Nusrat Ghani Selected To Stand For Ladywood Constituency

On Friday at a meeting of the Ladywood Conservative Association held at Ladywood Community Centre, Ms Nusrat Ghani was selected as the Conservative candidate to champion the people of Birmingham Ladywood at the next General Election. Ms Ghani said: “It is an honour to have been chosen to represent Ladywood’s residents at the upcoming General Election.

“This is an exciting time for Ladywood as Birmingham city centre continues to transform thanks to flagships projects such as the new library and the proposals released yesterday for the regeneration of Paradise Circus.

“However, Ladywood is suffering from high levels of unemployment and is one of the areas worst hit by the effects of Gordon Brown’s recession and I look forward to working with local residents and the Ladywood Conservative Association to bring around a Conservative Government and implement the right policies to address these issues and get our region working again.”

Dominic Fisher, Chairman of Ladywood Conservatives, said: “I am delighted that the association have chosen such a strong candidate for the forthcoming General Election. In Nusrat we have found a local candidate with the experience, dedication and passion to truly represent the entire community in Ladywood”. 

In the above picture from left to right are 

1. Robert Higginson (Soho ward candidate)
2. Nusrat Ghani, (Ladywood constituency PPC) 
3. Sharon Pennant (Ladywood ward candidate)
4. Dominic Fisher (Ladywood constituency chairman)
5. Mohammed Shahban (Nechells ward candidate)

Jewellery Quarter Focus

We are lucky to have a number of museums in Ladywood constituency,

There are plenty of family events and craft activities taking place at the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter during the summer holidays as follows;

• Visitors will be able to make colourful door hangings (Saturday 15 August)


• Create prints using a mini-printing press with artist and printmaker, Adrienne Craddock (Tuesday 18 August)


• Make animals out of fabric, beads, buttons and other materials (Saturday 22 August)


• Produce their own artwork with art educationalist Connie Harpur (Tuesday 25 August) and;


• Design and create decorative bead accessories (Saturday 29th August).

All of the events taking place on Saturdays are free of charge and suitable for all the family. Events on Tuesdays have a small admission charge and booking is essential. For further details please visit http://www.bmag.org.uk/ or call the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter on 0121 554 3598. In other news, local band Twang have just released an album titled Jewellery Quarter!

Is Ladywood Solid Labour?

It's not rare for naysayers to question how much effort should be put into gaining representation in Ladywood - some describing it as solid Labour. Setting aside the fact that many of our members and supporters in Ladywood are determined to gain better representation for the area, the electoral picture shows that an opportunity exists for change. The following pie chart shows the breakdown of votes cast in Ladywood ward in the Euro elections.

The turnout in Labour is very poor at about 15% of the electorate which means less than 5% of voters in the area voted Labour. Solid Labour? I don't think so. Given that the Conservative Party polled just 27% nationally in the European elections compared to exactly 20% in Ladywood, we can expect an uplift at the next set of locals. With a good campaign we can increase turnout and get supporters of all parties to switch to us. So why shouldn't Ladywood be a target seat in the next set of local elections?

Don't Let Labour Rewrite History On Swimming In Ladywood

Between 1984 and 2004 Labour ran Birmingham council. In all this time, Ladywood ward and constituency were served by Labour politicians. In 1994, the swimming pool on Monument Rd which is in Ladywood ward was demolished by the council, and as we all know, no local replacement was forthcoming. For a video archive of this story, check out the Monument Road video stream at TNT news.

The 2006 local elections in Birmingham were the first after Labour had been turfed out. As our local candidate in those elections pointed out, Labour's literature in that campaign spoke of the pressure they had been putting on the council to build a swimming pool! Fast forward to 2009 and the Conservative-led council has put forward plans for a first class 50m swimming pool in the heart of Ladywood. So are our local Labour councillors happy? Not a bit of it. At the last Ladywood ward meeting on June 15th Kath Hartley in the chair made the odd prediction that the council might use 'nasty politics' over the swimming pool. Even at this late stage, the local Labour councillors are calling on this international venue to be located at Ladywood Middleway. Steve Beauchampe, a researcher and photographer on Great Lengths (Malavan Media, 2009), a book documenting the historic swimming pools of Britain, has labelled this Labour idea a non-starter.

They've got more front than Brighton Beach and it's about time that we pointed out their knee-jerk opposition to anything that isn't their idea.

Birmingham Lives

Last Sunday saw the Birmingham Lives exhibition staged at the Radisson Hotel with dozens of stalls mainly focused on different slices of Birmingham's heritage. Ladywood was well represented. Mac Joseph and his friends from Old Ladywood displayed their extensive wares including a 2010 calendar, but their stand was so busy that we didn't manage to take a good look at the pictures. We met members of the the Ladywood Reunion club. They have decided to sponsor the Kidney for Kids appeal this year and we picked up some leaflets for one of their upcoming events which is taking place at the Tower Ballroom. The Kidney for Kids campaign has been very successful so far this year and WM was unlucky not to win an award at the Birmingham Media Awards. At our last executive meeting, Ladywood Conservatives decided to support this charity this year.

We had the pleasure of briefly meeting Norman Bartlam. Not only is he the author of several books on the history of the area - I picked up a copy of Ladywood Lives from his stall - but he has been expanding the horizons of Ladywood kids for years. His current project is TNT news which gives youngsters from local schools to present their own local news stories. On Monday, their video was played at the Ladywood Ward meeting at Ladywood Community Centre which seems to be a forum where the 3 Labour councillors moan about things that they should already be doing something about.

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