.@BirminghamLive news editor. Family, #AVFC, news, although not always in that order. Story? DMs open. Own views here
Birmingham
Joined July 2009
- Tweets27.3K
- Following3.3K
- Followers2K
- Likes37.1K
Agree with all of this. The club has always been too nice and known its place on and off the pitch. Not any more #AVFC
Nassef isn’t suing Carragher because he thinks a High Court judge is going to slap a damages order on a podcast rant. He’s doing it because the entire media class has spent years treating Villa (#avfc) as a convenient stepping stone and a permanent second tier.
Carragher didn’t just give an opinion. He told the fans to "shut the fuck up" and declared the club can never reach the level of the traditional powers, right as the ownership has poured hundreds of millions in, won the Europa League, and got the team competing in Europe properly. That isn’t banter to the people who actually own and run the club. It’s a direct fucking insult to these owners who've done a terrific job rejuvenating the club and running it better than at least 3 of the media six, it's an attempt to set the ceiling in public and keep the hierarchy story alive.
Sawiris has form for pushing back when he thinks the system or the narrative is stacked against the project. This is the same instinct. Put the statement out, make the pundits and the wider media think twice about casually writing Villa off as forever below United, and show the fanbase that the ownership won’t sit quiet while the club’s rise gets dismissed. Whether it ever reaches a courtroom is almost beside the point. The message is the point.
If you want the current hierarchy left unchallenged, fine. Call it tinpot. The people who rebuilt the club from the brink of HMRC winding them up clearly see it differently.
James Cartledge retweeted
Nassef isn’t suing Carragher because he thinks a High Court judge is going to slap a damages order on a podcast rant. He’s doing it because the entire media class has spent years treating Villa (#avfc) as a convenient stepping stone and a permanent second tier.
Carragher didn’t just give an opinion. He told the fans to "shut the fuck up" and declared the club can never reach the level of the traditional powers, right as the ownership has poured hundreds of millions in, won the Europa League, and got the team competing in Europe properly. That isn’t banter to the people who actually own and run the club. It’s a direct fucking insult to these owners who've done a terrific job rejuvenating the club and running it better than at least 3 of the media six, it's an attempt to set the ceiling in public and keep the hierarchy story alive.
Sawiris has form for pushing back when he thinks the system or the narrative is stacked against the project. This is the same instinct. Put the statement out, make the pundits and the wider media think twice about casually writing Villa off as forever below United, and show the fanbase that the ownership won’t sit quiet while the club’s rise gets dismissed. Whether it ever reaches a courtroom is almost beside the point. The message is the point.
If you want the current hierarchy left unchallenged, fine. Call it tinpot. The people who rebuilt the club from the brink of HMRC winding them up clearly see it differently.
James Cartledge retweeted
— “You're not married, you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never watched Star Trek?"
— “No."
— “Good Lord."
EXTRAS (2005)
RIP PATRICK STEWART (1940-2026)
James Cartledge retweeted
Only gone to the Ballon D'or in his Villa Jacket.
For the people at the back, he's Mr Aston Villa.
#avfc
James Cartledge retweeted
When oh when is this blot on the landscape going to be demolished. With so many windows smashed, and broken glass likely to fall in high winds, it’s a real danger to people. #LookUpBirmingham
James Cartledge retweeted
So they’re shoving unsold Lower Grounds places out to market for cheaper than fans paid for their standard seats…?
Gross.
Champions League at Aston Villa expensive?
£75 for hospitality?
champions-travel.com/tickets…
James Cartledge retweeted
Throwback to Birmingham City using Aston Villa’s club records and honours... 😆
James Cartledge retweeted
Exactly 6 months ago @ToyokoINN_JP told us, face to face, they were close to showing plans to finally, after 12 years, save the birthplace of Sabbath, home of Metal and most important grassroots music venue in the country, Birmingham’s The Crown.
Guess what? They lied. Again.
James Cartledge retweeted
Of everything they've ever done, and I love it all, this is easily the best Vic and Bob sketch.
Bob losing it halfway through.
"I tell ya what I gonna do, first chance I get kid, I'm outta this small town shit hole. Am gonna go somewhere big city... rike Reeds"
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Surprised, to put it mildly, that @BromStandard has allowed Ryan Bridge an unchallenged editorial, complete with link to the Raise the Colours website, to platform his views. Journalism is about asking difficult questions, no?
James Cartledge retweeted
The BBC collect a billion pounds in licence fee revenue from the Midlands and expect us to be grateful for increasing production spend from 2.4% of that to 4%.
The BBC’s total content spend in 2025/26 is £2.55bn so that’s actually going from less than 1% to slightly over 1%
BBC director-general backs Archers studio decision bbc.in/4e8qKu0
James Cartledge retweeted
The Midlands contribute 25% of all licence fee revenue - close to £1 billion annually - to the BBC but received the lowest share in the UK in 9/10 years up to 2023.
That share was just 2.7%.
London 39.8%
The North 20.6%,
The South 11.9%
Scotland 9%
Wales 7.9%
NI 4.2%
Shocking to hear that @BBC plan to reduce investment into #Birmingham and move our beloved The Archers out of the city.
I have written to the Director General demanding they reverse the decision.
James Cartledge retweeted
If the BBC need to find £500m in savings they can find that out of the 40% of their production budget they spend in London, or the 21% they spend in the North, not from the already measly 2.7% they spend on the entire Midlands.
The Archers was born in Birmingham and is a key part of our broadcasting heritage. I’m very disappointed by news that the BBC plans to move its production out of the city.
The BBC has made clear commitments to growing its presence in the West Midlands - especially with the move to the Tea Factory. So, moving one of its most established programmes out of the region sends the wrong message.
We have the talent and the facilities here. There is no good reason why we should lose a programme that has called Birmingham home for decades.
I’m meeting the BBC’s Director-General, Matt Brittin, this week. I want to understand the reasons behind this decision and discuss every available option to keep The Archers here.
The BBC promised to invest and support our regions, this is entirely the opposite of that. And it can’t be allowed to happen.
birminghammail.co.uk/whats-o…
James Cartledge retweeted
Can you imagine ITV taking Corrie out of Manchester? @andyburnham and @lisanandy would be front of the queue with pitchforks.
But from the destruction of the UK's oldest cinema to birthplace of Sabbath and home of The Archers, Birmingham never matters...
birminghammail.co.uk/whats-o…
Can you imagine the BBC trying this with anything recorded at Salford?
birminghammail.co.uk/whats-o…
James Cartledge retweeted
I note that politicians and journalists have been falling over themselves in praise of Lord Jeffrey Archer who has died aged 86. I don’t share that view.
Back in 1987 Archer sued the Daily Star for libel after they reported he had paid for sex with a prostitute.
Thanks to his lies in the witness box he was awarded £500K in damages, a record at the time. Actually the paper was right he had had paid £6K for her services.
The editor, a talented Aussie called Lloyd Turner who had done a great job for the paper, was fired by the idiot owner who preferred to believe a politician than his own staff.
That verdict left Turner, according to his wife, a broken man, and he died five years later at 57.
So, he never had the pleasure, some six years later, of seeing Archer, being jailed for perjuring himself and forced to hand back the £500K.
Archer’s lies destroyed Turner’s career and hurried the end of his life.
Disgracefully, that story has been ignored by the good and great in the hagiographies.
James Cartledge retweeted
This is a thread I was sent via the NUJ but I want to share. Please retweet:
At the end of last year, the BBC asked Ofcom to change its Operating Licence for Local Radio, so that it could "do more local programming when more people are listening". What happened next? A thread../1
James Cartledge retweeted
He served prison time for perjury after extracting enormous damages in a libel case which destroyed a woman's life. He also lied relentlessly about almost everything. But he was a great friend of the people that matter, and that, my friends, is all that matters in this country.
Very sad to have had to announce the death of my friend Jeffrey Archer on the show last night. A man of talents, flaws, positivity and bouncebackability, with a zest for life. He was a terrific interviewee. He sometimes invited me to his flat on Albert Embankment as he loved political gossip. His trilogy of Prison Diaries remain the best books of the last 20 years on what life is like in prison. He sold 350 million books in 47 languages in 114 countries but the literary cogniscenti always looked down their noses at him. I tried in vain to get him to write his autobiography. Yes, he sometimes lacked judgement, no he never achieved his aim to be a front rank politician, yes he did some bad things. But what a life. What. A. Life. @Jeffrey_Archer
