Why is world cricket ignoring Imran's cruel fate?

Why are cricketers ancient and modern ignoring the fate of the man who is arguably the sport’s greatest all-rounder, Imran Khan?

Where are the protests? Where are the strongly-worded condemnations and ineffectual flappings of impotent outrage? Where is the boycott of Pakistan’s cricket team?

What’s the difference between Vlad Putin jailing his opponents on fatuous, transparently trumped-up charges and Pakistan’s military junta doing exactly the same thing?

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/imran-khans-call-from-jail-hold-asim-munir-accountable-if-anything-happens-to-me-alleges-harsh-treatment/articleshow/122581528.cms

Follow the money (down the drain)

Without wishing to stir things up for Unison and Birmingham Council, it seemed worth checking out bin-related online expenditure data.

Birmingham Council says, so it must be true: “We strongly refute any suggestion that agency workers have been carrying out work normally undertaken by striking workers. We continue to deploy the same number of agency workers on days of action as it we would on any normal working days.”

Odd, though, as the cost of agency workers listed under the heading ‘fleet and waste operations’ was £7.1 million in the first six months of 2024 and £13.1 million in the same period this year.

Total spending under the heading ‘fleet and waste operations’ was £38.3 million in the first six months of 2025 compared with £35.8 million at the same time last year.

An appalling cynic might think that, as the bin strike drags on, the council is spending a small fortune filling the void with temporary binpersons despite its strong refutation.

I did ask the council if there was any explanation for the rise in the employment of agency staff other than the obvious but, as usual, answer came there none.

Unite claims the strike is over plans to downgrade 171 people at a cost to each dustperson of £8,000 a year, ie £1.4 million (the council says only 17 people would lose £6,000 each, ie £102,000). Meanwhile, one way and another, Extra Personnel Ltd is cleaning up.

As it’s a nostalgic month for Birmingham music (Black Sabbath, ELO) here’s a Longbridge-inspired ditty (RIP Dave Cousins):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J56IicSNuEY

Birmingham's £10 million-a-month habit

Good news and bad news. The good news is Birmingham City Council has been warned of the huge cost of employing temporary staff almost permanently.

The bad news is that the warning was issued 22 years ago by former councillor Mike Olley, when the cost to the local taxpayer came to a then-worrying £19.3 million.

Today, the cost of temporary staff can conservatively be put at £10 million.

Every month.

The 2003 report highlighted lack of financial control, management failure, lack of ‘quality control’ over the people recruited and pointed out the private sector didn’t immediately call a temping agency every time a vacancy needed filling short-term. ‘There is a clear recognition of the need to challenge unnecessary cost,’ the report said.

What do we find today? In the first five months of this year, the council paid Hays Specialist Recruitment £41 million, Extra Personnel £5 million and £6 million on agency teachers. £51 million in five months or £10 million a month.

In 2003, Coun Olley said: ‘Whilst the motivations and level of accountability are different in the public sector, this does not mean that we should not seek to operate to the same level of efficiency as the private sector. Certainly in a climate where we as a Council need to find £31m in 2003/4 and £42m in 2004/5, we are in no position to discount how economies with agency staff might contribute to this.’

£31 million and £42 million? Ha! Chickenfeed.

A spokesperson from Hays, said: ‘Hays has worked with Birmingham City Council operating as their managed service provider since 2017. We supply a broad range of temporary workers across roles including finance, admin, social care, project management HR and technology.’

Obviously most of the cash the council pays Hays and others goes in wages and tax but it seems reasonable to assume 10 per cent is profit. In its 2024 annual report, Hays reported a profit of £105 million on a £1.1 billion turnover.

Who says the Crime Commissioner doesn't pay?

The good and worthy causes supported with taxpayers’ money by West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster are manifold. The following list contains most, probably not all, the charities and organisations he gave money to during the month of March this year.

This list includes brief snippets about what these organisations do, mainly culled from their websites. The total amount listed adds up to more than £2 million.

• Advent IM Ltd £23,650. Security consultants;

• AJB Media £36,624. Specialist supplies, professional services and public engagement;

• Avision for Empowerment £37,805. ‘We are a Community Interest Company and the driving force for the empowerment and development of people to achieve personal and professional success’;

• Anawim Women Working Together £101,297. ‘Provides trauma responsive services including holistic support and advocacy in Birmingham to empower women’;

• Barnardo’s £9,776. ‘Helping vulnerable children’;

• Birmingham City Community Football Trust £5,000. As visited recently by Chancellor Rachel Reeves;

• Black Country Women’s Aid £440,116. ‘Black Country Women’s Aid is an independent charity which has supported survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence in the West Midlands for 30 years’;

• Blesst CIC £9,936. ‘BLESST focuses on developing deprived families and young people through employability training, community safe space learning, and cultural identity’;

• Bringing Hope £36,991 ‘Bringing Hope is a charity based in Birmingham UK that works in prisons and the community with those involved in serious violence and crime’;

• Buddi Ltd £11,470, alarms for the elderly;

• Birmingham Says No £10,000, ‘We are a multi award-winning campaign aimed at tackling the pressing issues of knife crime and youth violence across the West Midlands’;

• Centre for Civil Society (Living Wage Foundation) £2,137. ‘We are the movement ensuring everyone earns a wage to meet their needs’;

• COPACC £2,495 subscription. ‘CoPaCC now has a portfolio of services, collaborating to optimise organisations to meet their governance and management challenges and opportunities’;

• Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre £6,633. ‘Specialist support for adults and children in Coventry who have been impacted by sexual violence or abuse at any time in their lives’;

• Catch 22 £74,403. ‘For over 200 years, Catch22 has designed and delivered services that build resilience and aspiration in people and communities’;

• Centre Spot CIC £3,976. ‘Centre Spot CIC is a creative social enterprise that uses Sports and Physical Activity to engage and build capacities of people, particularly young people’;

• Cranstoun £424,900. ‘Empowering people, empowering change’;

• Children Heard and Seen £11262. ‘Supporting children with a parent in prison’;

• Dare2lead £2,359. ‘Dare2Lead is a social enterprise dedicated to unlocking the leadership potential of people, organisations and communities. Our range of leadership training and motivational programmes are tailored to suit everybody, regardless of their ability or industry’;

• Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire £11,130. Unclear what the money’s for but the university offers degrees in professional policing;

• Engage Youth Empowerment Services £1,056. ‘Delivers bespoke creative projects for young people, direct family and significant others’;

• First Class Foundation £6,250. ‘We create projects and programmes that serve young people and their families across the city’;

• Global Media Group Services Ltd £2,500. ‘On-air, on Global Player and outdoor – through these platforms combined, we entertain and reach over 51 million individuals across the UK every week’;

• His Majesty’s Prison Service £12,574 for ‘targeted initiatives’;

• ICVA (subscription) £1,750. Independent Custody Visiting Association;

• Inclusive Sports Academy £5,000. ‘Delivering well-being and physical activity to audiences with special educational needs and disabilities across the West Midlands’;

• Living Xperience Connexion £12,500. ‘We develop bespoke empowerment programs for offenders and those on the periphery of offending’;

• LuxeventsUK Ltd £1,200. ‘We’re an independent, female-owned agency based in Edinburgh, and we’ve built a reputation for delivering events that are strategic, seamless and memorable’;

• Man at Work CIC £3,866. Set up ‘to deliver transformative training for professionals in supporting the healthy personal development of boys and young men, challenging sexism and fostering violence-free relationships and communities’;

• Mentoring Arts and Diverse Education CIC £740. ‘Tailored mentoring and outreach services’;

• Midland Langar Seva Society £2,050. ‘The charity now provides over 150 thousand hot meals per month alongside many other amazing projects both in the UK and abroad’;

• Networkfour £3,999.43. ‘Alleviating poverty, breaking the chains of homelessness and criminality to offer hope and transformation to people in Birmingham and the West Midlands’;

• Positive Youth Foundation £10,000. Provides ‘intensive frontline services to young people’ and supports ‘the local, regional and national youth work sector’;

• Phoenix Psychological Services £61,000. ‘An independent psychological practice specialising in trauma across the lifespan with individuals, families and organisations’;

• Prospects £70,000. ‘We guide millions of students to make the right choice’;

• Partnership Bridge Ltd £11,970. ‘Public order and safety activities’;

• Rethread Youth Ltd £22,312. ‘We are Redthread, a national charity delivering transformative youth work in hospitals and health settings’;

• Remedi – Restorative Services £100,000. ‘Remedi exist to enable those accessing our services to be the people they can and want to be, through the creative and proactive use of restorative approaches’;

• RSM UK Risk Assurance Services LLP £7,140. Internal audit;

• Recite Me Ltd £3,325. ‘From creating WCAG (web content accessibility guidelines) compliant websites to providing customised user experiences, Recite Me is here to support you to be more inclusive online through a range of accessibility solutions’;

• Red Snapper Recruitment Ltd PCC £10,000. ‘Experts in public safety’ (also agency staff for the dog unit £26,900);

• Rockc CLC £3,500. ‘At ROCKC, we’re on a mission to raise awareness around gang culture and violent crime through the powerful combination of art and education’;

• Round Midnight Ltd £14,000. ‘We are Virtual Decisions. We create engaging VR content that allow difficult decisions to be safely simulated, improving outcomes and saving lives through experiential VR learning’;

• Sarbat Wolverhampton £3,620. ‘We promote diversity and inclusion thus integrating the local community. We deliver these through a range of activities which includes multi sports projects, community engagement activities and education’;

• St Regis CofE Academy £4,700. Probably related to Wolverhampton police cadets;

• Titan Film and Hire Ltd £2,168. Public engagement;

• Unite and Uplift Together CIC £4,708. ‘We are on a mission to ensure everyone regardless of age, gender, social economic class, sexuality and disability have access to professionally organised support programs in a safe environment so they achieve their full potential for themselves, their communities and society as a whole’;

• Safer 2gether £33,945. ‘A venture launched to support practitioners from all sectors, navigate the ever evolving and complex safeguarding landscape’;

• Safer Now £2,150. ‘SaferNow exists to close the gaps between what organisations within children and adolescent safeguarding arenas can do, and what our communities require of us’;

• The Feast Youth Project £3,000. ‘Our desire is to bring together teenagers from different faiths and cultures to build friendships, explore faith and change lives’;

• The Mentoring Project £2,500. ‘We are dedicated to supporting change in the outcomes for Children’;

• Trailblazers Mentoring £4,000. ‘A UK charity which provides 1:1 mentorship and practical support to people in prison and post release’;

• Victim Support £60,275. ‘Provides specialist practical and emotional support to victims and witnesses of crime’;

• Weapons Surrender Ltd £13,474. ‘We offer a complete ‘start to finish’ service to the Police, public, local authorities, government bodies and supporters of anti-knife crime’;

• West Midlands Media Ltd £1,950. IT support;

• YMCA Black Country Group £17,000. ‘Everyone should have a fair chance to discover who they are and what they can become’;

• Zoe Lodrick Ltd £883.84. Sexualised trauma specialist.

And they say there ain't no sanity clause

Once upon a time a Government employed KPMG to tell them what they wanted to hear. KPMG duly obliged, announcing that a high-speed railway line from London to the provinces would generate £15 billion a year, mainly in the Midlands and the North.

That was in 2013 and it’s taken more than a decade for us to wake up and realise it was all just a dream.

But if you turn back to the KPMG report ‘HS2 Regional Economic Impacts’, you will see it is littered with disclaimers suggesting, to the cynic, especially in hindsight, that the firm didn’t really believe its own conclusions.

The report declares: ‘Any party other than HS2 Ltd that obtains access to this report or a copy (under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, through HS2 Ltd’s Publication Scheme, or otherwise) and chooses to rely on it (or any part of it) does so at its own risk.’

It says: ‘We accept no responsibility for the consequences of this document being relied upon by any other party, or being used for any other purpose, or containing any error or omission which is due to an error or omission in data supplied to us by other parties.’

And it goes on: ‘Whilst KPMG LLP has undertaken the analysis in good faith, no warranty, expressed or implied, is made in respect of the accuracy, completeness or appropriateness of its assumptions, calculations or results. No reliance may be placed upon the analysis by any party, except where specifically referred to in an agreed KPMG LLP letter of engagement. All users are accordingly advised to undertake their own analysis and due diligence before making any decision or entering into any commitment based on the information in this report.’

It also points out, further distancing the firm from what its report says: ‘The project has been peer-reviewed by an advisory panel of independent experts set up by HS2 Ltd.’ And they say there ain’t no sanity clause….

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/05/hs2-report-overstated-benefits-expert

Pity they didn’t read my reports

In 2013, I wrote:

When it comes to a sensible, reasonable, rational assessment of whether the thing will provide value for money, though, our politicians fall back on a variety of reports.

These are commissioned by the Department for Transport and paid for by the Department for Transport so it rarely comes as a shock when they are widely trumpeted as proving the case for HS2.

I actually took the trouble to read the last one all the way through. The truth is I could not make head or tail of it. When it descended into rocket science, I knew I was lost.

In 2015:

Nobody really knows how much HS2 will cost when it’s finally opened. The official figure is now apparently £43 billion and Labour has said it would withdraw its support if the bill rose to more than £50 billion.

But it is said that in the corridors of power it is widely accepted that the bill will eventually come in at something like £73 billion.

It’s clearly the case with HS2 that the simplest way of estimating the cost is to think of a number – any number – and then double it.

There is no chance it will bring any added long-term prosperity to the West Midlands. Just as the true cost of HS2 is pure guesswork, so is its ability to create jobs. But whenever its backers come up with a number, halve it if you want something like the true picture.

And in 2016:

It’s probably unlikely the Birmingham to London high-speed trains will actually derail when they hit a top speed of 223 mph. Because the might never go that fast.

Research by engineer Prof Peter Woodward warns that at such a high speed there could be ‘significant issues’ with track instability.

The HS2 company says it’s taken into account the fact that its trains will run about 40 mph faster than the rest of the world’s high-speed trains and there’s nothing to worry about.

Let’s hope so because speed of travel is one of the key arguments for building the line in the first place. If trains can’t actually go as fast as advertised then, even if they don’t crash, the whole financial case for this infinitely costly (latest guesstimate now £55.7 billion) line will certainly run into the buffers.

Fetch the comfy chair

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin with news that the West Midlands Police have spent £67,000 so far this year with a company called Back Care Solutions.

If you find that staggering, you may need to sit down when you learn that, in March, the police paid £497,000 to Abbott Toxicology, who test officers and recruits for drugs and booze.

A cursory glance at Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster’s on-line spending declarations for the first four months of the year show has been splashing the cash.

He’s given £45,000 to the West Midlands Anti-Slavery Network while The St Giles Trust, which helps people ‘held back by poverty, unemployment, the criminal justice system, homelessness, exploitation and abuse to build a positive future’ has had £739,000.

Many payments are relatively small sums: Birmingham LBGT has been given £40,000; Birmingham Pride got £2,000; Relate’s had £88,000; Sikh Women’s Aid £39,000; the New Testament Church of God’s was blessed with £3,200; the Romanian Community Centre, £4,000; Women in the Shade, £2,000; and Edu-k-fun, £2,160.

The commissioner obviously believes in the transformative power of sport having given Streetgames UK, £20,000 and Support through Sport Youth, £3,678; the Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation, £3,080; Sporting Spirit, £3,859; Guardian Ballers £2,400 and Streetgames £20,000.

Mr Foster’s membership of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners cost taxpayers £49,695, his taxis £7,000, his earnings £100,000.

Happily, he’s got more money than ever to spend, having put up local taxes by £13.95 (6.5 per cent, 5p below the legal limit) but even with a budget of £984 million, he’s not happy. He blames ‘central government’ for the police being 800 officers short even though the force claims crime fell six per cent in year to March.

Maybe. Still, His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary’s most recent assessment gave the force no ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ ratings, two ‘adequates’, three ‘requires improvements’ and three ‘inadequates’.

The inspector said: ‘I have serious concerns about how well the force investigates crime, protects vulnerable people and manages offenders and suspects. We have highlighted these problems in previous inspection reports, but the force’s performance has declined.’

Fetch the comfy chair.

The rubbish keeps piling up in Birmingham

It really does look as if the Birmingham Commissioners, appointed by the Government to sort out the chaos that is the city council, are digging their heels in as far as settling the bin strike is concerned.

They have ‘instructed’ – note the word ‘instructed’ as it proves the commissioners now run the city – to stick with its ‘best and final offer’ made to the unions via ACAS.

In a waffly notice issued recently, the commissioners say: ‘Bringing this action to an end by lawful and financially prudent means is fundamental to resolving outstanding issues and prospective legal action in relation to the equal pay issue. In this matter time is of the essence.

‘Commissioners have concluded that the best and final offer, which takes all of these matters into account and provides an agreed framework for the implementation of a modernised waste collection service delivering in addition recycling and food waste collection on a best value basis, and which Commissioners have been briefed on, is required to be submitted via ACAS by no later than close of play Friday 30th May 2025 and is essential.

‘If this offer is accepted the Council can proceed to implement it following a report to Cabinet which sets out the financial implications. If not, Cabinet should consider a full report on the next steps that can lawfully be taken. The Council is instructed accordingly.’

This instruction was issued after the Unite union claimed the commissioners had sabotaged by the commissioners.

https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2025/may/birmingham-bin-strike-escalates

A run-away disaster for Birmingham and Britain?

The cost of Birmingham Council’s Oracle computer disaster may be as much as £343.5 million – even higher than the worst estimates.

Uncollected business rates were supposed to add up to £12.5 million but, in reality, the figure is £140 million, according to Lib Dem Paul Tilsley, the city’s longest serving councillor.

He told a meeting back in March: ‘That (Oracle) system didn't work and it has left us with a bill. We don't know how much but certainly, as far as business rates, £140 million as a starter.'

I asked this week if the figure was accurate and he told me: ‘I would never quote an inaccurate figure.’ I also asked the council but, as usual, they didn’t respond.

The original Oracle budget was £19 million. The official cost is now £131 million. A union-sponsored report by Sheffield University’s audit reform lab added extra costs supposedly caused by the Oracle disaster: £12.5 million in business rate bad debts; £4 million council tax deficit; and £69 million written off in budgeted savings that never happened. That all comes to £216.5 million.

But – and it’s a big but – if Coun Tilsley is right and the business rate deficit is £140 million, that makes the Oracle cost at least £343.5 million. The £140 million represents one third of the city’s budgeted business rate revenue for the current financial year.

And it makes you wonder if this represents something worse than just an incompetent local authority failing to chase up bad debts – a flight of rate-paying businesses out of Birmingham.

The council claims the number of businesses in the city rose by 255 (0.7 per cent) last year but as 89 per cent of them are micro-businesses, that doesn’t mean much. Manufacturing was down 2.7 per cent, construction down 4.3 per cent, hospitality down 1 per cent and transport down 4.9 per cent. Retail business rose 1.2 per cent representing 21 per cent of all the businesses in the city.

But the one big increase was a 6.6 per cent rise in public service ‘enterprises’ (surely a contradiction in terms).

The dreadful possibility has to be that the city is enduring an irreversible decline in genuine private-sector wealth-creating businesses. If that’s true, we may soon see a decline in the other growth-sector, professional services (up a modest 0.3 per cent) not to mention a further fall in business rate revenue.

And you do have to wonder: Is Birmingham’s parlous state representative of the state of the country as a whole?

Sue me, sue you blues

What a litigious city Birmingham must be. In the last two years, the bankrupt council paid more than £27 million to our learned friends.

Bevan Brittan, which received £8.6 million, is the largest single lawyerly recipient of Birmingham taxpayers’ money.

They say on their website, ‘We have advised Birmingham City Council for many years on a series of major projects and transactions, all of which we have secured through tender.’

The city’s cash is widely spread, however, and sometimes we are not allowed to know who gets it. On April 7, the city solicitor paid out £211,320 in legal fees. This is reported under the heading ‘redacted personal data’. I wonder who got all that dosh?

In the first five months of the year, £431,427 of redacted legal fee payments were made to anonymous beneficiaries.

(Talking of redacted, I note Birmingham Law Society redacted its International Lawyer of the Year Award 2014 from its honours board. It went to Phil Shiner, struck off three years later for making false claims against British soldiers in Iraq.)

The barristers at St Philips Chambers don’t do badly. They earned £743,527 in the last two years.

These chambers (I always think they deserve an apostrophe but apparently not) were the professional home of the Recorder of Birmingham, Judge Melbourne Inman, the man who sentenced Twitter criminal Lucy Connolly to 31 months imprisonment.

Watch his judgment here....

It doesn't half pay at the WMCA

In March, the West Midlands Combined Authority spent £4.5 million on consultants, a step up from the first two months of the year when its 1,226 staff paid almost £3.7 million for ‘consultants, external advice, legal advice and professional advice’.

It’s not just going to lawyers, accountants, engineers and so on.

Recipients include a digital marketing expert, a communications specialist, an artist and an actress who ‘works with the The Laban-Malmgren System of Character Analysis, the Stanislavski Method and live improvised music to discover and awaken inner lives and physical responses’.

Birmingham Hippodrome theatre got £10,000 (How to put on a decent panto? Oh no it wasn’t).

Dr Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt offers ‘unparalleled knowledge of creative health at the intersection between practice, policy and evidence’.

Good Afternoon Experiences Ltd got £9,100. They ‘conceptualise and lead the creative direction of playful installations and experiences and games that incorporate creative technology, play or interaction.’ Well, it’s more interesting than bus shelters.

But then, the West Midlands Combined Authority has an embarrassment of riches which it can’t spend fast enough.

In the 2023-24 financial year, it had £591.9 million to spend on the Midland Metro, railways, social housing decarbonisation and so on. Alas, it only managed to get £386 million out the door.

A proper business would be delighted to spend £215.3 million less than planned but in the public sector it’s a disaster. How do you justify your unending demand for more money when you can’t get rid of what you’ve already got?

And they’re plainly understaffed, having paid £250,000 to Hays Specialist Recruitment in January, £286,000 in February and £534,297.83 in March.

As for staff, like a good employer, they’ve paid £1,484 to Back Care Solutions, £1,913 to Posturite and £7,740 to New Leaf Health to help them hit their ‘workplace wellbeing goals’.

They’ve also set aside £1 million to pay for untaken holiday entitlement.

The Labour Party doesn’t do badly either. The authority paid £16,998.57 in January and another £8,258.62 in February to the Labour Party to cover the employment costs of people seconded to work in the office of Mayor Richard Parker.

Luckily, Mayor Parker has secured more money from the Government with a £1.2 billion budget this year which ‘includes £389m as part of the government's Integrated Settlement, which gives the authority power, funding and responsibility for local priorities’. And that’s before the billions to allow Blues fans to get to their new football ground by tram.

Deckchairs on the Titanic?

In August 2023, Birmingham Council housing department signed a four-year contract with a Liverpool charity to buy furniture and soft furnishings worth £2,025,000.

That contract was later expanded. A lot.

I had to check the number five times but it’s still the same. The contract is now worth £32,400,000.

The recipient is the Furniture Resource Centre Ltd. This charity says, to avoid furniture poverty, every household must have ‘bed, bedding and mattress, table and chairs, sofa and/or easy chairs, wardrobe/drawers, carpets in living rooms and bedrooms, curtains or blinds, washing machine, refrigerator and freezer, cooker/oven, TV.’

I did ask the council and the Furniture Resource Centre several times what the city’s taxpayers got for this money and why it was so much more than originally planned but got no answer.

The furniture bill may be connected with the £45,111,772 Birmingham – one of the biggest landlords in Europe – is paying three companies providing temporary accommodation.

The charity End Furniture Poverty says the average payment by local councils is £220 per household. On that basis, about 145,000 Birmingham households – one third of the total for the city – would get something bought for them by the council.

In their last report, the Government commissioners called in to supervise the council say the local authority doesn’t have a grip on its spending on charities, companies and services operated in its name.

The report says, ‘The council is not equipped to properly operate these entities, understand their liabilities and extract value from them.’

It also says Birmingham’s failure to establish the true position has been slow because of ‘staff absences, lack of appropriate skills and a failure to prioritise this activity despite awareness of the significant risks involved’.

Brimful of Asha's

On March 19, Birmingham taxpayers forked out £1,048.36 to Asha’s, ‘Birmingham’s premier Indian restaurant’ (six-course menu £89.75).

This is among the many transactions carried out using city council credit cards. In March, council officers spent at least £32,500 on petrol alone – not bad for a city determined to drive the motorist off the roads.

Most petrol was bought in and around Birmingham but some payments were much farther afield, including two at the Shell service station in Penhale near Newquay in Cornwall.

There are payments to hotels – popular places include the Holiday Inn, Cambridge, the Marriott in Durham and somewhere called The Ship – Uber taxis and £125.20 to Symphony Hall on the day of the Trevor Francis Memorial Concert.

All these transactions are published online without any glossary to explain them, which makes drawing any conclusions somewhat fraught.

So let’s look at what happened in 2024. In that year, 42,560 credit card transactions were paid for by the city council. They totalled £5,825,201. Of these, at least 6,329 payments went to Amazon.

Of course, every big organisation needs to repay expenses incurred by employees in the course of their work and dishing out credit cards is a simple way of ensuring staff don’t end up out of pocket.

In March the Government launched a crackdown on the use of taxpayer-funded credit cards by civil servants. It seems the news hasn’t filtered through to Birmingham yet, though, as Cabinet Office credit card spending has risen since the alleged crackdown, perhaps that’s no bad thing.

https://order-order.com/2025/04/24/cabinet-office-taxpayer-credit-card-spending-increased-after-freeze/

Broke Birmingham's £1 million commissioners

Since last September, the commissioners running Birmingham Council have stopped publishing their minutes online. Apparently there has been ‘a slight delay’.

This is a shame because Birmingham taxpayers might then discover more about what the commissioners are doing. This is important given the bankruptcy of the council, the rise in local taxes and the fact that the commissioners themselves are adding £1 million to the city’s expenditure.

The direct cost of the commissioners over the 12 months to March this year was a little over one million pounds (£1,046,000 give or take).

Their day-rate is £1,100 though top banana Max Caller’s on £1,200. This money isn’t just for turning up, it includes hotels, subsistence and travel expenses (all necessary given that, as far as I can tell, none of them lives in Birmingham).

Then Cabinet Minister Michael Gove called Mr Caller, aged 74, out of retirement to become chief commissioner. Mr Caller is apparently ‘the man who fixes broken councils’. He’s been Chief Executive of Hackney and Barnet councils and Chair of the Local Government Boundary Commission for England.

The other commissioners are John Coughlan, ex-Chief Executive of Hampshire County Council, now director of a company called Skills for Care;

Chris Tambini, ex-Director of Corporate Resources at Leicestershire County Council;

Pam Parkes, ‘Executive Director for People and Transformation’ (what was once head of personnel) at Essex County Council;

Jackie Belton ex-Chief Executive of Bexley Council;

John Biggs the commissioners’ ‘Political Advisor’, a career London Labour politician; and

Myron Hrycyk, the only commissioner with private-sector experience, having worked at that paragon of entrepreneurialism, Severn Trent Water, apparently turning it into ‘a Digital 1st business’. Mr Scrabble at least has local connections having obtained an MBA from Birmingham University and been a member of the Midlands CBI Council.

The commissioners, appointed in October 2023 on five-year contracts, sent a report to the Government in January complaining the council was ‘budget-setting without enough urgency’, suffered from ‘highly defensive and siloed management’, key service areas remained unacceptable and, despite a few changes, the council failed to remedy the ‘deeper, cultural dysfunction that led to the Council’s failure’.

Luckily, the report also said: ‘Commissioners are working in partnership with the Council to promote a resolution to this dispute which is essential for service transformation.’

That went well then…

Bankrupt Birmingham’s bonkers budget bonanza

Bankrupt Birmingham’s bonkers budget bingeing bonanza knows no bounds, as far as I can see.

For a council which has put up the local tax by a third in five years and is supposedly obliged to spend money on essential services only, because it’s broke, it seems incapable of drawing in its horns.
I have spent a bit of time looking at the online spending statistics it is obliged to make public. I’ve tried several times to get explanations for some of the costs involved, both from the council and from the recipients of its largesse. Without any success.
So here is a random list of items the council is spending our money on:
· £285,000 to the Professional Squash Association who are holding the British Open at the Birmingham Rep this month;
· £1 million on mobile phones;
· £622,788 on air quality sensors;
· £14,333 building a tortoise exhibit;
· £10 million on Neighbourhood Network Schemes for the elderly;
· £252,000 on breastfeeding advice;
· £2 million on family weight-loss programmes;
· £7.5 million for ‘Bring It On Brum!’, a scheme promising to ‘deliver Doorstep Sport to bridge the inequality gap’ and ‘address the holiday experience gap for children and young people from low-income households’;
· £127 million over ten years with the Brighton-based charity Change Grow Live which helps drug addicts and alcoholics via four “free and confidential hubs”;
· This is separate from the Aquarius Action Project’s £3.9 million. Its mission “is to support people to overcome the harms caused by alcohol, drugs and gambling by providing responsive and effective services”;
· £5 million protecting women from domestic violence;
· £100,000 to Grassroots Suicide Prevention;
· £33,000 alleviating headaches among the Pakistani community;
· £2.6 million trying to stop Brummies from smoking.

You just can't get the staff these days

In the first two months of this year, Birmingham City Council paid no less than £13.8 million to Hays Specialist Recruitment.

This money came from the council’s human resources and financial divisions while elsewhere the city paid out £2 million for agency teachers during the spring term as well as £2 million in January and February with Extra Personnel Ltd on ‘waste operations’.

Recruitment certainly doesn’t come cheap. Birmingham’s last finance chief, Fiona Greenway, lasted less than two years before her job went to Carol Culley, an old chum of Joanne Roney, the council's new managing director.

Ms Greenway worked from May 2023 to March this year. The recruitment firm which brought her to Birmingham, Gatenby Sanderson Ltd, was paid £470,272. I assume the lion’s share of this went to Ms Greenway but who knows? When asked, the recruitment firm wouldn’t say.

Other ‘human resources’ costs include £101,067 for a ‘content creator’; £336,544 to Birmingham Children’s Trust for ‘staff advertising expenses’ on top of the monthly £15,159 salaries for ‘Counter Extremism Programme & Prevent’; £280,024 on an ‘interim director street scene’; and £261,140 to take on Mr Paul Tullett as ‘equal pay programme lead’.

Obviously I did try asking Hays and the council about their arrangements but, again, they didn’t bother to get back to me. Alas, when I looked to see what jobs Hays might have on offer at the moment, its Birmingham Council website says: ‘There are currently no jobs available.’

https://webmicrosites.hays.co.uk/web/birmingham-city-council

The 'communities' charge - no whites

As part of its ‘deep engagement’ strategy to hold focus groups to ‘increase awareness on community experiences of health inequalities’, Birmingham City Council is spending £1.2 million.

Last month, it agreed contracts worth £589,226.5 with some of the 13 ‘communities’.

Its Pakistani Deep Engagement Partner, ‘The Delicate Mind’, gets £55,578 and says it will ‘critically examine structural inequality and how this exacerbates poor mental health we also explore the intersection between faith, identity and masculinity and how this effects mental health and wellbeing’.

Legacy West Midlands, which gets £89,851.50, ‘delivers sports, arts, heritage and youth programmes for the benefit of the whole community, including marginalised and underrepresented groups’.

Christians get £85,455; the Caribbean community £89,999; Bangladeshis £89,851.50 while Soft Machines Ltd, the scheme’s ‘academic support partner’, is being paid £57,390 and consultants Deepcx Insights Ltd receive £39,954.

The Somali Deep Engagement Partner, Allies Network, a community interest company, is being paid £89,998.99. On the council’s website, it talks about the opening hours at its Balsall Heath office and warns: ‘Please only attend if you are a black, African or Arab woman, family or elderly person.’

This is all chicken feed, of course, compared with the £1.5 million the council spends trying to persuade its citizens to give up smoking, the £4 million that goes on helping gamblers and alcoholics not to mention the £5,250,000 devoted to human resources training.

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/directory_record/424484/allies_network_cic

Next: You just can’t get the staff (especially teachers and dustmen).

Somebody's cleaning up in Birmingham

Bankrupt Birmingham council is paying out legal fees of more than £1 million a month to a variety of solicitors and barristers.

In February alone, the council paid at least £1.5 million, including £685,411 to Bevan Brittan LLP.

In the first three months of the year, legal fees came to £3,648,861. Oddly, the figures for March do not say who the recipients might have been.

In April, the city entered into contracts with three law firms providing advice on the provision of affordable housing. Bevan Brittan and Trowers & Hamlins are getting £166,666.70 each while Browne Jacobson will receive £551,274.20.

Three property agencies, Savills, Lambert Smith Hampton and Avison Young (UK) Limited are to be paid £83,333.33 as part of the same initiative which aims to replace bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless families with houses.

Meanwhile, as the bin strike drags on, the poor local taxpayers will at least have new wheelie bins to chuck their rubbish in.

Their cash-strapped council has kicked off the new financial year by signing a contract worth £8,867,500 with IPL Plastics (UK) Ltd for the supply of Wheeled Recycling Bins, Food Caddies and Containers. Somebody’s cleaning up.

Next: Snow white

Birmingham's £91 million consultancy bill

Bankrupt Birmingham and its 13,000-plus employees are spending at least £91 million on consultants as far as I can make out from scrutinising the figures online.

Among these, KPMG has seven contracts worth £7.7 million, PwC has £4.6 million of contracts, Ernst & Young saw its contract worth £1.3 million as “Strategic Partner Programme Support, Early Intervention and Prevention Programme” soar to £6,311,500. Deloitte gets just £210,440 from two contracts.

PwC gets £2,497,000 as ‘a Delivery Partner for UiPath Robotic Process Automation’. This will supposedly save the council £5.5 million though this doesn’t take into account these fees or the £1.9 million worth of redundancy costs involved. Using robots instead of people is good because, “software robots can do it faster and more consistently than people, without the need to get up and stretch or take a coffee break”.

Grant Thornton has an audit contract worth £1.6 million. Originally it was a mere £252,000.

The city’s rubbish is uncollected because of a strike by binmen. Unite union says the cuts would deprive 150 people of £8,000 a year each. If that’s true, the council would save £1.2 million a year.

Maybe one of the many consultancy firms employed by the city council might suggest other ways of saving money.

For instance, American consultancy Oliver Wyman which gets £1,480,000. The company says, ‘We guide clients through high-stakes decisions and transformative moments so they can adapt, grow, and thrive. Our edge? The power of perspective — driven by deep industry insight, specialized expertise, and a spirit of true collaboration.’

Next: The cost of lawyers.

Bankrupt Brum’s £15 million binge

There was a minor kerfuffle when it became known Joanne Roney, chief executive of the council, was at a property conference in Cannes when the bin strike began. A council spokesman was at pains to point out Ms Roney’s expenses were paid for by her hosts as she had a speaking slot. That they failed to mention was that, in January, the council paid Travelperk, a corporate travel company. £65,545.99. Was this to send some of its planning officers to Cannes for the conference? I asked but answer came there none.

Mind you, the city spent £3.2 million with Travelperk in the first two months of 2025, so I don’t suppose it matters much. It looks as if the council is running ahead of 2024 when, in the whole year, it forked out £15,149,095.38 almost all of it spent by the housing department.

Apparently, this isn’t for global junketing, it’s for accommodating the homeless though not necessarily cost-effectively.

NEXT: A nice little earner – the £91 million-worth of consultants.

Rattus Norvegicus

I recently whiled away a couple of idle hours studying Birmingham City Council’s ‘payments to suppliers over £500’ website and found a fund of fascinating information. Alas, like Johnny Nash, I have found that, after perusing these spreadsheets, there are more questions than answers.

I have asked the council for some of these answers but so far, a week later, none has been forthcoming. I shall wait a little longer.

Meanwhile, though, for a bankrupt council with rats as big as cats because of the bin strike, it is interesting to note Birmingham spent £777,412 allowing 60 members of staff to take time off for trade union business (eight unions altogether, including the strikers of Unite).

It seems 46 of these people spent more than half their working day on union business. This is for the year 2023-24. The previous year, the cost was £667,293. In 2018-19 it was £472,666.

With everyone seeking a solution to the bin strike, surely one way of saving money would be to axe time off for union business. But then how would they plan the next strike?

Water company washes its hands of water leak

 The jokers at Severn Trent sent me a letter from ‘Melissa (no surname)’ who is described as ‘Subject Matter Expert’ assuring me they investigated my report of a leak and found nothing. The letter said they visited my house; the leak is across a road three miles away.

I spoke to Melissa who said it was a templated letter, they had actually been to the site of the leak, carried out some tests and found it was only ‘groundwater’ so it was none of their business.

We discussed this at some length.

I don’t believe it’s only groundwater. They admit they have not found the source of the water and it hasn’t been flooding the road forever, only since last October. Surely that means it’s unlikely to be a newly-sprung spring.

Melissa denied she was, in effect saying that, though water might be a precious resource, Severn Trent don’t care enough to do something about it.

She said I should contact the Environment Agency or the Highways Agency. I demurred, suggesting she might like to contact them instead of me. She said she wasn’t able to do so because she didn’t know enough about the problem – even though she had just read me extracts of her engineer’s report about the water pouring across the road.

According to Melissa, Severn Trent has no responsibility for ‘groundwater’ even though it charges customers for ‘highway drainage’ and ‘wastewater and surface water drainage’. I suppose when the resource gets to the supplier free of charge one way or another, this fatuous monopoly doesn’t care how it comes by its ‘precious resource’. Never again should we take seriously the water companies’ bleating about how important it is to conserve water. They are only too keen to wash their hands of any responsibility.

The Elon Musk of the 18th century

My new novel 'Devil Money' exposes the massive financial fraud at the heart of the foundation of the city of New Orleans. The city was first settled by the French, lured by the promise of riches under a scheme set up by a fugitive murderer who became the most powerful finance minister in Europe.

John Law was given exclusive rights to found settlements in Louisiana which, in the early 1700s, was part of the French empire. At the time Louisiana – named after French King Louis XIV – stretched all the way to Chicago. 

And it was while John Law was selling shares in his Mississippi Company that New Orleans got its name and was first settled – the name refers not just to the city in France but also to the Regent, Phillip of Orleans, who was running the country at the time for the five-year-old King Louis XV.

The price of shares in Law’s company soared, attracting money from all over Europe. By 1720, a share was worth 40 times its original price and the word ‘millionaire’ was first coined to describe people who made their fortunes speculating the stock.

Then the share price collapsed and John Law was forced to flee France in fear of his life, leaving a trail of financial devastation behind him.

Louisiana was described in France as a land of plenty, with gold and silver mines, a wonderful climate a friendly native Americans. John Law even took to displaying gold bars in the shop windows of Paris claiming they were from Louisiana.

In 1718, he sent his servant Billy Barnett to find out the truth. During that trip, New Orleans was founded as the French capital in Louisiana was moved from Biloxi. But when Billy got back to France and reported on the absence of gold, silver, diamonds or treasure of any kind, John Law didn’t want to know.

The shares were booming and he wasn’t going to let a small matter like the true state of affairs get in the way. Sadly, this sort of financial trickery still goes on – it’s just that John Law and his Mississippi scheme were among the first to dupe investors and rip them off.

Law, who founded the Bank of France, was the Bitcoin entrepreneur of his day. He printed paper money to boost his scheme, paid off the Government’s debts and caused run-away inflation. These days, such an economic policy is called quantitative easing. In early 18th century France, they called it ‘le diable d’argent’ – Devil Money.

Law (1671-1729) arrived in Paris in 1715 having fled England to avoid execution for murder and knocked around Europe making his living as a gambler before becoming one of the world’s first economists.

He was befriended by the Duke of Orleans and became the greatest financier in Europe, controller of the entire French economy – from tax-collecting to boat-building – lord of Louisiana and founder of New Orleans. Thanks to soaring share prices, he was probably as rich in his day as Elon Musk is now.

‘Devil Money’ follows his remarkable career through the eyes of stable-boy Billy Barnett.

For Billy, John Law was father-figure, mentor, friend and meal-ticket – until a financial black hole threatened to swallow everyone up.

Theft, lies and Ponzi schemes, insider-dealing, price-fixing, money-printing, fraud, gambling, reckless speculation, tax avoidance, market-rigging – they were all in a day’s work for Billy Barnett.

When it came to treason – John Law started plotting to depose King George I – even Billy had to draw a line. But could he turn paper money back into gold before it was too late?

John Law created the Mississippi bubble which was closely followed by Britain’s South Sea bubble – these financial disasters almost bankrupted two nations and had profound consequences for decades to come.

It’s doubtful whether many of today’s politicians have heard of John Law, let alone learned the lessons of his career. We can but hope they are willing to learn from history.

The financial crash caused by Law’s scheme was so devastating that over the course of the next 70 years it played a part in American independence and the French revolution.

Financial crisis? A warning from history

Chancellor Rachel Reeves  has been sent one of the first copies of a new novel called ‘Devil Money’ about the economic policies that caused one of the first great global financial crises. The book highlights the danger Governments face trying to deal with their mounting debts.

When France’s King Louis XIV died in 1715 there was a black hole in the nation’s finances so big the Government couldn’t even pay interest on its debts. Yet Ministers refused to cut back on their spending. They wanted to maintain the army and expected perks and pay including free clothes, free meals, free accommodation, free tickets etc.

So, they turned to an economist who performed an economic miracle, creating paper money. These days, it’s called quantitative easing. Back in early 18th century France, they called it ‘le diable d’argent’ – Devil Money.

The Bitcoin phenomenon of the age was the brainchild of John Law, a Scotsman who fled England to avoid execution for murder, made his living as a gambler and became one of the world’s first economists.

John Law (1671-1729) became the greatest financier in Europe, controller of the entire French economy – from tax-collecting to boat-building – lord of Louisiana and founder of New Orleans. Thanks to soaring share prices, he became as rich in his day as Elon Musk is now.

‘Devil Money’ follows his remarkable career through the eyes of stable-boy Billy Barnett.

For Billy, John Law was father-figure, mentor, friend and meal-ticket – until another financial black hole threatened to swallow everyone up.

Theft, lies and Ponzi schemes, insider-dealing, price-fixing, money-printing, fraud, gambling, reckless speculation, tax avoidance, market-rigging – they were all in a day’s work for Billy Barnett.

When it came to treason – John Law started plotting to depose King George I – even Billy had to draw a line. But could he turn paper money back into gold before it was too late?

Author Nigel Hastilow says, ‘John Law created the Mississippi bubble in France which was closely followed by Britain’s South Sea bubble – these financial disasters almost bankrupted two nations and had profound consequences for decades to come.

‘It is doubtful whether many of today’s politicians have heard of John Law, let alone learned the lessons of his career, which is why I am sending a copy of ‘Devil Money’ to Ms Reeves in the hope that – as an economist just like John Law – she is willing to learn from history.

‘John Law founded the Bank of France, nationalised the entire French economy, tried to colonise a vast area of what is now the United States, from Chicago to New Orleans, and sold shares in the state-owned company he ran.

‘The word “millionaire” was coined to describe the people he made rich. But it couldn’t last and the crash, when it came, was so devastating it led eventually to the French revolution 70 years later.’

‘Devil Money’ is available on Amazon price: £15 (Hardback) £7.99 (Paperback) £3.00 (Kindle) or at any decent bookshop.

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBLGaC3NzJc

Website: www.devil-money.com

About the Author

Nigel is a journalist by trade. He was editor of The Birmingham Post in the 1990s and a columnist for the Wolverhampton Express & Star. He has worked for the Institute of Directors, the Institute of Chartered Accountants and ran his own publishing company. 

He has written several books including: The Trials of Eldred Pottinger, an historical romance set during the First Afghan War; Close of Play about plans to turn a cricket ground into a housing estate; The Man Who Invented the News, about a journalist surviving in the English Civil War; and Dead Groovy about the lawyer responsible for the worst deal in the history of rock and roll. He lives in Wickhamford, near Evesham, Worcestershire.