BloggingBrum

Stuart and I have just built a wordpress blog site for NBSE which will document and assist in establishing a social enterprise that will provide North Birmingham with adult training in social media to disadvantaged groups such as the unemployed.  This is likely to branch into a few other social issues that are currently present in the area.  We will be firming this plan over the next month before holding a meeting currently set for June 11.  Further details can be found on the North Birmingham Social Enterprise website.

Since I have lived at Harrison Road there has always been an unsightly dumping ground towards the top end near the High street. It was an unkempt area of land that contained a dead bush, thousands of weeds, trash, rolls of carpet, discarded white goods and the odd used condom. Why anyone would want to use this particular heap of junk as their sexual habitat is beyond me. The area was also used as a cut through to the car-park opposite Erdington Abbey, currently under repair after an arson attack from local firework wielding youths (painting a pretty picture of my home town here aren’t I?!).

On a brighter note, the good council of Erdington has decided to extend the car park towards Harrison Road, covering the dirty mess that once stood. I am not going to get too excited by a car park, but as far as it goes it is a pretty well designed one, has some nice brickwork at the Harrison Road end and is a vast improvement on what I used to have to pass. I would’ve preferred a nice area of grassland, some new shrubs or a flower bed but with the potential for all this to be trampled from people remaining to use it as a short cut then extending the car park is probably the best option.

I write in response to Patrick Collinson’s report in the Guardian money supplement, 12 January 2008 on Peter Lorimer’s plight of five betting shops in his home town of the Green Lanes area of North London along a 300 yard walk to his local post office. I knew that my home suburb of Erdington in Birmingham was also rife with these establishments but to what extent I did not. Testing out a very similar length route from the centre of the high street where I live to the north end to purchase a new vacuum cleaner belt, I passed not five but eight places where I could gamble my hard earned cash: two William Hills, two Shipley’s, one Betfred, one Ladbrokes and two Goldmines Quicksilver’s. Although these were not all strictly what I would call a betting shop, four were gambling halls with slot machines and the like but even so I categorise the two types in the same ilk.

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