Dear Birmingham Town Planners

I cannot begin to count the number of times I've wanted to compose a suitably-charged missive to you lot, but here it comes, at last. I will be brief, which will please not only yourselves, but also my regular readership.

Recently, you spent rather a long time sorting out Holloway Head. I know, Mr Beetham went and built another monument to his Liverpudlian greatness slap-bang on the roundabout, giving Birmingham its first tall building since either the Rotunda or the BT Tower. Thanks very much, and nice work, except if you're heading towards the place when the sun's low, when it becomes a dazzling beacon to cause major accidents.

But, in your wisdom, you thought - while the whole area was a mess - you'd jump in and make some much-needed alterations to the traffic light, pedestrian crossing and lane system on the roundabout. You'd got rid of the old pedestrian underpass at the place, so you thought: why not stick pedestrian-controlled lights at a major city centre junction?

Well, much as I prefer the pedestrian, I do not prefer it when they are in charge of the traffic-flow around said roundabout. They should - given the sheer volume of vehicles that pass this point each day - be subject to the terribly-well-thought-out sequence of traffic lighting that you have installed, for the benefit of the driver. The pedestrian must kowtow to the motors in this instance.

But no. They are in charge. Have you had a really good look at what you've done to the traffic around Holloway Head? You've completely and utterly fucked it right up, chaps, that's what you've done.

This gets back to what I've identified on many occasions as Birmingham's fatal flaw. It is so preoccupied with modernity: ref. Rotunda, Bull Ring, all these bloody identikit city centre twat-pads (that I and most of my friends live in), that it fails to recognise when something just needs sprucing up, not completely rethinking. The old underpass system at Holloway Head? That just needed making a bit nicer. It takes the pedestrian under all the roads, avoiding the need to hinder either footman or driver. Why did you not sort that out? There's a lovely pagoda in there, you could have put some benches up? Tch. Wasters.