Parking Cube

Reading this article on the new high-tech car park at the futuristic (Borg - sorry it had to be said) Cube complex in central Birmingham reminded me of the car park in the original Bullring that heralded the future. As the following article quotes the idea was simple:

Motorists left their car with a uniformed member of staff who would then drive it into a huge lift serving each of the four floors. It stopped at a level with spaces and the car would be driven out onto a trolley, then pushed to the nearest available space where it would be placed.

Unfortunately the idea was too labour intensive and was abandoned after three days, leaving the car park empty until it was demolished to make way for the new Bullring. Hopefully the Cube's version, said to be the largest car park stacking system in the UK, will be more successful.

Jasbir Authi drew a similar comparison in the Birmingham Mail yesterday.

World Half Marathon Championships

It was a rather strange site waking up this morning to see some of the top half-marathon runners racing past my house but it was certainly an exciting and welcome one. The course was quite disruptive to people living in South Birmingham particularly if one happened to be, as I did, cut off by the course but had been picked to provide a potential record breaking time. Unfortunately that did not happen on this occasion (not helped of course by Paula Radcliffe having to pull out at a late stage) but I understand the winner of the international female race broke her own personal record.

Brew Coup to Unseat Whitby

You may not have noticed it, but at the moment a coup is taking place in Birmingham that will culminate tomorrow at 5.30pm. Randal Brew, a Conservative councillor for Northfield, fed up of the lack of consultation from the current Council Leader Mike Whitby, has challenged him for the top job at the city council as originally broken by the Stirrer. With nearly one in ten unemployed in the city as a result of the economic crisis, Randal plans to deflate us out of recession by cutting 3000 jobs at the City Council, famously the biggest local authority in Europe and twice the size of the European Commission - a plan which is sure to enthuse the nasty party who would, if they chose Brew, look to be going down the route of Thatcher rather than the liberal Conservative traditions of Joseph Chamberlain which made this city what it is today.

The ruling self-styled "progressive partnership" Conservative-Lib Dem coalition (ConDem for short) who run the city are famously opposed to an elected Mayor which would "concentrate too much power in one persons hands".  They prefer the current system which would allow 49 Conservative councillors to elect the leader behind closed doors; presumably the Liberal Democrats will not get a choice.  Meanwhile, Birmingham's 750,000 strong electorate will only be allowed to make our views known next May when a third of the council seats will be up for grabs, which means little is likely to change and in any case we might be slightly distracted by the general election, which is likely to happen on the same day.  Nice to see democracy is alive and kicking in Birmingham, eh?