In a somewhat meta presentation at Town Hall, due to take place on Sunday the 20th of January at 2pm, a chap called Anthony Peers is going to deliver “an account of the architectural history of Town Hall from its construction through to it recent renaissance.” Apparently, “Anthony has been researching the history of the building for close to a decade and was involved in the planning of the recently completed scheme of repairs and improvements.”

Unfortunately I’m not in Birmingham that weekend – drat! However, it sounds really quite interesting, and it’s only £6 (£5 if you’re over 60, although I bet they have student concessions going if you ask nicely)… So, there’s no real excuse for you to avoid this talk if you’re truly interested in the redevelopment and reopening of one of Birmingham’s largest and best-known landmarks.

And, as a bonus, click the image above to get a full-sized version, taken (and stitched together) by yours truly. Enjoy

Via this link:
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This will be deleted soon as it’s done, so don’t bother blogging about it.

I’ve been lazy recently – must update more! I’ve been sitting on this stuff for a while now, and I thought it’d be time to blog about this (especially considering I told them I would!)

If you were watching the local events calendar recently, you might have noticed that the  2007 Birmingham Festival of Xtreme Building (now finished, sadly) had an events space where guest shows could come and exhibit. I was just walking past, walking down to take some photos of the area around the TIC in Millennium Point for a future blog, when I noticed this exhibition going on, so I dropped by - admission was free.

I was amazed to find what I did; a cornucopia of little mysteries (and one copy of Great Mysteries), all with their own stories to tell. The exhibition was entitled “Belongings”, an exhibition (and indirect celebration) of all things Lost and Found.

Katharine Kavanagh, a Curator
(she promised me the specs were
hers, but I don’t believe her!)

Put on by two UCE graduates, Natalie Wilson and Katharine Kavanagh (under the moniker of Kipipeo Arts), the exhibition’s sole purpose was to bring to the surface all those things people discard or lose, and give you a little food for thought, to take a minute to just wonder the situations and circumstances that resulted in the items being where they were. All of the items were tagged with the date of, and where, they were found (or discovered), plus any backstory if there was any. The majority of items were completely anonymous, which lent them a definite air of curiosity (and I like curious mysteries!) When I asked Katharine about where they’d collected their items, she explained to me how she’s a bit of a hoarder (like me!) and that she and Nat had either found items at random or gone to public places (libraries, railway stations, the main Birmingham bus terminuses, etc) and just used their eyes. They had a trunk with some ‘Restricted Items’ in (things that might be dangerous for little kiddies to get their mitts on -good idea) but they also had some rather curious finds like a woman’s handbag (left in Birmingham Central Library about 3 years ago) which had not just her purse in, but her cards, her passport (!), her various forms of identification, a Visa (which had expired a while back) and some letters from what I guessed were her sponsors. You can see the handbag, and the trunk, in the photo of Kat to the right.

I totally clicked with Kat’s mindset – I’m a serial hoarder too, I love collecting things and never throwing anything away, because you never quite know when that oddly-shaped screw or collection of elastic bands might just come in handy. This festival was as much a celebration of not throwing anything away as it was discovering items which would otherwise remain locked away in windowless back rooms in public buildings (only to see the light of day when they were either discarded into a bin or tossed away into a dump). To recycle all these curios in the way they did meant a lot of legwork and effort on their behalf (they apparently spent many months collecting before the exhibition began), but it was most definitely worth it. For the identifiable items (like the handbag with the passport in), Kat said that they were going to do their best to return those items to their original owner, which was a nice touch.

There were some items I would’ve loved to take away for myself (and she said that if I wanted to take something I was more than welcome). I wanted all the 78s! However Kat professed to have claimed them herself because the 78 player was hers I can’t take a record from someone so I let them be, even though she offered to let me have one to take away, but that would have ruined the collection… So, as a fellow hoarder and an avid (nay, obsessed) vinyl collector, I let her keep them all. (I know how much it means to someone to have a record which is subsequently taken away from them for one reason or another.) I did snap loads of photos though, so I did get to take something away I suppose

Here’s the best (imho) photos I took (there’s more available, including shots of the most important pages from their explanatory Portfolio) on my Flickr page):

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All in all? A very worthwhile afternoon, even if it was a bit overcast. Can’t blame them for the weather, it didn’t rain though. The event was on all weekend, but I never even knew about it until I walked past on the Sunday (I left just after the exhibition closed). I had a great time, and it was an enjoyable morsel of brain food.

So,  the moral of all this? Always be prepared to deviate from your original plan when out in a city, and keep your eyes peeled because you never know what you might stumble upon and have a great time exploring.

(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.

In the first three months of a pilot scheme in Harrow, north London, that began in May, 173 housing benefit and council fraudsters were exposed, saving the council £110,000.

…

VRA is used only in conjunction with questioning by call operators who have been trained to detect deception, says a spokesman for the Capita Group, which owns the technology. It works by measuring “micro-changes” to the frequency of the human voice and relaying to the operator, in real time, the level of risk that the speaker is being deceptive.

I’ll reserve judgement on the efficacity of this scheme - however, I’ll be amazed if the helpline staff can even hear callers, given the shocking condition of some of Birmingham’s antique telephone lines!

Remember: lying: baaad. Birmingham City Council knows all… They’ll be installing those fancy mirror-style TVs in your homes next so they can broadcast inspiring promotional content to you!