With the temporary return of the Birmingham Big Wheel (hopefully without the Parisian commentary which made it all the more quirky the first time around), are we going to perhaps see a return of the Birmingham Big Screen?

For what seems like almost two years now, the Big Screen has remained resolutely dark, with nothing but a test pixel lit to show that it’s still got mains power. This is a real shame, as the screen’s a definite asset to the city centre; when I moved to the city in 2005 I enjoyed walking past it every day. I watched the news on it in the evening, I caught some short films and sometimes it even threw a few curveballs my way. As well as that, it screened the football and other major sporting events (drawing major crowds, not always without their own minor crowd control problems, but all in all well managed).

But then, one day, it went dark…

Image credit: Birmingham Mail

After the owners of Waterloo House obtained a High Court injunction against the City Council (claiming that it disturbed the workers inside), the Big Screen was switched off. As its temporary moorings in front of the then-unfinished Town Hall were removed, the screen had to move as well, and BCC (perhaps unwisely) built a more permanent plinth for the screen in Victoria Square. Costs for this lift-and-move have been reported as ca. £1million.

Attempts to gain planning permission for this new (re?)installation have garnered some opposition, and while I agree it will raise noise levels just perceptibly, I highly doubt that the sound would be that audible from the various office locations given the angle and the amount of surrounding street furniture which would help to disperse and diffract soundwaves (the screen’s PA was never that loud anyway). In short, the Birmingham Big Screen should definitely be turned back on, and About Brum fully supports its reactivation. It provides a tangible benefit to the locale, offers a focal point for people to meet and enjoy their lunchtimes and gives the city centre another venue for people to publicly enjoy sporting events and quickly catch up with breaking news. I never heard people complaining as they sat on the steps each lunchtime watching!

But what do you think? Do you work nearby or do you just love/hate the thing? Always interested to know.

The Express & Star reports that “More than 60 firefighters from stations across the Black Country and Birmingham battled through the night” after security guards first spotted the blaze catching hold inside the building at around 22:30 on the evening of the 8th. From there, it was more containment than prevention for the WMFS as the flames quickly spread to the entirety of the structure, causing massive damage and also causing its three characteristic towers to collapse into the structure.

Fortunately, the hobby of Urbexing (aka Urban Exploration; exploring buildings and the urban landscape, taking photos as you go for documentary purposes) is alive and well in the Midlands, and some good photosets have already been taken – in one case, less than a week before it was destroyed in the blaze. The photoset from adders0121 on flickr shows you what the Brewery was like inside prior to the blaze.

All this provides further evidence as to why Urbexing should become an officially-endorsed practice, supported by the local Government and associations like English Heritage! As a form of documenting the region’s past and its plethora of historical landmarks and buildings, it is almost unique in that just about everyone who Urbexes shares a similar attitude – do no damage, always be careful and be very thorough. Some people’s dedication verges on the obsessive, and I’ve seen people travel for hours just to visit a derelict building!

The saddest thing is that, aside from people who actively go exploring, the region’s industrial past is all around us yet much of it is simply being left to ruin, destruction or redeveloped into boring luxury apartments or offices… and most of us never even realise until it’s all gone. You may be surprised as to just how much you can see by simply opening your eyes and studying your surroundings a little more, so give it a try next time you’re out and about around the Midlands.

This year’s candidates are:

• Acorn Hospice
• Kidney Kids Appeal
• Birmingham YMCA
• The Conservation Trust
• SIFA Fireside Day Centre in Digbeth
• St Mary’s Hospice in Selly Oak

There’s more info on each of these charities on the Brum Twestival site.

Having had a good friend who died from advanced stage lung cancer spend his last weeks at the BSMH, I’m especially grateful to them for the wonderful care, attention and compassion they give to their residents and their families on a daily basis. They’re entirely funded by donations and the odd benefactor; to lose St. Mary’s Hospice - or indeed, any other Hospice – would be a tragic thing to happen and would drastically decrease the availability of quality palliative care in the West Midlands. Besides that, it would put an even greater strain on the NHS to provide the same level of extraordinary care.

So, please support your local Hospice – and indeed, support all of your local charities. If you can’t afford to donate to all of them at once, set up a rota system or donate to a number in turn, changing every couple of months. What’s £10 or £20 a month? It’s not much to you, but to them it means the world. Thank you

See you at the Twestival in September!

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.

Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre said it stopped a major ‘flash mob’ exercise involving dozens of people. But members of the group said the event, in which people froze for five minutes, took place and images went on the social networking website Facebook. The Bullring said it prevented a “major blockage”. A spokesman added that the shopping centre “could not afford customers not being able to get past”. A spokesman for the ‘flashmob’ said they had not intended to annoy people.

And then it gets better:

The Bullring’s general manager, Tim Walley, said on Saturday lunchtime that security had spoken to a group which had assembled outside and was told they would reconvene in smaller groups in the shopping centre.  He said: “We saw one of them with a loud-hailer. “We couldn’t afford customers not being able to get past. We’ll be looking at 180,000 people coming to shop on a Saturday.”

What’s a flashmob? Well, ‘a flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief period of time, then quickly disperse.’ What’s so harmful about that? I was shopping in the Bullring last Saturday, and let me tell you, there was PLENTY of space for people to walk around – more than enough space for a few dozen people to do five minutes’ worth of Pythonesque comedy. If they’d been juggling fire or whipping round on rollerblades to the music of Starlight Express, then fair enough, I’d probably expect them to be moved on too – but standing still? How square do you have to be to not find that a bit of harmless fun (and amusingly odd?)

If I’d been in Birmingham this weekend, I would’ve taken part myself, Flashmobs are really nothing more than a bit of painless, hassle-free fun which provide great entertainment value for observers. In what way is it obstructive or harmful to shoppers? I think we can determine from this that the Bullring security staff (and the managing director) could be accurately described as humourless, revenue-driven employees who seek to disrupt peoples’ fun at every opportunity possible.

We need to have weekly Flashmobs in the Bullring from now on.

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“Reinvigorating Longbridge’s industrial heritage while also attracting new hi-tech investors and companies will also play an important role in cementing the area’s status as the real engine room for a prosperous and ever-growing Midlands economy, able to compete on an international stage.”– Mike Whitby, Birmingham City Council leader

A smattering of pre-new-year goods news, I suppose… From BBC News, this morning:

Up to 10,000 jobs could be created and 1,400 homes and a shopping centre built to renovate part of Birmingham affected when a car plant closed down. About 6,000 workers lost their jobs in Longbridge when MG Rover collapsed in April 2005. Now a total of £500m could be spent if the 15-year plan goes ahead.

Government ministers have already outlined plans for a £20m innovation centre in the area which will make up part of that redevelopment. The plans are being developed by the Birmingham City, Worcestershire County and Bromsgrove Councils. Council leaders said they hoped the 15-year transformation of the area would encourage more people back to Longbridge.

Under the plans Longbridge railway station would also be revamped and Bournville College would also be relocated to the area.

£500 million? That’s not petty cash. I wonder where they’re going to get it from… Higher taxes? Or, perhaps they’ll get lucky with some ERDF/EUSF funding? One hopes for the latter but I think it’d be ill-advised to expect anything but the former. I definitely know that the only thing I’ve seen in the way of progress since Nanjing bought Longbridge is a near-total asset strip of the property, combined with a bit of bulldozing and, earlier this year, a VIP tour for some of the Nanjing execs around Birmingham centre (culminating in a ceremony attended by the Chinese, Council members and a the Press), so not much in the way of positive improvement has happened yet. I don’t even think any car production has been restarted there yet, which was their aim, wasn’t it?

 Or maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, my favourite bit from the article:

‘Determined to succeed’
A museum called the Austin Heritage Centre has also been proposed, which would celebrate the area’s history in car-making.

Woohoo! That’ll get the tourists rolling in!

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.

 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.