Tag Archives: UK

Learn more about the Other Birmingham

Posted on January 3, 2011 | 3 comments

A couple of years ago there were a couple of incidents involving folks from Birmingham, AL and the city we’re named after, Birmingham, UK, confusing the skylines of the two cities separated by the Atlantic Ocean.

There’s an online resource that should help keep that from happening again.

The Other Birmingham was created by Fiona Cullinan, who originally created the piece for her travel journalism blog as a one-off. She has since maintained the site, enabling her to accept additional submissions about similarities between the two cities as well as suggestions about what else should be covered. There’s been a lot looked at already, including that growing list of similarities…

By the way, there are several cities named Birmingham in the United States. They’re considerably smaller, like Birmingham, MO (population 214 according to the 2000 Census) and Birmingham, MI (pop. 19,291) to not even in existence anymore (e.g., Birmingham, KY).

3 Comments

Posted in Travelogue

Tagged AL, B'ham, Birmingham, blog, brum, cities, comparison, England, Fiona Cullinan, match, Online, similar, The Other Birmingham, travel, Tumblr, UK, urban

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.

2 Comments

Posted in Across the pond

Tagged accounts, Across the pond, Alabama, Birmingham, error, leaflets, News, photo, story, UK

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.

1 Comment

Posted in Across the pond

Tagged AL, Alabama, Birmingham, Birmingham Post, blog, England, Joanna Geary, misuse, photo, UK

Across the pond: Big screen controversy

Posted on April 21, 2008 | Leave a comment

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.

Across the pond: WordCamp Birmingham… overseas

Posted on April 18, 2008 | Leave a comment

WordCamp UK logo The 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…