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.