Dear Editor, In their desperation to regain the initiative in their propaganda war on the Central Library Council Leaders have announced what we already knew – that Argent plc is their favourite developer for Paradise Circus, and no other developer was invited.

But we are none the wiser about what they intend to do there than we were seven years ago when the Council first decided that it wanted to sell its valuable property interests in Paradise Circus. Since then we pedestrians have found our way from “east to west” and back again without too much difficulty, although now through the cluttered Paradise Forum under the Central Library that is felt by many to be ugly, but is, without doubt, an increasingly well-known landmark due to its unique design. No building in Brindleyplace stamps such a memorable image on the mind.

Lucinda Lambton, in her Radio 4 programme Listed, certainly wanted the Library to be kept for future generations. After walking through Victoria Square and Chamberlain Square she described her reaction on seeing it as “wham bam in your eye this sensational seventies Brutalist monster of a block which becomes beautiful by virtue of its being of its age, and there won’t be any more ever.”

How can the new Minister for architecture, Barbara Follett, disagree?

Alan Clawley

Friends of the Central Library

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The art of putting

your foot in it

Dear Editor, Deirdre Alden has got herself in a twist again.

I see she’s questioning if an exhibition by Turner Prize winner Martin Creed should be staged at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

She’s said (quote) “I don’t know how people think that is entertainment”

Well, art isn’t always about being entertaining. Sometimes it’s challenging. Sometimes it’s offensive. Sometimes it leaves you cold. The point of the arts is to stir a reaction. Using the word entertainment as a criterion for understanding is a bad place to start... but Deirdre doesn’t leave it there. Oh no, she’s going to push on further, she going to give us a piece of her mind.

“When I go to look at art I want to see something and think that’s really clever, I couldnt have done that.”

Which is lovely. Given the kind of “art” she’s been involved in is writing Bunty style stories of girls at boarding schools and riding horses, brushing their hair Mrs Alden shouldn’t be attacking art. Once again we see a typical response by the Tory Party to the arts. Don’t understand it, cut the funding, call it sick in the process.

I’ve not seen the exhibition yet, I’m looking forward to it. But I’m going to allow the works to speak for themselves rather than allowing Mrs Alden’s small-minded judgemental attitude to frame mine.

Ben Whitehouse, by email

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Pray we don’t face

this awful choice

Dear Editor, What a terrible situation the parents of Danny James were in, and who could possibly blame them for helping their son kill himself?

This isn’t about man-made laws and judicial procedures, this is about love, not financial gain or emotional greed, the terrible dilemma of devoted dad Mark and mum Julie and the guilt they have to carry for the rest of their lives just doesn’t bear thinking about, but we have to bring the Jameses to book, because we just don’t have an answer for these type of circumstances, and until we debate the right to exit this world with the help of others we have to put justice in the hands of the courts, and pray to God , that we don’t have to face such a choice.

ST Vaughan