Six of the Best 604

Alistair Carmichael writes on the Commons debate on the Investigatory Powers Bill: "The Bill is rotten to its core and I wish we could have blocked it as we did in Coalition when faced with the Communications Data Bill. Dealing with Tories in government was difficult. Dealing with Tories in government and Labour in opposition is impossible."

The Sports Direct scandal is the result of successive governments desperate for jobs, says Conrad Landin.

"If I ever see you in the street, I hope you get shot." Dawn Foster on her experience of moderating comments on the Guardian website.

Steve Parnell looks back at the work of the angry and passionate Ian Nairn, the outspoken critic of England’s 'subtopian' demise.

The Birmingham Conservation Trust takes us to Moseley, where 1945 prefab houses can still be found.

"I think these were the first books where I really had a sense of place from them, whereas Blyton’s descriptions don’t tend to be of anywhere specific and nicely pleasantly general, Saville’s descriptions of location were precise and taken from real life. It made me want to visit Shropshire and since I was 16 or 17 I have done, frequently. Its become one of the places I love to be most in the world." A contributor to World of Blyton recalls discovering the charms of Malcolm Saville.

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Wolverhampton Low Level to Birmingham Snow Hill in 1984

A look at the former Great Western main line from Wolverhampton Low Level to Birmingham Snow Hill.

This film was shot in 1984, when the line lay derelict.

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Paedophile activist suspended from the Labour Party

Last night The Times broke the news that Tom O'Carroll, the public face of the Paedophile Information Exchange around 1980, had joined the Labour Party.

To Labour's credit, he was suspended today.

But his brief presence was in line with the Corbynistas' attempt to return Labour to the early 1980s.

When I worked in Birmingham in 1981 and 1982 it was possible to find literature from the PIE among that from other municipally approved good causes in the city's central library.

The idea that the professional left was the scourge of child abusers did not arise until some years later.

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Birmingham City Council vs local historians

Some graves yesterday

What is it with West Midland graveyards and the authorities?

On Saturday I blogged about the thwarting of the locals' attempts to preserve a historic gravestone at Bishop's Castle.

Now comes news that Birmingham City Council is frustrating the Jewellery Quarter Research Trust's effort to compile an online database of thepeople buried in the city's Warstone Lane and Key Hill Cemeteries.

ITV News reports:

The voluntary group’s website, is still under development, and contains database with lists of graves and in some cases biographies, obituaries and photographs or portraits of the deceased ...

They say they receives hundreds of visitors on their website each week from around the world, ranging from historians to people researching family histories. 

But they have now been banned from taking photos of each gravestone unless they apply in writing for permission on a ‘case by case’ basis.

The report also quotes a spokesman for the council:

Permission for this request was declined on the basis that once this information is held by a third party then the council will have no control over how it may be used in future, without a formal agreement in place.

Which must mean it never issues press releases, because it has no control over how they are used either.

If you asked Birmingham City Council to fund this work, they would (quite truthfully) tell you that their finances are under unprecedented pressure.

Which makes it a shame that the only departments they still fund are the ones that stop other people doing things.

Anyway, enjoy the Jewellery Quarter Research Trust website.

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Phyllis Nicklin's photographs of Birmingham

Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know the weakness I have for photographs of building and street scenes from the mid 20th century.

So the work of Phyllis Nicklin was bound to appeal to me.

She was the staff tutor in Geography in the University of Birmingham's former Department of Extra Mural Studies in the 1950s and 1960s.

She died in post in 1969, leaving behind thousands of slides she had taken for her classes.

The video above, made for a recent exhibition in Birmingham, celebrates her work.

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Steve Gibbons Band: Tulane

Choosing Fight for My Country by Balls a couple of years ago I wrote:

A couple of Saturdays ago I saw Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings at Market Harborough Leisure Centre. The opening act was Steve Gibbons, a legend of the Birmingham music scene. 

Back in 1977, when the Steve Gibbons Band had a hit with Tulane, he was a leather-jacketed rocker - a sort of Brummie Fonz. Today he looks like a Southern gentleman, albeit one you would be wise not to play cards with for money.

So here is Steve Gibbons in his pomp. The bass guitarist in his band is another Birmingham legend - Trevor Burton from The Move.

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Cliff Richard discovers Gas Street Basin in 1974

An extract from the film Take Me High.

Reel Streets, which has lots of photographs of the film's locations then and now, describes it thus:

Tim (Cliff Richard) is a successful ambitious young financier working for a London Merchant bank, but even his happy-go-lucky attitude is severely jolted when he is sent to Birmingham instead of the promised New York for his posting! 

But comedy reigns when the enterprising bank manager helps an unsuccessful Birmingham restaurant compete with its rivals by introducing a new fast food - the Brumburger!

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