A local resident managed to gulp back her excitement to tell us “There  hasn’t been a decent apple in Moseley since 1998 and I’m going to be the first through the door when it opens.” Another somewhat rudely interrupted to ask “Is it true that  you can buy meat from all the animals in Tesco?” We don’t know but we’re keen to find out.

One of the bemused contractors told us “this is weird, don’t you people have other shops?”, little does he know.

An impassioned speech by the  head developer set out a vision of Moseley where  people will be able to shop unconstrained by the  random stock purchasing of other supermarket chains. This was greeted by what can only be described as a rousing “Hurrah” from the assembled crowd.

Though it must be said that this isn’t entirely a good news story, this is only the beginning of development which could take as long as year.

Be patient people of Moseley, be patient. The good times are on their way.

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Let’s get this out of the way and then you can all get on with something else. One point of note is that this year it was held in Kings Heath Baptist Church, we’d never been there before, it’s quite nice.

We were pleased to see that hundreds of people did bother to turn up, through combining the Moseley and Kings Heath hustings we really have created a monster.

So, as usual, here’s what they all had to say (this account will be stupidly partisan and might include some embellishment).

Peter – Green Party
This is  a strange one, Peter isn’t even standing but he came to tell us about the Green Party. Apparently William, who is standing, has just had a baby and understandably had better things to do than talk to us. As it took some time to absorb who Peter was we have no idea what his surname is, though that doesn’t really matter as he is the one person that is guaranteed not be able to win the election. Peter took an interesting approach to a local hustings, he dodged Moseley and instead told us quite a lot about Brighton (which isn’t in Birmingham). Brighton does sound very nice, it sounds like they’re doing great things down there, though seemingly they are not volunteering to sort out our street drinker.

Each speaker had a time limit but this still came as a bit of a surprise as at the end he started randomly listing forms of transport. He listed walking, cycling  but got stopped before he got to the more interesting ones. Peter did not mention parks once.

Lisa Trickett – Labour Party
Lisa doesn’t come across as someone you’d really want to get in an argument with, the  first few rows did look a little bit worried at the start of her speech but seemed to settle down once it became clear that it wasn’t us she was angry with. She did make many points about housing, social care which all seemed fair enough. Interestingly in her opening speech not many points about Moseley, she did say  she recognised that we can organise a good meeting. She’s not wrong, there are not many situations where a meeting isn’t the most appropriate and desirable response.

One of the things that came through,  more in the questions than the opening address, is how Labour will respond to our dire local financial situation. Lisa did make a number of points about the current coalition’s attitude to selling off local resources to the private sector. It did seem a bit unfair as many of the most disastrous things in the City were Labour ideas that have just taken a really long time to go horrifically wrong.  I think a collective hands up “we’re  all guilty” might be wishing for too much.

Lisa gave the impression she really likes living round here, has had lots of jobs and knows about housing. Lisa did not mention parks.

John Turner – Conservative
I can’t remember the last time the Conservatives really tried in Moseley. I’m not sure if they’re trying now. John came across as a really nice bloke but unfortunately, these days, talking to a nice Conservative makes you think they’re just keeping you busy whilst their mates are round the back of your house filling their van up.

John said he was extremely supportive of the budget set by the current Council leadership but at least had the decency to have a little chuckle and a wink as he said it. He also weirdly said he was standing in order to provide something different, prudent management. We’d be fascinated to see how he believes this is different to his own party who are running the place at the moment. He did mention Moseley quite a lot but we have no recollection of what he said.

John did not mention parks at all.

Martin Mullaney – Liberal Democrats
Martin does not need any introduction, if you’ve ever opened a paper you will have seen him doing….. you know, things. The noticeable thing about this hustings is the dramatic improvement in how Martin speaks publicly. He was clear on  what  he stands for and why we should support him. Unfortunately the trade off is that he has lost the trade mark “what will he say next” attitude that used to characterise him, to be replaced with a slavish towing of the Conservative/Lib Dem line. As they’ve been paying him a good wage for the last few years it isn’t surprising.

He did mention parks, he mentioned parks a lot. There were some points where most of us thought he was applying for a job as a Parkie. Given how much he knows about parks this could well be something he could fall back on and, it would seem, be very happy.

Some of the audience were disappointed to hear that Martin’s Magical Train has been delayed. It would seem that we are aiming for 2024 before the railway opens. As this will mean this has taken a fifth of a century to come to fruition one might suppose there is a greater chance that a train will just evolve out of the existing railway.

Martin’s platform is entirely based on, “remember how bad Moseley was in 2004?”, this is quite a bizarre tack as just about everyone would say it was really good back in 2004. There was a vibrant atmosphere, house prices hadn’t shot through the roof forcing all the interesting people out. Moseley is obviously a much more staid place than it was eight years ago if there is any chance of going back to that time then we would happily jump at the chance. Oh, nearly forgot this claim, under the Labour party trees didn’t grow in Moseley. Apparently Martin has Moseley and Narnia mixed up.

So if you want a 365 day a year, 7 day a week Councillor then vote for Martin. Martin did mention parks.

Alan Blumenthal – UKIP
Like some sort of tease the hustings always leave the best until last. Our biggest worry is that Alan will get fed up of being constantly slammed at the polls and won’t stand any more. We would all be poorer if this happens.

Alan is, so he told us, notorious for not listening, a candid confession from a prospective representative. Having said that he has a solid policy framework. He will not, under any circumstances, cut front line services.  Hang on a minute, there is one circumstance where he would cut services, if those services were for foreigners then they’d get cut. No translation or nonsense like that.  Also, Alan recognises the problems caused by people losing their jobs so he proposes to get rid of all those lazy arsed people in the council that do nothing all day (I paraphrase).

Alan made it quite clear he doesn’t like foreign supermarkets. That includes Aldi and Lidl.

Finally Alan doesn’t believe in giving money to the Greeks.

We imagine Alan does like parks but not foreign parks, he didn’t elaborate on the subject.

David Isgrove – Himself
Finally, David.  You won’t find David on the ballot paper but as  always seems to be the case with our hustings he used his role as Chair to contribute his views and elaborate. His principle concern seems to be inefficient logistical planning that means some lorries are travelling about empty. This wasn’t in response to anyone or anything, just offered for nothing and left hanging.

So, that’s about it. There were questions from the public but from our question about the railway to the bloke at the end who was concerned about hemp cultivation in Australia they were all fairly vacuous.

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Getting rid of the toilets from underneath the island was a great idea to bring a little bit of Moseley back into community use. We fondly remember a cherubic Martin Mullaney toiling away on a rainy Sunday afternoon laying turf and creating a bewildering path system across a small swamp. Those were the days when shameless self publicity were a hobby rather than a lifestyle choice.

We have no idea who managed to get the money to pave the place over and turn it from being green into what has become the Village Green, but we’re sure that there will be a number of people coming forward to claim it was them. They were heady days, when there was going to be a steady stream of Tolkein tourists banging down our doors just  to experience the true Middle Earth. As it turned out the Lord of the Rings turned out to be less about Tolkien’s homo-erotic fantasy and more about Peter Jackson giving us more reasons to go to New Zealand. We didn’t get the lasting legacy we expected in the form of our stainless steel Ent but we did get a demonstration on how a small minded approach to branding works.

We’ve always maintained the absolute best use of the Village Green would have been building a band stand. Though we freely accept that we have fallen into the traditional Moseley stance of having very good ideas about what other people should do with their money.

The one lasting consequence has been the monthly farmers market. Once a month, Saturday morning gives an opportunity for bleary eyed residents to come together and make mumbling explanations of Friday night. The market has been such a success as we effectively live in a food desert based on the Kwik Save/Co-op refusal to engage in the sale of fresh food. The monthly arrival of a marginal  increase in the quality of food at a premium price is a great thing. Who cannot express delight in the stifled giggling of the organic farmer as he explains how £2 for corn on the cob is reasonable because he has really nice soil? Or the beef farmer that seemingly has an inexhaustible supply of superlatives for what is basically a steak?

The idea that the market should move to being weekly is an interesting one. On the one hand we like the market and find it difficult to remember which week it is held on; on the other hand isn’t our farmers market the same one that goes to Kings Heath, the Jewelry Quarter and Harborne? Moving our market to every week will obviously have an economic wellbeing of the other places, though our instant reaction is, fuck ‘em, we  invented farmers markets.

If you look at Moseley’s economic development then the farmers market is one of the few bright moments. The gentrification of the late 90s got essentially derailed in a shit storm of destination drinking, myopic licensing and the avarice of absentee landlords. If increasing the amount of good quality bacon we have access to can once again encourage people to shop here then we are all for it.

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This year the organisers took the novel step of combining Moseley and Kings Heath residents so there was just one event in Queensbridge School. This had the obvious potential to  ”kick off” as the two very different communities came together. It didn’t “kick off”. It was quite amicable. The best thing about this  is that we got the evening chaired by a bloke from Kings Heath. As Moseley residents no doubt know, our usual Chair insists on answering the questions along with the candidates. Fortunately  this didn’t happen.

The following is an obviously biased and flawed remembrance of the first hour.

First up was Conservative candidate John Turner. John is a new candidate for Moseley and it’s nice to see the Conservatives still trying, though John did admit that he didn’t really expect many people to vote for him.  Although it is unlikely he will get in, it probably isn’t a good idea to remind people of that in your opening speech. Apparently the key things we need to know about John are  that he has lived in Moseley for over 20 years, he’s  a lawyer and he agrees with everything that David Cameron and Mike Whitby say. As David Cameron has made policy flip flopping his own,  we can only assume that John too celebratates contradiction. We have to respect John’s agreement with everything that Mike Whitby says. Mike is, currently, trying to develop his own version of English and it is usually difficult to figure out what he is saying. John did state that he completely agrees with the budget set by the  Council this year. As two elements of  that budget have been found to be unlawful in the High Court in the last few weeks, we might suggest that John shouldn’t be your first choice when it comes to legal advice.

Next  up was Labour’s own Martin Straker-Welds. It wasn’t the  most dynamic performance from Martin. Though to be fair to him it’s really in his interests to just keep his head down and win this election by default. He gave a list of notable Labour achievements  such as removing children from poverty. Possibly  he confused achievement with aspiration. With the scale of cuts to services in Birmingham it was hard for Martin to not make some of the most obvious points about the City’s poor governance. He made these points well.

The opening speech from, incumbent, Cllr Emily Cox was a strange affair. It came across as much more of a  goodbye/thank you rather than a bid for another term. She consistently emphasised her local work and where she has disagreed with her party  both locally and nationally. You really have to feel sorry for Emily. We think most people recognise that she’s been a decent local Councillor but has been desperately betrayed by her own parties shameless grab for power. She did make an interesting point that she would have liked to vote for an alternative budget but one wasn’t presented by the Labour Party. Is this a hint that she would be willing to change allegiance? One doubts that  her current home situation would really make this viable. At one point she was asked what the Lib Dems would do if current polling is reflected in the election result, and Labour were the largest party without a majority. She answered that the Lib Dems haven’t even thought about this. A difficult position to put her in because that eventuality would obviously mean she had already lost her seat.

Last but one was William Lilley from the Green party. This is William’s second time standing and at last years hustings he hadn’t prepared a speech. He hadn’t prepared a speech this year either. Come on William with a years notice you can find five minutes to throw a speech together. He did speak for his full time allocation and made the point that he had warned us  last year about the impact of the cuts on the most vulnerable. He’s not wrong, he did warn us last year. William came across as about the most convincing candidate on the night.  He made good points about examples  of alternative budgets and the social costs of cutting services.

Alan Blumenthal is always  good value for money. Although he sounds a lot like a really sad robot, his tone obviously hides a steel trap mind. Well it might hide a steel trap mind. He explained to us that as he’s standing for UKIP he is the only candidate who’s party can claim to have the word independent in their name. This is very true. He also claimed that this means he is truly independent, apart from the commitments that were in his party’s  manifesto. I think if we’ve learnt one thing in the last year it is that manifestos mean pretty  well nothing.  His actual speech didn’t have any stand out points though later he did claim that he would reduce youth violence by getting rid of speed cameras and putting  more Bobbies on the beat. This got a typical Moseley cheer as everyone in the room ignored the economic nonsense of his plan.

The one issue that has most confounded residents this year has been the Tesco development. Obviously this was a question that was raised and it was interesting that pretty well all the candidates  were consistent with the line that little could be done now. All except Alan. He has  a plan to change national planning law so that people making planning applications have no right of appeal. Good luck with that.

So, there is a summary with completely partisan comments thrown in for no good reason.

Possibly much interesting stuff happened  after this, but  given the quality of the  illogical heckling coming from the  audience it’s doubtful the level of debate managed to substantially improve itself.

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Probably the most ludicrous being Mullaney’s suggestion that the people of Moseley should enter into a contractual arrangement to indemnify Planning Committee Members against poor decision making. Remember this man is in charge of a budget, until the Council takes it off him this afternoon. Possibly one of the arguments that excessive cuts are not such a bad thing.

It’s no secret that we have been quite supportive of this plan  but we recognise that we are in a minority.

There are quite a few fantastic claims being thrown about that need to be addressed.

1) Moseley “Village” Needs Saving

The notion that we live in a “village” is very amusing but the reality is we don’t. We are a suburb, only a stones throw from the centre of the second largest City in the fourth largest economy in the world. We have an active community with a coherent identity but that is not sufficient to make a village.

The development of a new supermarket will not destroy this notion of a “village”. There does seem to be some confusion around how a supermarket will impact on consumer choice in Moseley. If Tesco opens it will not be compulsory to shop there. If you want to support other stores then your free will remains in tact and you can buy as much stuff as you want from them. If other people come to Moseley and only shop in Tesco then this will have no impact on other stores as this is trade they currently do not have.

There is a valid concern around traffic but again this will not destroy our suburb. We live on one of the major arterial routes into Birmingham. Traffic may increase inconvenience to people and may prove to be more dangerous but Moseley will still exist. The validity of this argument needs to be subjected to proper testing through the Planning process and possibly the courts.

2) The Developers are bullying Councillors

This is possibly the strangest claim. The developers have sought legal advice and based on this have expressed an intention to appeal if the decision of the Committee does not support their proposal. A consequence of them winning such an appeal will incur cost on the Council (and possibly the Councillors, more later on this).

This isn’t bullying. This exercising a right according to the process that applies to everyone. If they believe that a decision could be successfully appealed then they have every right to do this. The reverse of this is that if they appeal and lose then they will incur costs, that’s how the courts work.

Simply stating an intention is not bullying and characterising it as such is just childish.

3) Planning Committee Members will lose their houses

Ok, the last point wasn’t the strangest one. This is.

Let’s get this absolutely clear. Members of the Planning Committee will incur no personal legal cost whatever they decide.

It is true that taking a decision that is contrary to advice, that later results in costs being incurred by the Council, could result in them being surcharged. The important thing to remember about this process is that it would be the Council pursuing costs against the Councillors and not the developers.

If the developers appeal and win, their costs will be paid by the Council, who in turn could seek to get these back from the Members.

No Council will ever seek to get this money back however legally justified they might be. This is for the simple reason that taking money off Councillors, that might one day be in charge of your career progress, is a stupid move. No officer would even suggest it.

If the Council lose an appeal then it will be Birmingham residents that will be paying the legal bills.

This final point is really the crux of this whole issue.

Council officers have advised the Committee that rejecting the proposal is likely to result in a successful and costly appeal. They do not know this will be the case but it needs to be considered.

Local campaigners believe that they have a sufficiently strong legal case to win in court. Possibly they do.

Members of the Planning Committee need to weigh up a number of different issues. Firstly is this a sufficiently important issue to risk Council Tax payers money in court? Secondly is the case made by local campaigners compelling enough that it would persuade a court where it hasn’t persuaded planning officers?

If the answer to both of those questions is yes then they should reject the application.

If the answer to either is no then let’s just get building.

The consequence of losing such a case in court will cost a lot of money. It isn’t just the concern of whether Councillors lose their houses. There are many other things that we can spend that money on. Street Wardens, Social Services or even schools.

Considering the consequences of all available actions isn’t submitting to bullying. It is the responsible action that we expect of those that we ask to represent us.

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For those people that quite literally didn’t want a new Tesco this week has brought good news. Across Moseley, people with a keen interest in local history are delighted that the derelict site in the middle off our fine shopping district has been saved for future generations.

When plans for a new shop/medical centre/sheltered housing first came to light, residents were quick to write a list of things that Moseley doesn’t want. This includes:-

• Better shops
• Access to medical treatment
• Jobs
• Economic development
• Contaminated land being cleaned

The preservation of the derelict site means that the massive rat population will not need to be rehoused, local drug users will not need to find somewhere else to shoot up and Benzene can continue to leak from the disused petrol station into the wider area.

The main complaint against the proposed plan was outlined to us by a local historian, “What most people don’t realise is that this site is dripping with local colour. Did you know that this is the very spot where Oswald Mosley first saw a meteorite thus giving our village its name? Is better access to medical facilities really a fitting tribute to the father of British fascism?”

The claim that the development of a new Tesco would have brought new jobs and economic development to Moseley was disputed by a mother we spoke to “I’m not having Hugo working in a shop, he’ll work in new media like his Dad, where he’ll speak incomprehensible babble and learn to dress like a twat.”

Concerns that  the collapse of this plan will leave residents with nothing to complain about are a worrying reality.

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As you no doubt know, in addition to being able to make a response, to the consultation, online you could also get forms to complete in a number of businesses around Moseley.

One such business is the Prince of Wales pub. Keith Marsden, the licensee, spoke quite eloquently at the recent Forum meeting and expressed a view that not all businesses supported this wanton waste of tax payers money.

It now appears that Cllr Martin Mullaney has decided that all responses collected in the Prince of Wales should now be disregarded. Why has he reached this crazy conclusion? Because he claims that attempts to talk to people about the implication of the scheme have fixed the results.

Providing people with information so they can make an informed decision is apparently contrary to the spirit of this already corrupt consultation. It should be noted that it is not claimed that any false responses have been completed, no, just that information has been given to residents.

If the Ward chooses to disregard the views of residents on such spurious grounds then it will be a sorry day for all of us.

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Unfortunately not. It looks like we’re going to have another similar scheme sprung in us with little notice and very little consultation.

Our local Lib Dem Councillors have announced that they have managed to get £100,000 funding from Safer Birmingham to install cameras in the centre of Moseley. Safer Birmingham are the same organisation that came up with the Project Champion that we’ve been complaining about for the last year.

It seems that our Councillors are claiming that this is at the request of residents and local businesses. A claim we are very dubious of.

We know that Home Office Evaluation of CCTV demonstrates that it doesn’t have an impact on overall crime. This finding is backed up by similar research across the planet. We know that CCTV has no deterrent effect when it comes to anti social behaviour as a result of alcohol consumption.

So what is this scheme actually going to do?

It stands a good chance of displacing car crime from the car park to surrounding streets. Thus increasing the burden of crime residents.

It will be a further £17,500 the ward will have to find to operate the scheme in coming years. This will have a negative impact on services in Moseley.

So we can pay £100,000 and have more crime and less services.

Though there is a chance that one of our Councillors will get re-elected next year which is what this is all about.

There is a consultation on line on Birmingham City Council Hall Green page. This consultation is only due to last a few weeks and not the three months that good practice would dictate. This is an obvious attempt to stop people having their say.

Moseley Forum have organised a public meeting at the Community Development Trust for the 24th November.

Make no mistake, the view of our Councillors is that this should happen whether we like it or not. If you have any concerns then you need to voice them in the little bit of time we have been given to do so.

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It was clear from the beginning that placing security cameras in such a middle class area was always likely to be unpopular. The weight of evidence, from research, indicates that such surveillance is only truly effective when spying on more working class populations. So when people from as far afield as Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath met to show their displeasure at the three million pounds spent on a network of cameras, nobody really expected to have any impact our decision makers.

It is fair to say that almost all of us shocked to hear the news that the police had agreed to turn off their cameras and stop spying on us. There was even a substantial bonus to the local bag industry when it was agreed to cover every single one of the hundreds of different cameras, thus reassuring the public and keeping the cameras warm.

In an unfortunate twist  it now seems that our celebrations might have been entirely premature. The gesture of covering the cameras might actually have been a step too far. It appears that the so called Human Rights Act could also apply to the rights of  camera operators.

A police representative told us, “Ok, it’s a fair point that we didn’t ask anyone before we put them in. To be honest we thought it would be a lovely surprise for everyone. I think I can put my hand on my heart and say that next time we buy you something like this we will ask you first.”

He went on, “The whole bag thing has gone a bit far. I’ve got camera operators that are suffering real distress, it’s inhuman, they can’t see a thing through that thick waterproof fabric. We’ve sought advice and we think it is against the law.”

A dubious legal expert confirmed this for us “Some operators cannot tell whether they are looking up or down and that is effectively torture.  We need consistency. If we don’t let the security services kidnap people and send them to Syria with a hood over them then we can’t do almost exactly the same thing to police employees. They must be removed”

The Safer Birmingham Partnership did confirm for us that none of their employees are currently being tortured in Syria.

They are also looking for someone that wants to buy a couple of hundred very specific bags.

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