Is it time for politicians to be protected from Hate crime as well?

Just heard on the BBC News that Manchester police are going to record hate crimes against sub-cultures such as Goths and emos – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-22018888 
Totally good move, which I agree with. However, could I suggest another culture should be added to that group: members of political parties (and trade unions). 

I can hear the heckles already: “a politician wants protection from the public that he should be representing”. But please let me for a moment try to justify my case. As a Liberal Democrat Councillor from 2004 to 2012, I have had the following incidents against me in the last three years:

I have been threatened three times with violence in my local pub by people claiming to support the BNP and further claiming that my party was supportive of immigration. On the third occasion, the person punched my friend in the face, since my friend said that he was a member of Friends of the Earth – the BNP supporter said that he was a lorry driver and “you therefore had this coming to you” and punched my friend.
I’ve been grabbed by the neck and throttled by someone in my local pub who simply called me over and without saying a word grabbed me round the neck by his hands. When I wrestled myself free, all he said was “you’re a c*nt!”. I subsequently discovered from his friends that he was a Labour Party supporter and was not happy with the formation of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government 

And then two weeks ago – again in my local pub – I have a gentleman, called Ralph, shouting out across the room that I was a “Liberal c*nt”. Then marching over and standing next to me, staring down at me as I was seated. I sat my ground and stared back him asking “can I help you sir?”. He said “no” and went back to his side of the room.




I could go back further. Indeed, my house has cctv fitted, due to a number of other incidents relating to potential physical threats, due to my membership of the Liberal Democrat Party.

I am sure that there are active members of other political parties who could relate similar incidents. Yet, if we want a fully functioning democracy in this country, then people needed to be protected from threats of violence due to their political views.

Funerals in pubs

Funerals in pubs

Now this is going to sound slightly mawkish and don’t worry, I have no intention at this point to pop my clogs, but here’s a big question: why don’t we have funeral services in pubs or clubs?

The reason I ask this question is that I attended a lovely funeral last week where the service, burial and after burial reception were held in three geographically separate locations, each more than two miles apart. My thought at the time was why couldn’t the service, complete with coffin, have been held in the same place as the reception, with the family announcing that they are departing with the coffin to the cemetery. The bar is open, so drink a toast and we’ll be back in an hour.


I have asked Keith Marsden at the Prince of Wales pub, Moseley, Birmingham, that in the event of a satellite falling from the sky and landing on me, then whether my funeral service and reception could be held in the beer garden of the Prince of Wales pub. Indeed, I’d be more than happy for my coffin to be used as a beer table even. Keith Marsden doesn’t know if funeral services are allowed in pubs.

Let me put forward the advantages of having a funeral service and reception in the same place namely a pub or club:

a) It’s cheaper. You don’t have to pay for the hire of a chapel......and let’s be honest, funerals are expensive

b) It’s more convenient. Everyone stays in the same place.

c) It’s generates business for pubs at a time of day when they are empty. All the pubs in Moseley are empty at lunch time during the week. By generating business, we are also creating jobs

d) The pub or club will most likely have more room for the congregation and a far superior sound system. Of the many funerals I’ve been to, I am constantly shocked at the lack of seating and poor quality sound systems, these chapels have.



At time when our local pubs are dying financially, here’s an idea to use human death to regenerate them.

What do others think?

Sarehill Mill re-opens as a working water mill

Sarehole Mill re-opened today, after £400,000 was spent during the winter de-silting the mill pond, re-roofing, installing flour milling equipment and getting the 1850 bread ovens working again.

The mill is now milling flour for the first time since, well, at least 1960, if not earlier. The bread ovens haven't baked bread since 1860.

What was a static museum has now been transformed into a working museum and you can tell the difference straight away with all the smells, noise and vibrations of an operating water mill. The water wheel is now turning full pelt - before it turned slowly with a trickle of water. Now water gushes through this wheel.

10 volunteer millers now work on the site and hopefully, once they sort out the consistency of the flour, they'll start baking bread - a kitchen for preparing the dough has also being installed.

For some background see my earlier blog entry at http://martinmullaney.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/sarehole-mill-moseley-to-start-milling.html

Why I will be chaining myself to Moseley Road baths this Thursday 14th February

Why I will be chaining myself to Moseley Road baths this Thursday 14th February

This Thursday, 14th February, between 10am and 12noon I will be chaining myself to Moseley Road baths at protest against Birmingham City Council’s recent decision to cancel the Heritage Lottery bid for phase 1 of the restoration of the baths AND its announcement that once the current boilers break down or the buildings have a structural fault they will be permanently closing the building to swimming. Readers of my blog will know that both the boilers and the roof of the building are on their last legs and probably won’t last longer than 2015.

I will be wearing an Edwardian swimming costume, since Moseley Road baths are the last completely intact and operating Edwardian swimming baths in Britain. Statutory listed Grade II* - less than 10% of listed buildings have such a high listing – these baths are not only important to Balsall Heath, but are of national importance.

I was Cabinet member for Leisure, Sport and Culture for Birmingham City Council from 2009 to 2012 and led on the Council’s Heritage Lottery bid for these baths. In March 2012, I persuaded my Cabinet colleagues to commit to allocating £3million of 2015/16 capital money from the Council’s budget, which would be used as match funding against a bid for £5million from the Heritage Lottery fund.

The total cost of this phase 1 of the restoration of Moseley Road baths would have been £8million (£3million from the Council; £5million from the Heritage Lottery Fund) and would have done the following:

• Permanent repairs to the exterior fabric of the building with a life of 25 years – so basically a complete re-roofing to stop any water ingress 
• Complete re-wiring and new machinery (eg new boilers) for the pool. We would be particular keen to install a combined heat and power system in the boiler house. This would heat all the buildings along Moseley Road and help to regenerate this corridor. 
• Pool 2 maintained as a community swimming pool 
• Pool 1 boarded over and used for community use. 

In December 2012, the new Labour administration announced that the Heritage Lottery bid was been withdrawn and there would no longer be any plans to restore the baths or even to keep them as swimming baths. Further, the Labour administration has repeatedly claimed the £3million allocated never existed. This is total rubbish. The Cabinet report allocating the £3million was counter-signed by the Chief Financial officer who is not allowed to sign financial reports if the financial details do not add up or the monies are non-existent. The money would have come from the 2015/16 capital budget which amounts to £1,000million per year and £3million within that budget would have been set aside for Moseley Road baths.


Please feel free to join me at this protest. You don’t need to lock yourself up. Just be there and show support.

Councillor Trickett and her fictitious claims over the closure of Moseley Road baths

Councillor Trickett and her fictitious claims over the closure of Moseley Road baths

Councillor Trickett appeared on yesterday’s Adrian Goldberg show on Radio WM where she tried to justify the closure of Moseley Road baths. 

The link to the broadcast can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p013s3mz Councillor Trickett's interview starts at 1hour 35minutes 



She makes the following two significant claims in her interview that are completely fictitious. These are:

Claim 1: “Firstly there was never any funding for Moseley Road baths. There had been a very vague commitment by the previous administration. Yet no money had ever been identified. “

Claim 2: “no money had been put aside. No bid had actually been work on. They hadn’t even done the costings of the actual works. We had to start on that a fresh in May.”

Let’s deal with Claim 1.

Below are the key pages from the 21 page Cabinet report that allocated £3million from future capital resources for a Heritage Lottery bid. The report was approved by Cabinet on 5th March 2012. I have highlighted the relevant points to note:



Notice that recommendation 2.5 which says “Cabinet is requested to agree to allocate up to £3m of resources for improvements to Moseley Road Baths, to be funded by a review of the capital programme, subject to a successful application for Heritage Lottery Fund grant, as described in Appendix 1 para 1.3.6. “


Notice that the recommendation says “funded by a review of the capital programme”. So that’s where the money will come from: the Council’s Capital programme. And how much is the Council’s annual capital programme? Just over £1,000million per year. Yes, £1,000million per year and we were going to shuffle things around and allocate £3million. And when did we need this £3million? In 2015. The Heritage Lottery bid would take two years to complete AND Sparkhill baths would be open in 2015. 

In short: The Cabinet agreed to allocate £3million from future capital resources on 5th March. The Chief Finance officer was happy that there was plenty of leeway within the 2015/16 capital budget of over £1,000million to accommodate this.

Councillor Trickett and others from the Labour Party have been playing with semantics about which capital budget this £3million was coming from. This is academic, since in the drawing up of the 2015/16 budget, the £3million for Moseley Road baths would have been accommodated within a capital budget somewhere.

So how the hell can Councillor Trickett claim “there was never any funding for Moseley Road baths” when there is a Cabinet report agreeing to the allocation of £3million from a £1,300million budget in 2015 

Let’s look at claim number 2 

She claims that (a) no costings for works required for Moseley Road baths had been done by May 2012 (b) absolutely no work had even started on the Heritage Lottery bid by May 2012.

Both this claims are completely fictitious.

A complete structural survey was completed on Moseley Road baths in Spring 2007. The survey was part of much broader historic survey which would form the basis of a Heritage Lottery bid. The historic element looked at the historic importance of the baths from a national context. The structural survey went through the building with a fine tooth comb looking at what needed fixing or restoring and calculating the cost to put right. The total cost of restoration came out at between £17m to £20m. The variation in cost was due to the level of modern facilities one wanted at the baths. 
Getting the Heritage lottery to fund a huge amount of a £17million bid was completely out of the question – this was made clear by the Heritage Lottery team. Also, with the 2012 Olympics draining the Heritage Lottery of finance, any sizeable bid would have to wait until after 2012. 
For this Heritage Lottery bid we, after advice from the Heritage Lottery, to break down the total restoration of the baths into phases. Phase 1 would cost £8million (£5million from the Heritage Lottery; £3million from the Council). 

Work took place within the Council during 2011 to work out how much the bid should be – the £8million was calculated using the 2007 structural survey costings (plus allowing for inflation) and the intention was to ‘stop the rot’. £8million will stop the rot in the building and give the building another 25 year minimum of trouble free swimming. 
In the lead-up to the 5th March 2012 Cabinet meetings, I had meetings with both the Chief Financial Officer and the Cabinet member for Finance, to ensure that they were supportive of £3million being used as match funding AND that there was lee-way within the 2015 capital budget to allocate £3million for Moseley Road baths. 
Once Cabinet gave approval on 5th March 2012 for the £3million allocation, work started on the Heritage Lottery bid in earnest. Work couldn’t start before this date, if the Cabinet decided not to approve any money for match funding in a Heritage Lottery bid. 
So it is completely fictitious for Councillor Trickett to claim “No bid had actually been work on. They hadn’t even done the costings of the actual works. We had to start on that a fresh in May.” Alot of work had happened in the weeks and months prior to May 2012. 

As my blog is repeating showing, the words ‘truth’ and ‘Councillor Trickett’ do not go together.

What Labour were saying a year ago about Moseley Road baths

What Labour were saying a year ago about Moseley Road baths

I have to hand it to the local Labour Party for their ability to say one thing in local elections and do the complete opposite in power. This is no better shown in their attitude over Moseley Road baths.

A year ago, they were criticising me, as Cabinet member for not getting Moseley Road baths re-opened asap and for a "sticking plaster approach" to moseley Road baths. See cutting from their leaflet last February.

Well only 9 months into the Labour adminstration, they have cancelled the Heritage Lottery bid to restore the baths - they are dishonestly claims that no money was ever identified to do this. This is utter rubbish. They have also made it clear that the days of Moseley Road baths as a baths are numbered. Once the boilers break down or another fault developes on the building that it - CLOSURE.

Birmingham MP appears in 'Lincoln' film

Birmingham MP appears in 'Lincoln' film

Followers of my blog will know that two days ago I explained how Birmingham, England, MP, John Bright persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to make the complete abolition of slavery in the USA a central theme of the American Civil War. See my blog at http://martinmullaney.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-birmingham-mp-who-persuaded.html 

I managed to see Steven Speilberg’s ‘Lincoln’ film last night and was surprised to see John Bright MP appear in the film – not as an actor, BUT as a photograph.

Abraham Lincoln’s White House office contained two portraits: Over the fireplace hung a painting of President Andrew Jackson. The room also included a photograph of John Bright MP, which in numerous photographs of the office can be seen on the fireplace mantle. See photograph below.



Reading reports of the making of Steven Speilberg’s ‘Lincoln’, I do know that he has tried to be as accurate as possible and this has included the layout of President Lincoln’s office. As a result, John Bright’s photograph can be seen in the background, on the fireplace mantle, whenever action takes place in the office. See screen shot below.