For those who were unaware, the Public Consultation for the planned £193m Birmingham Library  is halfway complete (it’s been running from the 20th of April and will end on the 22nd of May).

This is the last opportunity the general public will have to voice their opinions - you can contribute yours, so get going – there’s more info on the BCC web site. Likewise, they’re also running focus groups which you can participate in.

As local residents, it’s your Council Tax money they’re spending, so why not have your say?

Some blurb from the BCC web site;

Mike Whitby, Leader of Birmingham City Council, has unveiled the design concepts for the new Library of Birmingham by the acclaimed Dutch architects Mecanoo.

The Library of Birmingham will be situated on Centenary Square between the Birmingham Repertory Theatre (The REP) and Baskerville House. The project will make a huge contribution to the regeneration of the city, creating 250 new jobs including 25 apprenticeships.

The library building will be joined to The REP at ground and mezzanine levels and will share the foyer, bars, restaurants and a new 300 seat theatre.

What bothers me the most (aside from the astounding cost, and the fact that this redevelopment isn’t really necessary) is that they’re going to be using the entire plot of land currently used as a car park – granted the multi-storey behind Baskerville House will still be there, but it’s always full in the daytime with commuters’ vehicles. When this Library is built, parking your car in the centre of Birmingham will become just that little bit more difficult.

Worst of all, as part of the redevelopment of the surrounding area, all but a few circles of grass will be removed and paved over wholesale – what happens to the water table, and why are the few remaining patches of green space in the middle of our city to be so neglected? There’s a lot to be said for being able to relax during your lunch breaks while sitting on a nice patch of grass in the warmer months.

The one good thing about this redevelopment taking place is that archaeologists from the UoB have unearthed some interesting finds just below the car park tarmac, including a “canal arm and factory remains.” From the site;

A previous desk-based assessment showed that the site was formerly within the vicinity of John Baskerville’s house in the 18th century, a canal, and was the later location of the Union Brassworks in the early-19th century, and Winfields Brass Works, one of the largest brassworks in Birmingham during the mid to late-19th century.

There’s a more detailed writeup (old link, obsolete) (with more photos and a video of an animated above- and below-ground virtual tour) on the University’s Archeology and Anthropology web site.

Related reading:

Library of Birmingham promotional web site
UoB: Cambridge Street, Birmingham
BCC: Concept designs for Brum Library
Birmingham Mail: first look at new Birmingham Library
BCC: BigCityPlan - The Core

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already noticed unmarked black gantries appearing in several areas of Birmingham over the past week or so. Some have already gone up in Digbeth, and from informal discussion with contractors installing the gantries today it appears that there are at least 10 more to go. Today (Monday), two gantries were erected at the top of Broad Street (the Five Ways end), one overlooking each direction of traffic. These gantries will shortly be outfitted with ANPR cameras – so for all you Vehicle Excise Duty, car insurance evaders and generally Naughty People, Broad Street and Digbeth high street (amongst other areas) are soon to officially become No Go Zones.

Update, August 2009: these gantries are now fitted with ANPR cameras – the reason you might not see them is because they are really small! If you look at the gantries closely, there’s one or two ‘lumps’ on each one – those are the cameras. Your travel in and out of the city, including dates, times and durations of journeys, are now being logged by Central Government. Enjoy.

According to sources at Birmingham City Council, the cameras themselves are not under their management or jurisdiction as West Midlands Police undertake day-to-day operational responsibility (with much of the central gantries set to be operated from of their Steelhouse Lane station). However, Birmingham City Council’s CCTV department can supervise and control the CCTV cameras being fitted alongside some of the gantries. 

Personally, I am in two minds to the introduction of ANPR to the city centre (as I am sure many others are)… My car is comprehensively insured, fully taxed and I hold a full UK driving licence. Any reasonable road user expects every other driver and car owner to behave in a similarly responsible manner – so I am incredibly angry when I find that someone is either driving whilst uninsured, untaxed or without a valid driving licence.

Now, while the ANPR system is excellent for catching those who are breaking the law, I am not sure that the introduction of yet more automated monitoring is a good idea. The tricky question is, where does one draw the line with camera-based monitoring systems? I have heard the gradual ingress and creep of CCTV and monitoring systems described as ‘death by a thousand cuts’; The Guardian recently published a fascinating piece on this topic, and it’s available to read online (and I suggest you do).

A theoretical argument in favour of allowing more and more cameras is “well, we already have so many cameras, why not just install some more? It’s not like it would make much of a difference.” ANPR has some excellent applications in the fields of proactive detection of illegal drivers; one watch of almost any episode of Road Wars or Police Interceptors will show the ANPR systems are used often (to very good effect) and increasingly relied upon as well. I have no problem with this, because it catches those who think they are somehow different from all other road users and by doing so inevitably raise the cost of driving for every other law-abiding person. However, by contrast a cynic might argue that the introduction of ANPR gantries to areas of the city centre opens the door for ‘upgrades’ to SPECs cameras for average speed monitoring, as opposed to vanilla ANPR equipment. At that point, Birmingham could potentially become a city of forcibly imposed speed limits, just as Nottingham has become, with city-wide networks of ANPR cameras and both 30 and 20mph zones.

Over the past year or so, there has also been an increase in reports of some London boroughs imposing fines on drivers remotely, via CCTV-observed infractions of comparatively minor traffic laws… The subsequent ticket and demand for payment of the fine being sent to the driver in the post, based on their information being obtained through the DVLA from their vehicle’s number plates. While this may not happen in Birmingham for some time given the comparative paucity of CCTV cameras specifically for monitoring city centre traffic flow, there remain a number of rather glum possibilities.

One of the most paranoia-inducing theories is that the SPECs trigger speed might be intentionally set lower than on current implementations, resulting in an inflated number of drivers receiving penalty points and large fines for exceeding the speed limit by as little as two or three mph. If this were to happen, I am sure many would condone it as both extremely poor policing and a particularly sneaky, devious way of profiting from honest road users. Fortunately, for that the camera network would have to first be upgraded from ANPR to SPECs, involving a degree of maintenance work, and then operational control would need to be transferred to the West Midlands’ Safety Camera Partnership - and I am sure those developments would be well documented in the regional press were they to take place.

For the time being, based on the information I have to hand at this time, these gantries are ostensibly to remain solely as ANPR gantries for monitoring of traffic flows, detection of lawbreakers and, by extension (because it is the elephant in the room) detection of terrorists using the UK’s road network. I did request some more specifics from West Midlands Police via their Press department relating to the planned rollout timetable and provisional completion date, but as of 6pm I had not received a reply. If I receive any more information, I will update this piece accordingly.

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.]

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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.

(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.)

Some people had put it to me that others may have thought that I was hiding behind pseudo-anonymity whilst publishing my criticism – this is unfair, as I publish any and all information about myself in the public domain for all to see. My name’s at the top of every post I write, this site (and my others) have a big amount of information about me plus links to other sites, and any person with half a brain just has to do a whois on the domain name to find out my name and contact details. When I write something, I don’t go about publishing it under the veil of anonymity, I stand by what I wrote. Part of my criticism was a photoshopped version of the new UCE logo – I even wrote that I’d done it, yet I was told that it wasn’t obvious? Hmm. I know that some may think that I’m being a bit hipocritical, talking about freedom of speech whilst removing my own post, but it’s too much hassle than it’s worth in the short term, and until I have a better understanding of my own rights it was the most obvious choice to make. My original commentary may yet see the light of day, depending on whether I think I have a decent chance of defending what I’d written. Then again, it may not.

I feel this predicament I find myself in highlights the delicate sitation that many students who choose to criticise their universities find themselves in – they publish some criticism about their establishment, someone higher up the food chain decides that they’re infringing a little-known rule or regulation regarding fair comment or criticism of the establishment, and all of a sudden they’re in front of an arbitration committee with potential suspension or expulsion from their course, with little say in the matter should they decide to stick to their guns… Democracy, until someone decides they don’t like what someone else is saying (funny kind of democracy, huh?)

Now, I understand that sometimes there’s good reason for this action (grossly libelous or completely untrue commentary about someone in particular, which isn’t nice) but I felt that my comments did not fall under those ‘brackets’, nor did they infringe on any other rules – that said, I’m going to reread what I originally wrote, and see how it might be interpreted in the ways that were described to me that would bring about the kind of response I’ve received.

A note to all institutions or organisations: the Internet has been around for long enough, and people should realise that individuals or other organisations are always going to criticise or make public their own opinions on these matters. Being a student at a university is not the same as working for a business, where employees can be dismissed for making comments relating to their employer – the idea of a university is that it is an educational establishment which allows students to learn whilst being able to enter into discourse with lecturers and other students – but whilst we are educated by the lecturers, we are not bound by the same rules as a child at school would be. Universities have traditionally been some of the main sources of discourse and criticism, and I believe that’s a very healthy thing. What universities should focus on is the quality of the learning experience, and not become focused on thing outside their remit.

The most perplexing thing about all of this is that if my original article didn’t happen to rank highly in Google when people searched for results relating to the rebrand, my university would have most likely not given a toss either way about all of this, and I would never have been contacted in the first place. Make of that what you will.

I believed my commentary to be fair criticism about the public policy and fiscal decisions of the educational establishment to which I pay several thousand pounds a year to (and I was in the last of the lucky people who entered into the system under the capped fees scheme). What I wrote is quite strongly-worded, but I still feel that it’s fair commentary (I don’t beat about the bush when I have a strong opinion about something, particularly when it affects others too.) The subject of my criticism should be able to take said criticism without then trying to enforce restrictions to prevent this commentary being further disseminated, particularly as it directly involves myself and other students – us being the ones who financed the decisions (and subsequent actions) in question!

That’s all I’ll say for now, before I know it I’ll probably dig myself an even bigger hole. But to all higher education students, be aware – your establishment may present itsself as a democratic, receptive establishment where the students have a fair say in all matters regarding them, but UCE certainly failed spectacularly when they sought advice and comment from students regarding its recent rebranding… And then it wants to censor and punish me for publishing what I believed to be fairly pointed (yet accurate) comments about said rebranding? If you realised just how much it cost, you might feel the same way.

I also hope it explains why I’ve removed my original post for the time being. If anybody higher up wishes to discuss this matter with me in an informal setting, I’m more than willing to do so – in fact I’d be keen to do so. But being told that I either remove what I’d written to avoid further action against me, or leave it up and face the (potentially very serious) consequences… That doesn’t seem very fair, does it?

All comments or criticism welcome. In fact, encouraged.

 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.

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

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.