by Paul Dale
Birmingham's biggest land sale for decades - disposal of the Wholesale Markets - could be finalised within weeks, netting the city council more than £200 million.
Lawyers for the council and US development company Hines are said to be poring over the small print and close to reaching agreement about the exact boundaries of the 21-acre site on the edge of the city centre.
If the deal goes ahead, and that looks a certainty now, it will release the largest single urban redevelopment site anywhere in the UK, and one of the biggest in Europe.
More importantly for the council's Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, the sale will produce funds beyond the dreams even of council leader Mike Whitby.
There's a lot you could do with £200 million. The £30 million funding gap for the new library is a mere bagatelle. The cost of delivering the Midland Metro extension from Snow Hill to the markets site, estimated at £70 million, could be paid for with plenty to spare. It would even be possible to cut through the ring road concrete collar at the appallingly-designed Holloway Head, thereby creating further potential for regeneration sites.
Whitby must think that all his Christmases have arrived at once. He will have good reason to look forward to the council elections in May, safe in the knowledge that he does not have to face the polls again until 2010.
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Magisterial put-down of the West Midlands' two-year investigation into congestion charging from Birmingham Lib Dem councillor Jon Hunt.
The day after the region's council leaders rejected bidding to the Government's Transport Innovation Fund to run road pricing experiments, Hunt trumpeted: "It's unfortunate that so much public money has had to be spent on this exercise when it could have been ploughed directly into public transport.
"The TIF process highlighted the way this region has been bedevilled in the past by centralised and secretive transport projects, relying excessively on big spending at the expense of ordinary travellers."
Tough words, but wouldn't it have been better to have heard more from the Lib Dems before the decision not to proceed with the TIF bid was taken? It's so easy to be wise after the event.
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A cautionary tale from Birmingham commercial property guru Glyn Pitchford, who, having been fired up by the launch of the council's Big City Plan, decided to do his bit for the sustainability agenda.
The diminutive Pitchford, who claims to be 5ft 6, thought he would get his rusting push-bike out of the garden shed and cycle to Solihull Station in order to catch a train to Brum for a "leader's breakfast meeting" organised by the Chamber of Commerce.
Pitchford, who is a business sector rep on the West Midlands Regional Assembly, recalls that he wore a dark blue suit and dark cashmere overcoat with collar pulled up, finished off with a blue woollen scarf, "so's not to be noticed".
Oh, dear. A real cyclist would have known that you do want to be noticed on the roads, especially by lorry drivers.
Pitchford, who is probably lucky still to be alive, picks up the story: "Well, my 35-year-old Dawes (made in Brum) bike had no lights. Neither was I wearing any fluorescent strip.
"I decided it was a bit dangerous to travel by road so I kept to the footpaths but walked the bike until I passed the local police station. I eventually parked the bike in the railway station store only to then realise I hadn't got a chain and lock.
"On my return, I was wondering whether I'd find the bike pinched - but it was still in the same place I left it.
"Cycling home, this time on the main roads, it was then that I realised this was somewhat dangerous. There were no cycle lanes, I wasn't wearing a helmet, I'd forgotten how to change gears and I was in heavy traffic, mainly buses and lorries.
"The fumes were horrid and traversing traffic islands was pretty horrific. The lanes were narrow and there didn't seem to be any leeway given for cyclists by other road users."
Iron Angle's advice, Glyn, is that cycling is best left to paperboys. Stick to the car in future.
