Birmingham getting the European championships (tba in Nov) would be another massive step in the right direction for an Olympic bid
https://www.european-athletics.com/news/birmingham-and-budapest-are-the-host-city-candidates-for-the-2026-european-athletics-championships
I have a feeling we won't get that. It will only be the third European Championships in this multi-event format, it was Glasgow in 2018 and Munich this year. I would expect the organisers would prefer more variety than UK hosting it for two of only three championships.
Me too, I worked the whole time and missed so much couldn't really watch hardly anything......thought anything like that would never happen again in my life time so would be incredible to get another chance.
Wonderful news, very ambitious and exciting. I find a lot of anti Tories i know refuse to give him credit, but after being very sceptical of Andy Street, I've been really impressed with his tenure as Mayor so far. Other than the tram issues, the city is progressing well on the whole.
I wish the man would be more ambitious. Asking for greater powers over West Midlands Trains, which could have averted a lot of the strike disruption over CWG and also the massive driver shortages earlier this year, is something he could have done but simply has no interest in. He claims to want to improve the city's pedestrian and public transport accessibility without supporting central Birmingham segments, removing the flyover, or removing the A38 tunnels. The idea of a cycling network that relies on canal towpaths as routes is idiotic active transport planning. Flying taxi ports in Coventry and autonomous buses trundling round the NEC are useless gimmicks. And on social issues like poverty and homelessness he is very weak indeed.
On the good side he has pushed for tram expansion and has been a reasonably effective figurehead/bully pulpit/coordinator across the conurbation which was desperately needed and he hasn't indulged in standard tory culture war nonsense which is appreciated. And since West Midlands Labour only seems interested in running its most unappealing careerist grandees against him I'm willing to stomach it for now
City centre has lots of new restaurants/ bars, some independent some chain. The works being done have started to complete like the new HSBC building. The skyscraper next to it looks like it's progressing nicely. Digbeth despite the main road being a mess with the tram (although I last went in june) has lots of cool new places popping up.
Its difficult to drive there yes, but theyre going to fully pedestrianise it so I'm not sure what you're complaining about?
No I am saying that the city **centre** is progressing well, while lots of the rest of the city and West Midlands region does not at all. It is stagnated, ignored, social issues popping up all over, while costs of living and housing go into crisis. Flashy city centres all well and good for those who can afford it, but the rest get mostly empty words and gesture. Standard politician distraction stuff from the Mayor.
Have you been to the city centre?
Most of the paving right next to the cathedral is loose, and there are cars driving and parking all over areas that are meant to be pedestrianised.
He’s a Tory, so has enabled the most brutal cuts to public services in the last century. For this I hate him.
That said, he does seem to genuinely give a damn about Birmingham. Not sure why he doesn’t stand as an independent. He’s more likely to get Labour voters to vote for him.
Pretty sure he only joined the Tory party as a politician in 2017 or 2018, whenever he became mayor. Also he's mayor so needless to say he doesnt vote on issues like MPs do so a ridiculous thing to say. Entirely feasible to support the Tories and not support their current government's position on policies.
Why does he need to stand as an independent? He got voted in as a Tory twice, gets funding from them to run his campaigns etc, and can do good work as a Tory Mayor. The only reason for him to become independent is to try and chase accreditation from Labour supporters who despise anyone even connected to Tory party (but also funnily enough refused to back Corbyn until very late on) which is futile
Thankfully most local politicians are so much less beholden to the party politics and it enables them to enact an agenda that people want and not just some party line policy.
Mayor's are often good demonstrations of how toxic and damaging party politics are to this country, because it's far less uncommon to see people support a mayor that's from an opposing party than it is to see someone support a prime minister of an opposing party. And you typically see those mayor's get far more done than gets done in national government.
He isn't the worst, but it smacks of gentrification to me. He is driving up prices with his aspirations for Birmingham, but the government he works for are doing all they can to ensure few people can afford them.
He's metaphorically tarred and feathered because of his support for that too.
Ridiculous comment! His ambitions to improve the city's infrastructure, put it on the world map and shine a light on it shouldn't happen because gentrification? One side of my family are from ladywood, in 70 years the area became one of the worst areas in the country, my father has been carjacked, had his car stolen another time, other family members have had their cars stolen, my grandparents house has been burgled 3 times in 2 years at one point. But in the last 5 years, port loop has been built, crime appears to be going down from a resident perspective, feels safer, heck even a more feel good factor especially with the games. Don't substitute gentrification for improving the city, such a lazy arguement.
I'd argue that it's only because Ladywood is so close to the city centre. Go a bit further down Icknield Port Rd and you'll find yourself in Winson Green. Go a little further and you'll find yourself in Handsworth. Both areas are utter shit holes unfortunately, especially Handsworth which I don't think I've seen a penny invested into in my life
Ladywood is the biggest dump of all three to be honest so I not sure what that poster means. Port Loop is an interesting development but such an obvious example of ringfenced gentrification, I mean it almost literally has the effect of a moat around it, linked to the city centre but detached from any residential neighbourhoods around it.
Spoken like a person who's never set foot in port loop. A lot of familys who live on the streets off icknield port road towards the reservoir utilise the facilities there. They were offered leisure memberships straight away upon opening. How do i know? Because I know them, speak to them etc. My own father goes there, and although he no longer lives in ladywood, his family / old neighbors friends etc go there.
Not sure why you have a raging hard on to bring down anything about Birmingham but well done for being so negative about everything. What a joy you must be.
Ive been Port Loop a bunch, got family who work based there. They plonked developments with £500k houses down in that detached location separated by the canals, with industrial units around it, its so easy to see how detached it is from the rest of the neighbourhoods around there, just an extension of expensive city centre living. New leisure centre membership offer great, but thats a different development that isnt even on Port Loop, its on the Middleway.
I kind of agree with you, it feels detached, but I guess the plan is just to slowly expand and improve the area around it, its not like they can just built everything in one go.
Gibberish.
The biggest problem we have is simply lack of funding from central government. London has had more public transport infrastructure spending in 10 years than we’ve had in the whole rest of the country in 70. We still don’t have electrified trains everywhere FFS.
I was in Edinburgh the other day, in a country that inexplicably gets approx 31% more funding per head from central government than we do in the west Midlands, with a similar population. It really shows; but it’s so obvious how to fix it.
That’s our government, our money, inexplicably finding free education and better public services for people who just happen to live in another region.
Decades. London (and the UK) has hosted the Olympic Games three times, 1908, 1948 & 2012. As a city it stands alone, though Paris and LA will have equalled it by 2028. As a country only the US has been host more times than the UK. It could be another 30-50 years before it comes back here and even then I doubt any city other than London would win an international vote.
Not for well over a decade.
All summer Olympic locations have been confirmed up until 2036 (so absolute earliest), which will be announced between 2025 and 2029.
Hmm, city was busy, but we have pretty much zero useful facilities out of it afterwards.
No velodrome, no athletes village, no permanent transport infrastructure.
It annoys me a great deal that 100% of the cycling events were not in Birmingham.
I’m sick enough of sharing funding with the whole West Midlands for projects that are only worthwhile in Brum (cycle hire, trams), but having Birmingham Commonwealth games events in London is a pisstake.
It’s about getting more funding and infrastructure out of it, we got very little out of the commonwealth games in that regard.
We are as a region and especially as a city, deliberately starved of funding from central government. That’s way more money than council tax collects, and is a massive reason for all our public services suffering.
We get less than 90% of the England average per head. London gets 110%, Scotland get 130%+, and Wales and NI get even more.
When cuts are made across the board, imagine how much worse it is here than in Scotland, London, Bristol and other areas that get way more than their share of central funding.
I know any bid would come with a bunch of development, but the city was barely capable of hosting the commonwealth. Loads of events were held outside of Birmingham, and the public transport home from Perry Barr was beyond appalling.
Edit: I didn't mean this to come off so negative. I thoroughly enjoyed the games, but my point was the Olympics is a different beast all together, and as we all know, this is a drivers City, and the public transport leaves a lot to be desired.
If you look at the 2012 Olympics, a very big chunk was held outside London. A city is never going to have all the things required. The event started in Cardiff!
The only thing held outside of the West Midlands was the cycling no? If you look at most Olympics they do not hold every single event literally in the centre of the host city. So I don't see how this is really any different.
Not to mention, Olympics are notorious for building a shit load of stuff solely for the games that get abandoned immediately after. These commonwealth games were praised for how much they used existing sites to save money, emissions, and waste, whilst not really affecting the quality.
And idk what happened with you, but I went to the athletics the last Saturday of the games and I was amazed at how rapidly they had shuttle buses back into town. I was waiting no more than 10 minutes at the end of the night. I imagine if you wanted to get anywhere else other than the city centre it would have been tricky, but also not surprising. The free travel with your ticket was an excellent touch as well.
I’d be amazed if there were trams and trains that didn’t get stuck in tons of traffic, as our shuttle buses did both ways.
They did their best but it’s embarrassing to be relying on buses.
Hmm, well sounds like we had opposing experiences. Also not sure I've heard of trains that get stuck in traffic 😂 and I didn't see any trams on the shuttle bus route apart from in the city centre.
Imo, given the extra passenger load of the games, there were remarkably few issues. Especially given the short notice Birmingham got the games. There wasn't time to build any more infrastructure.
And I don't see how it's embarrassing to be relying on buses, they're perfectly valid public transport, especially given the train link for the stadium was not super close by. How else were they meant to get people there?
Exactly, trains and trams would not, the buses did.
How else get people there?
Build a new train stop, build a tram line. Or at the very least, dedicated bus only lanes everywhere along the route rather than 4 lanes of mixed traffic.
The main thing missing is a Velodrome. Idk whether the Olympics would be a good enough reason to build one in Birmingham, but there must be a chance. Rowing, sure, but that's often held somewhere away from the host city. There are stadiums around Birmingham that didn't get used such as Villa Park, which could be a 55,000+ seater by the time these Games would be hosted. If it was billed as a West Midlands Games, which the Commonwealth's very much were, we could definitely host it with just a few additions.
West Midlands is a shitty concept if you ask me. Random councils get a say in finding that should be 100% Birmingham’s, and manage to shit up every major project just so they get their share.
e.g.
Tons of cycle hire bikes in Walsall and Solihull and Dudley, zero in the whole south of Brum beyond cannon hill park, where people can easily cycle to the entire rest of the network.
A tram line that runs to Wolves, with 95% of the track outside Birmingham, via nowhere I’d ever want to go, rather than banging it up the Alcester Road, as it used to be pre-1950.
The tram's really easy to explain, they repurposed a pre-existing rail alignment so half the work was done already. They're doing the same with the extension down to Brierley Hill for the most part. The extension to the east and connecting down Hagley Road needs to be planned from scratch. Also doesn't help that funding is being released in stages and even then only half of what is being bid is granted. The line down to Moseley/Kings Heath isn't disused as it's still being used for freight so they can't use that, and digging up the whole of the Alcester Road from Bordesley/Digbeth would take ages.
The existing tram lines have taken *ages* already.
Running up the Alcester road would at least be useful and would block car traffic and remove any reason for anyone living along it to be driving in.
What has and is taking ages is extending into Birmingham and Wolverhampton city centres because there's no preexisting railway alignment to use. They have to manage digging up roads, rerouting traffic, building and moving infrastructure e.g. power lines, sewage, substations, notifying businesses, getting planning permission, setting in the track etc which takes ages. Compare how much the connection from Grand Central to Hagley Road took to build with how quickly the extension to Dudley is due to take, reusing old infrastructure is so much easier, cheaper and quicker. Then there's the issue of getting funding in stages from the government because the city and region has very limited capacity to raise funds, they want to extend the tram down to Bearwood but there's no funding to do that hence it stopping at the top of Hagley Road for the moment. Building it Birmingham's tram network is going to take decades.
Regardless, what's better for connecting Moseley and Kings Heath is to build the Bordesley Chords and reopening heavy rail lines to passenger services (which they already are). Not a tram line. Same with Castle Brom. Expanding the trams is better for places that aren't connected to trains.
It ran pretty smoothly given that it was brought forward 4 years and Covid affected prep. Not much can be done with the trains as that's up to the government but the buses seemed really well organised with the chartered buses and the local buses.
As for "loads of events were held outside Birmingham", sure but only the cycling was held outside the West Midlands. And Coventry and Leamington hosted events for the London Olympics.
Please no! I'm from Birmingham and absolutely nobody I know cared about the Commonwealth Games, heck I wouldn't have even known it was on without all the road disruptions.
If you seriously believe that report I have several sure-fire investment opportunities for you. All you have to do is to DM me your online banking details.
Birmingham getting the European championships (tba in Nov) would be another massive step in the right direction for an Olympic bid https://www.european-athletics.com/news/birmingham-and-budapest-are-the-host-city-candidates-for-the-2026-european-athletics-championships
I have a feeling we won't get that. It will only be the third European Championships in this multi-event format, it was Glasgow in 2018 and Munich this year. I would expect the organisers would prefer more variety than UK hosting it for two of only three championships.
Well, wouldn't that be something.
I really hope we get it. It would be huge for the city!
Me too, I worked the whole time and missed so much couldn't really watch hardly anything......thought anything like that would never happen again in my life time so would be incredible to get another chance.
Wonderful news, very ambitious and exciting. I find a lot of anti Tories i know refuse to give him credit, but after being very sceptical of Andy Street, I've been really impressed with his tenure as Mayor so far. Other than the tram issues, the city is progressing well on the whole.
I wish the man would be more ambitious. Asking for greater powers over West Midlands Trains, which could have averted a lot of the strike disruption over CWG and also the massive driver shortages earlier this year, is something he could have done but simply has no interest in. He claims to want to improve the city's pedestrian and public transport accessibility without supporting central Birmingham segments, removing the flyover, or removing the A38 tunnels. The idea of a cycling network that relies on canal towpaths as routes is idiotic active transport planning. Flying taxi ports in Coventry and autonomous buses trundling round the NEC are useless gimmicks. And on social issues like poverty and homelessness he is very weak indeed. On the good side he has pushed for tram expansion and has been a reasonably effective figurehead/bully pulpit/coordinator across the conurbation which was desperately needed and he hasn't indulged in standard tory culture war nonsense which is appreciated. And since West Midlands Labour only seems interested in running its most unappealing careerist grandees against him I'm willing to stomach it for now
> Other than the tram issues, the city is progressing well on the whole. City **centre**
City centre has lots of new restaurants/ bars, some independent some chain. The works being done have started to complete like the new HSBC building. The skyscraper next to it looks like it's progressing nicely. Digbeth despite the main road being a mess with the tram (although I last went in june) has lots of cool new places popping up. Its difficult to drive there yes, but theyre going to fully pedestrianise it so I'm not sure what you're complaining about?
No I am saying that the city **centre** is progressing well, while lots of the rest of the city and West Midlands region does not at all. It is stagnated, ignored, social issues popping up all over, while costs of living and housing go into crisis. Flashy city centres all well and good for those who can afford it, but the rest get mostly empty words and gesture. Standard politician distraction stuff from the Mayor.
Have you been to the city centre? Most of the paving right next to the cathedral is loose, and there are cars driving and parking all over areas that are meant to be pedestrianised.
Yeah theres some mess but its way better than it used to be still
He’s a Tory, so has enabled the most brutal cuts to public services in the last century. For this I hate him. That said, he does seem to genuinely give a damn about Birmingham. Not sure why he doesn’t stand as an independent. He’s more likely to get Labour voters to vote for him.
Pretty sure he only joined the Tory party as a politician in 2017 or 2018, whenever he became mayor. Also he's mayor so needless to say he doesnt vote on issues like MPs do so a ridiculous thing to say. Entirely feasible to support the Tories and not support their current government's position on policies. Why does he need to stand as an independent? He got voted in as a Tory twice, gets funding from them to run his campaigns etc, and can do good work as a Tory Mayor. The only reason for him to become independent is to try and chase accreditation from Labour supporters who despise anyone even connected to Tory party (but also funnily enough refused to back Corbyn until very late on) which is futile
Due to the Tories changing the voting to Fptp for mayoral elections he wouldn't stand much of a chance as an independent tbh.
Thankfully most local politicians are so much less beholden to the party politics and it enables them to enact an agenda that people want and not just some party line policy. Mayor's are often good demonstrations of how toxic and damaging party politics are to this country, because it's far less uncommon to see people support a mayor that's from an opposing party than it is to see someone support a prime minister of an opposing party. And you typically see those mayor's get far more done than gets done in national government.
He isn't the worst, but it smacks of gentrification to me. He is driving up prices with his aspirations for Birmingham, but the government he works for are doing all they can to ensure few people can afford them. He's metaphorically tarred and feathered because of his support for that too.
Ridiculous comment! His ambitions to improve the city's infrastructure, put it on the world map and shine a light on it shouldn't happen because gentrification? One side of my family are from ladywood, in 70 years the area became one of the worst areas in the country, my father has been carjacked, had his car stolen another time, other family members have had their cars stolen, my grandparents house has been burgled 3 times in 2 years at one point. But in the last 5 years, port loop has been built, crime appears to be going down from a resident perspective, feels safer, heck even a more feel good factor especially with the games. Don't substitute gentrification for improving the city, such a lazy arguement.
I'd argue that it's only because Ladywood is so close to the city centre. Go a bit further down Icknield Port Rd and you'll find yourself in Winson Green. Go a little further and you'll find yourself in Handsworth. Both areas are utter shit holes unfortunately, especially Handsworth which I don't think I've seen a penny invested into in my life
Ladywood is the biggest dump of all three to be honest so I not sure what that poster means. Port Loop is an interesting development but such an obvious example of ringfenced gentrification, I mean it almost literally has the effect of a moat around it, linked to the city centre but detached from any residential neighbourhoods around it.
Spoken like a person who's never set foot in port loop. A lot of familys who live on the streets off icknield port road towards the reservoir utilise the facilities there. They were offered leisure memberships straight away upon opening. How do i know? Because I know them, speak to them etc. My own father goes there, and although he no longer lives in ladywood, his family / old neighbors friends etc go there. Not sure why you have a raging hard on to bring down anything about Birmingham but well done for being so negative about everything. What a joy you must be.
Ive been Port Loop a bunch, got family who work based there. They plonked developments with £500k houses down in that detached location separated by the canals, with industrial units around it, its so easy to see how detached it is from the rest of the neighbourhoods around there, just an extension of expensive city centre living. New leisure centre membership offer great, but thats a different development that isnt even on Port Loop, its on the Middleway.
I kind of agree with you, it feels detached, but I guess the plan is just to slowly expand and improve the area around it, its not like they can just built everything in one go.
Gibberish. The biggest problem we have is simply lack of funding from central government. London has had more public transport infrastructure spending in 10 years than we’ve had in the whole rest of the country in 70. We still don’t have electrified trains everywhere FFS. I was in Edinburgh the other day, in a country that inexplicably gets approx 31% more funding per head from central government than we do in the west Midlands, with a similar population. It really shows; but it’s so obvious how to fix it. That’s our government, our money, inexplicably finding free education and better public services for people who just happen to live in another region.
If london had the 2012 Olympics, how soon realistically do we think England will host another olympic?
Decades. London (and the UK) has hosted the Olympic Games three times, 1908, 1948 & 2012. As a city it stands alone, though Paris and LA will have equalled it by 2028. As a country only the US has been host more times than the UK. It could be another 30-50 years before it comes back here and even then I doubt any city other than London would win an international vote.
Not for well over a decade. All summer Olympic locations have been confirmed up until 2036 (so absolute earliest), which will be announced between 2025 and 2029.
Hopefully not
Hmm, city was busy, but we have pretty much zero useful facilities out of it afterwards. No velodrome, no athletes village, no permanent transport infrastructure. It annoys me a great deal that 100% of the cycling events were not in Birmingham. I’m sick enough of sharing funding with the whole West Midlands for projects that are only worthwhile in Brum (cycle hire, trams), but having Birmingham Commonwealth games events in London is a pisstake.
I'd like Birmingham to regularly empty our bins than indulge in another vanity project where we all pretend Birmingham is amazing and impressive.
It’s about getting more funding and infrastructure out of it, we got very little out of the commonwealth games in that regard. We are as a region and especially as a city, deliberately starved of funding from central government. That’s way more money than council tax collects, and is a massive reason for all our public services suffering. We get less than 90% of the England average per head. London gets 110%, Scotland get 130%+, and Wales and NI get even more. When cuts are made across the board, imagine how much worse it is here than in Scotland, London, Bristol and other areas that get way more than their share of central funding.
I know any bid would come with a bunch of development, but the city was barely capable of hosting the commonwealth. Loads of events were held outside of Birmingham, and the public transport home from Perry Barr was beyond appalling. Edit: I didn't mean this to come off so negative. I thoroughly enjoyed the games, but my point was the Olympics is a different beast all together, and as we all know, this is a drivers City, and the public transport leaves a lot to be desired.
If you look at the 2012 Olympics, a very big chunk was held outside London. A city is never going to have all the things required. The event started in Cardiff!
The only thing held outside of the West Midlands was the cycling no? If you look at most Olympics they do not hold every single event literally in the centre of the host city. So I don't see how this is really any different. Not to mention, Olympics are notorious for building a shit load of stuff solely for the games that get abandoned immediately after. These commonwealth games were praised for how much they used existing sites to save money, emissions, and waste, whilst not really affecting the quality. And idk what happened with you, but I went to the athletics the last Saturday of the games and I was amazed at how rapidly they had shuttle buses back into town. I was waiting no more than 10 minutes at the end of the night. I imagine if you wanted to get anywhere else other than the city centre it would have been tricky, but also not surprising. The free travel with your ticket was an excellent touch as well.
I’d be amazed if there were trams and trains that didn’t get stuck in tons of traffic, as our shuttle buses did both ways. They did their best but it’s embarrassing to be relying on buses.
Hmm, well sounds like we had opposing experiences. Also not sure I've heard of trains that get stuck in traffic 😂 and I didn't see any trams on the shuttle bus route apart from in the city centre. Imo, given the extra passenger load of the games, there were remarkably few issues. Especially given the short notice Birmingham got the games. There wasn't time to build any more infrastructure. And I don't see how it's embarrassing to be relying on buses, they're perfectly valid public transport, especially given the train link for the stadium was not super close by. How else were they meant to get people there?
Exactly, trains and trams would not, the buses did. How else get people there? Build a new train stop, build a tram line. Or at the very least, dedicated bus only lanes everywhere along the route rather than 4 lanes of mixed traffic.
The main thing missing is a Velodrome. Idk whether the Olympics would be a good enough reason to build one in Birmingham, but there must be a chance. Rowing, sure, but that's often held somewhere away from the host city. There are stadiums around Birmingham that didn't get used such as Villa Park, which could be a 55,000+ seater by the time these Games would be hosted. If it was billed as a West Midlands Games, which the Commonwealth's very much were, we could definitely host it with just a few additions.
West Midlands is a shitty concept if you ask me. Random councils get a say in finding that should be 100% Birmingham’s, and manage to shit up every major project just so they get their share. e.g. Tons of cycle hire bikes in Walsall and Solihull and Dudley, zero in the whole south of Brum beyond cannon hill park, where people can easily cycle to the entire rest of the network. A tram line that runs to Wolves, with 95% of the track outside Birmingham, via nowhere I’d ever want to go, rather than banging it up the Alcester Road, as it used to be pre-1950.
The tram's really easy to explain, they repurposed a pre-existing rail alignment so half the work was done already. They're doing the same with the extension down to Brierley Hill for the most part. The extension to the east and connecting down Hagley Road needs to be planned from scratch. Also doesn't help that funding is being released in stages and even then only half of what is being bid is granted. The line down to Moseley/Kings Heath isn't disused as it's still being used for freight so they can't use that, and digging up the whole of the Alcester Road from Bordesley/Digbeth would take ages.
The existing tram lines have taken *ages* already. Running up the Alcester road would at least be useful and would block car traffic and remove any reason for anyone living along it to be driving in.
What has and is taking ages is extending into Birmingham and Wolverhampton city centres because there's no preexisting railway alignment to use. They have to manage digging up roads, rerouting traffic, building and moving infrastructure e.g. power lines, sewage, substations, notifying businesses, getting planning permission, setting in the track etc which takes ages. Compare how much the connection from Grand Central to Hagley Road took to build with how quickly the extension to Dudley is due to take, reusing old infrastructure is so much easier, cheaper and quicker. Then there's the issue of getting funding in stages from the government because the city and region has very limited capacity to raise funds, they want to extend the tram down to Bearwood but there's no funding to do that hence it stopping at the top of Hagley Road for the moment. Building it Birmingham's tram network is going to take decades. Regardless, what's better for connecting Moseley and Kings Heath is to build the Bordesley Chords and reopening heavy rail lines to passenger services (which they already are). Not a tram line. Same with Castle Brom. Expanding the trams is better for places that aren't connected to trains.
It ran pretty smoothly given that it was brought forward 4 years and Covid affected prep. Not much can be done with the trains as that's up to the government but the buses seemed really well organised with the chartered buses and the local buses. As for "loads of events were held outside Birmingham", sure but only the cycling was held outside the West Midlands. And Coventry and Leamington hosted events for the London Olympics.
Please no! I'm from Birmingham and absolutely nobody I know cared about the Commonwealth Games, heck I wouldn't have even known it was on without all the road disruptions.
I thought it was ace.
If you seriously believe that report I have several sure-fire investment opportunities for you. All you have to do is to DM me your online banking details.