Birmingham, B29

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2010-04-28T16:54:00.001+01:00

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battery innards

2010-03-22T21:40:00.000Z

You may be sad that the old Battery Building got flattened to make way for more excting retail opportunities, but as part of the excellent Flatpack festival, you can see its innards while it was still (just) alive.

On Thurs 25th March there's an event called More Films about Buildings, featuring amongst other things the video "Take Only Photographs, Leave Nothing But Footprints", shot inside the Battery Building by Dale O’Keeffe.

If you can't make the event (and Flatpack's stuff is *always* awesome), you can see the video online here.

(thanks to @genzaichi for the heads up :)).

got any spare pics of Selly Oak?

2010-03-10T11:05:00.003Z

Selly Oak Railway Bridge - dating from 1931
Originally uploaded by ell brownWe've been emailed by Saima Ali from BCC (who also has a yahoo account), who says:

"I work for Birmingham City Council, and in particular neighbourhood management. We work together with local residents to try and improve local services and areas. This includes removing graffitti, arranging litter picks, improving community gardens and helping respond to issues of anti-social behaviour. This is a long shot, but I'm putting together a celebration of our work, as its all done on a minimal budget, We are desperate for some photos of Selly Oak, and I was wondering whether you had any that you could donate.

The work we are doing is not for profit, and really relies on community spirit and a willingness to be involved."

So if you're interested in donating some pics, please get in touch with Saima.

Dawko goes electioneering ...

2010-03-08T09:39:00.008Z

We've had our first election leaflet, from Nigel Dawkins, the local Conservative parliamentary candidate, and uploaded it to the excellent The Straight Choice website so you can also enjoy it.

We weren't expecting much, but this is pretty lame. He has focused on a single issue (Cadbury takeover) and managed to blame the Labour Party for the failure of his letter to Lord Mandelson preventing the takeover. It's also simply not true that Steven McCabe failed to support Cadbury: we imagine he felt as an MP he might be able to do more in Parliament than co-signing a Tory councillor's letter. Plus Dr Lynne Jones, our current MP, has been quite busy asking questions.

Also, it's not every day you get a Tory getting outraged about a free economy: apparently, Nigel will launch a "Let's Keep Manufacturing" campaign to "make it more difficult for our manufacturing companies ... to be taken over by foreign concerns". This might come as a surprise to Conservative head office, whose business policy contains the promise of "Reducing the burden of regulation", and whose whole microeconomic stance could never been summed up as protecting ordinary people against "banks, the shareholders, the city whizz kids". Plus anyone who can remember the Tory privatisation bonanza in the 80s might feel a bit sick at his accusation that Labour is pursuing a policy of "everything is for sale".

We imagine that Kraft might be a bit surprised at him borrowing Cadbury's trade mark too ....

Odd policy wonks aside, one thing really concerns us: Nigel's use of a graph to explain why you have to vote Tory in Selly Oak to get rid of Gordon Brown. Here's the offending "chart":

From b29

The only label is "recent polling results" - there's no indication of numbers, location, date, who carried it out, etc. etc.. Does he really expect voters to make a decision to vote for him on the basis of a ridiculously badly constructed graph? We have emailed him to ask him for the following info:

when was the poll conducted?
what were the raw data results? (We cannot see any numbers on the chart)
where was the poll conducted?
who was the poll conducted by?
what was the poll methodology?

UPDATE

Nigel replied, saying that the chart was based on national polling figures, possibly from Jan. So, no figures, no provenance, but it's national polling figures, from earlier this year.

If you would like to see the wide range of national polling figures for yourselves over the past few months (actual data), here's a handy summary.

Frankly, we don't think Nigel's response is good enough. We replied saying "We think it's unusual to publish a chart with no figures or provenance, especially when your leaflet specifically implies that it was a local poll by using the text "only by voting Convervative in this constituency ..."". Perhaps they were not expecting people to actually look at the leaflet :).

UPDATE V2

He ended up getting a little snippy with us, saying that he thought it unusual to be contacted via email by someone without a name (we signed our email birminghamb29) and snail mail address. Is it? We noted that he doesn't put his own snail mail in his emails ....

So we replied:
"Does that mean you don't want to send us the figures? Or you would like to if we identified ourselves? We don't think we should have to identify ourselves directly when asking about your election leaflet." And asked again about the figures.

Nigel reiterated that the chart was drawn from national polling figures from Jan, of which there are loads. Looks like he doesn't want to share :(.

Oh, and just to be clear - this blog doesn't endorse any particular party. We're looking forward to receiving more leaflets from the other parties to pick apart :).

b29 springwatch - verging on the toasty at last

2010-03-02T12:15:00.003Z

secret spring garden door

2010-03-01T10:33:00.001Z

broken hearts in b29

2010-02-18T09:55:00.000Z

Just before yesterday's snow, I noticed an early Valentine's rejection in the gutter:

*sigh*.

urban street crime in middle-class B29 shock

2010-01-27T14:58:00.005Z

There's a burnt-out car in Selly Wick Road!

From b29

Apparently the fire service were busy putting it out on Sunday evening around 6:30 PM.

Must remember to add it to Fix My Street, but in the meantime we're enjoying the NIMBYness of some of the B29 FMS entries: this person from the ever-lovely Weoley Castle posting in the "Flytipping" category clearly thinks that the race of the "youths" is relevant, though she hasn't quite grasped the precise definition of teenager ...

*UPDATE* - the car was reported to Fix My Street, and has now gone. Although we also got an email from BBC asking for the following info before they took it away:

Name
Address
Telephone Number
Make & Model of Vehicle
Registration Number
Colour of Vehicle
Is the vehicle taxed?
Exact location of vehicle

That seems like a lot of personal info you're required to give them before they act ... information gathering overkill?

Brum taxis: lottery?

2010-01-21T10:49:00.007Z

You may have seen the headlines on 11th Jan about the odd criteria being applied to people applying for taxi licenses in the Midlands.

The situation in Birmingham is still unclear: the Council's newsroom website reported the story as part of its Media Watch, but there is no release about it, and we've been asking for a link to their policy on twitter, which they seem to have been ignoring. (Not even a reply saying why they don't want to give it to us). Does this mean the BBC newsroom is overworked, inept, doesn't care or is trying to avoid the issue?

The Council's own site (the newsroom is a separate bit, presumably because the expensive new content management system on the main site doesn't allow them all the functionality they need) just has links to application forms - there's no mention of what criteria will actually be applied. I'd find that a bit weird if I were applying for something ... However, there is a list of prosecutions, which mainly features driving without insurance.

So we'll do some more digging ... I can't believe the Council doesn't understand that people are concerned about this, and that it *might* be a good idea to try and be a bit more transparent? Interestingly, although the Post reported the story, they didn't get a quote off BCC. Is that cos they didn't try, or is the BCC newsroom ignoring them too?

*UPDATE*
The newsroom got back to us after a few days (still no info from the BBC actual). They stated that: "Birmingham City Council Licensing does undertake Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks for all new hackney carriage and private hire driver’s licence applicants. In addition further checks are carried out every three years for the duration of a licence".

Other points were:

An applicant with a conviction for any sexual offence should normally be refused.
An applicant with a conviction for a drug related offence should normally be refused.
Applicants with driving offences can only have their license reinstated after a period of time equal to the amount of their ban after getting their driving licence back (e.g .if they were banned for 6 months, they can get their taxi licence back 6 months after getting their driving licence back). If the ban was due to drink or drugs, there's a min of 2 years.

Which is reassuring :)

Igloo, Selly Park

2010-01-10T12:41:00.004Z

new_folder has captured a beautiful snow construction in Selly Park...

Brrrr proof

2010-01-10T12:33:00.003Z

Naturally you've noticed it's cold, but the Birmingham Selly Oak Weather station has the proof: -9.3°C on Thursday 7th Jan.

snow snow snow snow

2010-01-05T14:46:00.002Z

This morning, snow at about 7/10 on the #uksnow scale morphed B29 into Narnia ...

B29 Through The Viewfinder

2010-01-04T22:32:00.004Z

As I was idly perusing the Birmingham B29 flickr pool today, I came across this rather lovely construction:

It's a Through The Viewfinder (TTV) picture by Pete Ashton of the actual park in Selly Park. TTV pics are often taken by aiming a newfangled digital camera at the viewfinder of a ye olde one, creating some interesting effects. Pete's also in the process of setting up a shop if this has got you slavering to purchase one, and he's got a whole load of other pleasingly wonky pics on his site too.

I also find new_folder often has some fresh takes on B29 ... anyone got any more suggestions of unusual pics of the area?

Local issues for the next election

2009-12-12T16:46:00.010Z

Are you interested in making the next general election a more transparent process? Then you might be interested in the Democracy Club, a network of volunteers to help mySociety and TheStraightChoice ahead of our next big vote.

They want to know what the local issues for the next election are for a variety of areas to help inform their website - so we'd love to hear from you what you think are important decisive topics for the local area.

Here's a possible list to get started:

Flooding - is enough being done to protect local residents? Can the various agencies responsible for flooding work together well enough?
Green transport - is enough being done to keep public transport low to encourage cars off the roads? (The endlessly increasing bus fares are a personal bugbear of mine. Especially when you have to get on a 47, pay £3.30 for a return and there's someone smoking dope on the top deck at 9AM.)
Congestion - why is driving into or through the city centre such a convoluted unmitigated nightmare?
Council finances - how can central government help to make BCC more transparent? How can we counter local borkups like BCC spending £2.8 million on a new, broken website and having the head of the scrutiny committee say that local people aren't interested in how the council is run?

And a few yes/no ones:

Should South Birmingham PCT be allowed to continue with presumed opt-in to Lorenzo patients record system?
Should the redevelopment of the Central Library go ahead? (though I realise it's not in B29).
Should we get the Stirchley swimming pool redeveloped?

Perhaps a better question is "Are there any local issues which divide the candidates standing at the next election" - let us know in the comments below, or by using the hashtags #localissues and #b29 on twitter, and we can feed them back to Democracy Club :).

Selly Oak New Road - Bournbrook stuff

2009-12-11T09:46:00.003Z

Phase 2 has got its own website, mysteriously full of watercolour paintings of dual carriageways, and a map that's far too small to be useful.

They have got some progress pictures, though, and some brief information about what's going on. I was interested in the mysterious crane action in Bournbrook Road - they are apparently realigning the river, extending the bridge and culverting (enclosing) part of the river.

It means Bournbrook Road is shut (until Feb 2011!), but it doesn't seem to stop people optimistically driving past the Road Closed signs and frowning at the inability to get on the Bristol Road.

Supermarket slight relocations

2009-11-18T11:41:00.001Z

Looks like the Selly Oak New Road Phase II has a theme: relocating supermarkets by approximately 20 yards.

Not only are Sainser's planning to rebuild themselves on Battery Park, just across the road from their existing store, but Tesco Metro on Bristol Road has relocated ... approximately 20 yards. The new one is due to open today; will you miss the old one?

Spot the difference:

ready to run?

2009-10-08T10:53:00.006+01:00

In case it had escaped your attention, Birmingham's going half-marathon crazy on Sunday (11th oct) with a "normal" half marathon starting around 10AM and the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships, women starting at 9 and men at 9:30. Both routes go through the area, so it's your chance to hang out in B29 (in my case, on the Pershore Road) casually eating sandwiches and watching sporty people flash by.

Unless of course, you're actually running, in which case (a) it would be great if you could film it using a chest-mounted camera; and (b) good luck! Apparently the professionals go by much faster than you'd expect . . . the IAAF site tips Ethiopian Tilahun Regassa for the men's race. His personal best from last year was 59:36: using very basic maths, that's about 13 miles an hour. Speedy :).

The Birmingham Half Marathon people (the council and an energy company) have also laid on some entertainment, including a saxophonist in Cannon Hill Park, and an African drum band and a ceilidh band on the Pershore Road. The latter two I can see helping people with their rhythm, but I've never tried to run to The Pink Panther theme before :). Here's a map of the route (PDF) plus entertainment points overlaid.

From the map, looks like a good place to stand is by the Nature Centre on Pershore Road so you get to enjoy the drums and see contestants going both ways. It also seems to be near a water station, but is it wrong to hold out your own refreshments to the runners? A boiled egg, perhaps? A cooked vegetarian sausage? A selection of crudités? Though I expect the houmous would go everywhere.

*Everyone* I've talked to about the event so far has mentioned the unfortunate Paula Radcliffe evacuation incident, so I won't :). Sadly, though she was billed to appear, she's been struck down with tonsillitis so we won't get to snap her zoooooming past. I'm also looking forward to seeing the wheelchair race - you often see people running in the park, but I've never seen a wheelchair racer training. The wheelchair half marathon starts at 09:50. If you get any good pics, please add them to the flickr B29 group - we'd love to see them.

The Beeb decided not to show the IAAF race, but Sky will. This means images of Broad Street (the finish line) will be beamed across the world on Sunday morning: let's hope they get to clean up all the vomit & drinking rubble left over from Sat night first. In theory, the race(s) should boost the local economy - Bristol's 2001 hosting netted the local economy at least £0.58m!

Finally, if you've got a car, remember not to park it on the route on Saturday night - restrictions start at midnight. They'll take it away somewhere, though it's free to get it back. The helpline is 0844 888 3883.

New council website - and some free exercise

2009-09-08T08:25:00.006+01:00

Birmingham City Council has finally launched its new website after a serious delay (originally due March 06) and a bit of a row about the £2.8m cost. Frankly, after that delay and that much cash, it's hard not to be underwhelmed.

It still looks old-fashioned, there's a few missing sections (did they not manage to run a link checker before pushing that big red button?) and they have failed to take the opportunity to seriously upgrade the services and information offered. My biggest gripe about the site (and Council in general) is its lack of transparency: it's hard to find out what's happening and when and who to talk to about changing anything, and it doesn't look like the new site offers anything different in these areas. Currently both the Council meetings and "Democracy in Birmingham" pages are broken,both linked to from the Democracy index, which promises "Decisions are published here on a daily basis, with easy access to agendas and reports". The only link to reports is in theory from 2003-4 (though the link is just http://old.birmingham.gov.uk/ which I can't imagine is really supposed to just give results for democracy from 2003-4), which gives ... no results.

One other irritating omission - the Council recently launched a scheme to make gym and swimming free to local residents, but you can't find out more info on the site - gym4free's broken [UPDATE: it's now working] and the swim4free page doesn't mention it. Is it a secret? If you're interested, here's the information from Google's cache (ignore the Heart of Birmingham PCT trust link because that implies only their residents qualify). You'll need a Leisure Card (again, that's the cached version of the page), but don't try applying online - it's not currently working :(.

UPDATE: looks like all the online forms are currently borked, so you won't be able to pay your council tax online either ....

Easy GP ... though not on the web

2009-09-03T14:48:00.001+01:00

Today on the bus I noticed a poster advertising a new NHS walk-in centre in b29.

It's at 15 Katie Road B29 6JG, open every day 8-8, tel 0121 415 2095 for info. Not sure how long it's been around but yay for out of hours doctor access :).

However, the NHS' various web pages seem to deny its existence - the main NHS web page maintains it's never actually open, and the centre doesn't appear on searches for walk-in centres within Birmingham. Although this document says it's been open since June 2009, it refers interested people to the NHS South Birmingham site, which has zero results for a search for Katie Road walk-in centre, and only one for walk-in centre :( (even though the referring document is hosted by that site, it's clearly not indexed for search). Oh, and the website apparently is "designed to improve communication between the local NHS
and the community". Hmmmm.

Has anyone actually been there? Is it actually open?

Selly Oak New Road demolition

2009-08-27T12:12:00.004+01:00

demolition in advance of a new road
Originally uploaded by Nikki Pugh

They're starting to pull down the rest of the buildings just south of the University campus on Grange Road / Dale Road - including the old gun factory.

The pic on the right is of the buildings opposite - I love the clock tower in the distance partially obscured by rubble smoke. As for the gun factory itself, new_folder has a great picture of the demolition in progress.

It would be nice if developers officially gave people the chance to look around sites and take pictures before they are squished by big yellow machines. They could invite, say, local Flickr groups and/or local historians to preserve some images before everything's a big pile of rubble destined to live under a tarmac road.

65 Oakfield Rd - free tree info

2009-08-13T12:44:00.004+01:00

65 Oakfield Rd - free tree info

If you find yourself wandering around B29 and wondering vaguely to yourself "what is that tree?", then the people at 65 Oakfield Road, apparently in conjunction with Bimringham City Council, have encircled a horse chestnut (I recognised it from the conkers :)) with a tree information booth.

Bizarre. But pleasing. Can we have more?

Perhaps an edible plant recognition system? Or a B29 celebs chart? *Are* there any B29 celebs?

Alice in Wonderland style shroom on Selly Wick Road

2009-08-07T18:47:00.002+01:00

Alice in Wonderland shroom by pindecIt's worth a look if you're wandering past Selly Wick Road - about half way up the hill on the left (as you head upwards), nestled at the base of a tree belonging to a house on a corner.

It's ENORMOUS.

Although sadly lacking a smoking caterpillar.

B29 street sign hacks

2009-08-06T11:12:00.005+01:00

From the people of Herons Way, who don't care for B29 and wish fervently to live in B18, to Cecil Road's nice use of pencil and red pens (and possible postcode correction to B9), we've been noticing a lot of sign hacks.

It's a nice way to gauge local feeling. Wouldn't it be great if every street designed their own street sign, rather than having one thrust upon them by the Council? There's nothing stopping us ...

We've spotted a few different styles from elaborate corrections to a lo-fi white sticker hack by Harrow (formerly Harrow Road) - are there any especially arty ones out there?

Let us know about any more you spy ...

Get the wellies and cat snorkels out

2009-07-19T22:11:00.000+01:00

More heavy rain today meant bad things for the River Rea through Selly Park.

It's high - a few inches below the banks - and the playing fields are all sodden, so more monsoonery and it'll be paddling time again :(. The weather still isn't great, although the river has subsided over the afternoon, so we don't appear to be in critical danger for tonight.

The last Selly Park South Neighbourhood meeting had the Council talking more about improvements to the river under Dogpoo Lane - including apparently the installation of an Environment Agency water gauge so they can tell when the river's high: would be good to get a live feed of that data. However, work won't start till Jan 2010 and take several months, so in the meantime it's back to battening down the hatches and crossing fingers.

The work also includes ripping out the nice old balustrades and replacing them with concrete. Can we get something impressive done with the old ones? Put them in Canon Hill Park maybe?

Weoley Castle - local news

2009-07-09T11:40:00.012+01:00

After our walk around B29 included Weoley Castle, and finding a very negative view of Weoley on chavtowns, I wondered what view the outside world gets of the area from various news sources. This would also show how good news organisations are at providing very local news.

BirminghamMail.net appears to be thinking along the right lines by creating a "weoley castle" tag and associated RSS feed. However, it doesn't actually work - zero points for zero results for the tag (and note a related tag is "knife crime"):
The site does actually contain several (mis-tagged?) Weoley Castle stories. At the time of writing, the top 5 are - two anti-social behaviour stories from March 09 (the same family - evictions and imprisonment), an improved school (March 09), a charity worker meeting a Royal (May 09) and a stabbing (from 2008). Not all bad, but not a great vision of community harmony, not updated very often, not helped by technology failure (it would also be helpful if they sorted out their favicon).

BirminghamPost.net doesn't even pretend to have helpful tags. You also can't order the search results - and unlike BirminghamMail, they don't seem to be ordered by date descending. Actually, the ordering of results isn't stated, so I'm assuming it's based on relevance. So, the search results on a news site don't appear in date order, most recent first? Awesome ... . Here, the top 5 search results are:

So two of these stories are just passing mentions of Weoley Castle, not news from it. Hmm. Also, given that BirminghamMail.net and BirminghamPost.net are run by the same company, it seems strange that only one has implemented tagging (albeit incorrectly), and that searches aren't orderable, the default order being unclear, and there's no way to filter stuff based on whether it's actually news (as opposed to comment/culture/brief mentions). No wonder people are talking about the "death of local news journalism" - if you can't even find stories relevant to you, it's not overly surprising that people won't use the news sources. The group also owns the Sunday Mercury - no results. (*disclaimer* I don't read any of these papers, so I don't understand what the difference between them is supposed to be.)

The parent company also owns icbirmingham, with a similarly crap search. Their top 5 items are: a list of schools for no apparent reason (no date); the same anti-social family (from 2002! both a very old story and a long time for the same family to be causing Weoley Castle trouble); an expats forum; an incidental mention in a piece about an old folk's day centre in Northfield closing (Nov 04); and the same row about absence figures at a Weoley Castle school (Dec 07). However, the group has been making moves towards community sites based around postcodes and local governance reporting so perhaps they might cover Weoley in the future ...

How about the dear old Beeb then? They've got nicely configurable search results (by date, relevance and category), but not a lot of WC news with only one story this year, and only a few mentions in features elsewhere ... I guess The Mailbox is several miles and cultures away from Weoley. (Disclaimer: I used to work for them in New Media, albeit not for the News bit.)

National newspapers-wise, there's not much - The Guardian has 3 stories, latest from 2006 (with configurable search results & RSS, nice :)). The Sun's search just gives some locations of commenters on their forum. I lost the will to google any more.

I LOVE U by Simon Hammond on Flickr

What about sites written by local people? The Castle Community Site looks a bit empty, and has a rather empty forum, though they link to OFSTED reports and minutes from Councillor meetings (£91k to carry out a survey on a single deciduous tree?? I'd be cross about that if I lived there - p2 item 1051), and the local residents' association seems to be having trouble getting enough members. The Weoley Castle.com lists local amenities and shops, while WeoleyCastle.org has links to local history resources, but seems to have been last updated in 2007. There are also some nice old pics of Weoley, which reveal the modern-day versions when you click them.

Probably the richest set of user generated stuff about Weoley Castle is the flickr pictures, with some lovely shots of the area, some historical reenactments and, oddly, a lot of knives. Here's the map view:

View weoley castle flickr in a larger map

Over on technorati, the blog search is pretty slim pickings (though apparently you can't search for the phrase "weoley castle") apart from the videos - there's a few visualisations of the Castle in case you can't make it to the ruins and/or your imagination fails.

And what seems to be a local history video project feat. Trevor :).

Plus a few more randoms that might put you off Weoley Castle like blowing up a (toy) ladybird, those neighbours from hell (again), some kids happy slapping the select&save with eggs and a nasty one of someone shooting a pigeon.

I think the area's crying out for more personal local sites that don't have anyone blowing anything up - though if you know of any more sites, let us know in the comments. If there are any Weoley Castle community groups out there just itching to get a site up, but are not sure where to start, they could try the Social Media Surgery on 14th July, or a UK Online centre.

Finally, the plan for our next walk is to find out definitively whether Weoley Castle is shit or not - if you have suggestions for places for us to visit or want to join us, please comment.

b29 perimeter walk odyssey

2009-07-07T15:55:00.007+01:00

On Sunday 5th June 2009, an intrepid bunch (michael (@citizensheep), josh (@joshhart), mark (@cybrum) and I) met at the Nature Centre on the Pershore Road to trek around B29 as flâneurs. Sadly, no tortoises turned up and we were pretty sure the Nature Centre wouldn't lend us one.

Our journey started at the south-eastern corner of B29 on the Bournbrook, meandered as close to the B29 boundary as we could get (with a bit of guessing and some improvisation) until we passed the North-Western corner in California and lost the will to live: a massive downpour meant we decided to cut corners and head back via Castle Road.

We took it quite slowly, looking out for unusual stuff that you just don't notice on a purposeful journey.

Some themes that emerged on our odyssey were:

1. Things we found that we didn't know about

Halfway along Eastern Road on the right, heading for Bristol Road, we discovered a half-abandoned playing field - the field itself was freshly mown but the changing rooms kinda skanky and falling apart - anyone know who owns it?

Part of the walk also showed up our lack of knowledge of our natural surroundings - our plant recognition skills were pretty low, so Michael snapped the odd plant and asked the internet for help in identifying them.

Over in California, we were appalled at finding people having to live directly under electricity pylons on Reservoir Road / Heron's Way. We were also interested to see people correcting the postcode - clearly believing that B18 (Jewellery Quarter) beats B29 as a place to live. pffpfppf.

Still in Reservoir Road, we stumbled across a dance centre: Benwell Dance Club, now severely shut, but still an unusual location for fleet-footed B29ers. The road also has houses that are mostly the same, except for experimental tile decorations on the outside.

2. Disappointment in development

At the former BBC Pebble Mill site we bemoaned the slow pace of development on the Science Park (they did some road works in 2006, but the next tranche of work doesn't start until late 2009) and wondered why they couldn't have left the tennis courts open to the public.

The ongoing Selly Oak New Road works are pretty ugly, and just outside the University campus on Grange Road we realised that the Westley Richards gun makers (firm founded 1812, workshop built around 1900) is going to get demolished to make way for it. I remember hearing them test-firing from the University Campus and seems a shame to lose it, even though I'm not a fan of hunting, it would be good to have a look round inside before they knock it down. I tried snapping through the keyhole but it didn't really capture any interesting historical innards ...

We weren't overly whelmed by the new hospital either, and Michael captured the moment with his fancy new iPhone on AudioBoo:

Listen!

3. Random things that caught our eyes

Some places are so good they get named twice, and someone's been embedding the pavements with mysterious letters:

Some graffiti:

4. Finding things we did vaguely know about but not exactly

We found the Weoley Castle ruins completely by accident, just when the downpours and sore feet were beginning to grate ... *and* Weoley Castle wasn't as grim as we'd imagined, though we did get some funny looks off the local kids for consulting a map. The ruins are gated off behind a fierce fence, though they occasionally have open days (next one 19th July). I particularly liked the animal finials, so much so that I might adopt it as the B29 logo :).

Michael did get a bit whelmed by the castle - "lots of ... um ... bricks":
Listen!

And finally, as we trudged home to Selly Park, Michael and I found a few more hidden things - some secret off-road cricket, and a handy brick alcove just begging for something (an animal finial?):

We're planning a few more ramblings ... and will post things here if you'd like to join us.

safe snacks

2009-07-03T12:43:00.003+01:00

Just found the Scores on the Doors site, which publishes BCC health inspection results for cafes, restaurants and other food-based stuff in B29.

The results for food hygiene in restaurants are here, though no-one got a max of 5 stars. Bohemia and the Oak Tree Sandwich Bar top the list with 4 stars - looks like Oak Tree Lane might be B29's shiniest because the takeaway list is topped by Chez Moi on the same street. Also pleased to see the tasty Jumbo takeaway on Pershore Road with 4 stars - they also do healthy food, although the site doesn't list any healthy eating award results for Brum.

The pub list is topped by the Ember Inns chain - The Country Girl and the SPT. I can' t say I'm a massive fan of the SPT food: the nicest thing I can say is that it's OK if you get peckish while you're drinking. At least they seem to have stopped their bizarre refusal to serve soft drinks in pint sizes (previously you'd get "sorry, it'll have to be a 10 oz glass" or something ... wtf?).

On the cafe front, the Rich Bitch recording studios max up with 5 stars (can you go there if you're not recording something?), and the trusty Selly Sausage gets 4 (though personally I'm not a huge fan of the veggie options). My favourite hangover buster, Lesley's Corner Cafe, gets 3 - I'm happy to carry on scarfing down the veggie breakfast with that. The site also covers things like butcher's shops, but I'll leave you to do your own meaty searches.

B29 tortoise walk EDIT now starting at 1

2009-07-01T10:02:00.006+01:00

Desert Tortoise by dotdoubledot

EDIT: we're now planning to kick off earlier - at 1 PM.

We're planning a walk around the perimeter of B29 this Sunday (5th July), recording our feelings as we go, in the spirit of the flâneur ("a person who walks a city to experience it").

Apparently, in 1840s Paris, it was very trendy to wander around with a tortoise on a lead to make sure you were gong at the right speed to truly experience the city - so can anyone lend us a tortoise?

The plan is to start off from The Nature Centre on the Pershore Road at about 1 and walk around the google map of B29 as closely as possible until our feet/tortoises run out - leave a comment if you're interested in joining us :). We're happy to pick people up on the way, walking-bus style (we'll let you know where we are via @birminghamb29. You are welcome to get off and on as you please.

Council customer service

2009-06-23T11:06:00.005+01:00

Last year, Jon Bounds set up a Birmingham City Council area on the Get Satisfaction site, which provides an online space for people to discuss problems with organisations. This is particularly interesting in the context of the Council's own rather opaque complaints system (what would you call a "Leadership Line" for? I called it to find out, and got a recorded message saying "This line has now been decommissioned" ... awesome) and lack of online discussion facilities.

The Council seems to have shifted its view of its constituents to see us all as "customers", but has failed to make a corresponding shift to provide a better level of "customer service". The Council has a responsibility to be transparent about its decisions and spending in order to make us "customers" feel like we're getting value for money and that our views are being heard. At the moment, it's far too difficult to try and extract that information from their clumsily cluttered website (they've turned their search off until they launch a new site, but no date is given, and you only get the warning on the front page. Super helpful). This is particularly mysterious after they won an e-government award in 2007 for simplifying citizen's access to information, including "Customer First – ensuring customers receive basic, fast and accurate services with a single, friendly and professional contact point for all queries". Where is it? Oh, via google, there it is - they don't seem to have implemented it, and don't give a date for its launch. *sigh*.

Our own Michael Grimes has set up a Selly Oak ward area within the Get Satisfaction / Birmingham City Council area, for everyone to discuss/comment about local issues there - please do add your concerns, questions etc.. I've posted an idea about the Council lending out speed cameras to people who want to log/display the speeds of motorists in their area (a personal topic - I keep nearly getting squished on the Pershore Road).

However, in the context of increasing surveillance across Birmingham, it would be interesting to get some other ideas to resolve the problem: are more cameras (albeit mobile non-fining ones) really a good solution? You might also want to sign the 20 MPH e-petition (a surprisingly 21st Century initiative from BCC).

MPs allowances published

2009-06-18T13:46:00.004+01:00

The official Parliament site has published (censored) MP allowances forms for the past few years - the interesting ones are the "Additional Cost Allowances".

You can see Lynne Jones' here - nothing too outrageous despite expensive taste in wallpaper and a few problems adding up. Though she seems to have spent quite a lot on decorating, for one job she's declared that despite having oak flooring put down, she only claimed for pine.

B29ers in other constituencies can find Gisela Stuart's expenses here and Richard Burden's here - though Richard's seem to be missing the Additional Cost Allowances for 07/08.

One surprise is that these are handwritten: how can MPs not have an electronic system to log their expenses? It doesn't help the impression that MPs are still living in the 19th Century (albeit with 21st Century expenses claims).

mapping B29: our view

2009-06-17T12:39:00.005+01:00

Thanks to Michael's sterling work in mapping out B29 in google maps, we can now create our own map of the area. He's made the map open to everyone with a google account. I really like the idea of creating our views of the area before the Google Maps street car comes round :).

It woud be great to see your views of the area on the map. The first thing you'll need to do is get a google maps account, then click the "save to my maps" link on the map itself. If you haven't used google maps before, here's a handy guide to editing maps - though on the B29 map you're free to use whatever icons you like - I've started by using green pins for street signs.

We've kicked off by adding some street names to the map - have fun!

B29 street names

2009-06-08T20:56:00.007+01:00

Yes, it's a very boring topic for a post; but as I can't find a comprehensive list of B29 street names anywhere, I decided to write one myself.

Names have been taken from the Google map that I created earlier, so (knowing Google Maps) there may be some mistakes. And of course I may have missed some, so if you spot a mistake or an omission please do let us know.

There are well over 200 streets, so to save it taking up useful space on this page you can see the list of B29 street names here.

European elections - results

2009-06-08T19:41:00.003+01:00

No Rusty Lee for MEP, despite UKIP coming second in European Parliament elections in the West Midlands overall.

Celeb MEP-fans need not panic, though - Michael Cashman got returned, though this time it'll be a lonely Birmingham-Brussels commute without any other Labour colleagues (and despite his registered address seeming to be in London...).

Local results: unavailable from Election Office?

Interestingly, although BCC is the Election Office for the Euro elections, and their election results page promises that results are published online before anywhere else, they don't seem to be providing any stats - linking instead to the BBC.

The BBC main news site has a full list for the region, and the BBC's WM area has a partial local breakdown for Birmingham. It's not clear whether we'll ever get a local results list off the BCC ... even though they are very revealing, showing that for Birmingham itself, UKIP was placed fourth behind the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems.

UKIPerie

Despite predictions of major upsets, 5/6 MEPs are the same - just UKIP's Nikki Sinclaire being a new bunny, though according to her rather horribly yellow site (not yet updated to celebrate her win), she's been working as the other UKIP MEP's political advisor. Nikki's also planning to travel by Easyjet and stay in 2* hotels to use her MEP allowances to the best benefit of UKIP. Would be great to see those receipts published on her site, perhaps?

Our WM MEPs are now:

Tories:

Philip Bradbourn
Malcolm Harbour

UKIP:

Mike Nattrass
Nikki Sinclaire

Labour:

Michael Cashman

Lib Dems:

Liz Lynne

WM extremism?

I'm pleased the BNP didn't get any MEPs in the region, though they did poll 8.6% of the vote - or 121,967 votes in total - with a 34.8% turnout. Seems pretty high, even though it's only an increase of 1.1% on 2004 - perhaps some comfort to be taken in a worsening political and economic situation not moving the WM electorate to extremist views.

Unless of course, you take UKIP to be an extremist view. Perhaps this will prove to be the election in which UKIP became the acceptable face of anti-European, anti-immigration policies. It remains to be seen how acceptable they remain with respect to the alliances they may make in the European Parliament, and where they go with policy statements like "we believe the traditional British way of life is inherently good, and should be promoted for its own sake": cuddly fascists are still fascists.

battery demolition

2009-06-06T18:17:00.010+01:00

The lovely jdk653 contacted us to point us towards a Birmingham Post, um, post about the demolition of the Battery building as part of the new Sainsbury's development despite efforts by conservationists (including the venerable Prof Carl Chinn) to save it.

UPDATE: I went down to Battery Park on Sun 7th and took some pictures of the demolition in progress:

The original planning document (2004) specifically mentions that the building was to be repaired, though the BCC site skirts over the demolition vs repairs issue. According to the Post, Sainsbury's say the building is unsafe and therefore can't be repaired. There are some pretty amazing pics on the derelict places site, which reports that a couple of people fell through floors during the shoot.

There's a few conflicting reports about the listed status of the building - the Stirrer reckoned it was, but the SkyscraperCity forums had a few posts from people saying it wasn't - and the Council's listed lists doesn't include it (though the Goose at the OVT is in :)). Either way, it looks like the loss of an historic building.

Also, the "mixed-use development" that's being built on the Battery site includes a technology park: where does that leave the not-quite-built-yet biomedical science park on the old Pebble Mill site (due 2015)? Oh BCC, with these science/tech parks you are really spoiling us ...

Google map of the Birmingham B29 postcode area

2009-06-04T22:57:00.006+01:00

In this post – my first ever on this blog – I've had a crack at plotting Birmingham B29 on a Google Map, with fair success if I may say so.

View Birmingham B29 in a larger map

Thanks to James Thornett for his static map of B29 which served as an invaluable guide.

I'm going to try to do more with this, but in the meantime you can add it to your Google Maps account if you have one. You can then see other maps – such as Pindec's B29 Meandering Games - layered over the top.

If you don't already have one you can get a Google account here.

How many Mbps please: how fast is your broadband in B29?

2009-05-28T13:27:00.007+01:00

Is B29 a slow broadband area? According to the BBC, the government may miss its 2012 target to give every household in the UK access to 2 Mbps broadband, and some Virgin users in the area are reporting speed issues of their own.

There is a telephone exchange in Oakfield Road (B29 7HW), and according to the BBC report then any house within 4km *should* be able to get at least 2 Mbps.

I thought it would be interesting for us all to report our true broadband speeds, and see how much it differs between providers. Those of you using BT lines can use the BT speed checker, otherwise try the Broadband Speed Checker, or take a look at the speeds your modem reports directly from its config/admin pages.

That way, if your speed is much worse than people close by with the same mode of access (i.e. cable or broadband), you should definitely recheck all the internal factors that affect broadband speed - see this handy guide. Even if you can't find an in-house fault like a rogue phone socket without a microfilter, it's also worth googling around to check your hardware/ISP compatibility - we had a NetGear wireless router that turned out to be incompatible with TalkTalk (our cheap but pretty sucky ISP - their customer service is laughably awful).

In First Avenue, with broadband over a BT line, I get approx. 6.3 Mbps download speed according to the Broadband Speed Checker service (that's fixed cable - over my Wi-Fi it's more like 2.3). I could in theory improve this by switching providers, as we're less than 1km from the Selly Oak telephone exchange and we're in a cable area. According to the excellent Sam Knows site, there are 6 other local broadband providers from the Selly Oak exchange I can consider (plus additional secondary sellers not listed).

How fast are you? Any broadband recommendations for B29 (on price and on customer service)?

European Elections - celebrity battles

2009-05-20T16:05:00.005+01:00

There's an election for the European Parliament on 4th June - the West Midlands region has currently got 7 MEPs, but we'll only be returning 6 this time round.

The full vote allocation rules are complicated (I had absolutely no idea how it worked before googling it, which kind of shames my degree that included politics *cough*), but essentially based on a quota system.

The list of candidates (including addresses) includes a disappointing amount of BNP candidates (tip: if you get a BNP leaflet though the door, why not send it back to one of the candidates with no stamp?) but also some celebs - Michael Cashman (ex-EastEnders) has been an MEP since 1999, but I didn't know that Rustie Lee was standing for UKIP (despite being born in Jamaica, she seems to fully support their anti-immigration policy).

So which ex-EastEnder really is the best person to represent the West Midlands? Sadly no opportunity for a cook-off - Rustie's #4 out of 6 UKIP candidates, so she hasn't got a hope of being elected despite her campaigning skillz.

I'm sceptical about the impact that regional MEPs actually have on B29 (though naturally I'm pleased that seal products have been banned in the EU - no more River Rea seal culls), but it will be interesting to see the impact of recent anti-MP feeling on MEP voting patterns.

I will vote, partly because I think it's important to express a preference, and partly because I want to counterbalance anyone voting for the BNP or UKIP.

The other parties standing are

Labour (feat. Cashman)
Conservative
Lib Dems
Green (on an anti-racism ticket)
UKIP (anti-immigration muppets who deny they are racist)
BNP (racist muppets, some with dubious pasts)
Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship” (how does Jesus feel about the EU?)
No2EU (a trade union backed party that reject the "European gravy train", and will refuse to sit in the European Parliament if they get any seats - not clear what happens to the MEP salary?)
English Democrats Party (pro the English political system devolving from Westminster; anti-immigration; anti-political correctness - usual muppetry)
Jury Team (coalition of independent candidates; advocate MEPs publishing details of all their expenses; backed by Esther Rantzen)
Pro Democracy: Libertas.eu (similar to above - pro transparency; coalition across Europe; no distinct party line)
Socialist Labour Party (feat. Scargill)

birminghamB29 twitter group

2009-05-15T11:09:00.005+01:00

Twitter have implemented some changes which'll make it easier to aggregate Birmingham B29 info - just follow @birminghamB29 and reply to it (i.e. send a message containing @birminghamB29) with any B29-related info you want to share :).

pricing democracy

2009-05-14T15:31:00.009+01:00

How do local MPs stack up in the expenses row?

Dr Lynne Jones has published her own response, which says she abhors the abuse whilst taking a sly swipe at "well-paid journalists". Nevertheless, she embraces the transparency principle, linking to her They Work For You figures, which show that apart from staffing costs where she was ranked 15th out of 645, she's mostly way down the list of expense claims.

This is particularly interesting given that she's stepping down at the next election, and in contrast to efforts by others to feather their nests while on the way out.

Nearby Stephen McCabe (MP for Hall Green), on the other hand, overclaimed for his mortgage, which surprisingly doesn't make a mention on his website. He also voted strongly against a transparent parliament - a position which he may well find is untenable prior to the next election.

Local councillors

The row made me wonder about Birmingham City Council expenses transparency - and it's clear there's a lot of work to be done. It seems ridiculous (very Douglas Adams) that the Register of Allowances is only relevant to the current financial year, and that it and the full Register of Members Interests are only viewable in person at the Council House during office hours. [edit - thanks to Robert for digging out the URL for the Members Allowances - though note it's still a set of PDFs rather than a searchable data source].

How can it be acceptable that some members can opt out of the e-version of the Register of Members Interests? It may not be a legal requirement to provide an e-register, but surely it's an accountability requirement - especially given that the Council's Local Code of Governance claims the following:

"Governance is about how local governance bodies ensure that they are doing the right things, in the right way, for the right people, in a timely, inclusive, open, honest and accountable manner;"

Having an unsearchable expenses register and a partial e-register of interests is neither open nor accountable.

Also note that the e-version of the Register of Members' Interests is a scanned hand-written document filed by member (and therefore also unsearchable). To achieve "effective scrutiny", the Council should provide all this data online for people to query, visualise and cross-reference with, say, Councillor voting patterns to make up their own minds.

I'm not assuming that Councillors are overclaiming expenses, or voting in line with their special interests, but hiding the data in hand-written documents will conceal any patterns both from voters and from the scrutineers. Humans just aren't very good at visualising patterns from flat numbers, and if we don't have the data to make some shiny pie charts then voters may assume the worst.

So, out of interest, I've transcribed what information is available from the e-Register of Members' Interests here for B29 (Selly Oak) Councillors (be aware that transcription errors may arise from it mostly being hand-written):

Wright, Robert (LibDem) (see also his blog)

Statutory Register (07):

(i) Membership/control/management of bodies appointed/nominated by BCC

Local Access Forum

(ii) Other bodies

Liberal Democrats
Unlock Democracy (formerly Charter 88)
Amnesty International
Friends of the Earth
Public and Commercial Services Union
Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors

(iii) Any employment or business carried on by him

Civil Servant

(iv) Any person or body who employs or has appointed him:

Water Services Regulation Authority

(v) Any person or body other than BCC who has made a payment to him in respect of election or expenses in carrying out duties:

Selly Oak & Edgbaston Liberal Democrats

(viii) any land in BCC's area in which he has a financial interest:

26 Cecil Road, Selly Park, B29 7QQ

Gifts Register: (07/08)

Birmingham Rep - 2 tickets for Hysteria (declined - est value £25)
2 x West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority / Centro - meal (est value £25)
Birmingham Rep - 2 tickets for Rafta (est value £25)
Hyder Consulting Ltd - meal & ticket to carol concert - (est value over £25)

He was fortunate to decline the tickets for Hysteria - it was one of the worst plays I've seen for years (we left in the interval).

Interestingly, Robert both works for the Water Authority, appears to live in the area in Selly Park (Cecil Road) that got flooded last year, and has been dined by Hyder Consulting - an advisory and design consultancy working with BCC to try and solve the urban flooding issues - perhaps they are involved in the B29 flood modelling?

RADCLIFFE, DAVID (LibDem)

Statutory Register (07/08):

(ii) Other bodies

Liberal Democrats
University College Union
Association of University Administrators
Electoral Reform Society
Cyclists Touring Club
New Politics Network
Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors
Push Bikes

(iii) Any employment or business carried on by him

Senior Planning Officer, University of Birmingham

(iv) Any person or body who employs or has appointed him:

University of Birmingham

(v) Any person or body other than BCC who has made a payment to him in respect of election or expenses in carrying out duties:

Selly Oak Liberal Democrats

(viii) any land in BCC's area in which he has a financial interest:

46 Regent St, Stirchley, B30 2LG

Gifts Register: (07/08)

WMPTA - meal (est value £25)
Birmigham Rep - 2 tickets for "Our House" (est value £50)
Birmingham Rep - 2 tickets for "His Dark Materials pt1" (est value £50)
Birmingham Rep - 2 tickets for "His Dark Materials pt 2" (est value £40)

DOW, ALISTAIR (LibDem)

Statutory Register (07):

(i) Membership/control/management of bodies appointed/nominated by BCC

Muntz Trust
SIFA / Fireside
Kings Norton United Charities
Birmingham Opera
Birmingham University Court

(ii) Other bodies

Aston University Free Church Chaplaincy
Warwickshire monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Liberal Democrats
Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland

(v) Any person or body other than BCC who has made a payment to him in respect of election or expenses in carrying out duties:

Selly Oak and Edgbaston Liberal Democrats

(viii) any land in BCC's area in which he has a financial interest:

23 Hindon Square, Birmingham, B15 3HA

Gifts Register: (07/08)

2 sets (?) Birmingham Rep tickets (refused)
PTEG dinner (est value £25)
Hippodrome - 2 tickets (est value £25)
Old Rep - 2 tickets (est value £25)
Robert Keys Associates - guest at Birmingham Post awards lunch (est value £25)
Redcliffe Catering - dinner (est value £25)
PTEG - dinner (est value £25)
Hyder Consulting - meal and carol concert (est value over £25)

PTEG may refer to the Passenger Transport Executive Group (publicly funded policy/strategy group on public transport). Robert Keys Associates - I couldn't find. Redcliffe Catering are local catering contractors.

There. That was a bit tedious, wasn't it? It's interesting to reveal the interests of our local counillors, but I still want to see their expenses .... Though it looks like the Birmingham Rep spends quite a lot of time giving out tickets to local councillors.

Flood Action

2009-05-14T14:42:00.006+01:00

With more rain forecast, it's an apt time for the Selly Park Community Residents' Association (SPRCA) to hold an AGM to discuss, amongst other things, forming a Flood Action Group with someone from the Birmingham Resilience Team, which appears to be some kind of Council organisation with responsibility for emergency planning. The team has published a nice wallet of ICE info, plus there's a few tips on their site, but it all feels a bit clunky, and not particularly relevant to flooding - there's an emergency phone line but the number will only be given out over local radio ... is that really helpful?

When will the Council manage to grasp the idea that emergency planning might also include providing/collating live info via multiple platforms? I'd like to get an email/tweet if my house was in danger of flooding ... rather than have to be listening to radio WM (*please* don't make me listen to local radio :( ). Much nonsense has been written about twitter and microblogging, but providing live flood info would be an ideal application.

BBC weather forecast for Birmingham for next 3 days (interestingly, despite Birmingham being a large area, the Met Office don't do a finer-grained forecast):
You must have a browser that supports &amp;amp;lt;span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"&amp;amp;gt;iframes&amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;gt; to view the BBC weather forecast
The AGM's on 20th May at 19:30 in Skittle Alley, SPT - or alternatively contact Saima Ali, Ward Support Officer, Selly Oak Constituency on 0121 303 9987 or saima_ali@birmingham.gov.uk.

According to the SPRCA, computer models of the Rea and Bourn Brook are being made to try and alleviate any possible floods in the future. It would be great if these were available online showing real time water levels to help people to judge whether it's time to start moving their stuff upstairs ...

more bizarre weather #b29

2009-04-28T18:36:00.003+01:00

This evening (28 April 18:30) we have a lot of weather going on in B29:

thunder
lightning
hail
rain

Brrr.

Traffic's crawling on the Pershore Road; looks like we might have an awful lot of water around too ...

religious doorsteppers in B29

2009-04-28T13:54:00.010+01:00

We've had quite a few people round recently attempting to enlighten us into the ways of their various religions. This is quite annoying when (a) you're a committed atheist and (b) you're in the middle of making a veggie burger.

Most people are terribly polite, indeed today's Smiley Christians and the other week's Jehovah's Witnesses both said it was "nice to meet me" despite them (presumably) fervently believing I'm going to burn in hell for my (lack of) beliefs.

However, what I object to are people like the two from St Stephen's a couple of weeks ago, who attempted (pointlessly) to engage me in a debate that descended into farce - they seemed to be getting a bit annoyed at me not agreeing with them, which is not quite what I expected from the cuddly CofE. I entirely respect their right to believe what they like, and to go round B29 and try and convert people (though I suspect there's probably a few thousand people out there in Birmingham who'd rather a more direct intervention to help their lives than a doorstep chat), but I object to them trying to imply that my beliefs are worth less than theirs. Here's a hint - if I tell you I'm an atheist, you're unlikely to be able to catch me out by asking "Do you pray?". *And* my veggieburger was burning.

I wonder what the conversion rate of doorstop chats really is - I expect it's less than with other direct marketing methods. I'll ask the next ones around ...

Does anyone make a sign that says "no free newspapers and no organised religions please"? Are there any disorganised religions that that would miss out?

Could we start a B29 watch where we let each other know who's coming round knocking on doors, maybe via twitter (e.g. #b29watch)?

B29 games map

2009-04-06T23:19:00.009+01:00

I've started a map outlining some lo-fi games to play should you find yourself aimlessly trundling around B29 - from avoiding scary shops to guessing the staff-to-client ratio in a curry house.

It's an openly collaborative map, so please add your own B29 games; I'm aware that this blog gets skewed towards Selly Park (where I live) and not California (wayyyy over in B29 *West* [edit: thanks Jack, doh!].

View Larger Map

Also, I'm planning a trundle over to the rest of B29 shortly - anyone got any must-sees or highlights?

spring sprung

2009-03-14T17:22:00.009Z

... and after the snow comes spring.

Inspired by new folder's lovely B29 spring pic, here's another flickr slideshow from the B29 flickr group.

Add your pics to the B29 group and tag them with "spring" to ping them up here.

EDIT - multiple iFrame / blogger borkage means that we can merely admire a single new folder pic here :)

B29 snow

2009-02-01T19:06:00.009Z

Archive of incoming snow Feb 09 (even tracked and rated on twitter).

Jump to flickr to see all the snow scenes posted to the flickr B29 group.

Going to party like it's B29?

2009-01-30T17:35:00.005Z

Randomly met a resident of Second Avenue yesterday, and on chatting about the upsides of living in B29, he mentioned that his street has an annual street party.

photo by Annie Mole

I live just round the corner, and I've never stumbled across the street party - usually in late June (my invite must have been lost in the post) ... but it made me realise that (a) there aren't many places in B29 for casually meeting other B29-ers, especially since the mac is shut (other than Flood Meetings?); and (b) a large-scale street party (i.e. a fête) would be awesome, despite growing up in deepest darkest Sussex and vowing never to having anything to do with countryside-type things again.

Anyone up for a B29 village fête? We could simply congregate in Selly Hill Park with hats (for wearing), wellies (for wanging or wearing, depending on the weather) and strawberries (ditto). Put "late June" in the diary.

where post please?

2009-01-19T21:07:00.006Z

I've lived in B29 for 8 years, but I still wasn't sure I was using the nearest postbox ... until I came across a handy site that maps them all - from a nice man affiliated with the lovely mysociety.org bunnies. thanks!

Wonder if mysociety can fix the bizarre practice of the postie having to bring large things round to your house without being able to check first that someone's in ...

Latest flood missive from BCC

2009-01-19T20:39:00.002Z

Another month, another City Council missive about the floods back in September 08 ... This time it's to feedback about the (paper) questionnaires they sent round and to let everyone know they are Doing Stuff.

Interestingly, they are also asking if it's OK if they share the result of their investigation into the causes of the flood with the Environment Agency and Severn Trent Water ... this seems to (a) be a no-brainer and (b) imply that the various agencies still can't work together - at the community meeting the Council organised shortly after the floods, it was clear that the agencies didn't really have a model for communicating, and there was a certain amount of shifting responsibility round on each other.

If your house is filling up with sewage water, you don't really care which agency has responsibility. It transpired that Severn Trent didn't even realise the flooding was contaminated with sewage until the community meeting - and again it doesn't take a genius to realise that if you have a holding tank of sewage under Dog Poo Lane, and there's a massive flood on the lane, there might be some kind of unpleasant leakage going on.

Nevertheless, we now have a useful list of numbers (including out of hours) for BCC flooding - though it's still split between "blocked highway drainage flooding" and "river flooding", plus EA's floodline, Severn Trent and Flood Forum - which is still a lot of numbers to choose from if you're not entirely sure where the water's coming from.

In September, Bournbrook burst its banks because it couldn't fit under the road at Pebble Mill, and submerged Sir John's, 4th and 3rd Avenues - does that count as river flooding or poor drainage or Severn Trent or EA's problem? EA says it doesn't deal with surface flooding (and had no flood alerts up about B29 at the time) - and the Council don't seem to have plans in place to deal with incidents where the Bournbrook is too fat to fit under the road.

Still, this incident has incited the most contact we've ever had from any local governmental type agency, other than the time the Lib Dems came round to see if we wanted anything ... and of course the flood of semi-interested activists at local election time. Though I still reckon we've had the Jehovah's Witnesses round more often than any political bunnies - and they even claimed it was nice talking to me last time after I (politely) declined The Watchtower on account of being a committed atheist.

FYI the flooding contact details in full:
BCC Highways (blocked drainage) 303 6644
BCC river flooding: 303 7235
Out of hours for both: 303 4149

EA floodline: 0845 988 1188
Severn Trent: 0800 783 4444
Flood Forum: 01299 403055

Planning Alerts

2008-10-28T13:51:00.002Z

just briefly, before a larger post about the flooding and the political wrangles emerging from it:

If you'd like to be alearted via email about B29 planning applications, sign up for free at planningalerts.com.

This site trawls Birmingham City Council webpages - so you don't have to - and indexes planning applications by postcode, so you can sign up to be alerted when anything happens near you.

A wondrous free idea run by volunteers and hosted by mysociety.org; it counteracts the awful slowness with which local authorities are freeing their data by just getting on and writing screenscrapers (basically, bits of code that suck in web pages and sort out the useful data) instead.

Is Birmingham the new Coventry?

2008-10-07T15:05:00.002+01:00

An entirely trivial point: looks like the new way to kill off soap characters is to have them move to Birmingham (though not specifically B29 ;)). The BBC have just offloaded the Trumans from EastEnders by relocating them here...

b29 under water

2008-09-06T17:22:00.006+01:00

just a quick post to note the floods; the river rea is all over the Selly Park playing fields, with water flowing from Kitchener Road onto them - when we took a look a few hours ago, water was geysering up in the middle through the manholes.

The Bournbrook broke its banks just by Pebble Mill and flooded 3rd, 4th and Sir John's Avenues, and the Pershore Road was flooded at Pebble Mill and Cartland Road.

Here's a video of the river at the bottom of First Avenue:

I took some more pictures, but not of the avenues flooding; I felt like it wasn't very helpful for the people whose houses were disappearing underwater to stand around and take pics of it ... but loads of people did have their cameraphones out so I'm sure there will be lots of pics.

More floodwaters (apologies for the terrible camera angles):

Looks like it's stopped raining, so fingers crossed.

*UPDATE*

Sadly, the water kept rising - the bottom halves of Hobson and Kitchener Roads and Cecil road were really badly flooded, with water levels up to people's thighs. Fashoda Road was half flooded, and you couldn't drive up DogPool lane - there was a fire engine at the junction with Fashoda doing what it could.

The waters did start to subside around 5ish, but that was little consolation for the people whose houses were submerged. One of our neighbours reckoned it was by far the worst flooding for 20 years... and there's more rain forecast for Tuesday with the fallout of hurricane Gustav :(.

Sharing B29 places ...

2008-08-21T12:50:00.004+01:00

I've been looking at B29 on a few location sharing sites (is there a better collective name for location-based social networking sites? I'm sure James knows...), most of which seem to suffer from being based in the US, clunky UIs and/or too few users.

One such site is streetadvisor.com, with just two whole Birmingham entries. It struggled to find my street - insisting that I live in Water Orton. I've never been to Water Orton, so I guess it might be nice, but I definitely don't live there. The map interface is relatively friendly, however, with the kind of slideable google map overlaid with widgets that's become the norm, so I eventually found my street which streetadvisor insisted is in Bournbrook. pfff.

Once you've located your street, the site invites you to rate it on a variety of scales including retail opportunities, provision of health services and schools and availability of gas. This feels like it might be a useful tool for people looking to move somewhere, but I can't really see what would motivate users to add their street .. or am I missing something? Would you want to showcase your street? Would the pre-defined categories help, or would you rather praise your street in your own words?

Mobile social networking is the latest start-up frenzy with a whole smorgasbord of sites popping up. Brightkite had a lot of industry buzz, and it's got a nice interface, and puts B29 roughly in the right place. The focus is on knowing where your pre-existing friends are, rather than on reviewing or discovering stuff. Again, it suffers from a lack of other users - at the time of writing, no-one else is within 4,000 metres of me :(.

With Rummble, the focus is on sharing info on physical locations and reviews with your pre-existing network, so in theory you get "trusted" local info. Over at Plazes, you get more of a microblog+location feel - it's more about discovering who's around and what they've tagged rather than local reviews. Plazes just got bought by Nokia, and they've got an API to enable developers to extract and reformat the info that people add, which implies the site will be funded for some time ... I'll award zkout the honorary gratuitously stupid 2.0-esque name award.

The common problem with these micro-local sites is that their usefulness won't become clear until they've achieved a critical mass of users - which is much more of a challenge on a small local scale than across a much more generic user group. Stiff competition also implies a lot of market churn - the likelihood is that different local groups will champion different micro-local sites, so it's difficult to see the business model working, at least in the short term while sites fight it out for market share.

Anyone found a good location sharing site? Or should we just stick to a huge mashup of individual google maps?

Here's the only one I've found so far for B29 - one that's quite juggling-specific ;)

If you've got a lovley B29-specific map, let me know and I'll add it in ...

Selly Oak New Road update

2008-08-21T10:31:00.003+01:00

More info emerging via evidence of sitting in traffic jams and the birmingham.gov site.

Phase 1A continues with the road reduced to one lane. Sadly, there's no info on the site of how long this phase will take, or what's in Phase 1B, or if there's a Phase 1C ...

I'll go take some pics of the cones and excavations shortly.

p.s. hi - I'm pindec, your new B29 reporter since the lovely James went and uppped sticks over to B13. I've lived in B29 since 2001, and I have a personal grudge about the ever increasing bus fares. Once I manage to secure the official data on bus fares - which is proving to be ridiculously tricky - I'll post a rant about it :).

Work continues on the Selly Oak New Road

2008-05-12T02:29:00.003+01:00

birmingham.gov have provided another update on the progress of the Selly Oak New Road.

The following works are due to take place from Saturday 3 May 2008
Preparation for surfacing will be taking place to footpaths.
Placing service and signal ducts in footpaths of new road
Drainage works from attenuation tank units to the Bourn Brook.
Kerbs and trimming sub-base to tie-in with Hospital Link Road Section 1.
Exposing existing ducts on West side of existing bridge and installing support.
Constructing ramp for diverting Northbound traffic out of new island.
Commence demolition of West side of existing bridge

I'm not entirely sure what most of this means - nor does it give any real indication of whether the work is progressing on schedule - but still, it's good to know that those attenuation tank units are being looked at!

There appears to be quite a lack of information, blog posts or even images on the web relating to the development of the Selly Oak New Road so if anyone has anything interesting to add, or fancies going out and taking some photos, then please do, and let me know.

(Here are all the previous posts on this subject.)

I'm moving

2008-03-15T00:28:00.004Z

This week, assuming all goes to plan, I will be moving out of Birmingham B29.

It's not really a deliberate or planned move.

Initially I thought I was going to be moving within the B29 area... but then I also thought I would be moving with my girlfriend, rather than us going our separate ways.

How wrong you can be.

So, the upshot is that I will be moving to B13, within a short walk from the centre of Moseley.

It will certainly make attending the fantastic Moseley Folk Festival even easier than usual!

However, the problem is what to do with this site.

I could continue representing B29 on the web, after all I have spent enough years living in the year to understand what is going on and present a useful view.

On the other hand, shouldn't Birmingham B29 be represented by someone who actually lives and breathes the air every day, who walks the streets and receives the enticing Selly Oak and Northfield council leaflets through the door?

What do you think?

Anyone interested in taking on B29? Anyone think that it doesn't really matter? I really would be interested in any thoughts you have.

Selly Oak New Road

2008-02-07T11:10:00.000Z

Another brief update from birmingham.gov on the progress of the Selly Oak New Road:

The following works are due to take place from Monday 4 February 2008:
Importing and rolling fill material for new road and roundabout.
Work on north wing wall for the first section of new canal bridge, Harborne Lane.
Waterproofing, back of wall drainage and backfilling to back of walls.
Placing gully connections.
Site clearance and excavation to east pavement will be taking place.
Work on retaining wall next to B&Q.
Excavating lagoon and stockpiling arisings.
Tree clearance to the environmental works off Arosa Drive

Both carriageways are restricted to one lane working, which may cause disruption for motorists and pedestrians.

If you need further information please contact either George Underhill on 07977 437305 or Dave Greenaway on 07766 923287.

Here are all the previous posts on this subject.

Check neighbourhood problems near you

2007-12-20T17:31:00.000Z

I've mentioned Fix My Street (previously called Neighbourhood Fix It) on my personal blog before and thought that it might be useful to also mention it on here.

To find out what's bugging the people who live in B29, what the council is doing about these problems, or to report one of your own, use the box below.

You can also subscribe to customisable alerts.

Selly Oak Relief Road (from Flickr)

2007-12-18T20:24:00.000Z

(photo by kate&drew)

Selly Oak New Road (update)

2007-12-18T13:33:00.000Z

Another brief update from birmingham.gov on the progress of the Selly Oak New Road:

The following works are due to take place from Saturday 15 December:

Importing and rolling fill material for new road and roundabout
Steelfix and shutter to walls for the first section of new canal bridge, Harborne Lane
Placing gulleys

Please note that the location of these works means traffic flows will not be affected

Here are all the previous posts on this subject.

Royal Mail Delivery Office, Selly Oak

2007-12-14T12:41:00.000Z

Property in B29

2007-11-19T16:18:00.000Z

Despite warnings of a slowdown in house price growth in 2008 there are undoubtedly plenty of people out there looking to buy and sell so here's a couple of particularly useful links for anyone buying or selling in B29.

extate.co.uk has a handy link to property available to buy in B29.

rightmove.co.uk has a similar link to properties currently available to buy in B29.

They also have a useful guide to house prices in the area based on sales in the last two years. A screen grab is below showing the headline information.

Gumtree - classified ads on the web

2007-11-07T22:11:00.000Z

Have you ever tried the Gumtree website? No? Then you probably should.

Essentially an online collection of the type of ads that you'll find in a local newspaper, or on the noticeboard of a local post office (if it hasn't been closed down).

A quick search for 'B29' reveals mostly what you would expect from a residential area dominated by student housing - lots and lots of available flat/house shares and accommodation related ads.

However, don't dismiss the site too soon if this isn't your thing as, sifting between the accommodation options, you might just find a bargain such as this Ikea bookcase and CD rack or can you help out this person searching for spare jam jars?

Probably a bit late for most of you that are reading this, but the Gumtree Birmingham Community are organising a Meet Up tomorrow at the Sunflower Lounge... in their own words:

Hi to all Birmingham friends of Gumtree!

Exciting news from the Gumtree camp – we are hosting a Meet Up for the Birmingham Gumtree community.

This is our way to say thank you to the Gumtree community and a chance to meet the team behind the UK's biggest classified site.

The fun starts at 6pm when we will be putting our card behind the bar (Until it runs out so get there fast!) and there will also be a karaoke competition with some fantastic Gumtree merchandise to win.

Come along to have a laugh, make new friends and celebrate being part of Gumtree Birmingham. Friends, colleagues and family all welcome.

Date: Thursday 8th November
Time: 6pm-11pm
Location: The Sunflower Lounge, Smallbrook Queensway, B5 4EG

Hope to see lots of you there!

The Gumtree team

Work on Selly Oak New Road begins

2007-11-02T12:44:00.000Z

Following my post last month on the proposals for the Selly Oak New Road it would appear that, as promised, work has now begun.

This from birmingham.gov, updated on 25th October:

Phase 1A of the scheme includes for the widening of Harborne Lane, reconstruction of Harborne Lane bridge, the construction of a new roundabout at Harborne Lane / Selly Oak New Road, construction of new carriageway across the old Birmingham Battery site and flood compensation works.

The following works are due to take place from Monday 29 October:

Importing and rolling fill
Drainage works
Trial holes in footpaths

Please note that the location of these works means traffic flows will not be affected

If you need further information please contact either George Underhill on 07977 437305 or Dave Greenaway on 07766 923287.

B29 Constituency Profile

2007-10-10T22:23:00.001+01:00

As promised, here's an overview of the parliamentary constituencies that touch on the B29 postcode area.

I have to admit I was slightly surprised how much of the area is actually a part of the Northfield constituency rather than Selly Oak.

(click on map for large version)

Note: Outline shown on map is not the whole constituency - just the portion that exists within the B29 postcode area. This map illustrates the overall constituency outline of Birmingham.

All three constituencies are currently represented by Labour MPs with Lynne Jones in Selly Oak, Gisela Stuart in Edgbaston and Richard Burden in Northfield.

Selly Oak Liberal Democrats

2007-10-10T18:08:00.000+01:00

As an interesting addition to my post on Lynne Jones - MP for Selly Oak, I recently found www.publicwhip.org.uk which contains a fascinating insight into the parliamentary voting behaviour of all MPs, including Selly Oak's very own Lynne Jones.

For those with a bigger interest in politics the site also contains a wealth of interesting information on policies, the House of Lords, and a fascinating customisable diagram of who-is-where in government on any day in the last ten years.

Back to B29, and in the interests of political neutrality, I thought I'd highlight the Liberal Democrat's web presence for Selly Oak.

Dave Radcliffe (left) is the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Selly Oak constituency.

The website itself is fairly useful - details of advice surgeries run by the Lib Dem councillors, a selection of local news (although at the time of writing in a slightly bizarre order), and a much more comprehensive overall Lib Dem news section.

If you're wondering about the difference between the Selly Oak Constituency area and the B29 postcode district area then here is the constituency map to be compared with the B29 map.

I might attempt to produce a combined version in the next day or two to demonstrate the complete political make-up of B29.

Selly Oak New Road Proposals

2007-10-04T22:33:00.001+01:00

According to birmingham.gov.uk, construction on the Selly Oak New Road is about to start. The 'last updated' tag on the page says 2nd October 2007 although this doesn't necessarily mean that the information is completely new.

According to the website

Works are programmed to start in October and last for 10 months until August 2008.

Has anyone else got any further information on this?
Anyone able to shed any light on when construction is actually due to start?
Please comment on this post if you have any additional info...

There's a useful map of the proposed new road on the website, although I've provided a slightly doctored version below to make it, I think, a bit clearer.

The orange line is the current Bristol Rd through Selly Oak, the red line is the proposed new road. The heavily student-populated area including Dawlish Rd, Tiverton Rd et al is the large area shaded green in the centre.

(click on map for large version)

In essence the reason behind the plan is very similar to the Northfield Relief Road which was completed in June this year and allows traffic to progress along the A38 route between the city centre and Rubery/M5 without going through the busy shopping centre of Northfield.

The idea of diverting traffic away from the pedestrian-busy shops/pubs of Selly Oak and allowing heavy traffic a quicker and easier access in/out of the city has been around for some time with many of the details agreed in 2004.

The recent demise of the Knife and Fork (pictured left) was, for many, the first big step in the plan.

The plans for the new road are part of a wider initiative labelled the Selly Oak Local Action Plan which includes a number of other major developments in the area.

Early morning tree, Selly Park (from Flickr B29)

2007-10-02T12:41:00.000+01:00

(from Flickr B29)

Liberty's heli of a curry (from The Sun newspaper)

2007-09-30T18:40:00.000+01:00

Sticking on the big-news-from-B29-theme, I was reminded on Friday of this excellent story from 2006.

As reported in The Sun newspaper, pop group Liberty X splashed out £4,500 by hiring a helicopter to deliver food from the Sundarbon restaurant on Bristol Road in Selly Oak, to London.

Apparently Westlife are big fans of the Sundarbon food as well.

Tornado hits Selly Oak (a long time ago)

2007-09-28T16:17:00.000+01:00

Whilst searching for any big news story directly related to the B29 area I came across the enticing headline "Tornado hits Selly Oak".

One look at the story, from the BBC website, and it didn't take long to realise that this was quite an old story, from July 1999 in fact.

However, it still made me chuckle for a number of reasons - not least that the story is credited as "From the newsroom of the BBC World Service".

Fair play though, it appears that the story was published by a very alert journalist at a quarter past five in the morning.

Birmingham University Welcome Week

2007-09-24T22:26:00.000+01:00

This week (24th Sep - 1st Oct) will see more than five thousand new students arriving in Selly Oak as the latest batch of new students begin life at the University of Birmingham.

(photo by Biscit aka Simon J)

Birmingham Uni's Welcome Week will see new and returning students take part in a range of activities - organised by the university and its Guild of Students - designed to involve and introduce everyone to Birmingham's 27,000 strong student community.

From The University of Birmingham website.

If you're not one of the new 5,000 but fancy having a nose around then why not try out this virtual tour of the uni, or step into the real world and go along to the next open day.

Tiverton Pool & Fitness Centre

2007-09-17T12:34:00.000+01:00

One of Selly Oak's hidden gems is the Tiverton Pool & Fitness Centre which has been open now for over 100 years.

Located on Tiverton Road in the heavily student populated area of Bournbrook, the centre is open 7am - 9.30pm Monday to Friday and slighter shorter hours at the weekend.

Facilities include a swimming pool, separate childrens pool, sauna and 'pulse point' gym.

There are a whole host of organised activities and fitness classes for all ages that can be booked online including strokes, pulse point, and studio cycling.

A few more photos

2007-09-15T10:38:00.000+01:00

This morning I finally managed to do what I'd been promising myself for the last few weekends now and got out of bed and took the camera for a walk around selly oak/park.

Images have been dutifully uploaded and added to the B29 flickr map, including another Selly Park image for the collection.

Podnosh, The Knife and Fork, and a new speed camera

2007-09-14T22:16:00.000+01:00

This very complimentary snippet on Podnosh today has made me release that it's been a while since my last post.

So then I started to borrow yet more content from Podnosh, like this insightful blog from a newly trained Birmingham bus driver which is well worth a read.

Then I noticed that Birmingham: It's Not Shit has gone through a very worthwhile redesign and come out looking very lovely and shiny in the wash.

And it has an associated flickr group with a recent photo of one of the landmarks of B29, the soon to be disappearing Knife and Fork (left: photo by ellybrown1980).

Still just about surviving (although not still serving unfortunately) but by the gathering of equipment and signs I would imagine that it is sadly just about on its' last legs.

I also couldn't fail to notice tonight that an extra speed camera has appeared on the Pershore Road very recently (not even any marker lines on the road yet), heading out of the city just after the junction with Pebble Mill Road beside the Nature Centre. Just about here.

It didn't slow down my journey to the excellent Jumbo Chinese takeaway though, thankfully.

Lynne Jones - MP for Selly Oak

2007-08-23T11:35:00.000+01:00

Lynne Jones has been MP for the Selly Oak constituency since 1992.

Party politics aside, her website feels like a really useful tool for people living in the area to get a better understanding of what is going on.

Plenty of press releases, events, and articles offer an insight into Lynne's day-to-day work for the Selly Oak area and her views on important matters.

The area I found most useful is this section on local issues which neatly outlines latest information and Lynne's views on such issues as the 'Studentification' in Bournbrook and Post Office closures.

The pubs and bars of B29

2007-08-22T10:05:00.000+01:00

www.beerintheevening.com lists 9 pubs in the B29 area and most have a good selection of comments and reviews on the website. The Weoley Castle (below) has received no comments so far and also has the dubious honour of the lowest rating, scoring only 4/10.

(photo by rtubb99)

At the other end of the scale, TC's in Selly Oak has the highest rating, scoring an impressive 7.3/10 based on 7 users - helped by being a good venue for watching sport according to the comments.

Having never really used this website before I was quite impressed with the amount of information that it holds - and it does appear to be fairly comprehensive in its listings.

Apparently there are 760 pubs/bars within a 10 mile radius of Selly Oak train station which seems fairly comprehensive to me - anyone for a pub crawl?

Selly Oak train station

2007-08-20T11:38:00.001+01:00

An interesting overview of the history of Selly Oak train station, situated off of Heeley Road in Selly Oak and the A38 Bristol Road.

The first station was originally built in 1876 but, as anyone who has used it will quickly realise, the station was entirely rebuilt in the late 1970s with the launch of Birmingham's cross-city rail service.

loose_grip_99 has some interesting photos from Selly Oak station from the mid 70s on Flickr.

(photo by loose_grip_99)

For the complete guide there's the usual comprehensive page on Wikipedia including a link to the live departure board from Selly Oak station, courtesy of National Rail.

The 10 most expensive roads in B29

2007-08-15T14:02:00.001+01:00

Here's an interesting (maybe!) list of the ten most expensive roads to live on in B29 based on average sale price of houses over the last 2 years. (from ourproperty.co.uk)

Upland Road in Selly Park comes top of the list with an average sale price of £520,667 while the next three roads at the top of list are also from Selly Park. They are, in order of 2nd to 4th, Oakfield Road, Serpentine Road and Greenland Road.

A quick check of properties currently for sale in B29 via rightmove.co.uk suggests that things aren't about to change with the six highest priced houses all in Selly Park, including this 5 bedroom bungalow on Upland Road currently on the market for £825,000.

Ourproperty.co.uk also has more interesting stats based on house prices/sales in the B29 area (or any other postcode area for that matter) including the ten most transient roads, based on number of sales in the last two years.

Unsurprisingly the heavily student populated area of Selly Oak (aka Bournbrook) scores well in this area!

Map of B29

2007-08-15T09:45:00.001+01:00

In case you were wondering, here is the B29 area in full detail (click on map for larger image).

Peeling Paint (from Flickr B29)

2007-08-14T13:11:00.001+01:00

(photo by pindec, from Flickr B29)

Welcome to Birmingham, B29

2007-08-13T22:37:00.000+01:00

Hello, welcome and bonjour!

This is the new website/blog/portal for the postcode district of B29, Birmingham, England, UK.

It was primarily born from a desire to catalogue, photographically, the diverse nature of a postcode that I have now lived within for a cumulative total of 8 years.

At the time of writing (13th August 2007) there is nothing to show but a web address (this one - www.birminghamb29.com), a flickr group, and this single blog post.

However, the hope is that this thing will now begin to grow into something much more. At the very least I hope we can show, through the community of photographers using Flickr, what an amazingly interesting, varied and exciting area B29 is... and maybe we can do a whole lot more interesting stuff as well.

And maybe, just maybe, there'll be a few more postcode districts across the UK (there are 2,900 of them apparently) that'll decide to follow suit, and then things really could get interesting!

take care for now - hopefully plenty more to come soon.

Birmingham, B29

This blog has moved

battery innards

got any spare pics of Selly Oak?

Dawko goes electioneering ...

b29 springwatch - verging on the toasty at last

secret spring garden door

broken hearts in b29

urban street crime in middle-class B29 shock

Brum taxis: lottery?

Igloo, Selly Park

Brrrr proof

snow snow snow snow

B29 Through The Viewfinder

Local issues for the next election

Selly Oak New Road - Bournbrook stuff

Supermarket slight relocations

ready to run?

New council website - and some free exercise

Easy GP ... though not on the web

Selly Oak New Road demolition

65 Oakfield Rd - free tree info

Alice in Wonderland style shroom on Selly Wick Road

B29 street sign hacks

Get the wellies and cat snorkels out

Weoley Castle - local news

b29 perimeter walk odyssey

safe snacks

B29 tortoise walk *EDIT* now starting at 1

Council customer service

MPs allowances published

mapping B29: our view

B29 street names

European elections - results

Tories:

UKIP:

Labour:

Lib Dems:

battery demolition

Google map of the Birmingham B29 postcode area

How many Mbps please: how fast is your broadband in B29?

European Elections - celebrity battles

birminghamB29 twitter group

pricing democracy

Flood Action

more bizarre weather #b29

religious doorsteppers in B29

B29 games map

spring sprung

B29 snow

Going to party like it's B29?

where post please?

Latest flood missive from BCC

Planning Alerts

Is Birmingham the new Coventry?

b29 under water

Sharing B29 places ...

Selly Oak New Road update

Work continues on the Selly Oak New Road

I'm moving

Selly Oak New Road

Check neighbourhood problems near you

Selly Oak Relief Road (from Flickr)

Selly Oak New Road (update)

Royal Mail Delivery Office, Selly Oak

Property in B29

Gumtree - classified ads on the web

Work on Selly Oak New Road begins

B29 Constituency Profile

Selly Oak Liberal Democrats

Selly Oak New Road Proposals

Early morning tree, Selly Park (from Flickr B29)

Liberty's heli of a curry (from The Sun newspaper)

Tornado hits Selly Oak (a long time ago)

Birmingham University Welcome Week

Tiverton Pool & Fitness Centre

A few more photos

Podnosh, The Knife and Fork, and a new speed camera

Lynne Jones - MP for Selly Oak

The pubs and bars of B29

B29 tortoise walk EDIT now starting at 1