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October 22, 2007
A fantastic quote from one of Birmingham’s councillors emerged in the Post last week:
“I think it is very sad when people like the Victorian Society say we can’t treat kiddies who have life-threatening illnesses. You have to show some humanity when it comes to things like this.”
The story is that Birmingham’s Children’s Hospital is building a new cancer ward but the Victorian Society, whose mission is “to save and prevent needless destruction and alteration of buildings of architectural and historic interest, built between 1837 and 1914″ reckon they might be going a bit far with the design. Which, naturally, equates to wanting children to die horribly.
If we had an award from appalling use of bad logic by a local politician Mike Sharp (who’s currently the deputy Lord Mayor) would be in the running.
via Jo
it’s a mixture of stupidity & calculated political crassness. He’s trying to appeal to the ‘chattering classes’ to get ‘popular opinion’ on his side.
Sad thing is the paper printed it (with context?*) therefore he’s won
with or without ‘context’ there are people who will take this at face value & beleive that these damn aesthetes want to kill people.
…not that The Victorian Society are aesthetically aesthetes, but that’s another debate
There’s such a thing as design adoration gone crazy – and this would be it. Being that blinkered is ridiculous. I’m sure members of the Victorian Society wouldn’t think twice about what the building looks like if it was their child who needed life-saving treatment.
I hate to use the phrase ’stuck in the past’, but I do wonder about the demographics of the members and whether this could be a factor in their seemingly self-centred view…..
Grrrr…
what you need to ask is why the politician says this? He says it because he wants the plan (in its present form) to go forward.
why is this?
yes, there would be a greater benefit to the community for treatment to be had the presumably is not available elsewhere (is it available anywhere in the district at present?)
why push for this design against the wishes of a presumably moderate group of moderate conservative (small ‘c’) conservationists? They may well be swayed with a modest redisign – they might be pushed aside by need in any case (so their protestations are but nothing)
local polotician trying to talk his reputation up (& hopefully that is all – investigative journalism would look into matters of releations with all involved)
My reading is this is a case of a councilor trying to silence dissenting voices by mounting a non-argument. That sounds slightly “ooh conspiracy!” and I don’t mean to but it’s pretty much what goes on.
I think the reason is it’s easier to get rid of the people who go “um, hang on, have you really thought this through” than to actually think it through. And so as a side effect of lazy or rushed work (depending on the workload of the councilor in question) we get this sort of playground level debate in public.
For the record I’m no big supporter of the Victorian Society but given how much of Birmingham’s architectural history was needlessly smurshed to rubble in the 60s I do think we should be a little more careful these days.
Paediatric oncology services within the locality are varied. BCH, as the central provider to the Second City and its neighbours (and further afield, in some instances), needs to have second-to-none oncological services. Please don’t think that I have anything against Victorian architecture, I certainly don’t and I agree with both of you that there’s a real need to conserve. But I think it depends on the reasons for the need to build in this case.
If it turns out to be no more than a mismatched refurb of an existing space, then it’s ludicrous and feels like a sly handshake to those who will profit from this – and I’ll be duly put in my place for sounding off earlier; on the other hand, if there’s the need to expand the current space then that horrible question of NHS expenditure comes into play. Following the last 20 months or so of the NHS funding plight/ fiasco under the spotlight, if the design is based on cost rather than aesthetic it may well leave a bitter taste, but how could they justify the additional expense of a sympathetic rebuild/expansion at the cost of the taxpayers without a public uproar? Would additional external funding and resources be made available to make this work? Would be good if it could…..
I guess alot of my questions could have been answered if the journo hadn’t just laid down and taken the councillor’s side and had looked into the basics behind the story and asked the trickier questions.
my concern is ‘motive’ & pete’s take on matters might well be right & he is a genuinely stupid politician…
there will be lots & lots of money involved with all this though
it’s sad that the journo just reported the councillor’s point of view though – they may have done reports on the pros & cons befre in the paper.
This generally points to a poor standard of journalism & editorial direction within the paper (at best). Symptomatic laziess where they might as well be reporting on the ‘village fete/town show*’, “Mrs Migins on the cake stall said” sort of thing…
Ah well – cultural entropy & greed/power loves a vacuum
(*ah, but if it were Tackleford..) -