Birmingham Post - News Blog

"Leave Julie Alone!" Says Lembit

2009-11-20T14:10:08Z

Julie Kirkbride has received backing from an unlikely source for her hopes of standing again as the Conservative candidate in Bromsgrove.

The Tory MP has made it pretty clear she wants to stay on in Parliament, despite announcing she was standing down.

And now she's been endorsed by high-profile Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Öpik - who urged his own colleagues not to give her a hard time over her expenses claims.

Speaking to ITV Central, Lembit said: "I'm glad she's thinking about this. I know she's felt really shocked by the way she was treated in the media.

"She will have gone through this and decided, is there really something here so serious that I shouldn't stand again?

"I really hope that the Liberal Democrats in Bromsgrove will respect her wishes and not seek to make political gain out of this."

Of course, Lembit knows what it's like to be the centre of media attention, after dating first weather forecaster Sian Lloyd and then half of the Cheeky Girls (in a toe-curling Commons performance he told MPs: "I should point out that the other sister is still single").

Perhaps he sympathises. Or perhaps he's just taken a leaf from Chris Crocker's defence of Britney Spears.

Just because BIA runway extension is in a plan doesn't mean it will happen

2009-11-19T09:49:30Z

My exclusive story a week ago revealing that Birmingham International Airport's £120 million runway extension plan is in deep trouble represents something of an inconvenient truth for West Midlands' political elite.
It is always embarrassing for politicians when people begin to realise that local government's grand plans and strategies are nothing more than meaningless words if the money and the will to deliver major infrastructure projects like the BIA runway simply does not exist.
And let's be absolutely clear about this. Birmingham Airport does not, at the moment, have the money to build a longer runway and even if it did have the funding in place the BIA board remains to be convinced of the business case for doing so.

This is not something that I have made up. It is a statement of fact from Paul Kehoe, BIA chief executive, whose assessment of the runway plan as reported in this newspaper - "at best it's marginal, at worst it could be loss-making" - caught the seven West Midlands district councils off guard.
The councils, owning pretty much a half share in the airport, have succeeded in talking up the runway proposal in such a way that most opinion formers in the region and business leaders tend to lapse into a messianic trance while repeating the mantra "we must have the runway, we must have the runway".
They assume the project is in the bag. They have been convinced by the argument that the regional economy will benefit from inward investment worth hundreds of millions of pounds if BIA is able to offer non-stop flights to India, China and the west coast of America.
But is this really likely to be the case given the financial and environmental pressures facing the aviation industry as we move into the second decade of the 21st century?
Let me again quote Mr Kehoe: "Even if we build the extension, we can't be certain that the airlines will come."
The point the airport is making is one that really does have to be answered convincingly by our political leaders. Put simply, Mr Kehoe is asking why BIA's private sector shareholders should be expected to carry most of the risk for a scheme where the business case is, at best, marginal.
The longer runway would, as he points out, do far more for the regional economy than it would for the airport company assuming of course that you sign up to the claim that airlines would actually use the longer runway in large numbers rather than continuing to fly from Manchester and the London airports.
There is, according to Mr Kehoe, "no clear financial advantage" for BIA from plodding on with a huge infrastructure scheme which would swallow up most of the airport's available cash reserves for years to come.
He puts it like this: "The airport could just as easily spend the money it does have on improving passenger terminals. The board has to look at this with a cold towel on its head and consider the company's best interests."
I have left it until now to comment on a letter to the Post from Birmingham City Council chief executive Stephen Hughes because his words are barely worth commenting on. A text book exercise in self-serving obfuscation, Mr Hughes wishes our readers to know that the runway extension remains on track because it is a high priority for the region's councils and is at the top of some spending plan strategy or other.
Mr Hughes, on top of his growing portfolio of duties which already includes masterminding regeneration in Birmingham, has taken personal responsibility for delivering the runway extension and he has the total backing of city council leader Mike Whitby.
Well, that's okay then. Brum's answer to X Factor's John and Edward are on the case, charging around with unbridled enthusiasm in an attempt to convince the electorate that all is well, when the opposite is clearly the case.
Mr Hughes does not mention Mr Kehoe in his letter. It is as if the BIA boss's comments never existed, airbrushed away in order to re-write history.
It is not only the BIA board requiring a cold towel, Whitby and Hughes could do with one as well.

Quick Guide to the Queen's Speech

2009-11-18T12:01:35Z

The Queen's Speech set out the laws Labour plans to introduce before the next election. Here are some of the highlights:

Parents and school pupils will be told exactly what they have a right to expect from schools - and gain the right to take schools to court if they are failing to deliver.

The Children, Schools and Families Bill will allow them to complain to the head, then to the local authority, then to the Local Government Ombudsman and finally, if they are still not satisfied, to take a school to court in the form of a judicial review. The Association of School and College Leaders complained today that the Bill will become a "whingers' charter", encouraging litigious parents to complain.

A Financial Services Bill will hand new powers to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) designed to curb unreasonable bonuses, allowing it to void banker contracts and banks those that continue to offer unjustifiable sums.

The Government is once again promising to make parents of anti-social teenagers take responsibility for their child's behaviour. A new Crime and Security Bill will will encourage courts to impose parenting orders, which force parents to attend counselling or guidance sessions, when a child receives an ASBO.

Police will gain the power to evict people accused of domestic violence from their homes temporarily, even if they are not charged with any offence, "empowering victims to feel safe in their homes" according to the Government.

It will become a criminal offence to possess a mobile phone in prison, following reports that illicit mobile phones are common in Britain's jails. More than 300 illicit mobile phones and SIM cards were seized from inmates in Birmingham Prison last year, according to Government figures.

Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom will gain the power to appoint and fund "independently funded news consortia". These are partnerships of broadcasters, newspapers and bloggers, and the government is introducing the measure in an effort to stem the decline of regional media.

Culture minister Sion Simon (Lab Erdington), a Birmingham MP, is helping to oversee the policy. Ministers are expected to announce next month that he first consortia will be Scotland, Wales and North West England.

The Queen's Speech included a commitment to respond to the report setting out options for building a high speed rail line which will be published by the High Speed Two company in December.

The Government will press ahead with its Equality Bill, which includes measures to equalise pay between men and women.

Public bodies will be obliged to publish reports revealing average pay for men and women, so that disparities are easy to spot, and private businesses with more than 250 staff will be encouraged to do the same - with the threat of new legislation if the private sector fails to comply.

A new Child Poverty Bill is one of the most blatant "political" bills in the Queen's Speech. It will set out a target of eradicating child poverty by 2020, and require government to draw up a new "child poverty strategy" every three years. However, government frequently publishes strategies without requiring legislation to do so, and the Bill is really a statement of intent designed to highlight Labour's commitment to reducing poverty.

There is a victory for campaigners such as John Spellar (Lab Warley), who had demanded better rights for agency workers. They will receive the same employment rights as permanent staff if they are employed for more than 12 weeks in the same job.

Wheel clampers will be more strictly regulated to discourage "cowboy clampers" who target motorists unfairly, again dealing with an issue raised by a number of MPs.

The Government will once again press forward with creating an elected House of Lords - perhaps completing the reforms of the Lords it promised in its 1997 manifesto. Peers will also be allowed to resign and disclaim their peerage, allowing them to stand for election to the House of Commons.

This has led to questions about Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, currently Lord Mandelson, and whether he might become an MP once again, allwoing him to stand for the Labour leadership. Questioned this morning, he said he had "no present plan" to return to the Commons.

As widely trailed, a Personal Care at Home Bill will guarantee free personal care at home for up to 280,000 elderly and disabled people with the highest needs - although 166,000 do already receive free care. It's unclear why legislation is needed to increase the number of people receiving care.

The BBC, expenses, and the golden age of journalism

2009-11-16T11:02:14Z

The BBC chief I feel sorriest for is Tom Sleigh, Chief Adviser Operations, slaving away for an annual pittance of £76,300.
Poor old Tom. How must he be feeling after a national newspaper exposed the 100 best-paid Beeb executives, with Mr Sleigh anchored in bottom place?
It's unclear to me what a Chief Adviser Operations does, although giving advice is clearly a large part of the job, but no doubt he is worth every penny.
Even James Heath, Controller Strategy Journalism, is on £85,000, while Richard Addy, Chief Adviser Journalism, is paid £104,000.
I'm particularly taken by Sue Inglish, Head of Political Programmes. At £125,000, this is a job I venture modestly to suggest one might be interested in should a vacancy occur in the not too distant future. Wouldn't mind a crack at Head of Newsgathering either, at £165,000, if present incumbent Francesca Unsworth decides to call it a day.

The likes of Sleigh, Heath, Addy, Unsworth and Inglish can only stare in admiration, and perhaps envy, at the remuneration of the BBC's top brass, led by Director-General Mark Thompson, whose pay packet is £664,000, or £834,000 if you include pension entitlements.
And since the BBC is so clearly out of touch with the public mood as far as pay is concerned and so over-staffed it comes as no surprise to learn that executives are giving MPs a run for their money when it comes to claiming expenses. Mr Thompson, we discover, feels it necessary to claim 70p a time to feed parking meters, even though he has his own chauffeur-driven car when on BBC business.
In what could turn out to be a last hurrah for public sector excess, 107 BBC executives managed to claim almost £175,000 in expenses in just three months, an average claim of £1,632. Hotels, flights, drinks, dinners, lunches and taxis were liberally represented on the claim sheets.
I must, naturally, declare an interest. Or, more accurately, a dim and distant past interest.
In the golden age of journalism, circa 1976-1990, the expenses culture was alive and kicking, helped along the way by family-owned newspapers making more money than they knew what to do with and poor managers happy to depress annual wage rises in return for a nod-nod, wink-wink attitude that hacks could make up their money on expenses. And, oh boy, didn't we do well.
On my first day as a trainee reporter I was instructed in the black arts of expenses, being instructed not to forget to claim for a "lunch" if out of the office between 12 and 2 and a tea between 4 and 5. You didn't have to eat anything, in those days lunches were normally in the liquid form, or produce a receipt. Entertaining "contacts" was another easy earner, no receipts necessary as long as claims were kept within reason. No need to name the contact, either, since it was always possible to give the impression of secrecy and clandestine meetings in the manner of Watergate.
And so it went on. Dry cleaning bills could be charged to expenses along with the hiring of dress suits and dinner jackets. The cost of using a call box to file copy, years before mobiles appeared, was another lucrative source of income. Travel by train to London was always first class, justified by the excuse that you couldn't possibly be expected to do any work while slumming it in cramped seats in second class.
National newspaper journalists we came into contact with often boasted, truthfully, of banking their large salaries each month and living off expenses
It couldn't last, of course, although younger colleagues are amazed to learn that it remained possible, even in the early 1990s, for regional newspaper journalists to claim expenses without producing receipts. The gentlemen of the press were trusted to be honest, or at least not to be silly, until penny-pinching accountants took control of newspapers.
BBC staff should enjoy the largesse while they can. With the public sector about to come under the toughest spending cutbacks for years, the Director-General will be lucky to hold on to his car, never mind claiming 70p for a parking meter.

One day . . . 1 Day . . . 24th November at the Light House, Wolverhampton

2009-11-13T08:26:13Z

I was out of town for the first and, so far, only showing of 1 Day here in Birmingham. So like nearly everyone else here, I haven't seen the film made by the internationally renown Penny Woolcock and a remarkable cast of local men and women including the new-found talent Dylan Duffus.

The celebration-that-should-have-been last week, the launch of an important film coming out of our Handsworth starring our people was, incredibly, banned. I can't make head nor tail of what happened.

But I have read the review Michael Hayden wrote when it was shown at the BFI 53rd Film Festival in London at the end of October: Shot on the streets of Birmingham with an entirely black cast, 1 Day is an exhilarating grime musical, enthused from the start with some great rap set pieces, which complement the thrilling action perfectly.

As you and I can't go and see this exhilarating grime musical here in this city of ours where the film was made, from where the actors come, we need traipse out to the Light House in Wolverhampton on 24th November to see it, when we can also drop in on a Q&A afterwards with the film director, Penny Woolcock. (It's free, book via the ScreenWM Festival of Film.)

This Brum-ban is a missed opportunity for the city to congratulate its own on the making of the film, disturbing viewing though it may be. It is also a dangerous precedent.

So do go to Wolverhampton to see what Kevin Maher in the Times says is propulsive stuff that credibly mixes social realism with bursts of musical energy. And we'll make our own judgments, thank you West Midlands Police, as to whether just occasionally, though, the movie falls for the gangland glamour -- loving shots of guns, cars and posturing bad boys -- it claims to despise and, if it does, whether or not that distracts from the value of the film.

s.a. a video interview with Penny Woolcock about the film, the Scotsman interview with her, and a report of the Bird's Eye interview with her.

NOTE: The Stirrer has said it'll be shown at the Empire Rubery sometime and at Showcase Cinemas. But I couldn't find anything about this on the Web.

Don't hold your breath for the Rover trust fund to pay up

2009-11-03T17:42:45Z

I've been writing today about the MG Rover trust fund, which was discussed in a House of Commons debate led by Richard Burden (Lab Northfield), the Birmingham MP.

You may know that the former Rover directors, known as the Phoenix Four, promised to turn what left of the business into cash to be distributed to former employees, when the carmarker collapsed in 2005.

So far there's been no money, and the official explanation is that the business could not be liquidated while an official government inquiry into its affairs was still taking place.

Now that the inquiry is over - it reported in September - Mr Burden wants the money transferred to the employees' fund as soon as possible.

Fair enough. But let's remember that there is no guarantee there will ever be any money at all.

The corpse of MG Rover has creditors as well as assets. It needs to pay them off first.

Some of the Government's critics have talked up the importance of the trust fund, claiming that the lengthy inquiry into Rover's affairs stopped former employees getting their cash.

But they may be guilty of raising false hopes. I hope former Rover staff receive compensation but I wouldn't assume anything until they have the money in their pockets.

Time for Be Birmingham to step out of the shadows and answer some questions

2009-11-02T10:11:08Z

The ongoing row over Be Birmingham's use of the city's £115 million Working Neighbourhoods Fund puts the spotlight on a very shadowy organisation.
It is doubtful whether many people outside of the rarefied world of local government have ever heard of the City Strategic Partnership, as Be Birmingham used to be known before undergoing a trendy name change.
But this unelected body, which meets behind closed doors in private, is entrusted by the city council and the government to play an increasingly important role in deciding how large sums of public money should be spent - or not spent in this case.

To recap, this newspaper recently exposed Be Birmingham's plodding attempts to use its WNF allocation. Eighteen months into a three-year scheme, just £30 million had actually been spent and only £2.5 million of that went directly on projects to combat worklessness.
Attempts to discover what the £27.5 million not spent on worklessness has actually been spent on have, so far, proved fruitless.
I have also asked this organisation to set out how it intends to spend the remaining £85 million it is sitting on, what targets it has agreed with the government for reducing unemployment in Birmingham, and the progress being made toward meeting those targets.
What we do know is that less than half of the £115 million - some £46 million - is being directed at reducing worklessness, in a city where unemployment in inner city wards reeling from the worst recession since the 1930s is 30 per cent.
On the other hand, funding from WNF has been agreed for projects to fight obesity, get rid of graffiti and promote cultural festivals.
It has also been confirmed that £14 million originally earmarked for worklessness schemes has been "reallocated" to bail out the city council's overspending adults social services - a decision described as a smash and grab raid on unemployed people in Birmingham by Sparkbrook Lib Dem councillor Jerry Evans.
Be Birmingham's 15-strong board consists of city council directors and representatives from health trusts, the police, fire authority, chamber of commerce, regional development agency and the voluntary sector. Its chairman is Paul Tilsley, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader of Birmingham City Council.
When Be Birmingham was the City Strategic Partnership, and chaired by Tilsley's predecessor John Hemming, its board meetings were open to the public.
Hemming, to his credit, fought a long battle to convince board members that this was the right and proper thing to do.
But when Hemming went and Tilsley arrived, the shutters went down and newspapers were barred from attending Be Birmingham meetings.
Quite clearly, a serious problem of non-accountability exists.
Requests for an interview with Coun Tilsley have been turned down. This would be an excellent opportunity to explain the thinking behind the way WNF money is being allocated, to put the case for a wider focus than worklessness, but he does not wish to engage with the public through the media.
A better and more transparent option for the city council would be to subject Be Birmingham to a through investigation by a scrutiny committee.
Again, this seems most unlikely to happen. I believe I am right in saying that Be Birmingham's activities have never been the subject of a scrutiny probe.
This is the latest example of a worrying undemocratic trend seeping through local government.
Scrutiny committees have similarly been unwilling or unable to inquire into the activities of Service Birmingham, the arms-length company controlled by Capita set up to transform the council's IT services and deliver the business transformation project. Service Birmingham has contracts worth £617 million with the council and is the subject almost weekly of claims by councillors that it is failing to deliver, but has never been asked publicly to account for its performance.
I have absolutely no doubt that Coun Tilsley and his chums will argue that they are entirely accountable to the public through some torturous process whereby Tilsley is elected as a councillor and can be called upon to answer questions in the council chamber about the performance of Be Birmingham, Service Birmingham and other quangos.
The problem is, there never are any questions - or answers.

West Midlands Select Committee Growing Ever-Smaller

2009-10-29T13:13:46Z

I've written in the past about how the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are boycotting the West Midlands select committee, a House of Commons committee set up to ensure the Government is giving the region a fair deal.

Now it seems even Labour can't get its members on the Committee. The whole thing is rapidly descending into farce, despite the best efforts of the chairman, Birmingham MP Richard Burden (Lab Northfield).

There are supposed to be nine members of the West Midlands committee, which is currently investigating the effects of the recession on the people of the region.

Five of these are meant to be Labour, with three Tories and one Liberal Democrat.

But the Tories won't turn up, because they object to the whole idea of regional government.

The Lib Dems are also boycotting the committee, because they feel it is unfair they only get one member on the regional committee in places such as the south west where they have a lot of MPs (this doesn't really apply to the West Midlands, but local MPs are boycotting it anyway).

Mr Burden attempted to get independent MP Richard Taylor (Ind Wyre Forest) on the committee - but Lib Dems have managed to block this, by objecting to it in the House of Commons.

Now, Labour MP David Kidney (Lab Stafford) has left the committee, because he has got a Government job as an energy minister.

MP Janet Dean (Lab Burton) is meant to be his replacement.

But her appointment has also been blocked by opposition MPs, who appear determined to ensure the committee fails.

So out of nine committee places, only four are currently filled - and even Labour is only taking four of the five seats it is entitled to.

Did Mike Whitby really mean 8,000 when he said 800 jobs to go at city council?

2009-10-27T10:26:25Z

It is no great surprise that Birmingham City Council leader Mike Whitby is not encouraged by his advisers to grant live media interviews.
But, oddly enough, the man who finds it difficult not to embellish the simplest of claims appeared to be erring very much on the side of caution when he told BBC TV that some 800 council jobs were likely to go as part of a major cost-cutting drive.
Had Whitby stuck an additional nought on the end, he might have been nearer the mark.
The question at the city council has always been not so much how many jobs are likely to disappear, but how quickly can we get rid of them?

I advise anyone with an interest in these matters to take the trouble to attend monthly meetings of the splendid finance and performance scrutiny committee, under the chairmanship of Edgbaston Tory James Hutchings whose forensic examination of senior council officials is gradually exposing under-delivery of the local authority's ambitious business transformation programme.
Put simply, business transformation aims to save the council almost £1 billion over 10 years, largely through investing in better IT systems courtesy of outsourcing company Capita. Coun Hutchings and his colleagues have spent more than a year attempting to wheedle out of business change director Glyn Evans precisely how these savings are to be made.
The answer, naturally, is by slashing jobs among the council's 41,000 non-schools staff since savings of the size required can only realistically be delivered through reducing employment costs. But no one wants to say this publicly, or at least not to expose the extent of what is being planned.
Let's just consider one example. When the council's new website is finally running properly and it is possible for people in Birmingham to pay their bills and order council services online, there will be no need for an army of neighbourhood office staff. Eventually, there may even be no need for neighbourhood offices.
As well as better IT, business transformation is also driving forward the outsourcing of traditional town hall services.
Birmingham's fast-growing elderly population will increasingly in future be left with no alternative but to buy-in meals on wheels and day centre services from the independent and voluntary sectors. Hundreds of people currently in council-run residential care will move out as the city closes its old people's homes. Jobs in these areas are already disappearing at a fast rate of knots, with the likelihood of compulsory redundancies.
But business transformation will only deliver the promised savings if ambitious annual targets are met. Slippage of, say, £10 million a year would result in a £100 million shortfall over the period. And as Coun Hutchings and his committee are discovering, £10 million annual slippage looks about right so far.
To make matters worse, annual budgets for spending departments are worked out on the basis that business transformation savings will be delivered in full.
More than mid-way through the financial year, officials are desperately searching for ways of plugging gaping holes in their budgets. Even more jobs will be sacrificed as a result.
Up until now, Coun Whitby and chief executive Stephen Hughes have relied on the tried and tested formula that it should be possible to avoid compulsory redundancies because the council has in any case a 10 per cent staff turnover each year. So people whose jobs are under threat ought to be able to find another role somewhere in the organisation, even if that means re-training and possibly taking a wage cut.
It is becoming abundantly clear, however, that the vast scale of restructuring required to deliver savings and balance the council books are such that a very large number of jobs will go over the next year or so.
Did Mike Whitby say 800? Perhaps he meant 8,000.

Food from Dale End?

2009-10-27T08:10:48Z

Having raised the issue of food security (along with a low-cost, convivial alternative-style means of regeneration) as a topic for their Annual Conference last week with publication of Roger Levett's essay in Fit for Purpose (see blog entry), the WMRO appears to have promptly ignored it all.

Food after all, appears as if by magic. When the Conference delegates ate their lunch, I'll bet they thought little, if at all, about the fragility of the just-in-time systems that got it there, let alone where on earth it originally came from.

Or, as pertinently, where it all went to. This includes what the food companies chuck at source or in transit, the freegan stuff the supermarkets discard, the 30% we throw away, and the dung we produce.

Any notion that our food supply could be threatened in a UK city in the 21st century seems alien, fanciful, irrelevant.

So no wonder that the Conference delegates chatted about other things, including 'Green Infrastructure, leadership and the value of the environment'. This apparently included 'joint working' and 'intergenerational thinking' plus the familiar if unfeasible and undesirable 'one voice', this time for 'the environment sector' whatever (whoever?) that might be - oil companies, if their recent adverts are to be believed.

Considering alternative food supplies won't seem so alien when shortages hit . . . well, home. All the evidence indicates that our highly 'efficient' food supply systems are unsustainable, a situation about to be dramatically exacerbated with nine billion of us on the planet. This is because the grub on our plate is not at the end of a system; it's part of a cycle.

Many of us urbanites will have to face our squeamishness about the fur and feathers, the heads, claws and paws, let alone the death of the animals we eat. And there's all that embarrassment to overcome about dung, theirs and ours, that's so very useful for the growing of plants.

With such matters at the back of my mind, I read about the long-running fiasco over Dale End with its abandoned Toys'R'Us, ugly carpark and more than tatty air.

Given its rural-sounding name . . . Is it too fanciful to suppose . . . ?

The landowners are the City Council. They have the means and power to create open space or parkland at Dale End instead of continuing to mutter for years about the possibility to reconsider to restart to rethink to rebuild yet more retail glories for the big boys.

No, you're right. The Council wouldn't make Dale End an open space for us. After all, we've got the prospect of a vast 8 acres at Eastside City Park. And they'd cite lawyers, planning processes, best value and all that time-consuming gubbins.

So any ideas to revert the end of our dale, mammon forfend, to cultivation, whether Havana-style horticulture (see also the BBC clip below) or a Dickson Despommier-style highrise farm (see also the Discovery Channel clip) does seem a stretch too far, even if it were sold as a trendy, money-spinning tourist attractor showcase.

Far too fanciful. (See the third video clip, Simon Baddelsey's on the Victoria Jubilee allotments in Handsworth.)

Yet our food security is a topic that will, alas, return.

The BBC on Havana horticulture

The Discovery Channel on vertical farms

Simon Baddesley's video about the Victoria Jubilee allotments in Handsworth

Let's Give Spin the Red Card

2009-10-26T17:18:54Z

Birmingham's football clubs face a tax hike of more than £900,000 next year thanks to increases in business rates, according to Conservatives.

A press release from the Tories claims that Villa will see business rates go up from £637,775 to £1,309,380, an increase of £671,605.

And rates paid by Blues will go up from £575,460 to £334,650, an increase of £240,810.

Between them, they'll be paying an extra £912,415 to the taxman. It's all a result of a revaluation of business properties which comes into effect next year.

For example, Villa Park's rateable value has increased from £1.3 million to £3.1 million (according to the inspectors who decide these things), as you can see here: http://www.2010.voa.gov.uk/rli/en/basic/find/assessment-history/2010/10341021000

St Andrews is now deemed to be worth £1.4 million rather than £700,000 - and here's the link: http://www.2010.voa.gov.uk/rli/en/basic/find/assessment-history/2010/11144765000

As revaluations occur every five years, and the last one was in 2005, I'm not sure how shocking this is. Conservatives claim it could lead to higher ticket prices.

But what makes me smile a little is the toe-curling comment from Tory Shadow Local Government Minister Justine Greening.

She is quoted in the press release saying: "Even football, our national sport, is not safe from Gordon Brown's tax rises.

"If clubs pass on these extra costs, it could mean even higher ticket prices for fans. I'm sure many will think it is time to show this Government the red card."

It's one of those phrases that nobody would ever actually use, except perhaps when speaking to the media.

A new era for the Birmingham Post

2009-10-20T13:41:20Z

In three weeks' time, the last daily edition of the printed version of the
Birmingham Post will roll off our presses in Erdington, marking the end of
a publishing tradition that stretches back more than 150 years.

But it also marks a rebirth, as the Post starts a new chapter in its
evolution as a multimedia brand and its new life as a must-read weekly
title.

Never fewer than 100 pages in total - and often much bigger - all the paper's key strengths will be concentrated in one value-for-money read that you will want to keep in the office or around the house all week.

Alongside the relaunch of the print title, a brand new version of the Post will be delivered by email directly to your inbox every morning for you to scan at your screen, on your phone, your PDA - or even to print off and read in the old-fashioned way.

Together, the print and digital formats will deliver an unrivalled service. The stresses of the current economic downturn may well have hastened our move to become a genuinely multi-media title, but the result will be a paper that's better placed than almost any other to meet the challenges of the digital age by fusing innovation with its traditional values.

I'm sure existing readers will find much to like in the new Birmingham Post - and I'm also confident that the weekly title will have a much broader appeal across more of the whole West Midlands region than the current daily version.

Our already well-regarded online services will become an even more integral part of what we do, and by breaking news online every day of the week, there'll be no less Post coverage of the business and political stories that matter in the West Midlands.

The new paper, published every Thursday morning, will take broader and a deeper look at the major issues in the region.

That week-long perspective gives us an opportunity to really get under the skin of the decisions, trends and challenges that have the most impact. We can devote both more
time and more space to the reportage of Post staff - as well as to the comments and insights of the people involved, whether they are politicians, business people, academics or readers themselves.

In August, I shared with you the economic challenges faced by Trinity Mirror Midlands, the publisher of the Post and its stablemates the Birmingham Mail and the Sunday Mercury.

By going weekly, the Post can make its contribution to the changes the business has to make to secure its own long term future. Moreover, the change is a positive response to the challenges, and gives the Post a whole new business model that strengthens its profitability and future potential.

Unfortunately, all of this means that some of the Post's daily editorial team will lose their jobs, although we hope that as many as possible can be achieved through voluntary redundancy.

Over the past two months, everyone in the newsroom has been undergoing consultation about the future of the titles - and of course the future of their own roles.

As a member of the editorial team, I was also under consultation, and I thought it was very important that I should make a clear decision whether to stay and see the changes through - or to go and give the paper a fresh start under a new editor.

I believe that to stay I would have to commit to be editor for a considerable period into the future, but that after almost four years in the job already, the time is right for a new pair of hands to pick up the reins.

I am supremely pleased and proud of what has been achieved at the Post over
the past four years, and more than certain that its successes and reputation will continue to grow under a new editor.

I'm delighted that I can continue to work with an excellent team over the next few weeks as the changes to the Post and the business bed in, and I look forward to seeing his first weekly edition roll off the presses on November 12.

Birmingham - hungry city?

2009-10-15T17:42:09Z

There was on-line comment and a flurry of emails after last week's entry Green shoots of recovery. This was about Roger Levett's essay on guerrilla spud-growing in the WMRO publication West Midlands: Fit for the Future.

I was led to the eloquent and engaging talk by the architect Carolyn Steel at the 2009 TED Conference in Oxford. She wrote Hungry City: How food shapes our lives.

we're as dependent on the natural world as much as our ancestors were . . . we live in a world shaped by food . . . food is a fundamental ordering principle . . . one billion of us are obese while a further billion of us starve . . . 80% of the world's global trade in food controlled by just five international corporations . . . it's a grim picture

How do we make good decisions about our future when faced with seemingly intractable problems, plus great uncertainty?

In terms of any policy decision-making, I'm reminded of Deep Blue. You may remember that this was the computer programme that thrashed an understandably miffed and sulky Kasparov. This fiercesomely complicated software, as the chess programme Deep Thought developed at Santa Fe, was based on four simple heuristics which, I suggest, work pretty well as guidelines for decision-making in the real world (I quote from Kevin Kelly):

Favour moves that increase options.
Shy away from moves that end well but require cutting off choices.
Work from strong positions that have many adjoining strong positions.
Balance looking ahead to really paying attention to what's happening on the whole board.

As we're people not chessmen, we need something about the common good, especially for future generations. And for 'board', don't read Birmingham, read world as we're all in this together.

Basing decision-making on the heuristics above, we could follow Carolyn Steel's notion that food is a fundamental ordering principle. So a start would be to follow the advice of one of my email correspondents; i.e. determine what levels of food security Birmingham and its West Midlands hinterland actually has.

This would enable us to see what connectivity and other investment, both social and capital, is needed for all our supplies. Moreover, it would generate ideas about how we might get rid of dependency on corporate men in far-off places like Little Rock, Arkansas, and on the vulnerabilities inherent in global logistics.

It would also give us a practical understanding of the natural world and, crucially, our dependency upon it.

Meanwhile, as Roger Levett concludes his essay:

"the West Midlands has nothing to lose, and potentially a great deal to gain, from promoting low technology, low impact mutual enterprise meeting basic human needs such as food and warmth in a convivial way as one strand of economic recovery."

Is this the beginning of the end of local government as we know it?

2009-10-12T10:52:50Z

Is local government in terminal decline?
I only ask since it seems certain that forecast savage public spending cuts will force more Midland councils to hand over the dwindling number of services they continue to run to the private and voluntary sectors
The talk is of local authorities "commissioning" service delivery rather than providing it directly and the shift over the past decade has been amazing.
Even Birmingham City Council, which unusually for a large English authority continues to run most services in-house, is beginning to dismantle some of the last vestiges of a century of municipalisation.

Social services is bearing the brunt of this change, with plans to offload meals on wheels, day centres and home help provision already under way.
Allocating individual budgets to social care clients is bound to speed this process, as people begin to buy-in the help they need from the private sector.
On the transportation front, a £2 billion highways PFI will see responsibility for improving the entire city road network handed to Amey for a 25-year period.
It cannot be long, surely, before the council takes the plunge by deciding to contract out rubbish collection and street cleaning.
And what about all those back office functions, the payroll clerks and administrative back-up staff?
It's taken a long time to get there, but local government is not that far now from the vision set out by Michael Heseltine when he was Environment Secretary in the early 1980s. Heseltine forecast a time when councils like Birmingham would meet in executive form only four times a year in a manner similar to boards of directors - their task simply to keep an eye on the performance of local authority services contracted out to private firms.
One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the top-heavy staffing levels carried by virtually all councils.
Birmingham continues to employ about 41,000 non-schools staff, even though city council services are continually being handed to outside operators.
With a 10 per cent vacancy turnover each year it ought to be possible to trim the size of the workforce and save money by doing so.
The city council's business transformation programme, which is supposed to produce £1 billion through efficiency savings, is based in part on cutting jobs although politicians have, perhaps understandably, never spelt out exactly how many posts will go.
If the austerity years promised by a Conservative government come to pass - and even a re-elected Labour party will have to slash public spending - councils like Birmingham may find themselves shedding jobs at a far faster rate than they anticipated.

Will a Conservative Government be the Age of the Blogger?

2009-10-06T09:03:28Z

Amidst all the talk about raising pension ages and fixing the economy, Conservatives have thrown out some interesting ideas for making government more open, at their Manchester conference.

These include a public consultation stage for new laws - after a Bill's second reading in the Commons but before it goes into committee stage, when amendments are drawn up - allowing the public to suggest changes

This will all be done online.

The Tories also plan to cut back on inspections of local authorities, and instead tell councils to publish every item of spending above £500 online.

The idea would be to replace the top-down accountability that exists at the moment with a bottom-up regime, where residents are able directly to scrutinise what their councils are doing.

While the aim is to let individuals get more involved in government, there will also be a role for mainstream media and bloggers in making sense of it all and providing forums for debate.

Of course, it also means there is a danger that people without internet access will be excluded from parts of the democratic process.