Dear Patchers, it’s not every day that an alleged assassin comes to town — but that’s exactly what’s at the top of today’s Brum in Brief. Aimee Betro, who has indicated that she will plead not guilty, has been extradited from Armenia to face charges concerning a 2019 plot to murder the owner of a Birmingham clothes shop. Find out more below.
Also today, MPs are begging the government to pay out to improve one of the city’s busiest train stations, and the return of a Dispatch favourite: Bentley-driving Wolverhampton councillor Milkinderpal Jasapl, the man whose place of residence is a never-ending mystery (a little spoiler: he now says he’s living above an MOT centre). Plus, join the debate about Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery — still love it? Or think it’s seen better days?
Catch up and coming up:
- Fighting families and frazzled tutors — competition for King Edward grammar schools is incredibly fierce. Our weekend read delved into the topic that has mums and dads feverishly posting on Mumsnet. Catch up here.
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Weather
🌥️Tuesday: A misty start to the day, sunny by late-morning. Max 6°C.
🍃Wednesday: Foggy with light winds. Max 5°C.
🌥️Thursday: Cloudy again! Sunny by lunchtime. Max 7°C.
☔ Friday: Very wet and windy. Max 10°C.
🌦️ Weekend: A bit of everything: cloud, sun, drizzle. Max 9°C.
We get our weather from the Met Office.
Photo of the week
Glimpse the old rubbing up against the new in this shot taken from inside the Bull Ring shopping centre by Marcin Sz. Modern towers soar out of the mist behind the Edwardian Moor Street Station.
Brum in brief
⚖️ An American woman will face trial on Valentine’s Day for allegedly taking part in a plot to kill a Birmingham shop owner in 2019. 45-year-old Aimee Betro, originally from Wisconsin in America, has been charged with conspiracy to murder, possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, and is alleged to have been involved in the importation of ammunition from the US into the UK. Betro, who indicated at a hearing on Friday that she would plead not-guilty to all charges, was extradited from Armenia, where she was arrested last summer.
🚆 Two local MPs want the government to fund urgent upgrades to Kings Norton Railway Station. Northfield MP Lawrence Turner and Selly Oak MP Al Cairns are urging the reinstatement of two of four platforms at the station, which is one of the city’s busiest, serving one million travellers per year. “Commuters used to be served by six trains an hour, departing every ten minutes. This frequency has fallen to four trains an hour, which are ‘bunched’ and less convenient,” they wrote in a letter to the Minister of State for Rail.
🚙 Remember Milkinderpal Jaspal? He’s the Bentley-driving Wolverhampton politician we wrote about last year. We found out he’d been claiming to live in a small semi-detached house in the less well-off Heath Town ward (which he represents as a councillor alongside his wife and daughter-in-law) despite owning a much larger property in the well-heeled Grotto Lane (which multiple neighbours attested was his actual address). Well, Labour Party sources have now informed The Dispatch that Mr Jaspal has a new address! He’s currently claiming to live above a garage…that is, the Newcross Motor Company, also in Heath Town. A strange residence for a former mayor, certainly, but it’ll be handy if he needs to get the Bentley serviced….
☕ Spotlight: A local counselling service and charity is offering free sessions in a bid to tackle the mental health care crisis. St Martin’s is a charity based in St Martin’s Church in Birmingham city centre, that offers accessible and low-cost counselling for all, with 450 appointments every week. The first 50 new clients who apply for counselling in January 2025 will get up to four free counselling sessions, available online or in person. Reach out to St Martin’s here.
🧑🎨 Debate: Dispatch readers took to their keyboards over the weekend to debate the nature, and purpose, of Birmingham’s premier gallery and museum. After a four-year hiatus, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) has reopened. Changed is the central round room of 18th and 19th-century oil paintings surrounding Jacob Epstein’s The Archangel Lucifer — in exchange: a motley collection of pieces, including the collagist ‘Cold War Steve.’ The museum also has one of the largest collections of pre-Raphaelite paintings in the world: yet few, if any, have been included in the free permanent collection on display. Is this curatorial revamp a bold step forward for accessibility and relevance, or a patronising act of cultural vandalism? Dispatch readers couldn’t agree. One commenter argued that: “The space seems unfinished, and we now pay to see the pre-Raphaelites. The city is in trouble, and it feels like the Council is in denial.” Another stood up for the change, saying: “BMAG has to attract people who think art isn’t for them, it’s inaccessible, and I think the way BMAG is changing will do exactly that. Surely there’s room for many different experiences.” Have a view? Should galleries be geared towards displaying the art-historical inheritance of their citizens, or should they be platforms for representing contemporary life? Comment here.
Home of the Week
This Victorian, two-bedroom flat in Moseley is filled with neo-gothic features. Minton tiles, pointed arch windows and wooden shutters abound. It’s yours for £300,000.
Media picks
📰 The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is a publicly funded body which investigates miscarriages of justice. The CCRC was set up in the wake of travesties, including the wrongful imprisonment of the Birmingham Six. But has it failed in its mission? Writing in the London Review of Books, Matt Foot explores how the CCRC fell short, citing criticisms that its leaders lack courage, determination, and even the right experience for their roles — the current chair of the board, Helen Pitcher, is a non-executive director of United Biscuits.
🎧 Solihull-raised comedian Stewart Lee tells the story of 20th-century Birmingham surrealism in a BBC podcast, ‘The Balsall Heath Bohemians.’ Lee makes the case that British surrealism started not in London, but in the Birmingham suburbs. Lee tells the tale of Birmingham surrealism through key protagonists: the painters, Conroy Maddox and Emmy Bridgwater. The podcast also has first-hand testimony of University of Birmingham zoologist Desmond Morris, who was a young surrealist at the time. One episode, of the emerging surrealist scene in the city, involved Morris attempting to drag an elephant skull through Broad Street, before giving up and dumping it in an alley. The next day, the Birmingham Post, perhaps mistakenly, reported it as a ‘dinosaur in Broad Street.’
Things to do
🖼️ It’s your last chance to visit the Barber Institute before it closes on Sunday ahead of building improvement works. Catch exhibitions on Modernist still life, scent and the Pre-Raphaelites, and the sounds of landscape before it’s too late. The Institute will reopen next year.
🧠 Do you feel an extraordinary sense of cosiness when ‘The Fairytale of New York’ starts playing during the lead-up to Christmas? This event on Tuesday might explain why. Witness Prof. Lauren Stewart explain why, and how, music connects our brains to our bodies at The Glee, Birmingham. Tickets start at £10.50. Doors at 6:30 pm.
🍕 Celebrate Burn’s Night this Thursday with the Birmingham Brewing Company, Exploring Whisky and Smoke & Ash pizza. Tickets are £37.50 and include a beer that has been specially brewed for the occasion, a haggis pizza and four drams of scotch whisky, with a guided tasting.
📽️ On Friday, Soul City Arts Club will screen No Other Land, a documentary by a Palestinian-Israeli filmmaking collective that exposes the destruction of the Masafer Yatta villages in the occupied West Bank. Tickets from £5, doors open at 5 pm.
Correction: an earlier version of this issue described Moor Street Station as Victorian. It is, in fact, Edwardian and this has been corrected.
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