Philip Parkin

The council’s Area Investment Plan arrived in the post today. Last year’s plan arrived in a box, I think, and there were actually 3 of them in total, offering over 60 sites for development across the city. Now that a number of these opportunities have been snapped up, and the recession is biting, it makes sense for the city to accept that development is going to slow down for a while. There are a number of interesting sites in the plan, though, not least Sutton Coldfield Town Centre, the Selly Oak Hospital Site and, of course, Warwickshire County Cricket Ground.

Reading The Economist’s considered article on swine flu today reminded me of Nassim Taleb’s warning in ‘The Black Swan’ about how reading a daily newspaper is, at best, a waste of time, at worst, utterly self-defeating if you want to know what’s really going on. Being too close to a story, especially one on a subject as potentially devasting as a flu pandemic, means we fail to get a sense of perspective. We don’t see the wood for the trees. I’m a sucker for rolling news but when it’s a complicated, emotionally charged issue, the thud of The Economist on my doormat means that at last I’m going to get a bit of clarity.