Recently by Kate Cooper

Jonathan Walker's headline Birmingham must lead the way in reviving UK economy is about about the 2010 Cities Outlook published today. At a first reading, I took his headline to mean this city is at the forefront of solving the UK's economic problems.

Not so, as his article goes on to explain. Indeed, the 2010 Cities Outlook makes far less a sanguine read than his headline would suggest.

The Centre for Cities report : University Challenge: Growing the knowledge economy in Birmingham was published yesterday. It's a disconcerting read, shaking what the city believes about itself.

Manufacturing output static. The regional output gap at £15bn. 30% workless in the region, close to 40% in Birmingham.* Of the employed in 2008, only 15% in manufacturing, a figure which has fallen a further 11% this year. (see WMRO)

The seemingly relentless grip of old-style manufacturing on our psyche may shift at last.

I was out of town for the first and, so far, only showing of 1 Day here in Birmingham. So like nearly everyone else here, I haven't seen the film made by the internationally renown Penny Woolcock and a remarkable cast of local men and women including the new-found talent Dylan Duffus.

Having raised the issue of food security (along with a low-cost, convivial alternative-style means of regeneration) as a topic for their Annual Conference last week with publication of Roger Levett's essay in Fit for Purpose (see blog entry), the WMRO appears to have promptly ignored it all.

Food after all, appears as if by magic. When the Conference delegates ate their lunch, I'll bet they thought little, if at all, about the fragility of the just-in-time systems that got it there, let alone where on earth it originally came from.

Or, as pertinently, where it all went to. This includes what the food companies chuck at source or in transit, the freegan stuff the supermarkets discard, the 30% we throw away, and the dung we produce.

There was on-line comment and a flurry of emails after last week's entry Green shoots of recovery. This was about Roger Levett's essay on guerrilla spud-growing in the WMRO publication West Midlands: Fit for the Future.

I was led to the eloquent and engaging talk by the architect Carolyn Steel at the 2009 TED Conference in Oxford. She wrote Hungry City: How food shapes our lives.

The WM Regional Observatory has published a 10-essay collection under the title West Midlands: Fit for the future: Positioning the region for economic recovery.

These essays are to be discussed at their Annual Conference on 20th October.

Only one contribution, however, adds something surprising, even startling to the debate. It is by Roger Levett.

But let's start with the Foreword by Ian Austin MP. I quote: we know what we need to do to make the region the workshop of the world again.

We know? Eh? Workshop of the world? Which century is this man in? Or is he merely pandering to some vague nostalgia about what went on in Matthew Boulton's time?

Ten years ago this month, I sat each evening at a supper table in Pretoria. The Afrikaans host of the pension where I stayed, put his half-dozen or so guests around the same table. Thereby I got to dine with the most interesting of companions. They ranged from diplomats to engineers. Some were South Africans, some foreigners like myself. Most were seeking to help the fledgling new society function well.