bonus or extra rate or whatever. This wasn't paid to school dinner washing-up food bin emptying ladies, office lavatory cleaners, old folk care home bottom wipers and the like (mainly female employees) so was held, as far as I understand the issue, to have been discriminatory against female employees of the council in similar "blue collar" manual hourly paid roles. The women went to law saying that whilst they didn't tote refuse bins that their work was broadly the same so they should also have been given the same bonus or extra rate that the refuse workers were awarded. That the raise should have been across the whole workforce of those, male or female, on the same pay point for the same (manual and mainly physical unskilled in "dirty" jobs) hard work.

This exactly. Settling the historical issue of unfair pay for predominantly female staff (pushed by the GMB union) cost Birmingham a reported £760m - £1.1 billion.
It's hard to argue that, in hindsight, there wasn't unfairness in pay to these women, but look what it's done to the vulnerable people of Birmingham now as services are cut. How many jobs and livelihoods have been lost? How many young people have lost the support that they need?
I believe that those underpaid at the time weren't aware that they were being given a poorer deal and accepted their jobs on the terms offered.
It's a sobering warning to those pushing a reparations agenda, I think. Correcting the sins of the past demonstrably hurts those in the present.
The GMB should be ashamed, in my opinion, including for encouraging the industrial disputes which precipitated the bonuses in the first place. They clearly didn't think about those women back then, did they?
I can see lots of evidence of Tory underfunding of local authorities and also Labour council mismanagement, but this to me has another more dangerous root-cause.

 

[JockStalk]

You’d have to wonder why abc are reporting on the other side of the world. Maybe a distraction from domestic challenges….

 

[Jura]

Once upon a time Made in Birmingham was, well, marked on many many things. Webley, BSA, Greener, Midland Gun alone of the "volume" gunmakers. It was a city famous for "metal bashing" but pretty much all that has gone as far as volume production of guns. And with it not only the business rates that these employers paid but the money that recycled into the local economy that then supported other businesses.

But Birmingham is now a city of closed down public houses for example. In other trades Cadbury chocolate is made in Poland, HP sauce made in the Netherlands, and the Birmingham motor industry at Longbridge has long gone...victim of inept management and militant trade unions. So the city's revenue has declined but also the city has wasted money on grand projects such as the Commonwealth Games.

However JG the biggest inflicted wound on Birmingham's finances was self-inflicted. It that which has proved the fatal blow. It avoided paying equal pay for equal work, kept upping the ante and taking it to the next level of law (rather than settle) until inevitably in the top tier it yet again lost that case and it found itself with a bill for £1 billion (!) see below:

Birmingham City Council’s discriminatory pay practices are indicative of widespread problems - HR Magazine

The fundamentally simple idea of paying women and men equally for doing equal work should be hard-wired into every employer; not just private companies, but als

www.hrmagazine.co.uk

The fall of Birmingham City Council and the rise of equal pay claims

On 6 September 2023, Birmingham City Council became the seventh council in the last three years to declare itself in a state of “effective bankruptcy”. The Council issued a s114 notice which confirmed that it does not have enough resources to meet its financial liability relating to equal pay...

www.farrer.co.uk

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Aye this used to be Gunsmith House in Price Street, where I used to go for rifle stocking, gun case making, St Ledger colour case harding, all gone and turned into yuppie flats. Mainly because the Birmingham City Council disapprove of firearms. The do however approve of the “gay quarter”

 

[VSS]

I had Birmingham Rollers as a kid.

Pigeons?

 

[enfieldspares]

Property for sale in Birmingham, West Midlands | Savills

Search our selection of properties for sale in Birmingham. Our ever-changing portfolio of properties brings you closer to your ideal home in one of the UK's leading cities with its city centre and surrounding suburbs becoming more and more popular for home buyers. We are always prepared to...

search.savills.com

Aye this used to be Gunsmith House in Price Street, where I used to go for rifle stocking, gun case making, St Ledger colour case harding, all gone and turned into yuppie flats. Mainly because the Birmingham City Council disapprove of firearms. The do however approve of the “gay quarter”

Thank you for that. I did wonder how it was looking now.

 

[Ratel]

Birmingham was where my mother used to take me when shopping, Coventry was nearer but the train station was further from the shops. There were barrow boys in the bullring and fish and fruit markets. My father a toolmaker cycled the 12 miles to his work on the outskirts.
Now it is a frightening place and not being racist but many areas it's difficult to see any of the indigenous species. According to a friend who lives on the edge his words to me were "Don't ever go in there at night". He tells me that he feels threatened in the daytime if he goes there to shop in the markets, where most of the meat is Halal. I went to a grammar school there in the middle of a council estate, all Brummy working folk. The school is now one that was involved in the radicalisation of youngsters and the whole area has changed completely. The city seems to be vying with Riyadh for the most mosques. Not the good place to go now as it once was, when I wandered down Steel house lane looking in the windows of C.Smith, Lincoln Jeffries and others.
My one son had a share in a pub in the centre but wisely gave it up after three years of problems, even though they had some good doormen.

 

[John Gryphon]

Pigeons?

Yes and some tumblers, both ornamental and useless breeds lol.

 

[enfieldspares]

My father a toolmaker....

Hmm. Now where have I heard that said recently?

 

[tim@tcs]

Oh about twenty years ago I was running a night shift at Hams Hall and our testing team needed to go to Saltley. I was called at two in the morning for directions from the motorway off ramp. It went like this:
Keep going until you pass a big roundabout with a metal gate in the middle. After that first right and first left.
He asked how will I know if I’m at the right roundabout?
I asked, is everyone walking round in white pyjamas?
Yes. You’re there!

I worked nearby a few years ago and Saltley had become a cross between East Pakistan and Eastern Europe!
The none white residents complained about the none brown ones!
Nothing changes

 

[Donkey Basher]

Where’s Tommy Shelby when you need him.

 

[Lloyd90]

The UK's second-biggest city has been plunged into debt and darkness

Birmingham was once a powerhouse industrial metropolis, but now the UK's second city is a shell of its former self as rubbish lines the streets, the lights stay off and children grow up below the poverty line.

www.abc.net.au

On the one hand, I feel a bit bad for that kid that no longer gets the transport to school.

On the other hand, I’d bet money that the family are claiming a motability car for him… so perhaps they should be driving him to school themselves, just like lots of other parents do?

 

[John Gryphon]

so perhaps they should be driving him to school themselves

we walked/rode bikes or if lucky caught the bus