The announcement that High Speed 2, the fast rail route from London to Birmingham and beyond, is to be built with a station at Old Oak Common in Hammersmith and Fulham means the prospect of a Crossrail station at Kensal Gasworks in North Kensington is very much in doubt, say Labour Councillors. The site selected for the HS2 station, near Park Royal, will be a major new transport hub. This is not o...

When Birmingham Council tried to instil pride in recycling efforts, it had the clever idea of sending out 360,000 flyers showing the city skyline. Unfortunately the leaflets, saying: 'Thank you, Birmingham,' actually had a picture of Birmingham, Alabama, on them.

There were four by-elections yesterday, with some excellent results for Labour, boding well for the London and Birmingham elections in May: Sparkbrook Ward, Birmingham MBC. Lab gain from Respect. Lab 3932 (56.7%, +6.9), Respect 2301 (33.2%, -5.6), LD 395 (5.7%, -0.8), Green 179 (2.6%, +0.4), Con 133 (1.9%, -0.9). Swing of 6.3% from Respect to Lab since May this year. This was Respect Leader S...

As Gordon Brown stepped aboard the Birmingham train at Euston Station on Monday morning a journalist shouted to him "Did you have a proper holiday?"

The Birmingham Mail has the story: … a city councillor [has] failed to overturn a judge’s ruling that he “scurrilously” tried to smear a Labour opponent when giving evidence in an election court. Coun Ayoub Khan, who is his party’s prospective candidate for Ladywood at the next general election, hoped to clear his name after Elections Commissioner

Public services in Birmingham are expected to be severely disrupted tomorrow as local authority trade unions stage a one-day strike. More than 20,000 city council employees have been ordered to stay at home in protest at a pay and grading review which will see just over 4,000 staff suffer a wage cut, some by more than £16,000 a year.

The University of Birmingham has implemented LogMeIn Rescue as part of its IT helpdesk services to remotely support the computing needs of its 30,000+ academic population.

By Ger Francis A quite remarkable event took place in Birmingham on Sunday night. Between 800 and 1,000 people packed in to the Sparkbrook Islamic Centre for a meeting organised by Sheikh Zahir Mahmood - one of the participants in the Viva Palestina convoy. Built largely by word of mouth, the meeting raised an incredible £26,000

Birmingham council have imposed a new pay and grading system onto their 40,000-strong workforce, under the guise of the 'single status' scheme. Under this, some workers will lose half their pay. 20,000 angry workers came out on strike on 5 February and this is likely to be repeated and exceeded on 23 and 24 April.

Astonishingly, Birmingham Labour returned more MPs to Parliament in 2005 (nine) than the number of councillors they returned in last year's locals (eight). Labour MPs sit in Birmingham Edgbaston, Selly Oak, Hall Green and Northfield but in the 36 local elections held in these four seats in the local elections held in May 2006, 2007 and 2008, Labour have won a solitary seat. Occasionally peopl...