Weep for West Bromwich

I don't know if you've every been to West Bromwich. If you haven't, don't: it makes The Dark Place look like New York in the Roaring Twenties. Unless you're going to support their very fine football team (something The Dark Place entirely lacks). Otherwise, it's a case study in post-industrial decline, poor urban planning, democratic failure and political contempt.

What does a poor, abandoned town need? A bloody big 'iconic' building of course! If you give it curvy windows and a wacky name, the jobs and vitality will come coursing back. It's what Augé called a non-space and what Owen Hatherley et al. decry as the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of post-socialist politics: superficial, tricksy postmodernism which masquerades as democratic populism but is actually a cynical evasion of the tangible and unpostmodern problems facing places like West Brom. And so:

This is The Public. It was meant to be an arts centre of some sort, at a cost of £19m - because modern cultural policy assumes that people who used to make things will suddenly find themselves living in a Wonderland of jobs and aesthetic beauty if a big postmodern box is dropped on them. I think this is hugely patronising: it's cultural policy by helicopter.

It cost £31m. Nobody knows what it's for. Nobody goes there. It's going to be closed or demolished: the Arts Council of England called its own decision to build it 'a gross waste of public money', as Charlotte Higgins notes in her damning summary.

Next time, how about asking the people of West Brom what they need. They might be poor, but they ain't thick. My guess is that serious economic intervention might help. But what do I know?

!Whatthefuck?

Occasionally, we're all faced with periods of introspection. Our lives seem worthless, our activities pointless, our presence a drag on our families, friends and colleagues.

I have the solution. Whenever you have a self-esteem crisis, open the website of !Whatif? They're an 'innovations' company. I've read their site and still don't know what they actually do (or even how to pronounce it). I have divined that they wear zany facial hair, combats, and revere Nathan Barley as some kind of god. They charge companies big fees for sounding like they know what's hip - that's as close as I can get. Their name makes me scream with impotent fury. It encapsulates a mindless kind of trendiness, covers utter intellectual bankruptcy. This is what we've done to this country. Honest people making things have been sacked. Bullshitters with no regard for the decencies of grammar run the world. How I hope the recession sends them back to the fields (or as in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, perhaps they'll be on the first ship to a new planet. We'll follow you, honestly).

There does seem to be a total loss of confidence in company names now too. British Telecom is now officially BP. Vesper Thorneycroft is now VT. The BBC's privatised engineering wing is Red Bee. British Airways is BA. British Petroleum is now BP. West Brom's failed art-gallery-and-whatever is 'The Public' and on and on - what's wrong with a name which says who you are, or what you do? Especially for the shameful industries - BAe (formerly British Aerospace) should be Shiny Weapons of Mass Destruction No Questions Asked, Bribes Available.