Birmingham Salon Battle of Ideas Festival 2025 satellite

Discussion 1 - 11.15 am - 12.45 pm

Solving the housing crisis - the soundness of suburbs

Government plans to build a million and a half houses within five years have attracted a great deal of scepticism. They have made some changes to the planning rules but fifteen months after the election there is little sign of a significant change to the construction rates. This shouldn’t be surprising as other recent governments have made similar promises yet achieved very little to tackle the housing shortage.

Why has it been so difficult to build the homes that everyone seems to agree are needed? The usual answer is to blame the slowness and inflexibility of the planning system. Recently some rules have been relaxed but new conditions about affordability have been imposed and the environmental regulations have not been eased at all. This leads to developments of densely packed small properties with little or no parking provision. Despite all the pledges to tackle the issue there seems to be an entrenched attitude to house building that sees it as a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to create places to live.

Clearly the planning rules need more than a bit of fine tuning but is there a way to reform the system or could we simply abandon the idea of planning permission altogether? How can we balance national demands against the need for local democratic control? Is a housing estate, in itself, bad for the environment or can it be an improvement?

Retired councillor and housing expert Simon Cooke has written a defence of suburbia. If we are to sort out our housing crisis and provide the homes people want, he argues, we need to win the argument for why suburbia is the sought-after ideal for most families in search of freedom, in contrast to the apartment blocks and main-road-facing piecemeal housing development in Birmingham.

Speaker:

Simon Cooke is a former marketing professional and was a councillor in Bradford for 24 years, representing a ward entirely within West Yorkshire’s green belt. During this time, Simon spent six years as portfolio holder for Regeneration, a further six years as Conservative group leader as well as serving on the Local Government Association’s Housing, Transport and Environment Board and as a director of a large housing association, managing over 20,000 social homes.

Discussion 2 - 1.15 pm - 2.45 pm

Letters on Liberty - The Freedom to Blaspheme

In his Letter – The Freedom to Blaspheme – writer and curator Manick Govinda argues that blasphemy law has returned through the back door – with Islam, rather than Christianity, pointing the finger at heretics. From recent cases of attacks on free speech to the self-censorship of everyone from teachers to comedians, Manick argues that blasphemers are being persecuted and prosecuted across the world. While courtesy and kindness are valuable features of a free society, he writes, no religion or religious leader should be above criticism. Kowtowing to the offended, no matter how grievous the insult they may feel, weakens our liberty.

In 2024, Birmingham Hall Green MP Tahir Ali requested that the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts. So should we be free to criticise and mock religion? Is there a balance to be struck between tolerance of religious freedom and the right to publicly disagree with other people’s faith? Has the UK brought blasphemy law back to the statute books via the notion of ‘hate crime’? And after the stabbing of Salman Rushdie, the Charlie Hebdo massacre and other Islamist attempts to censor discussion of Islam, is the problem we’re dealing with a different idea of blasphemy to the days when the Life of Brian was banned?

Speaker:

Manick Govinda isan independent writer, commentator, mentor/arts adviser and curator. Prior to going freelance, he was programme director for SPACE (2018), head of Artists Advisory Services & Artists Producer for Artsadmin (1998 – 2017) and projects officer for Arts & Book Publishing at the Paul Hamlyn Foundation (1993-1996).