'Savage cuts'
Plus, 20 years of back-to-backs
Dear Patchers — Welcome to your Thursday briefing.
Financial strife tops our briefing today, with news that Birmingham City Council must find further savings of £79m. It comes on top of the hundreds of millions already cut from budgets, putting strain on services, the most vulnerable, and families around the city.
Elsewhere — and hopefully this will lift your spirits somewhat — we have notes on a campaign to help the homeless this summer. Plus, local performer behind bars and a much lighter link to a South Birmingham whodunnit.
Take care, Dan.
Brum in Brief
💷Council savings target soars: Birmingham City Council, already struggling with finances, has announced it needs to make further savings of £79m. This comes on top of the £300m cuts that are being pushed through after the council effectively declared itself bankrupt. New savings will be presented in October before final cabinet approval, said to be sparked by a rise in vulnerable children's spending and inflationary pressures among other factors. Liberal Democrat councillor Roger Harmer said: “If accepted, these costs would lead to far more savage cuts required in other council services to balance the budget.” Further details on council finances.
🏘️20 years of Back to Backs: Birmingham Back to Backs is celebrating twenty years of being open as a visitor attraction. The museum showcases the houses, built for the working classes, built across the city as the population exploded in the 19th century. While most of the houses were demolished, four houses in Birmingham were restored as part of a project led by the Birmingham Conservation Trust and the site is Grade II listed. Full story with comments on living conditions here.
😔Wish I wasn’t here: While the wintry and Christmassy months often spark many into a giving and charitable mood, in summer the most vulnerable in society can be forgotten. It’s this oversight that SIFA Fireside, the Birmingham support service for those experiencing homelessness, and One Black Bear, a local creative agency, are hoping to tackle with their Wish I wasn’t Here campaign. Here, homeless individuals created postcards to highlight their plight during the summer months, which you can learn more about here. As Melissa Roche, Head of Fundraising, Volunteering and Communications at SIFA Fireside said: [It] highlights the reality of homelessness in Birmingham that support is needed all year round, even during the summer.”
⚖️Birmingham rapper behind bars: A Birmingham rapper, Remtrex (real name, Demehl Thomas), is back behind bars after an investigation into the supply of drugs between Birmingham and Huddersfield. Remtrex has performed BBC 1Xtra and Wireless Festivals, has recorded with the nationally renowned Brum rapper Jaykae and has three million hits on YouTube. However, he returns to prison — previously serving a sentence for aggravated burglary — after a conviction at Birmingham Crown Court on 18 July. All the details.
🎭My Mother’s Funeral: A play about class, death and love. For two nights only, Kelly Jones is putting on a play about how expensive funerals are, what happens if you can’t afford to die, and how this play is funding the literal burial of her deceased mother. It’s at Coventry’s The Belgrade (where the programming is forever brilliant) and is only £12. More here.
🕯️Murder on the lawn: For those who like interactive mystery and whodunnits, on 3 and 4 August Winterbourne Gardens is hosting a 1920s Murder Mystery. Will it be the Butler or the impoverished Lady of the Manor? Is the weapon of choice the candlestick or a feather duster? Where will the body be hidden? Find out more and book here.
On My Mother’s Funeral — I’ve long maintained that the funeral / burial industry is a shyster industry mostly run by shysters verging on gangsterism.
If you want (your deceased relative) to be buried with full military honours and a giant Weeping Angel painted in luminous paint erected over the grave to mark their life and death, then absolutely you should have to pay handsomely for it.
But if you’re just an ordinary person of modest means wanting just a modest marking of your death, then nobody should be forced to choose between paying for that and paying for food and a holiday that year.
I’ve long maintained that since The State mandates certain minimum legal requirements for the disposal of dead bodies, then The State should cover that part of the cost of meeting those minimum requirements. Both my parents were clear about how they wanted to be dealt with — ‘just dump my body at the back door of the crem and do what you want with the ashes’ was their morbid joke whilst alive, which translated to unattended cremations where their bodies were transported in basic, erm, ‘packaging’ to a specialist crematorium which did that sort of thing; both of those basic cremations cost about £1,200 — fortunately they both had those amounts in their bank accounts at death which The System was able to transfer directly so we didn’t have to worry. Many people aren’t so fortunate.