Tag: upyerbrum

How much government money is spent in your neighbourhood? cons08

So how much? Add it all together: policing, benefits, health, road repairs.  The lot.  How much?  You don’t know, in fact it probably cant be done.

That is what Dick Atkinson realised 15 years ago. He runs the Balsall Heath Neighbourhood Forum and he wanted to know just how much public money was sunk into his patch each year.  he wanted to see if he could help spend some of it better.

Dick has written about this in many of his books and pamphlets. More importantly he has argued the case year after year as politician after politician came to visit his court in the pyramid building where the forum his based.  Among them the Tories.  David Cameron has visited Balsall Heath at least three times to my knowledge. He’s stayed here to find out more about inner city living.  He gave a Chamberlain Lecture (link to mp3 Chamberlain forum here) on civil renewal in a small church in the Seven Streets Neighbourhood.

Yesterday – as one of the Birmingham bloggers invited to the Tory Party conference – I bumped into Alistair Burt MP.  He too has visited Balsall Heath and told me that Dick’s wish is close to coming true:

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I’ve had a rootle around and can’t find much more detail of how this idea of a Sustainable Communities Statement does or will work.  He wasn’t the first person to mention it here.  Greg Clarke, shadow minister for the cabinet office (is that Tom Watson’s shadow or Phil Hope’s), also mentioned this at an NCVO fringe event held at BVSC on monday. So where’s the real detail on how much easier it is to count public spending in your neighbourhood? Will it work or does is simply apply to traditional boundaries, such as constituencies? Anyone help?

Other Birmingham Bloggers who were also at the conference:

Dave Harte on posh tories.

Alex Hughes fabulous flickr cartoons.

Deirde lines up the lolitics fodder.

Jon Bounds learns ten things and ponders why few MP’s really blog.

Simon Gray mostly shared his thoughts through flickr.

Praguetory is still composing his after having a camera nicked.

Dan O’Doherty at Birmingham University Conservatives thinks Cameron should be pm – shocker.

Prisoner Eye view of being arrested by the West Midlands Police

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West Midlands police comms department is acquiring quite a knack for doing curious things on Youtube. I think this one has been inspired by the head cams the police wear for gathering evidence. It’s a bit like some kids playing with a new toy – and of course playfulness is a quality on the net.   Worth watching some – for a bit.

We recently made this film below for BeBirmingham as part of the launch of the new Community Strategy for Birmingham.  It briefly tells the story of how West Midlands police had worked with students to produce a video designed to help reduce crime against students.

[youtube]PWZs8J7EtOM[/youtube]

Birmingham Conservation Trust's new website

Birmingham Conservation Trust logoThanks to a lot of work from Jon Bounds, new visuals from Citrus Frog  and some input from myself,  the Birmingham Conservation Trust has a new website.

You may not be surprised to know that it is built entirely on WordPress. Please have a look around and let me know what’s right/wrong etc. The aim is to make better use of the social web to connect better with the many of you I know care about the buildings in our city.

I’ve been a trustee for BCT for about 5 years.  If you’re not sure why you might have heard of us we rescued and restored the Back to Backs  before handing them over to the National Trust. Currently we are working on the Newman Brothers Coffin Works in Fleet Street.

If you have a passion or curiosity for Birmingham’s building please tag your youtube films or flickr pics birminghamct – they’ll appear on our front page and may even inspire me to blog about what you’re doing. If you’ve got a story or a link you think we should be sharing please e-mail me nick.booth (at) podnosh.com. Likewise if you fancy writing a few blog posts for the trust.

A simple way to support the trust is to also have a good look at our online affiliate shop here. You sign up to Sky we get £70, buy a book on Amazon and we’re more likely to net 7p. Last year our wider family’s xmas shopping raised about £40 for the charity, without us spending anything extra.

Thanks for looking, comments please.

Birmingham Bloggers met.

Birmingham Bloggers at thericeshow

Why did I enjoy last night’s bloggers’ meet (ask me about the apostrophe) more than any other?  It was partly because we did more than sit in a pub, partly because we did sit in pub and partly because new people came. However I think it was principally because the bloggers meetings are increasingly ripe with opportunity and optimism.

Jo Geary talked to the folk in the early part of the evening about Friday’s Birmingham Social Media Cafe, (time and venue here).  For those who are new to the idea it’s inspired by the the principles and ambitions of the Tuttle Club in London, established by Lloyd Davis as a place/occassion  where those professionally involved in social media can meet, share skills, knowledge, contacts, opportunities, invent and reinvent.  I’m going to break my tuttle duck a week on Friday.

So Birmingham will tuttle thanks to Jo’s organisation and some coffee sponsorship from the Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves.  Why this excites me is who it brings to the city.  Andy Dickinson is heading down from Lancaster to share his knowledge of video, it will be my first chance to meet Christian Payne, Paul Henderson is coming from Rural Net, Dave Briggs and I’m told, I think,  Ewan McIntosh.  (correction Ewan Spence – Mr M is of course also handsomely welcome.) Obviously lots of other lovely people will be here too.

The evening also gave me a chance to catch up with  Stuart Parker who has written here the blog post I would have written Had I said anything on this site about government plans to spend £300 million of laptops and broadband for the poorest. (For some of my thoughts see here and here.)Steve Cooper came for the first time and thought we were pretty friendly but expressed soemthing I’ve heard a few times:

Bit difficult to really break into a group, still was my first time as an attendee but hopefully will get round to speak to more at the next one.

Steve also took some top photos of All the People in All The World, the Stan’s Cafe show which very kindly played host to us for our first hour or so. Jon Bounds and I provided them with www.thericeshow.com, a simple aggregator site for online reactions to the who. They added the statistic in the image above whilst we were there.

Other people it was good to see coming along were Brian Simpson and Simon Howes plus David Louis who blogs to support his product design business and is very passionate about Jewellery Quarter heritage. There were two people that bounder tells me were from www.diceproductions.co.uk, if you read this please remind me of your names!   Other first timers who’s names or blogs I didn’t recall please let me know – praps leave a message.
I think the effort to do more than just go to a pub led to some who’d been reluctant to come, or come back showing more interest.  I didn’t see either Bobbie Gardner or Kate Chapman, but I was delighted that they had said they would try and make it.

Any more ideas for events where we might meet very welcome.  I know I haven’t mentioned everyone, so apologies and thanks all for such an enjoyable evening and my eternal gratitude to Jules for depositing me at my front door.

Update:  I’ve just found Ben’s blog, he who merged three meets into one. It was a pleasure to meet you.