…else you are unable to watch in, if you get my meaning. But yes, Izzy Knowles, a fellow Moseley Forum member, emailed me with this today:

There has been a spate of theft of batteries from street Virgin Cable / TV boxes throughout South Birmingham. The one at Billesley Lane @ Dyott Road was raided a couple of nights ago.

The batteries are large and heavy so the thief will have used a vehicle. They may also be using duplicate keys to open the boxes.

If you see anyone working on a cable box not in Virgin uniform or using a vehicle that doesn’t have Virgin logo please report it to the police and/or note registration numbers and descriptions.

West Midlands Police 0345 1135000.

A little bizarre, but just be aware, TV lovers…

Categories: Community Power
Tags: community groups, crime, moseley, moseley forum

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I recently wrote this for the Birmingham Press, who asked Moseley Forum if they would write 250 words on why supermarket developments in urban areas were a bad thing. I don’t like to take an absolute stance on the issue (which is hard to convey adequately in such a teeny-tiny word count), but nonetheless:

There are cases when a supermarket development can lead to a successful urban regeneration – but these cases are rare. More common is the opposite effect, wherein the surface positives of extra jobs, a shiny new building and local investment are swallowed in the ensuing wave of issues that engulf the surrounding community, which can be devastating in both a civic and economic sense.

When you spend money in a large supermarket, much of that will leave your community, to be absorbed elsewhere – to the overall detriment of the area. By contrast, a thriving shopping centre with the right mix of local shops and chains is more likely to ensure that money spent in the community continues to circulate in the community. In addition, there is net negative effect on job creation: supermarkets reap their large profits by achieving economies of scale, naturally meaning that fewer workers are required per unit than would be the case for a smaller retailer.

There is also an adverse effect on the pride and engagement of communities – particularly in areas that are already seriously deprived. As local enterprises crumble, unable to compete with the low prices offered by the supermarket, physical links between individuals, groups and businesses in a community are lost.

So while we must embrace opportunities to regenerate our urban communities, we must also ensure that we do not assume that money equals regeneration. Moseley Forum has objected to a potential Tesco development in our community on those grounds, and we sympathise with the Edgbaston situation, which has much in common with our own.

Categories: Community Power, Planning and Regeneration
Tags: birmingham, community cohesion, economics, edgbaston, moseley, moseley forum, newspapers, regeneration, supermarkets

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Cameron has gone awfully quiet on his Big Idea, hasn’t he? Perhaps he’s not so keen on society getting big when its people are increasingly disinclined to vote Conservative. Of course, their manifesto makes no secret of the true motivation behind the Big Society – to privatise our schools, hospitals, and anything else that sits still long enough to be converted into pounds and pence. Not exactly a shock, but I’m not going to shrug off the community element of this so readily, because intentionally or otherwise, the Tories have highlighted a really important issue (while simultaneously showing no insight as to how to resolve it, plus ça change). I’m not going to go into why parents shouldn’t run schools, as that has been done comprehensively elsewhere, but rather, we’re going to talk community activism and empowerment.

Community groups achieve wonderful, valuable, tangible things every day – often in spite of overwhelming capacity issues and other obstacles, and I stand wholly alongside any politician who recognises this, and is willing to act accordingly. But I question that the Conservatives (at least those involved in the production of the manifesto) even recognise why community groups do what they do so well.

Take this lofty goal:

“…our ambition is for every adult in the country to be a member of an active neighbourhood group.”

Do not misunderstand me – this is not a bad dream – it is just incomplete. It has the what, but not the why – WHY do people give up their spare time to join neighbourhood groups? It certainly isn’t because they have been told that they ought to, as though civic pride is something that can be distributed like penny chews. Ultimately, people do these things because there are rewards for doing so. Rarely monetary rewards, I might add, but rewards nonetheless. Perhaps it’s the chance to meet and work with new people, or to achieve something that means something to you. When I went to my first Moseley Forum meeting, what took me there after a long day at work was the desire to give something back to my beautiful community – the feeling that I owed it something, that I needed to be holding up my end of the bargain. That isn’t to say that people who feel the same as me will necessarily do exactly the same thing in their communities, and nor should they. Perhaps they like to shop in local shops, maybe they do a job which already fulfils that desire, or maybe they’re a full-time carer. If people are minded to act, or do good, they will find a way of doing it.

You can’t force inclination – but what you can do is make things easier for community groups to exist, function and to learn from one another. Here’s another line:

“…we will use Cabinet Office budgets to fund the training of independent community organisers to help people establish and run neighbourhood groups.”

This is, again, somewhat flawed. Who are these independent community organisers? What makes them more of an expert on community groups than any other community activist? How on earth would you even measure that, given the wide variety of things community groups do? Community groups don’t need a middle(wo)man, but central and local government can still play a role by making it easier for these groups to know and learn from one another.

And there’s already a good base for this: for example, a few years ago, the Guide Neighbourhoods scheme was started using funding from the Department of Communities and Local Government, and involved a number of successful community groups sharing what they knew with others. There’s also things like Resident University (declaration of interest: I work with Chamberlain Forum, which runs it), which helps active citizens and community groups to help themselves achieve their goals. These arrangements need to be supported, built on and encouraged by all the parties.

Of course, you would think that the Conservatives, with their supposed faith in the individual, would know this, and would recognise this in their Big Plans for a Big Society. Instead, they offer us a top-down approach to community empowerment, limiting the scope of potentially brilliant initiatives like Total Place and the Low Carbon Communities Challenge, and patronising people who have already taken ownership of their world. What a waste of paper.

This blog was originally posted on House of Twits.

Categories: Community Power
Tags: big society, birmingham, chamberlain forum, community groups, david cameron, guide neighbourhoods, moseley, moseley forum, privatisation, resident university, total place

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Although it feels like longer, it has only been five months since I decided that all the issues I cared about could, in one way or another, be put under the umbrella of politics. It was a bit of a Road to Damascus moment, brought on by two distinct events.

The first: browsing media jobs one day, I found a Press Officer role, in Birmingham, with a decent salary. The only problem was that it was for the Conservative Party. But why was that a problem? I always fancied that I had an aesthetic objection to the Tories, engendered by my parents (father born and bred well above the M4; mother from Iraq), both of whom frequently used the term as an insult, of one who valued money and status more than people. However, that didn’t adequately explain why the thought of their employ made my blood run cold. So I thought. I thought of Margaret Thatcher, and the way she was willing to write off the future of millions of people. I thought of the minimum wage. I thought of the NHS. The EU. Climate change.

I thought of Labour.

The second: I had a dream which featured David Miliband. He gave me a penetrating stare. I gave him one back. Neither of us said anything. Most odd.

So yes, I joined the Labour Party. It was only £1, and it was one of the best pounds I have ever spent. Since then, I have become more active in my local community (as vice-chair of the Moseley Forum), joined the Fabians and SERA, and have started an OU degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

And now, the Speaker of the House of Twits has invited me to be on the Labour frontbenches. Do I know enough to express my opinions in more than 140 characters without getting laughed at? There’s only one way to find out…

This blog was originally posted on House of Twits, with photograph from talkradionews.

Categories: Me Me Me
Tags: birmingham, climate change, david miliband, eu, fabian society, house of twits, iraq, margaret thatcher, moseley, moseley forum, national minimum wage, nhs, open university, ppe, sera

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