Answer Me This! Podcast

I have four facts about Birmingham. All of them are as useless as the next.

1) Birmingham has the largest City Council in Europe. Fact. (This isn’t a good thing, see fact 3.)

2) Birmingham has the longest single bus route in Europe. The Number 11 Bus route is something like 26 miles long. I don’t know exactly, and I don’t have time to Google it.

3) In Birmingham no buildings compliment each other. Take the new Central Library, it’s a complete eyesore. It’s also very different to the rep theatre next door to it, and different again to many of the buildings on Broad Street and the surrounding areas. This is due to the size of the council and their planning department, so it’s often the case building plans are not dealt with by the same people, so a consistent design isn’t kept to.

4) The old Central Library in Birmingham, that the new one replaced, has had many people try to save it from demolition. For a time, the City Council refused point blank every request, until they were asked. It turns out that the whole place is subsiding. And when you see the size and complexity of the building, it’s apparent that it’d cost a shed load of money to save.

I do have, however, one interesting fact about Birmingham: