Category Archives: Across the pond

Brum City Council in England plugs wedding fair in our Magic City

Posted on March 17, 2014 | Leave a comment

thedistance

The City Council for England’s second largest city has done it again; they’ve confused the Magic City with the same name from across the pond with itself. This time, the official website for the city council of the British city shared information for the upcoming 1st Birmingham NotWedding as an event. This is despite the fact it will take place in our Birmingham’s Southside. The folks at NPR decided to do a news brief on the latest error last Friday. The confusion had already received attention from New York’s Daily News and UPI last Wednesday.

The last time we saw an online incident of confusion involving the British city of Birmingham and our own, it was during the summer of 2008 (and there was an earlier incident that January). It’s not like we haven’t seen the incident take place here either, as evidenced by this Birmingham Post article including an interview with yours truly. The end of the account filed by The Mirror on March 11 points out other recent gaffes associated with Brum. Mike Smith at The Birmingham News shares a more recent case of confusion involving citizens and plane tickets.

Maybe they should take a look at the one-off travel blog comparison between the two cities posted in 2011 on Tumblr (or the infographic that made its debut back in mid-2012.

 

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The snowfall across the pond

Posted on January 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

Measuring the Depth. RTPeat/FlickrAs we wait for the pending snow event arrive in Central Alabama, we figured it would be a good idea to take a look across the Atlantic at what residents in the United Kingdom and Ireland are going through.

Our friends at the Birmingham Post have two photo galleries (check out their Iron Man in the second link) and a live blog with updates from around the region. The photo accompanying this piece was taken about earlier today in Arborfield. An American in Ireland decided fill his readers in on the similarities between how prepared Dublin and Birmingham are to handle any accumulation.

All we ask is that you take care of yourselves out there tomorrow.

Photo: Measuring the Depth. RTPeat/Flickr.

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Across the pond: The follow-up, Part 2

Posted on August 14, 2008 | 2 comments

We were going to do a follow-up about the fallout from our city’s skyline being used in a mailing about recycling efforts to more than 700,000… in the UK. Instead, André (that’s me) was interviewed for a story that was published in The Birmingham Post early this morning (their time) about a similar incident that happened over here last year. The Associated Press ran their own account of the story as well, interviewing our Chamber’s very own Melanie Davis.

The Birmingham Mail even got into the act with their take on the situation.

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The latest Brum photo debacle

Posted on August 12, 2008 | 1 comment

Seems like the Tory MEPs and the City Council in Birmingham, England don’t talk to each other that often. The Birmingham Post’s Joanna Geary shared an abbreviated version of the council’s debacle on the newspaper’s news blog earlier today. An image of our skyline was included on a recycling brochure that went out to more than 360,000 households in the English metropolis. Yes, we’re expecting jokes to appear in the comments.

Back in January members of the conservative party in England’s Second City decided to include a photo of the Birmingham skyline on their website… if you don’t remember what happened, check out our post from back then (which includes a screen capture of the image in question). It remained up for several days, or at least a week, based on what we learned for our follow-up post. One of the results was an interesting comparison of the two cities by The Sun.

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Across the pond: Big screen controversy

Posted on April 21, 2008 | Leave a comment

The Big Screen in Victoria Square - queen verena/Flickr

A view of “The Big Screen” in Victoria Square, Birmingham. queen verna/Flickr.

A 27-foot wide structure labeled as an important part of Birmingham, England’s progression towards being forward-thinking (in the words of their City Council) is still not on several months after the project was first approved after being turned off. The picture above was taken last February when it was operational.

Now, according to the article on The Birmingham Post’s website, this project has been stalled for months. The hope was for all of the screens being installed to be operational in time for the Beijing Olympics. It could be a great way to see if the network could work for when London hosts the Games in 2012.

So what are the issues? There are a plenty… as well as opinions about whether it should be there or not.

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Across the pond: WordCamp Birmingham… overseas

Posted on April 18, 2008 | Leave a comment

WordCamp UK logoThe WordCamp announced earlier today as part of SxDS will not be the only one held in a city named Birmingham this year. As we begin a daily check-in with our sister city across the pond, we take note that they also announced plans for a WordCamp today.

Theirs is currently scheduled to take place on July 19 & 20. They currently have a wiki and a subdomain set up on WordCamp.org to help with planning.

FYI – There’s also one coming up in France starting on May 3…

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