It snowed! Brum shuts down!

With an alacrity unknown elsewhere in the Universe, the school system goes into freefall in a sympathy action with the snowfall. Shut the schools, they screech. Let's add to the economic woes by causing more days off work. Educate by example. Show the children how you can really mess up an economy.

As with last year, Birmingham City Council along with my local council, Solihull "Metropolitan" Borough Council, have decided all schools will shut today, Tuesday. They will help the country lose over £1 BILLION pounds in lost production just today.

I can quite easily walk to school right now. In fact better than yesterday. However, the perceived wisdom, or insanity actually, is that it is unsafe to go to school. It is, on the other hand perfectly safe for children to be let out of school to wander the streets "having fun".

Yesterday lunchtime I was alerted to the fact that children were "being let go early" by a neighbour's child knocking on the door. We were not told formally by the school. I decided not to break with my routine and our son was picked up normally. Had he been in lessons? No, he had been watching a film, because there were only three of them left. I really feel the education establishment should get a grip and realise that snow is not a blanket problem. Our school is not a village school. I can readily understand that if a school is cut off by drifting snow, it would be ridiculous to attempt to push on regardless. But this is just hands up we can't cope stuff.

To the education chiefs of Birmingham and Solihull et al. You really are the least likely to get us out of this economic mess. We need people with brains in their heads not in their........!!!

Birmingham City Council makes clowns cry!

With all the news of dodgy bankers, short sellers with long memories, and ineffectual watchdogs, you'd think that having a bit of fun was OK. In Birmingham there is going to be a circus with clowns. Part of their act involves using trumpets. This would be fun, I'd think. Not for Birmingham City Council's licensing regulators. When they heard about it, they nearly got the tent folded. RULES!!! REGULATIONS!!! REDTAPE!!!! They went into spoilsport mode and became very functionary indeed.

Jacqui Kennedy, Birmingham City Council's director of regulatory services, has said, "Under the Licensing Act 2003 elements of the programme proposed by Zippos (the circus in question) would fall into the category of regulated entertainment. On that basis such events would require either a licence under the Licensing Act 2003, or a Temporary Event Notice under the same legislation. Birmingham City Council do not condone unlicensed events."

She won't be going to the circus! All this is correct, but this law is another one that hasn't been thought out properly. It is supposed to -

1. Prevent crime and disorder. 2. Promote public safety. 3. Refrain from being a public nuisance. 4. Protect children from harm.

None of these is in any way reason for Ms Kennedy to ban the clowns from playing their trumpets. Most of these laws are round-about ways for councils to make MORE MONEY and not for the betterment of society. The real point here is that the circus would have to get a licence to play the trumpets. COST enters the fray.

Let's be honest about these things. Let's not dress up laws so that they make a mockery of common sense. Ms Kennedy has only succeded in making the clowns cry and showing up Birmingham City Council as a jobsworth outfit.

I live in a brand? Yes, Brandtown in Brandshire!

Where do you live? In a town or village or large city? If it's a large city you'd be mistaken if you didn't think it was a "brand". According to those who claim to run things, Birmingham is a brand. Those of us who want to see Warwickshire restored to glory rather than as a truncated toy of the commercial world are going to need our wits about us.

There is some assinine think-tank called the Centre for Cities, which is an offshoot of the Institute of Public Policy Research. A certain Hannah Brown, of this think-tank, wrote a report in which she thinks the old West Midland "County" could be "rebranded" as Greater Birmingham. She says, “If you are trying to attract a global investor in Chicago or Shanghai, the chances of them knowing the ins and outs of the West Midlands, or the difference between Solihull and Dudley, are probably low. So you need an easy-to-understand brand. This could be Greater Birmingham. It could be something else, but a single identity is more likely to be successful. It does seem that in the West Midlands conurbation, there are a lot of cities which would be more successful if they clubbed together more than they do.”

Hannah, my dear, if any investor in Chicago or Shanghai was so dim as to not be able to find out where Solihull or Dudley was, they wouldn't be worth the effort! Anyway, what business is it of theirs to influence and force the hand of our politicians? They can look at Google Maps like the rest of us!

The trouble is that most of these characters are lamentably out of touch. Sandwell Council leader, Coun Bill Thomas, has said he favoured the name change for marketing purposes – as long as the Black Country boroughs retained their individual identities. "In terms of the name, we need to look at Manchester where they have successfully sold the concept of a Greater Manchester,” he said. “We need to bury our parochialism and work for the greater good of the region - and ‘Greater Birmingham’ would be recognised internationally.”

Speak for yourself Bill! It is not being parochial to want your local identity. He is prepared to have his identity preserved but appears not to want it for others. That is why many of us want our counties back and a stop to this horrendous hacking about of local areas. The Great Grocer started it and it seems he has left behind a number of devotees! Well, it's about time we moved them aside.

I'm Alabrummy Bound!

Where's Birmingham, folks? It's in, er, somewhere Down South or in the middle of England, I'm not quite sure!

Same goes for the bigwigs at Birmingham City Council in ENGLAND! They got Birmingham in Alabama all having a laugh because somebody put the wrong photo on some leaflets - 600,000 leaflets on recycling to be precise.

What this tells me is that we live in a society where a lack of attention to detail is becoming more obvious. Any self-respecting Brummy would know that the city skyline is different. Where is the telecom tower, where are the church spires, and where are the clouds? Umm!

Here's Birmingham, England and here's Birmingham, Alabama.

Birmingham bans unbelieving web browsing!

Birmingham City Council has got itself into a mess over website viewing by its staff. It's OK to view the antics of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the assembled bishops at the Lambeth Conference but not that of a group of druids or a coven of witches. The council has a Bluecoat Software computer system which allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".

It doesn't mean anything at all. If a heathen is temporarily interested in Catholic doctrines is that any different from a Catholic glancing into a site about the paranormal? Not at all. This is just about a council that's been sold a computer system that sounded good when the rep blurted out the details. Probably no questions were asked, so they got no answers. It's par for the course in modern UK.

A city council statement said the authority had a "long-standing internet usage policy for staff". It added, "We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make the control of internet access easier to manage. The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons." Does it need such a gobbledegook statement. No, it doesn't. Just a simple policy of no viewing sites which are deemed inappropriate.

Where has the notion of trust and responsibility gone? Surely not into the brains of a corporation-sponsored computer! We've seen what can happen to computers when in the hands of civil servants and local government officers.

If a child protection officer views an inappropriate site, is the software so sophiscated as to think "Umm, he's looking at that for his job and not his kicks"? I don't think so. Birmingham City Council is facing a possible lawsuit from the National Secular Society. I'd like to see them try, not because I support their views generally, but because they have a point here.

Birmingham should think again.