Filed 20 August 2026

The Trojan Elephant of Lichfield

Of bloody ‘course, this is what happens when you let Lichfield have anything. A cathedral, three pubs on every corner, a proper shopping street, and now apparently a cinema too. While Burntwood gets a leisure centre with a temperamental boiler and a Turkish-barber-to-resident ratio that even Turkey doesn’t achieve. Population’s not that different, before anyone says it. Check the numbers yourself. Wikipedia will tell you. Yet somehow, they get enough money to lose a £5 million overspend in, and we get a pretty drawing of a town centre that will never get built.

Anyway, turns out their lovely new Picture Palace, the one they were so pleased with themselves about, is costing rather more than advertised. Five. And a half. Million more. They reckon. On top of whatever it was costing before, which nobody in charge seems keen to actually put a number on. Something about “changing builders” and “lack of governance,” which is council for “we buggered up and haven’t the foggiest either, but we had to write something.” And that’s just what they’re asking for now. Nobody’s said that’s the end of it, and I’ll believe it’s the end of it when I see it, because five and a half million has a habit of turning into six and a half, and then a bit more after that, once you’ve already spent the first lot and can hardly turn round and mothball the thing.

Reminds me of that old story, the one with the elephant. Trojan elephant, I think it was. Some king somewhere, Egypt or one of them, used to give people elephants as a present, except it was really a punishment, because you weren’t allowed to work the thing or get rid of it, you just had to feed it forever and go bankrupt very politely about it. That’s Lichfield’s cinema, that is. Everyone stood there clapping when it turned up, and now they’re the ones who have to keep it fed and shovel its shit.

Mind you, say what you like about Lichfield, at least they got given something worth ruining. Nobody’s ever handed Burntwood so much as a bowling alley to bankrupt ourselves over. I’m not saying I want a cinema; I want a Weatherspoons, as is natural. I’m saying if anyone’s giving out expensive animals nobody can afford to keep, WS7’s got a shopping centre that could really do with one.