Dear Patchers — If the middle aisle of my local Aldi is anything to go by, spooky season is well and truly upon us. Fear not, treats not tricks lie ahead in your Monday briefing. One man who might not be so reassured, however, is Wolverhampton councillor Greg Brackenridge. He’s been accused of hamming up his service in the Royal Marines, leading to a very public resignation from one of his coveted positions. More on that in today’s big story.
Catching up: Over the weekend, we went inside a little-known building in Birmingham City Centre, the Bethel Presbyterian Church of Wales on Holloway Head. Designed by iconic architect James Roberts and built in 1967, the church has been a vital meeting place for Welsh-speaking Brummie worshippers ever since. However, its once 250-strong congregation has shrunk to about 12 people. One member said The Dispatch was again “punching above its weight bringing untold stories like this to our attention” and another said it was “fantastic writing and great to see this small slice of Birmingham get some words”. Read it here if you haven’t already.
Help us out: We’ve currently got some great stories in the works at The Dispatch. Alex is looking into how the University of Birmingham protects the rights of minorities on their Dubai campus and Samuel is exploring the links between a Birmingham MP, a local councillor and the Khalistan movement. Do you have any information on either of these topics? Get in touch at editor@birminghamdispatch.co.uk
Editor’s note: On 1 November, The Dispatch will be one year old! While I can’t quite figure out where that time has gone, I am incredibly excited. To celebrate, we will be holding our first ever event exclusively for Dispatch members, at a city centre location on Thursday 14 November. Look out for further details and tickets later this week. To make sure you don’t miss out, sign up by hitting the button.
Weather
☁️Tuesday: Filled with atmospheric fog. Max 15°C.
☔Wednesday: Overcast and wet. Max 17°C.
☂️Thursday: Light rain and sunny intervals. Max 17°C.
🌤️Friday: Clouds come back with some sunny patches. Max 15°C.
🍃Weekend: Drizzle and a moderate breeze. Max 17°C.
We get our weather from the Met Office.
Big story: Stolen valour — Wolves councillor accused of exaggerating Marines experience
Top line: Wolverhampton councillor Greg Brackenridge was caught up in a storm of press coverage over the weekend, with allegations that he exaggerated his military service. Brackenridge has been accused of blowing his own bugle, lying to voters by telling them he served as a commando in the Royal Marines. Allegedly, he didn’t even manage to complete the 32-week training course back in 1988. He has now quit his role as chair of the West Midlands Fire Authority.
Big talk: A former Lord Mayor of Wolverhampton, Brackenridge has enjoyed talking up his military experience in the past. In 2021, while unveiling the statue of a Sikh soldier in Wolverhampton in September 2021, he told a journalist: “I served as a Royal Marine myself when I left school and I worked with members of the Sikh community in the Armed Forces and people from all around the world, the Nepalese, the Gurkhas.”
The tie’s the limit: It doesn’t stop there. According to the Daily Mail, Brackenridge has previously posted online about his “professional career” in the force and has been photographed wearing the distinctive blue, red and yellow striped Marine corps tie and The Sun reports that he has been seen wearing a badge for veterans of the Iraq War from 1990 to 1991. We understand that Brackenridge has disputed the claim about the badge and written to The Sun to request this is retracted.
His response: In an interview with Birmingham Live, the councillor said he joined the Royal Marines when he left school and looked forward to a long career but this was cut short due to personal reasons. He said he has never claimed to have served on the front line or to have seen active service, adding that he has asked the Ministry of Defence to investigate what he says are “apparent attempts to illegally access my service records”.
Public service politicians? The Sun also reports that Brackenridge’s wife Sureena, who was recently elected as the Labour MP for Wolverhampton North East, used her husband’s former military career to persuade constituents to vote for her. A promotional leaflet for her campaign claimed he was a former Royal Marine along with the statement: “We’re a family that knows what public service means.”
Context: This is another dramatic turn in a series of unfortunate events for Brackenridge and the region’s fire service that began with the death of the former CEO, the UK’s first black fire chief Wayne Brown, by suicide in January. Brown had been accused of lying on his CV when it was discovered he did not have an MBA that he claimed to have had. His interim replacement, decorated former Marines Colonel Oliver Lee, was at first defensive of the organisation and criticised reports that it was “scandal-ridden”.
- However, last month he made a sudden U-turn and took to LinkedIn to disparage the “ungovernable” authority and Brackenridge, who he accused of telling “untruths”. He has since been suspended and, The Dispatch understands, sent cease and desist letters by the authority relating to his online posts.
Security fears: Last week, after Lee’s suspension, Brackenridge claimed to have been subject to a barrage of hate and threats online causing him to require enhanced security for himself and his wife. “In my years as a councillor and public servant, I've never felt the fear for myself or my family that I have in the past week,” he told Birmingham Live.
What did Lee do? As for Lee, his online outbursts are thought to have been triggered by the knowledge that he was going to face a crackdown by Brackenridge and the Fire Authority board for making “unlawful” decisions. In a Section 5 report — a serious notice of suspected illegality within a public organisation — discussed by a meeting of the Fire Authority board today, Lee is accused of unlawfully suspending a senior officer in May and of postponing an audit and risk meeting in July, both decisions that flout the organisation’s constitution.
What’s next? In an unexpected turn, Lee has now dramatically withdrawn his resignation — expect some updates on this developing story during the week ahead. But while Lee remains on the frontlines of seeming never-ending conflict at WMFS, Brackenridge has found himself in no man’s land.
Photo of the week
The Prince of Wales pub in Solihull Lodge, captured here by Alex Jones (dirty.brum on Instagram) first opened in the 1950s and closed during the Covid pandemic. These days it’s a shell of its former self; abandoned and boarded up on Prince of Wales Lane. Its next phase of life will be as a 72-bed retirement home where residents will be able to look after pygmy goats, berkshire pigs and beehives. Do any Patchers remember the pub?
Brum in brief
🍽 Purnell's, a Michelin Star restaurant in Birmingham, has closed after 17 years.“In this current climate, no one is bulletproof,” owner Glynn Purnell said, expressing heartbreak over the closure but pride in the restaurant's accolades and the talent nurtured there. Purnell is a huge figure in the city’s restaurant scene (The Birmingham Post once said he was “undoubtably the finest chef to hail from Chelmsley Wood” while Purnell’s itself won its Michelin star just a year after opening, as well as the Craft Guild of Chefs New Restaurant of the Year Award, and the AA Restaurant of the Year Award). Despite the closure, Purnell plans to focus on his other restaurants, Plates and The Mount. Birmingham now has three remaining Michelin Star restaurants, following this closure. “I'm truly honoured to have played my part in the culinary history of this great city,” Purnell says.
🔭 A rare comet, Comet A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), was captured by Black Country photographer, Joanna Noble, marking its first visibility in 80,000 years. The Royal Astronomical Society has dubbed it the “comet of the century” (high praise indeed) due to its brightness. Joanna shared her experience on X, saying, “Well, I can’t feel my fingers, but it was worth it,” after capturing the comet at around 7pm on Saturday. The comet's nucleus is estimated to be 2 km in diameter, and is visible until 30 October.
🚄 Former Tory chancellor George Osborne is backing a proposal for HS2 light, aimed at establishing high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham. He criticised former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's cancellation of the northern HS2 arm as “infrastructure vandalism”. Over 20 business leaders and university vice-chancellors have urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to support this plan, which could enable trains to travel at 186 mph—faster than the current services but slower than HS2’s 225 mph. They argue HS2 light could unlock £70 billion in economic growth, be 40% cheaper than the original proposal, and (maybe) arrive on time. Want to hear more about what “half an HS2” might look like? Take a look at this Dispatch piece from last week, by rail expert Gareth Dennis, if you haven’t already.
Home of the week
A home that could easily steal the show in an episode of Jeeves and Wooster or a cinematic rendition of the Great Gatsby, this large interwar house was designed by the architect H.W. Simister in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the 1930s. It features original Art Deco wood mouldings, a natty green bathroom, and brushed steel light fixtures fit for a New York diner. You’ll need a Hollywood budget to buy it too — it’s on sale for £1.9 million at The Modern House.
Media picks
🎧 How would you prepare for a hurricane? When Wolverhampton man Steven Hartill swapped Spaghetti Junction for the warm climes of Florida, he didn’t expect he’d have to batten down the hatches of his new home. Now Hurricane Milton has hit, that’s exactly what he’s had to do. Listen to his story here.
📰 Our weekend read about a brutalist building had us thinking, once again, about the arguments for and against this divisive architectural style. It was interesting to come across this article from 2022, which makes the case for preserving brutalist designs from a lesser-seen, conservative perspective, informed by Barnabas Calder’s Raw Concrete: The Beauty of Brutalism. “It is the ambition and scale of Brutalism that really seems to inspire Calder, just as it has inspired members of Brutiful Birmingham,” writes Niall Gooch.
📖 Freelance writer and Dispatch contributor Dave Proudlove (who you may remember for his recent story on Stoke-on-Trent) has a new book coming out next week. Work and Play: The Industrial Roots of English Football is a fascinating examination of the roots of some of English football's most famous clubs, and how the relationship between industrial communities and football clubs still survives at a local level. Purchase it here.
Things to do
Get your Wednesday’s fill of Greek Myth. Bacchus and Ariadne, Titian, from Art UK.
Tuesday
🕺🏿 Enjoy a contemporary dance class with African influences, led by ACE dance school’s Mthoko Mkhwanazi. The lessons take place every Tuesday at 6.45pm at their studio on Floodgate Street. Tickets £8.
🎭 Are self deprecating posh comedians off of Instagram to your taste? Go see Finlay Christie’s standup show I Deserve This at The Glee Club Birmingham on Tuesday. Notably, Christie won the So You Think You’re Funny? competition at the tender age of 19. He’s now topped 93k followers on Instagram. Expect generational comedy aimed at millennials and Gen Z. Doors at 6:30pm. Tickets start at £10.00.
Wednesday
🏺Make like the muses and gather at Kitchen Garden’s Storytelling Cafe this Wednesday to listen to Ancient Greek myths as told by Despina Ariou, who is from Syros in the middle of the Aegean Sea. Doors open and food will be served from 6.30pm. Story begins at 7.30pm. Tickets £11.
🎷 Catch some experimental Bristolian jazz (is there any other sort?) at Hare & Hounds, King’s Heath on Wednesday with Ishmael Ensemble. Their latest album, A State of Flow, was rated four out of five stars (no mean feat) in The Guardian. The paper described it as: “music that’s pitched somewhere between astral jazz, burbling electronica, trippy minimalism, psychedelic dub and 20 years of club culture.” Doors open at 7:30pm. Tickets start at £15.95.
Thursday
👿 Go full ‘Goblin Mode,’ this Thursday at Voce Bookshop, Birmingham as author and essayist Jen Calleja reads from her newly published Rough Trade collection Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode. Calleja’s book bears the fascinating, or horrifying, depending on one’s opinion, subtitle of: ‘Cannibalism, Mischief, Sex, Puppets and Music.’ The tome explores pop culture, film, and the messy experience of living in a body in the 21st century. Tickets start at £13.99.
🤖 Dance like a Robot from 1984? Go see, and/or take part in, How Does It Feel? This 6 hour ‘one day event’ held at Birmingham’s Black Box Theatre in collaboration with Fierce Festival aims to explore automation and the algorithm. How Does It Feel? is being run by a collection of artists, poets and academics interested in one of the most important technological advancements on the horizon. Doors at 10:30am. Tickets from £10. Lunch included.
Addition: The Dispatch understands Greg Brackenridge has written to The Sun asking for the paper to retract the detail that he wears a veteran’s badge which he claims is untrue.
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