I enjoyed this piece by @JonNeale on the Midlands and our tendency to skip over it in discussions about regional inequality, north-south divides, and levelling up. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/matter-midlands-jon-neale/

My three and a bit years in Birmingham were enlightening. It is definitely "English" in a way that North England isn't. As Jon says. And it certainly, especially in the urban West Midlands, has been held back and ignored every bit as much as the Liverpool to Manchester supercity.

I've written a lot about Birmingham. And done lots of interesting work (well I think so) arguing for more transport investment and R&D spending (both of which I am pretty confident have contributed to decisions to increase investment by the UK government). https://www.tomforth.co.uk/birmingham/ 

Two challenges for Birmingham that have sunk in after nearly three years away are,
1/ How easy it is to leave.
2/ How tightly the people who've left hold on.
And that's also a cultural thing, so quite difficult to fix.

So many of the talented and ambitious people I met in Birmingham moved to London or started working most of their time in London even in the few years I was there. It was a staggering rate of attrition of the top talent. Geography reduces that in eg Leeds or Manchester. Too far.

But maybe even more damaging than that. And this is a very emotive subject, so I apologise in advance to those I might upset,... those people really held on. They still had opinions about Birmingham, tried to run things in Birmingham, etc... even though they'd left.

An economic geographer could argue that close linkage as a big positive. To have a high spill-over of ideas, businesses, etc... across the two cities. And there was some of that. But I always say and still see the negatives as larger. It can be weirdly hollow city as a result.

The great news is that things got better in all areas. There's a clear turnaround for the West Midlands in the past decade. Its relative decline has stopped. New things, a reborn identity, local control and ambition, etc... it was all happening, and that seems to grow still.

Here's a report that me and @RichardALJones did with @nesta_uk in which we argue that of all regions and nations of the UK it is the West Midlands that the UK government should spend a lot more money on R&D in. We didn't forget it. :) https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/the-missing-4-billion/

I've just remembered one of my favourite expressions of something really jarring to me (North English) about Birmingham's English identity. Many claim Curzon Street station as "the world's oldest mainline train station". When it's newer than stations in Liverpool and Manchester.

The reason, explained to me with no understanding of why I found it daft, was that it was a station on a line that went to London. Whereas the stations in Liverpool and Manchester only went to Manchester and Liverpool. And thus, an opinion seriously stated, weren't main lines.

Just remembered --- I got told quite a few times, after years of living in Birmingham, not to write so uninformedly about Birmingham, by people who lived in South-East England, but who had left Birmingham a long time ago. Weird.