There is war in Birmingham! The sporadic fire between the city’s councillors and the preservers of the English language erupted into a major battle recently when the city council ruled that there were gradually eliminating the use of possessive apostrophes in street signage.  Places such as St Paul’s Square and King’s Heath in Birmingham, UK  are set to lose their apostrophes when new street signage is needed.

The self appointed Keeper’s of the Queen’s English (enough apostrophes for you?) have been waging a loosing battle of the past few years having given up on text messaging and email some time ago but this new public assault on city signage has their blood boiling and the daggers drawn. It wasn’t that long ago that the argument focused on whether the correct syntax was St James’s Park or St James’ Park, the debate has run a long course with both sides courting opinion which, in the main, was that Joe Public didn’t really give a damn.

Birmingham Councillor Martin Mullaney had tried to curtail any further debate by banning all future punctuation on city signage but in his wake has created more debate than it tried to quell.  He commented that he had better things to do with his time in council meetings than debate the issue. His other argument is that Satellite Navigation systems are only confused by the use of apostrophes within addresses, but as anyone knows, problems with SatNavs occur when trying to study a three inch by inch screen whilst driving at speed or listening to some automaton telling you how to drive.

There has even been a spate of mysterious editors creeping around the city with pots of white paint erasing out the apostrophes and occasionally removing the odd letter converting Birmingham’s boring places into more fun spots. This slightly more `intellectual’ graffiti seems to be replacing the old Smiffy Wuz Yer daubed walls and I for one applaud our education system in which today’s new yob can add his ammunition to a worthwhile debate.  Let battle commence. Bring it on!