One of my favourite new blogs in Brum is Strategy – The Digested Read.  No – stop it, don’t yawn.

Dave Harte wittily strips out the essence of turgid reports on the city, the region and the creative industries.   This is him on  Advantage West Midlands Regional Economic Strategy:

Our vision: now we used to think we could be a world-beater at making everybody wealthy but we were a bit hasty and now we just want to be “successful” at making people wealthy since the stats show we’ve not been particularly successful at it so far (although don’t forget we only influence about a fifth of total spend in the region – it’s not all our fault). But if we can pull it off you too could be drinking cappuccino by the canal like our friends on the cover. Those canals are in Birmingham by the way – our beating cultural heart, did I mention that already? (59 times).

This Youtube Film (created from the images of the marvellous Birmingham Group on flickr) is his take on the the Birmingham City Centre Masterplan:

[youtube]xyihjZYBrF0[/youtube]