safe snacks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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)?