Author: Nick Booth

Michael Parkinson Comes to brum

Birmingham City Council has pulled off a bit of a coup.

They have enticed Professor Michael Parkinson to lead a new team pulling together a 10 year vision for the future of the city centre. His credentials are impeccable, from the Government’s recent State of the English Cities report to leading the Economic and Social Research Council’s CITIES project.
The council’s website tells us: “The team’s task is to draw up a 10 year strategy for development within the ring road which will enable Birmingham to take its rightful place as a globally competitive city”.

Whoa, wait a second…. Read more

Podminions: Summer School Concert '06

In this episode Ruairi goes out with his microphone and interviews a few of the performers from the concert.
Firstly, James Hereper the clown, followed by Humza Chaudhry who was in the barbershop quartet and finally Mo who was taking part in the freestyle basketball demonstration.

As always, the podcast was recorded and produced by the boys at KNBS and supported by Podnosh & b:cen
Click on the play button below to listen to the podcast.

A Hug from Government?

A while ago the new headmaster of a large state run secondary school told me about his plan to stop excluding children – no more problem solving by binning the apparent source of the problem. He thought that of all the children who most needed the values and discipline a good school offers, it was the kids most likely to be kicked out.

So he wanted to understand why his school had excluded pupils in the past.

He looked through the figures, read reports, spoke to colleagues and then started contacting parents of excluded pupils.

He spoke to dozens of people. “At first there was no pattern, every case was unique, some surprising”, he said. “But after I thought about it for a while I reluctantly concluded one thing stood out: each child who had been excluded lacked a single adult who they knew had faith in them, who they could be sure loved them”

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David Cameron comes to brum – again

David Cameron was in Birmingham again today – to give a Chamberlain Lecture on how he sees the relationship between government and communities.

In fact the leader of the opposition was in my own neighbourhood Balsall Heath, an area he admires for the extent to which citizens and volunteers have taken control of their own streets. The Grassroots Channel programme “I am the grass now” reported on how people here would prefer to volunteer to keep their police stations open rather than leave a vacuum in their streets.

The truth is that Balsall Heath’s revival has been despite government, rather than because of it, and Mr Cameron belives there is much to learn from the people and the streets of this vibrant (yes it is fab) multi-culturural community. So where does that leave someone who wants to lead a Conservative government? Confused or clear about how government can get out of the way and let people make good choices?
You can find out here. Listen to his speech by clicking on this link, read the speech by clicking here and find out what the good people of Balsall Heath had to ask David Cameron by clicking here.

Go on, click away. You’ll be surprised.