The Sanctuary is hosting a School Prom Fayre on Saturday 20th February from  3.30pm-6-30pm .

A variety of stall holders will be displaying  ’credit crunch school prom dresses’. The fayre is being organized by PricePromiss, a small local business. For  further information please call Donna 07519745868.

Residents met with Councillors Mike Sharpe and Lynda Clinton at Castle Pool tonight to discuss the proposed cuts in services at Vale’s swimming pool. They have organised a public meeting  at 7.15pm on Monday 22nd February at Chivenor School to protest against the cuts and to generate support for their cause.

Residents met with Councillors Mike Sharpe and Lynda Clinton at Castle Pool tonight to discuss the proposed cuts in services at Vale’s swimming pool. They have organised a public meeting  at 7.15pm on Monday 22nd February at Chivenor School to protest against the cuts and to generate support for their cause.

Residents met with Councillors Mike Sharpe and Lynda Clinton at Castle Pool tonight to discuss the proposed cuts in services at Vale’s swimming pool. They have organised a public meeting  at 7.15pm on Monday 22nd February at Chivenor School to protest against the cuts and to generate support for their cause.

Men will be allowed to apply for the vacancy left by Sion Simon, Erdington’s MP, the Labour Party has confirmed. Labour’s controversial All Women Shortlist policy will be applied to the vacancy for the Dudley South constituency, but not for the Erdington constituency, Peter Starking, Regional Communications Officer for Labour West Midlands has confirmed.

Sion Simon says his reason for quitting is to campaign for Birmingham to have a directly elected mayor. His late resignation has come as a surprise to close colleagues and to the Labour Party, who  are now having to use  a shortened version of the appointment procedure to get a candidate in place before the general election campaign begins.

Sion Simon is to quit his job as MP for Erdington before the next election, probably in May. He says he would like to campaign to become Birmingham’s first elected mayor – Birmingham’s equivalent to Boris Johnson.
Earlier this year he had denied rumours published in a London newspaper that he was about to quit, saying: “This is completely wrong. It’s just nonsense. I’m looking forward to campaigning for Labour at the next election and asking the people of Erdington to let me continue representing them as their MP.”

41 year-old Sion Simon is currently a junior minister in the Department for Culture Media and Sport. His partner, 28 year-old Luciana Berger  has recently been named as the Labour party candidate for the safe Labour seat of  Wavertree in Liverpool.

The status of the mayor in Birmingham at the moment is ceremonial – he has very few powers, but attends functions and events as Birmingham’s ‘first citizen’. The council is currently run by a cabinet of nine elected councillors, and a council leader. If the system were to change, a local referendum would be needed. A directly elected mayor would have significantly enhanced powers – he would virtually take over the role currently served by the leader and cabinet.
The Labour government was very keen to promote the ‘directly elected mayor’ system, but it has met with very little success. Twelve areas in England and Wales have a directly elected mayor – London being the highest profile, followed by Middlesborough. Stoke on Trent did have a directly elected mayor for six years, but abolished the system in 2008. Residents of Hartlepool mocked the system in 2002 when they elected H’angus the monkey- Hartlepool FC’s mascot, to be their directly elected mayor. The man in the monkey suit, Stuart Drummond, is still in office, having won two further elections.
37 areas have had referendums on whether to establish an elected mayor in England. Twelve have said yes, 25 have said no to the idea.

some more photos from the archives… Last fireworks night (5th November) I was out with my camera, and while i shot quite a lot of photos and videos, these are the best of the bunch… (photos behind the cut)

firework exploding

this is the same as the above photograph, but with a clever distortion effect applied through digikam (photo manipulation software for linux) - I like this, it looks rather like a catherine wheel.

the same process again, but applied quite a few more times...

on this one, i've amended the colours - which i think are truly beautiful now.

flames from the bonfire leaping high. This is the last one they'll have there - next year, there'll be a school built there...

the bonfire again, with shady images of people slouching around...

the same photo as above, but treated... its quite spooky now, i think, rather like one of those infra red cameras you see on the TV...

Libby Smalley, aged 9 from Castle Vale, is featuring in a nationwide television advert aimed at raising money to help people with muscular dystrophy. Wheelchair bound Libby was born with spinal muscular atrophy.
The YouTube link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPdQYlzHKJg&feature=player_embedded#

The hearse leaves St Cuthbert's Church after the funeral service for Joan Lawrie

Friends and colleagues today said goodbye to Joan Lawrie, who died before Christmas aged 78.
At her funeral at St Cuthberts Church, Richard Temple-Cox former Chairman of the Housing Action Trust, told mourners that he nicknamed Joan ‘The Duchess’ because of her lady-like manner and impeccable dress. He  said that it would need a Bruno Tonioli, the Strictly Come Dancing judge, to describe adequately the passion that Joan brought to her work in helping to regenerate Castle Vale. He described her success as chair of the Public Relations Group which worked to improve the image of Castle Vale. One of her lasting legacies, he said, was the building of houses for sale on the estate – an acknowledgement that, after enduring a poor reputation for years, Vale had become a secure and a safe place to live.

The earliest sailors to go round the world used a calendar to mark the date.

 Every morning, they ticked the next day in the calendar. When they reached the land, after circumventing America, they found that they were behind, by one day, compared to the day as understood by the local people. Where was one day gone?

 There is a difference of 4 minutes, from one longitude to another. Half the world is divided into 180 lines, drawn from North Pole to South Pole, called the longitudes. It takes 12 hours for the sun to travel from one end to the other, of the hemisphere. Hence the time to travel from one longitude to the next is four minutes.

 Our sailors see the sun rising in the morning four minutes late, as they travel to the next longitude westward.

 When they travel the distance of 180 longitudes, they observe the sun rise twelve hours late. It does not matter whether they travel in a straight line or not.

 So the line opposite the Greenwich (zero) line is called the International Date Line.

 A STINGER

Suppose I stand a few yards away from the Pole. By walking for a few minutes, I can cover the distance from zero longt.to 180 longt. Shall I change the date in my calendar?

The funeral of Alan Lewis, 21, takes place tomorrow (Friday, 2.30pm) at Sutton Coldfield Crematorium. His body was found two weeks ago in the canal adjacent to Kingsbury Road, Castle Vale.

Mitchell Mann

Mitchell Mann’s snooker match  against world number 17 Matthew Stevens will be featured on Eurosport tv this afternoon from 3.15pm. Mitchell is playing in the Snooker 6 World Championships in Killarney, Ireland. Stephen Hendry and John Higgins are amongst the stars who have also got through the qualifying stages. Former snooker icon, Alex Hurricane Higgins did not make it through the qualifying stages of the competition.

Mitchell, a former pupil of Castle Vale School, will be 18 on Boxing Day.

The funeral of Joan Lawrie, who died last week aged 78, will be held at St Cuthbert’s Church, Castle Vale, at 1.15pm on Wednesday 6th January 2010.

The growing prominence of REDD in the negotiations has made CIFOR’s annual Forest Day an increasingly important draw for negotiators and assorted dignitaries. On Sunday, Forest Day 3 glorified in the presence of four Nobel prize winners, no less, and a recorded address from Bill Clinton.

The opening plenary addresses were very promising. I was delighted, in particular, with Gro Harlem Brundtland’s analysis. Some of her comments were very familiar:
“Unlocking the potential of forests to climate change mitigation is a major opportunity for leadership at COP15.”
“Involving local people is a moral and formal obligation, and the ONLY WAY TO MAKE REDD+ WORK.”
Perhaps she’s been reading our materials.

Wangari Maathai at Forest Day 3

Or perhaps (and I am seeing encouraging evidence of this at COP15), RECOFTC’s message is becoming mainstream.

Less surprising, but equally satisfying, was Elinor Ostrom’s testimony. I would specifically like to draw attention to her language on the issue of trust. The promise of local peoples’ contribution to monitoring forest resources in the long term, and thus to the generation of information required for REDD to be a credible mitigation strategy, requires trust between them, their representatives, and their governments over a long time horizon. And this trust must work both ways.

Some of the later sessions were less encouraging. In the sub-plenary session on ‘Degradation’, Sandra Brown of Winrock International intimated that remote sensing technology would, at the current rate of progress, soon provide all the information we need for credible monitoring and verification of a REDD mechanism. However, while such advances may soon lead to accurate monitoring of carbon stock changes, they are blind to the management interventions that drive them, which only first-hand data can provide.

Posted by Ben Vickers

Joan Lawrie, presenting Mike Sharpe with an embroidered portrait that she had made during his year of office as Lord Mayor.

Joan Lawrie has died this morning, after a short illness. She was 78 years old.
Joan had been an active campaigner for Castle Vale for many years. Her steadfast and determined loyalty to the Vale has seen her take her cases to the highest levels. Earlier this year she went to Downing Street to meet cabinet minister Hazel Blears to demand that Vale be paid the millions of pounds that she considered were due to the estate.
Joan had been a leading figure in many local organisations supporting the regeneration of Castle Vale, including the HAT Board, and the CAG of Merlin Venture.
She died this morning in Good Hope Hospital.
click here for: Goodbye to ‘The Duchess’