About Brum

Corny I know, but appropriate… Just now (about 1am), Birmingham (and much of the Midlands and Central England) had a little earthquake! It only lasted about ten seconds here, but was strong enough to make my speakers rock on their stands and my radiator make a noise… Amusingly, we all initially blamed each other in our house

Through quickly jumping onto Facebook, fast proving to be the quickest way to gauge opinion and feedback from your friends around the country, it seems that this was felt as far afield as Sheffield, Manchester, right down to Northampton (although Bristol didn’t apparently feel it, according to one of my friends). A friend who lives in Milton Keynes says that it was much more severe, shaking the house quite violently - he heard things moving around and falling over in the loft.

The BBC hasn’t even published a full article about this yet - proof positive that citizen journalism is good at a few things! [01:18: BBC News 24 reports that it was felt as far afield as Darlington, Cheshire, Northampton and parts of London]. However, they do have much more comprehensive info on the 2002 Dudley earthquake (5 on the Richter scale!) here and here - and Wikipedia has an article about it. MadJad, a Dudley area resident, has a little minisite dedicated to it. There was also a much stronger earthquake in Kent last year.

Yay for unexpected exciting things!

Edit: my housemate’s just sent me a link to the USGS site, where there’s a much more detailed technical writeup of the quake: it was apparently 4.7 on the Richster scale at its epicentre! Here’s the initial stats:

Earthquake Details

There’s even a map showing the epicentre (somewhere near Lincoln!) from the USGS site - click here to load it in Google Maps. Take three minutes and report your experiences back to the USGS while you’re at it.

[02:44: The Sun, in its usual restrained manner, has taken the time to carefully and objectively report on the night’s events. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s really worth a read. I liked the bit with smoke and flames.]

I’ll say it loud, and I’ll say it clear: I like Birmingham Central Library. It’s a real landmark. Being built from concrete, it’s a bit dirty here and there but it has a real sense of character, plus it’s pretty cool inside.

I got lost in there the first time I went in.

The current location of Birmingham Central Library, snapped on the 2nd of May, 2007.

Credit: BCC

However, it’s looking more and more like the existing BCL is going to be knocked down to make way for a new development, with an estimated cost of about £193 million (this isn’t such a long time after they picked up the remainder of the tab for the expensive Town Hall renovation, something like £18 million on top of the EU and Lottery funding). The Guardian picked up on this story a long time ago, and published an article to that extent (and while it’s dated, it’s still relevant, so it’s worth a read). A little has changed though from the original article. This is how the Guardian report reads:

Still dominating Chamberlain Square and squaring up to some of the city’s best Victorian and Edwardian buildings, the library is to be replaced by gleaming office towers. The Richard Rogers partnership, meanwhile, has been commissioned to design a new £130m library at Millennium Point, Eastside, Digbeth. The Rogers building - a stately ultra-modern galleon - will be the flagship of Birmingham’s new cultural quarter, set across a ring-road and web of railway lines from Chamberlain Square.

This has changed slightly - insofar as the new plans talk about the location being a shared site along with the Birmingham Rep, “with the library and theatre joining together and sharing a number of facilities to create a unique centre for knowledge, learning and culture.” Hmm. “Subject to Cabinet’s approval of the proposals (on 22 October), the next step will see a project manager and design team appointed to take the project forward and conduct an international search for an architect so that design work can get underway by summer 2008, and the new centre completed by 2013.”

More info’s available on the BCC web site’s “Library Of Birmingham” pages, and this is where you’d see it should it be built:

The council’s plans include converting the space between the Rep and Baskerville House, currently used as a car park (which is kinda useful!) into a massive Library. However, what’s wrong with Birmingham Central Library being in Chamberlain Square? It’s a great venue, the vista as you stand with the Birmingham Gallery to your back is really something (with the “inverted ziggurat” of the library towering over you and curving around the long ampitheatre-like steps down to the fountain).

I can see the need to put one’s best foot forward, and as Britain’s Second City, I fully agree with that. However, a cost of £193m for a new building on property already serving a useful purpose - parking is already hard enough in the city without another car park being bulldozed… Is it really necessary?

The Council rationalise their thinking by informing us that:

Birmingham’s existing Central Library is the busiest public library in Britain and the city’s most visited public building. However there are major problems with the building, which was built in the early 1970s. The fabric is in very poor condition and the design unsuitable for modern-day needs. The storage capacity and environment, and level of public access for archives, photography and rare printed collections are unacceptably poor given their national and international significance. The Library of Birmingham will provide an exceptional solution to this.

So just closing the Library, gutting it and renovating it then reopening it isn’t enough? Oh wait, I forgot, you want to convert the prime real estate in Chamberlain Square into office blocks, I forgot about that.

If you want to support those who would keep things the way they are, there’s a Facebook group where all the cool people hang out. According to Love Concreation, “Friends of Central Library are proposing to have a meeting on Tuesday 20th November at 6pm - location TBC, somewhere in Bham town centre.” So, keep your eyes peeled if you’d like to take part.

You may have traveled to this corner of the Web expecting to see my scribblings about the new UCE logo and how I was concurring with what many other people had already roundly described as a big waste of money and a poorly-implemented rebranding. You’ve just got the short version, but if you’re looking for the long version - sorry, you’ll be disappointed - I was strongly advised to remove this from my site (more on this later). So, this post has automagically gone into hiding for the time being, as some people in high places feel it may be sufficient cause for me to receive an official telling off or maybe even removal from my course. I’m opinionated, but I’m not an idiot, so this post will most likely stay in hiding until UCE have stamped my degree.

(And you can count on the fact that I’m quite surprised about this happening now of all times, and I won’t be letting this lie when I have a proper chance to sit back and consider all of this and argue properly in my defence, but now is not the time.)

(more…)

The Grauniad put out an insert with today’s paper, in association with the EC and Advantage West Midlands, focusing on the range of innovation, development (and redevelopment) and diversity within and around Brum and the rest of the County. It’s a very interesting read, and doesn’t smack of “look at our area, come and invest now please, aren’t we great” so go and pick a copy up!

 It has some interesting factoids in it too - like, for instance did you know that the first steam engine was perfected in the area of Birmingham which is now called Handsworth? And, did you also know that Birmingham is set to become the first majority ethnic community in 15 years’ time (due to the relative population growth of non-native communities versus incumbent British citizens?)

Nope, I didn’t know that either. Go buy it and read it for yourself, it’s a worthwhile read for anybody interested in our fair city.

An odd couple of bedfellows, but both quite significant events that took place last weekend - Birmingham hosted the Gay Pride weekend, seeing hundreds and thousands of people converge on the second city for a weekend of festivities, celebration, drinking and general madness… My lesbian housemate certainly seemed to enjoy herself, though she’s not shown me some of the snaps from her weekend exploits yet!

Unfortunately, as is customary with any big outdoor event, it rained all weekend. Oops. However, it doesn’t seem to have dampened peoples’ spirits, as is evidenced by taking a look at the photos from the weekend on the BBC Birmingham pages.

Last weekend also marked the start of Tolkien Weekend 2007 - something I’m far more interested in What’s not so well-known is that J.R.R. Tolkien (more info on the BCC pages) drew a lot of inspiration from the scenery in and around Birmingham when he was writing his Lord Of The Rings saga (as he lived in Birmingham at the turn of the century), and a lot of that which he drew his inspiration from is still around for all to see today. Buildings like Perrott’s Folly (just down the road from me in Edgbaston, and across the way from the Ivy Bush, the pub where Tolkien used to drink) serve as a mysterious reminder to those who are fans of his work as to how he even partly envisioned his amazing universe in the first place. The Folly gave Tolkien the spark for his idea of the Two Towers of Mordor- the Folly was built in line with the old water tower, and when you view them from a distance the similarity is striking.

Other landmarks include Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog, the blueprint for Fangorn and the Old Forest, as well as various places in and around the Midlands where Tolkien grew up. Tolkien didn’t just derive inspiration from Birmingham however, and there are many guides (including this one by Simon Rose) detailing in much greater depth many of the other buildings and locations whose influence can be seen in his later writings.

Photos from the 2007 Tolkien Weekend are available here, here and here.

In other good news, Longbridge will be officially back in action from today - the 29th of May - after it was announced that Nanjing Automobile are not only making Longbridge their EU headquarters, they are reopening the factory for production and using the factory as an R&D facility for new development. Since buying the company in 2005, Nanjing has invested many millions of pounds into the facilities and have long said they have wanted to resume production at the facility. They’ve also premiered several new models of MG vehicles based on old Rover designs at this year’s Shanghai Automobile Show, and now seem set to scale up production of new vehicles. (More info here, here and here.)
Credit for all photos: BBC News Online

Two big items of news to cover really: the Town Hall reopening soon, and the company which owns the Mailbox (one of the most recognisable landmarks in Brum centre) has put both the Mailbox and the Cube up for sale.

Obviously nobody told the Mailbox’s developers to hold back on an asking price, because they’ve set the figure at the princely sum of… wait for it… £300 million! From their blog article, it appears that the owners, Birmingham Development Company, are selling up because…

 …[the sale] will allow BDC to focus on new projects both within Birmingham and elsewhere. First and foremost, it will complete the construction of The Cube, The Mailbox final phase which will include a boutique hotel, waterside cafés, rooftop restaurant, designer retail stores, offices and apartments. BDC is also actively looking at a number of new developments to bring forward over the next few years.

Rrrright. Well, their loss, someone else’s gain. Companies like Harvey Nicks and the BBC (who have their regional headquarters in the back half of the building) must’ve been paying a FORTUNE in rent to them!

In other news, the newly-revamped Town Hall is due to reopen soon (October!) and some have already had a chance to see inside (not me, unfortunately, but I’m looking forward to the launch in October). I’ve taken loads of photos of the outside already, it really does look great - restored to how it looked before (literally, just how it looked before) but so much cleaner! It’s taken long enough… The Town Hall will also be run in conjunction with Symphony Hall, which means that there’ll be a much wider ranger of artists and events held there. The URL for the new site isn’t the best though - THSH.co.uk. And as bounder of B:iNS fame ponders, should it be pronounced th-ishh?

More stuff soon! Time to get this site up and running already.