Since John's election in 2005 all of the MPs in Birmingham have agreed to work together in the interests of the city (from time to time). There are monthly meetings of all 10 Birmingham MPs. There are a number of issues which have involved all party Birmingham Campaigning.
- New Street Station - the station is close to its limit as to passenger numbers
* New Street Station is to be redeveloped * - HP Sauce - sadly Heinz have taken Houses of Parliament Sauce manufacturing to Holland
- Loan Shark action - MPs are lobbying the government to keep funding action against loan sharks.
Birmingham - clearly the best city to live in
Notwithstanding the efforts of Pro Birmingham Campaign Sites, Birmingham has not really got the press it deserves.
Recent surveys have shown that:
"A recent crime survey ranks Birmingham sixth lowest for crime out of 55 cities. This makes Birmingham safer than Nottingham, Leeds, Manchester, Cardiff, Newcastle, Liverpool and London among others. The results of the survey show that Birmingham is well below the national average in six out of seven key areas.""Despite popular belief that gun crime is an issue in Birmingham, the survey shows that the ratio of gun crime offences to population is three times higher in the more traditional cities of Oxford and Cambridge."
Quotations from West Midlands Police website.
The link is to a Glasgow Evening Times story about how Glasgow came second to Birmingham. Somerfield's original press release is HereQuote: The 10 most serviced cities and towns in the UK (from a sample of the 42 largest)
- Birmingham
- Glasgow
- Manchester
- Swansea
- Liverpool
- Sheffield
- Leeds
- Northampton
- Southampton
- Edinburgh
The point about the above two stories is that they are calculated "per capita". Normally, for example, Birmingham issues more parking tickets than any other local authority simply because it is the largest city other than London (which is divided into a number of warring balkan republics known as London Boroughs). To compare cities, therefore, the calculations need to be done on a per capita basis.
When comparing sizes of Cities there are confusions that result from the fact that Cities such as Leeds (the third English local authority, but 4th English city) have local authorities (Leeds MDC) which include quite a bit of the surrounding area. Leeds MDC, for example, has a population of about 750,000 whereas the City itself is more like 440,000.The relative populations of cities are:
1. London 7,172,091 2. Birmingham 970,892 3. Glasgow 629,501 4. Liverpool 469,017 5. Leeds 443,247 6. Sheffield 439,866 7. Edinburgh 430,082 8. Bristol 420,556 9. Manchester 394,269 10. Leicester 330,574 11. Coventry 303,475 12. Kingston upon Hull 301,416 13. Bradford 293,717 14. Cardiff 292,150 15. Belfast 277,391 16. Stoke-on-Trent 259,353 17. Wolverhampton 251,462 Information Sourced from: www.citypopulation.de/UK.html
Best City For a New HeadquartersAccording to the UK Cities Monitor 2006 Birmingham is the best city for a new HQ. With a score of 1.01 it is well in front of Manchester (0.89), London (0.86), Leeds (0.74) etc etc. (source Cushman and Wakefield)
Also from the same report "London and Birmingham remain the best known cities."
Second Best City to locate a business in todayLondon (0.91), Birmingham (0.65), Manchester (0.59).
Generally the city does well in this report apart from as the best city for a new call centre where Birmingham is 7th.
