power 50 in 2009
Just before we snuck into holidaytime, the Post announced the 2009 Power 50. Dermot Finch chaired the judging panel. They decided our ‘Leader’, Mike Whitby, should only scrape into the top ten places. Finch blogged the list isn’t entirely serious and is entirely subjective - but it does highlight the need for cities like Birmingham to cultivate strong leaders . . . Birmingham’s leadership is not as strong as it should be . . .
Indeed, most Brummies will only have heard of one or two people on the list. Let’s look at this 2009 lot collectively, and see if that explains anything.
National stats say 52% of us are women. But we comprise only 20% of the Power 50, none of us are in the top ten.. So nothing new there then.
Apparently 38% of us identify ourselves as ‘non-white British’. I guess only eight of the Power 50 would put themselves in this category, with one in the top ten. So we’re missing that talent too.
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This list perhaps shows best just how London-centric the UK is. Islington fixers and the new toff-lites rule the roost.
Birmingham doesn’t attract the uber-wealthy, nor has a diversity of world-class sport, arts and culture. So unsurprisingly, only a few on the list have national recognition, none is a major figure: Liam Byrne, Digby Jones, Salma Yaqoob, Kumar Bhattycharyya, Julia King and, at a stretch (‘scuse the pun), David Bintley.
Do we even begin to make the the fringe of things here? Or are we merely thrown an occasional remark accompanied by a disdainful shrug, perhaps about our accent, our roads, our hands-dirty manufacturer image?
In, say, fifty or a hundred years, will history have Birmingham on the same map as Beijing, Banglalore, Silicon Valley, London, New York?
Will we be among those changing the world, as we were in Matthew Boulton’s time?
This year Mercer listed Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Vancouver and Auckland as top 5 in their quality of living rankings. Is there any chance we can begin to compete with the likes of them too?
It’s far-fetched.
We seem stuck in the infrastructures of our past, held too long in the automakers’ thrall. Perhaps we have too much baggage in our minds to imagine a different world.
But. . . just suppose Birmingham a century hence is up there with the rest. Who will have made the difference?
Put your money on the world-class scientific researchers here. Make no bones about it, only rigorous scientific effort gives us a chance to meet the challenges of nine billion on this planet.
Scientists are the revolutionaries.
Only the oncologist Nick James and the chemical engineer Waldemar Bujalski are on this list, along with Julia King. But there are others working here.
We rarely acknowledge them. Indeed, many hurl jibes that they are impractical, they’re not actually doing anything, or mock their ‘ivory tower’. All too often, they scrape around for funding.
Be that as it may, there are outstanding scientists working here in Birmingham, both men and women, people who have already made the world a better place.