Jon Bounds' Budget Best of Brum, written for the Guardian but they edited it way down. Here's the original.

Lots Of Things To See And Do In The West Midlands in April.

Birmingham had gotten an update on Google Earth which means at some point in the near future this link on Google Maps won't take you to a building site but will look something like this:



It's still a good couple of years out of date though. The park in front of Curzon St Station is still warehouses for example. But with Birmingham these days keeping up to date images is always going to be tricky.

That said, it's interesting how little noise is made about the Windows Live maps and their shockingly detailed flyover imagery. Compare this with the above, and note the re-glazing of the Rotunda:



Partly this is because Microsoft is evil and Google can do no wrong, but remember Google Maps are extensible, if that's the right word, in that they can be used by other applications with ease. The Windows Live maps require Internet Explorer for some functionality. Nuff said. (Sure look purty though...)

D'log has more musings on the update.

Remember that shockingly good Holiday 2007 piece on Birmingham than the BBC broadcast a month or so back? You missed it? Thankfully we live in the future and some kind soul has uploaded it to YouTube:



When this was first shown I remember thinking Visit Birmingham should have it streaming from their front page but that would be too obvious so it's up to the rest of us. Spread it far and wide.

Bonus revelation: Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen = not a twat!

Hat tip

Note venue change. Previously at the Custard Factory, now at King Edward / Chapter 11. Map and details.

Silver Footed Gig Guide for this week.

Birmingham: City of the Future



A video put together, one assumes from the narration, by medical students at Birmingham Uni. Good to see standards in medical student humour haven't changed much over the years.

via D'log

I appear to be coming down with a throat-cold (like a head-cold but more throaty) so I'm not going to try and read it, but you might like to know that Professor Michael Parkinson's Birmingham City Centre Masterplan Visioning Study (PDF, 1.3MB) has been delivered to the council. Others have read it already though.

D'log picks out the bits relevant to the creative industries.

The Stirrer wonders where the actual residents of Birmingham come into it all.

Nunovo wonders about the parks.

Birmingham Post report

The Mullaney Pipe. Track Birmingham's web 2.0 councilor's many varied online activities in one place.

The Silver Footed Gig Guide is up for this week with the troubling news that promoters Chicks Dig Jerks have been having money issues of late. It all seems to be okay now but if you're thinking of going to a gig, and what they're putting on looks up your street, do give them your patronage, say on Friday 9th at the Sunflower Lounge where they've got Hawnay Troof, Bee Stung Lips and Esquilax. "Scuzzy, dirty electro/rock" by all accounts.

Martin Mullaney YouTube Update

After his somewhat infamous tagging video it seems councillor Martin Mullaney has gotten the YouTube bug in a major way. You can browse all his works from his profile but I'd especially like to draw your attention to this masterpiece where he joins Keith Marsden, the manager of Epic Skate Park in Moseley, to explore the derelict building in front of his establishment.

At first this is a fascinating chance to see inside the offices of the old tram depot which, despite being a listed building, has fallen into a state of terrible disrepair, but it then turns into one of those classic TV moments when the owner of the property turns up and is none too happy. It's not on tape but according to Martin "there was a resulting scuffle ... which ended up with Mr Zaman picking up a 4foot long piece of wood and threatening to whack me over the head with it."



There are other videos of Martin exploring areas in his ward that need a good tidy-up, usually in response to complains from residents and I'm struck by how this very low-budget approach really opens up the dialogue between councillors and the public, not just by illustrating what's being done but by having a forum under the video for debate.

Martin's very keen on the Section 215 Notice which I'd not come across before. In essence it allows the council to demand a landowner tidy up their land. If they don't then the council do it themselves and charge the landowner. So far two of these have been served in Moseley and Kings Heath.

But it's not just council stuff that Martin's posting. He's also done a fascinating eight part series behind the scenes of the Moseley Road Public Baths, the highlight for me being the old boiler house.



Here's the full set: Intro, 1st Class Mens, 2nd Class Men's, Women's, Filter Room, Boiler House, Committee Room, Roof. Excellent stuff!

You'll remember me being rather disillusioned by the council having witnessed Mike Whitby in action last week. He could learn a few lessons from Martin I think.

Thanks to John Mostyn for the heads up.

***

My gods, he's on MySpace too, and quite proactively by the looks of things!

Apparently the Express and Star newspaper had a lively message board on its site until quite recently when it was removed as they "redevelop our interactive output". This sudden virtual diaspora prompted Aiden Goldstraw, previously web editor for the E&S, to start up We The Midlands which so far consists of a blog and forum.

WeTheMidlands is a new venture by myself to connect the people of the Midlands, share news, views and gossip and talk about issues and concerns. WeTheMidlands, as its subtitle suggests, will be written "By the people, for the people". The idea is for people to be able to get their news out to the world without going through the filter of traditional journalism.

It's still very early days - I think the site only launched last week - but it's great to see this sort of thing being tried on a region-wide level. Personally I can't be doing with forums but I know a lot of people like them. If you're one of those people here's a chance to build something from the group up. Aiden is looking for contributors.

Becoming an author on this site is easy - simply e-mail me on aidan@wethemidlands.com with a brief outline of your interest in contributing. I will then supply you with a username and password which will enable you to start sharing your news right away.

Spread the word!

Heads up from Stu.

If you didn't already know there's a lunar eclipse tonight and, right now, there's not a cloud in the sky so it should be spectacular. The full eclipse will be between 10.44pm and 11.58pm though the whole thing lasts for a good 3 hours. I'm planning to be on the bowling green off Linden Road in Bournville with my tripod at around 10-ish because I think witnessing huge astral bodies move in front of each other is better than having a life. The rest of you just remember to look up when you leave the pub.

Squeezypaws is ostensibly a cat blog, and there's nothing wrong with cat blogs. Without cats there would be no internet. And that's a scientific fact. That said, Nicky blogs about other stuff too, as you do. So, welcome Squeezypaws.

Also welcome Catnip and Stef.

When I was in Walsall a couple of weeks back I noticed the canals were kinda green. It seems they're now so green some people don't think they're canals at all. As reported in the Express and Star, an 11 year old girl walked off a jetty and a man drove his car in thinking it was a patch of grass.

To the amazement of onlookers, the motorist, aged in his 40s and wearing a suit, ploughed into the water between Wharf Bar and New Art Gallery. Staff and customers from The Wharf Bar ran to his rescue as the car started floating on its side and the man, believed to be from the north east, struggled to break free as the car began to fill with water.

Aparently responsibility for the removal of algae/duckweed from the canals lies with British Waterways not the local council. I wonder if this algae explosion is related to the £7 million cuts they suffered recently.

Be sure and watch the video which has a great vox pop.

via canal-blogger Granny Buttons.

Mail Gets Facts Wrong Shock

Your dodgy news reporting spotlight for this week is actually bordering on the criminal. As you know, the proposed Ent statue in Moseley was approved by the Council's Planning Committee on Thursday. While I'm on record as being disappointed by the results that's not what concerns me.

The meeting was, by all accounts, a rather noisy and fractious affair, characterizing the controversy this project has generated over the last three years. Here's how the Birmingham Mail reported it.

A protester battling to halt plans for a 20ft Treebeard the Ent on Moseley village green sparked outrage by claiming it had been pushed to the fore by Jewish businesses.

Leane Martin, a graduate of the Chelsea College of Art and a resident of Woodbridge Road, Moseley, said: "The majority of businesses are against this.

"It is being supported by ten per cent of businesses who are Jewish."

Ms Martin's remark was met with gasps and cries of "racism" at the planning committee meeting.

David Isgrove, of the Moseley Statue Group, said: "The comments were unfortunate and did little to help her case.

"The issue has provoked strong feelings, but I hope we can put all that behind us."

However, this is not what was reported on the Moseley Free mailing list by Pam Rutter, the other speaker making the case against the statue.

First, "Apparently........jewish" is chinese whispers. That wasn't said. What the speaker TRIED to say was along the lines of: "...a small minority of people in Moseley, and in Bham generally, are keen Tolkienites. Should they be allowed a statue commemorating Tolkien, or should the public art be more representative of the whole community in some way?" and to expound on this idea.

Most unfortunately, because of the tension of standing in front of so many people and because of the pressure of time, it came out sounding much shorter and much more contentious - something like "in an area that's 10% Jewish, you wouldn't build a Jewish statue". Very, very unfortunate, but never intended to be anything other than an illustration of a general principle.

So why did it come out so differently from what was intended? Well, any speakers who want to oppose an application get exactly 3 minutes between them. The were two speakers against the Ent, so they had one and a half minutes each. It is very very difficult to say everything you want to say within one and a half minutes.

(I know, because I was the other speaker! I made a complete hash of my one and a half minutes. Gobbledegook. I am not proud of my effort at all. I just wish I could have my time again.)

It's worth noting that Pam is not the sort of person to make this shit up.

Couple of things here.

The first is that the Mail printed a quote without checking its accuracy. It may well be that many people misheard Leanne Martin but that doesn't prove she made racist remarks. Neil Elkes, the Mail reporter, evidently didn't bother to check with her before printing what probably counts as slander in his paper. (It's also noteworthy that he spelt her name wrong.)

The second is that maybe the Planning Comittee isn't the best place to make these sort of decisions. You'd think it would be a controlled environment where those making points would be able to make them clearly. This evidently isn't the case, particularly if you're not experienced in dealing with that environment. Regardless of the outcome the whole decision making process looks fundamentally flawed

But whatever the specifics in this case we can be sure of one thing. The Birmingham Mail is not to be trusted when it comes to reporting facts. But then that's not exactly news.

St Patrick's Festival

Birmingham's St Patrick's Festival of all things Irish starts on Friday 9th and runs to Saturday 17th with the highlight being the Parade on Sunday 11th through Digbeth.

Information on the festival appears to be spread over two websites which together seem to have all the information you need. stpatricksfestival.com looks to be the current one but doesn't have the events listed. You'll find them on stpatricksfestival.co.uk. I'm also assuming this map (pdf) of the route is for this year. Actually, their whole web presence is a bit of a mess. Here's hoping all the real effort has gone into the event itself.

Photo by Karl Randay from the 2006 parade.

Interesting looking gig at the Barfly on Friday. Your MySpace links are as follows: Los Campesinos, KateGoes, Sky Larkin, Johnny Foreigner. £5 in, doors at 7pm.

Ent News - updated

You may or may not be aware that there are plans to erect a statue in the middle Moseley of an Ent. An Ent is a giant tree from Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings which recently was made popular by a film. Said Ent will be made of metal.

I, personally, think this is a completely stupid idea and wrote about it at length in 2005. The initial plans were rejected by the planning department but have since been resubmitted and will be voted on today. Here is the report on the application which is worth a read. Unfortunately the recommendation is that it go ahead, presumably because there is no precedent for rejecting the patently absurd.

I may or may not make it to the meeting (which takes place in committee rooms 3 and 4 of the Council House starting at 11am) but will report on the judgement.

If it is passed then we will have a statue of a tree made out of metal celebrating a man who hated Birmingham and everything it stood for. Hooray.

Update

It got planning permission. May the Lord have mercy on our souls.

Civic Gospels

This evening I went to a talk at the Council Chamber. This is the room where the city council meets to do business. It looks like this. The talk was titled "A Civic Gospel For The 21st Century" and was given by the historian and broadcaster Tristram Hunt, author of the book Building Jerusalem. He was introduced by the leader of the council, Mike Whitby, with follow on comments from Jerry Blackett of the Chamber of Commerce (who had a very nice tie) and Chris Game of Birmingham University (who has a very impressive beard).

Here's the summary of what the talk was about, taken from this press release:

His lecture will ask whether we can we recreate the civic gospel of Chamberlain's Birmingham, when it was known as the best governed city in the world. How can the business community once again play a strong role in civic affairs? What impact does the city's diversity and changing social make-up have on how it is governed? What new freedoms and powers does local government need to take the city forward?

While the talk was very interesting and raised some important questions about the relevance of Birmingham's Victorian-era regeneration to its current period of major change, that's not what I'm going to write about. What interests me is the talk itself.

I attended as a guest of a friend who works in the local history department of the Library. He gave the impression he could "slip me in", the subtext being I perhaps shouldn't be there. Of course there was no problem with my attending - anyone could have phoned the council and booked a place. They just needed to know it was happening.

The event wasn't very well attended considering the subject matter and the stature of the speaker (he's been on telly!) and I understand it hadn't been publicized very well, if at all. Just a few circular emails to the usual people in the usual departments. The press release from the council appears to have been issued on the 26th, two days ago.

The talk was, like I said, introduced by the leader of the City Council. I'm sure Mike Whitby is a good man. I'm sure he does what he does for sound and moral reasons. But I can't understand him. Sure, I recognise he's speaking a form of English but when I process the words that come out of his mouth I can't deduce any real meaning. Maybe if I spoke politics I'd get it, but I don't. Not many people do. From what little I did comprehend he appeared to be bemoaning the bad reputation councillors have and the negative reporting they get in the press. He alluded repeatedly to a battle that had occurred in the Chamber yesterday as if the audience would immediately know what it was. I had no idea, though I believe it was to do with setting the Council Tax. This is not a personal attack but from my perspective he was representing Local Government and I came away thinking I want nothing to do with Local Government.

Tristram Hunt's talk was, as you'd expect from a young media-savvy academic, very well presented. I wondered if him doing these sorts of events was similar to an up and coming band touring the country before making it big and expect to see more of him, if not in broadcasting then perhaps in politics. He struck me as very Cameron-esque, combining that belief in the virtues of free enterprise and business with an appreciation of the importance of what you could roundly call Society. I didn't necessarily agree with everything he said but I understood it and it made me think.

The follow-on speeches, reacting to Tristram's themes, were also interesting if short. Jerry Blackett came across as quite progressive making the point that local businesses realise that they need more from a city than low business rates - they need a city their workers, particularly their skilled workers, enjoy living in and are starting to realise they need to pay for this. Chris Game, using the position of academic with no vested interests, was very entertaining and I'd like to see him talk again.

The Q&A afterwards was a bit of a farce. A couple of relevant points were made but there was also a lot of single-issue grandstanding which kinda pissed me off. I wonder if this was due to the environment and the presence of Mike Whitby on stage where people felt able to rant about their specialist subject no matter how off-topic it was in the knowledge that Whitby couldn't stop them for fear of being accused of censorship. So there wasn't much of a debate about the issues under discussion, which was a shame as they were interesting issues.

Afterwards we moved to the Round Room of the Art Gallery for refreshments. There were multiple plates of sandwiches and canapes and plenty of wine. We stayed pretty much to the end and barely a dent had been made in the food (despite my best efforts).

So, conclusions then.

Over the last few months as I've been blogging about Birmingham I've become very aware that this sort of thing goes on a lot. There are many talks, conferences and the like which are open to the public and many of them are debating issues which are of crucial importance to the development of the city. I only know about them because I've either been looking or, more often, because I know people who have found themselves in positions where they come across them, usually within "the establishment". Often (though not always) these events constitute the "consultation" part of a project enabling the department or agency involved to tick the consultation box and get their funding. But no-one outside the usual suspects attends so no views or opinions outside of the establishment are heard.

Now, on the flip side to this, the danger of opening yourself up to the views of the masses is that the masses will give their views and once they give their views they expect something to be done about them. You can see this happening with the No. 10 Petition site where people are, rightly or wrongly, expecting their petitions to have some effect. Further to this is the cruel truth that there are a lot of idiots out there and giving them a voice is not always the most productive of actions. For further illustration of this see The Internet, department: Blogging, subsection: Comments. And this is something government at all levels is going to have to deal with. Currently, by accident or design, they're not.

But even if these talks continue to take place behind de-facto closed doors (which isn't such a bad idea if you want them to be controlled and useful) there's no reason why the results of them should stay hidden. To my knowledge this event was not recorded and there was no transcript. If it was there is no facility for that information to be made available to the wider population. Information, let's not forget, that the citizens have paid for. We paid for Tristram to travel here. We paid for the buffet afterwards and the overtime for the staff. And while the minds of those who attended may have been stimulated those who didn't see no direct benefit. I'm not suggesting they should be involved with the debate as it stood, but they should have access to the results of that debate, be it a video or audio recording or a document. Then they can take this and start their own debate elsewhere. This, to me, is the genesis of e-democracy or whatever you want to call it. Not so much having access to the current structures of power (which are not built to deal with it) but having access to the tools to build your own structures which can then react to the establishment from an informed perspective. Give us the information.

This view of mine comes into sharp focus when you consider our elected leader Mike Whitby and his alien ways. I don't necessarily want him to change but I also I have no desire whatsoever to engage with him on his level. It's occurred to me that if I want to continue writing about the City then at some point I'm going to get dragged into these institutions and negotiate the waves of politics and double-speak and, frankly, bullshit, finding myself eventually drowning in a sea of nonsense wondering what exactly my point was in the first place. I don't want to do that. I appreciate that managing a city is a very complicated thing and requires a specialist language and attitude. I understand that idealism will only take you so far in this arena if you want to get anything done. But I know in my heart of hearts that I'm never going down that road.

But I also have a passion for this city and a desire to understand it, not from a political point of view nor an academic one, but as someone who lives here. In order to do that I need information and I need the powers-that-be to realise that giving me and everyone else that information in a structured but undiluted form is not a bad thing but a very good thing indeed. That way we can have a proper debate, distributed across the city, involving everyone. We don't need to be given a voice - we already have a voice. We just need the knowledge, the information, to give our voices some substance.

To find out about future talks run by the council I'm guessing keeping tabs on this page of press releases might do the job.