Comment Commonwealth Games? Don’t get too excited, we’re Brummies
Many contracts, including the athletes village housing construction, will include requirements for apprenticeships – meaning that youngsters will be trained to do something skilled.
They will also need an army of volunteers to help support the Games in 2022 – and these will get training and qualifications.
It means they will start thinking they can do something other than work in a zero hours job washing up or stacking shelves.
And if Birmingham has an increasingly skilled workforce it will only encourage other major investors to come here rather than London or Manchester. As well as 11 days of sport in the summer there will be linked events – an urban sports festival, a arts festival and a business exhibition to make the most of the focus on Birmingham from around the Commonwealth. The doubters say we should be ashamed of our city and country, not strutting about the world showing off.
With the Games increasing the city and region’s profile, people might start wanting to visit and spend their money here more often. for day-to-day services like bin collection, social care, street cleaning, child protection and so on.
This money, from the council’s revenue budget, is not being used to fund the Games.
It’s in the contract. Experts say the Games will create and support more than 4,000 jobs a year up to 2022 through not only engineering and construction firms and their supply chains, but hotels and tourism, transport and sports facilities.
Local firms across a whole range of sectors will be at the front of the queue for work and contracts. Then they’ll get big ideas and start winning more work. Actually Liverpool were very keen and provided the biggest challenge. Other cities around the world needed more than four years to prepare.
Manchester 2002 was a disaster – they only used the Games to get a new tram network, a major football stadium and regenerate a former industrial wasteground. After Brexit, the UK will be looking for new global trading links and putting on a good show in 2022 could help.
All those Brummies with grandparents from Jamaica and the Caribbean, cousins in India and Pakistan and friends from Australia, New Zealand and Canada and anyone with relatives or ancestors from the dozens of other Commonwealth countries may care a little.