Recently by Paul Dale

How entirely predictable that Birmingham City Council should own up to a possible 1,380 redundancies late on a Friday afternoon.
A perfect time to attempt to bury bad news, as a government adviser once memorably stated.
It gives me absolutely no pleasure to say 'I told you so', for this will be a personal tragedy for every individual dumped on the dole queue.
But it is now clear that the claim perpetuated by council leaders for two years, that the city's business transformation programme is not about getting rid of jobs, was little more than a cynical myth.
It is true that the latest job-shedding exercise, mainly in children's social services, is being driven forward by the near certainty of savage government spending cuts next year. But the whole ethos of business transformation - seeking to save £900 million over 10 years through adopting "more efficient ways of working" - is about slashing the council's 42,000 non-schools workforce.

How the well-heeled middle classes of Moseley and Kings Heath must be sniggering at the generosity of Birmingham City Council.
And if they care to think about it as they roar around in their 4x4s they might even be a little surprised, when everyone in the public sector is talking about an impending financial nightmare and savage cuts to services, that the kind-hearted council is offering free gym membership to all regardless of circumstances.
The £9 million Be Active scheme in association with primary health care trusts, which has been rolled out across Birmingham, is doubtless well-meant.
It offers gym membership and swimming sessions at no cost provided participants sign up to use the facilities at least once a week.

Interesting to note that Birmingham City Council transportation chief Len Gregory was quick off the mark with a plea to firms to allow workers to make a "staggered" early journey home as heavy snow began to fall on Tuesday afternoon.
For it was Coun Gregory who in February 2004 masterminded a notorious inquiry into the way the then Labour-controlled council dealt with a freak snowstorm that left even gritted roads impassable and resulted in motorists taking up to six hours to drive a couple of miles.

Nine years after the idea was first seriously discussed, Birmingham is finally approaching the finishing line in its quest for a new civic library.
Members of the city council planning committee have given the go-ahead for a "futuristic" glass-fronted structure in Centenary Square which has been designed by award-winning Dutch architects Mecanoo and will be built at a cost of £193 million and open in 2013.
Unusually for projects of this size, the new library will be paid for entirely by Birmingham City Council through a combination of borrowing and cash from land sales, when the economy eventually recovers. The fact that the local authority is to find the money and is not reliant on government or private sector funding is a source of great pride to Tory council leader Mike Whitby.

My exclusive story a week ago revealing that Birmingham International Airport's £120 million runway extension plan is in deep trouble represents something of an inconvenient truth for West Midlands' political elite.
It is always embarrassing for politicians when people begin to realise that local government's grand plans and strategies are nothing more than meaningless words if the money and the will to deliver major infrastructure projects like the BIA runway simply does not exist.
And let's be absolutely clear about this. Birmingham Airport does not, at the moment, have the money to build a longer runway and even if it did have the funding in place the BIA board remains to be convinced of the business case for doing so.

The BBC chief I feel sorriest for is Tom Sleigh, Chief Adviser Operations, slaving away for an annual pittance of £76,300.
Poor old Tom. How must he be feeling after a national newspaper exposed the 100 best-paid Beeb executives, with Mr Sleigh anchored in bottom place?
It's unclear to me what a Chief Adviser Operations does, although giving advice is clearly a large part of the job, but no doubt he is worth every penny.
Even James Heath, Controller Strategy Journalism, is on £85,000, while Richard Addy, Chief Adviser Journalism, is paid £104,000.
I'm particularly taken by Sue Inglish, Head of Political Programmes. At £125,000, this is a job I venture modestly to suggest one might be interested in should a vacancy occur in the not too distant future. Wouldn't mind a crack at Head of Newsgathering either, at £165,000, if present incumbent Francesca Unsworth decides to call it a day.

The ongoing row over Be Birmingham's use of the city's £115 million Working Neighbourhoods Fund puts the spotlight on a very shadowy organisation.
It is doubtful whether many people outside of the rarefied world of local government have ever heard of the City Strategic Partnership, as Be Birmingham used to be known before undergoing a trendy name change.
But this unelected body, which meets behind closed doors in private, is entrusted by the city council and the government to play an increasingly important role in deciding how large sums of public money should be spent - or not spent in this case.

It is no great surprise that Birmingham City Council leader Mike Whitby is not encouraged by his advisers to grant live media interviews.
But, oddly enough, the man who finds it difficult not to embellish the simplest of claims appeared to be erring very much on the side of caution when he told BBC TV that some 800 council jobs were likely to go as part of a major cost-cutting drive.
Had Whitby stuck an additional nought on the end, he might have been nearer the mark.
The question at the city council has always been not so much how many jobs are likely to disappear, but how quickly can we get rid of them?

Is local government in terminal decline?
I only ask since it seems certain that forecast savage public spending cuts will force more Midland councils to hand over the dwindling number of services they continue to run to the private and voluntary sectors
The talk is of local authorities "commissioning" service delivery rather than providing it directly and the shift over the past decade has been amazing.
Even Birmingham City Council, which unusually for a large English authority continues to run most services in-house, is beginning to dismantle some of the last vestiges of a century of municipalisation.

Liberal Democrats are sometimes accused of cynically manipulating politics in order to gain power.
It's said that the party's representatives at Westminster and on local councils will promise people in one street or neighbourhood one thing, while setting out exactly the opposite policy a few yards down the road. Anything to get elected, seems to be the watchword.