Monday 18 March 2024

Chuck Schumer on wayward, "lost his way" friend Benjamin

14 March 2024 - Sky News

Chuck Schumer: Top Jewish politician in US calls for Israel election and issues warning to Benjamin Netanyahu

The US Senate majority leader has long positioned himself as a supporter of Israel. But in a landmark address, he has criticised its president for being "too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza".

The most senior Jewish politician in the US has labelled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an obstacle to peace and urged him to call an election.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who has long been a supporter of Israel, said on the Senate floor that Mr Netanyahu's government "no longer fits the needs" of the country and that its people "are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past".

The top Democrat said in his 45-minute speech: "As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders, and we should let the chips fall where they may. But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice."

Mr Schumer, who is the first Jewish majority leader in the Senate, called for "a fresh debate about the future of Israel after October 7 [Hamas attack]," and said: "In my opinion, that is best accomplished by holding an election."

Israel's next parliamentary elections are expected to take place in 2026 but could be sooner.

Israel-Hamas latest: Ex-IDF commander calls for government to be 'overthrown'

The senator previously positioned himself as an ally of the Israeli government, but his strongly-worded address saw him accuse Mr Netanyahu of putting himself in coalition with far-right extremists.

You must, please stand up to the men wanting ...

... their big, expensive, engineering projects.

Dear Top Women

You must oppose climate/energy intensifying grand schemes like Metro and Sprint

This month's £6.1 billion to 2032 for 95% Metro and Sprint glam splurge means 6.1 billion units in weight of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  This is disastrous.  Get your engineers and planners employed in getting regular buses and trains up to scratch and the remnant of railway lines back in use for TRAINS not trams (except from Cinder Bank roundabout to Stourbridge Jct, now you have put trams and a test track on the UK's last principal mainline​
​).  Get your staff and money redeployed into insulating and solar powering the homes of the poorest in the region.  This is how it is done:​
SAVE MONEY AND GHG EMISSIONS FROM NOT BOTHERING WITH MORE METRO AND SPRINT AND BUS FRANCHISING:
I have doubts over the wisdom of franchising because:
  • We had it for decades until the 1980s at a time when public transport was in decline and private transport in the ascendancy.  Dreadful things happened with public transport during that time!!
  • We already have the professional partnership between the officers at 16 Summer Lane and the bus companies.
  • The Bus Partnership fixes fares and routes, anyway.  So nothing is gained from franchising.
  • Council control destroyed the total tram network and a very large part of Brum's/Black Country railway network.
  • All seven councils and councillors leave public transport to 16 Summer Lane.  There is a serious democratic deficit because transport directors are sold on developing highly climate/resource-expensive, LR, VLR and ULR rail projects, plus Sprint buses.
  • Edinburgh City Council had discussions, debates and votes before going ahead with their two tram schemes.
  • Councillors who change every year, are blinded by the engineering results, the stunning cleverness of the new, multi-modal magnificence of it all.  Checking, challenging, questionning does not take place.  Now called scrutiny.
  • Tens of millions for franchising that must go into Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT).
  • Hundreds of millions from the 7 councils and cllrs for Metro should be going into FFPT and raising the status of buses at the expense of the dreadful road clogging car commuters.
  • Use the franchising and Metro extension money for bribing car commuters onto buses, trains, trams in the 6 hour rush hour every weekday.
  • My two year Hagley Road experiment suggestion is better!​
  • Franchising is the theory.  The Bus Partnership is the working reality that franchising cannot possibly improve upon.
  • Let individual cllrs and officers become shareholders in the bus companies and even the TfWM, itself.  MAKE MONEY from the dividends in being shareholders!

Sunday 17 March 2024

Guardian on Azhar Ali's comments

The meeting in which Ali claimed Israel had allowed Hamas to inflict its October attack was also attended by Grahm Jones. Labour figures are understood to believe a Labour councillor leaked the recording to the Mail newspapers.

In a recording leaked to the Mail on Sunday, Ali was heard saying: “The Egyptians are saying that they warned Israel 10 days earlier … Americans warned them a day before [that] … there’s something happening. They deliberately took the security off, they allowed … that massacre that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want.”

But after 36 hours, and more leaked recordings from the Daily Mail, his position as a Labour candidate became untenable. In another recording, Ali said “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” were “giving crap” about the MP Andy McDonald, who was suspended by Labour after he used the controversial phrase “between the river and the sea” in a speech during a rally.

The paper said Ali had claimed that Israel planned to “get rid of [Palestinians] from Gaza” and “grab” some of the land.

Now another leaked recording, published by the rightwing political news website Guido Fawkes, allegedly has Jones telling the group: “Fucking Israel again.”

Guardian on Galloway

Galloway, a former Labour MP, was elected in Rochdale as the Workers Party of Britain candidate, after calling the by-election “a referendum on Gaza” and winning the support of a large proportion of the town’s Muslim community.

Labour abandoned its campaign after its candidate, Azhar Ali, was found to have made inflammatory remarks about Israel.

Galloway holds a 5,697-vote majority in the seat that Labour had held since 2005. The win was his seventh parliamentary victory of a political career in which he has represented four cities and three parties across four decades, equalling Winston Churchill’s record.

£15 BILLION TO 2040 reduced to £6.1 billion by 2032

Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) is investing a total of £6.1 billion to deliver a green transport revolution across the region, expanding Metro, bus, rail, cycling and walking networks to better connect people to job and leisure opportunities.

The funding has been secured since TfWM was formed as part of the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) and will be invested over the 15 years to 2032, funding scores of projects and connecting communities across Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton.

As reported here, TfWM confirmed that plans are now being developed for the next five rapid transit routes – to deliver new turn-up-and-go Metro or Sprint rapid bus services.

The next two rapid transit routes, for which detailed business cases are now being worked up, are along Hagley Road in Birmingham and on through Sandwell to Dudley and further extending the line from Digbeth, through East Birmingham and North Solihull. Subject to the business case, construction work could start as early as 2028

Saturday 16 March 2024

14.3.24 Climate Change Select Committee

Dear friends

Last night's 'Public Forum', on the Climate Change Committee agenda, was the first time we had the most councillors contributing to the nearest thing we had to a discussion.  FANTASTIC!  I think that Dudley Council is the only one of the region's seven councils that has such an item on the agenda of some council committees.  WELL DONE DUDLEY!

Chairman Cllr Pete quite properly told me off.  Cllr Natalie put me right over car parking charges.  Excellent.  Cllr Dave B mentioned the Stourbridge Shuttle and what Suzanne Webb wants.  Cllrs Chris B and Hilary thought keeping the tram on the railway, now it is on it, would be best.

Why I think climate change is all embracing across every Council activity:
  1. Accepting that the planet's climates are changing for the worse means acting urgently on every aspect of life (and death)!
  2. It means including every policy area and cllrs checking, questionning and challenging every shibboleth and every conventional wisdom of how things are done or, even, should be done.
  3. Tackling climate means more than renewable and clean energy.
  4. It means more than buying an electric car.
  5. Adapting and mitigating our policies and personal behaviour means absolutely everything and cannot be confined to one or  two committees only.
  6. Parliament's own Climate Change Committee (their climate policy advice body) on the day before our meeting, issued their own school report verdict on HMG.  They said, the government's effort "falls far short of what is needed."
      
  7. Fighting your own 2020 declared Climate Emergency means getting sensible transport, the right transport priorities and not wasting hundreds of millions in both price and weight of greenhouse gas emissions on our own regional equivalent of the HS2 folly.
  8. It means housing of the right kind in the right places, eg: forgotten High Plateau and its purpose developed 22,000 sq m.
  9. It means trying to minimise the destruction of Nature in one of the most Nature depleted countries in the world.
  10. It means protecting Public Open Space.
  11. It means finishing the Black Country Forest at Merry Hill and working on the owners to do so.
  12. Responding to the climate emergency means low incomes helped before car users.
  13. Means working towards FREE concessionary travel for all in the region, rather than expanding free car parking.
  14. Means cutting back on our own car mileage and trying bus and/or bike.
And so it goes on ... with your own ideas!

"My Kingdom is not of this world"

John wrote, "The message of scripture is that while we need to live with the state, our primary citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20) and all our lives are centred not on the nation but on the church."

We are supposed to be centred on the non-violent Jesus of the Gospels.

For me, my first duty as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven is to seek to live in total compliance (extremely hard!) with the life and teaching of the non-violent King Jesus in the Gospels and, the Sermon on the Mount, in particular.  This means, certainly, conscientious objection to my conscription to even a Church-supported 'just war' and refusal to work in the arms industry.  Hence, I'm a member and financial supporter of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.

My non-violent heroes are: Jesus Christ, of course, but also Gandhi. Desmond Tutu, Dalai Lama, Mohammed Ali, Donald Soper, Martin Luther King Jnr and, Bruce Kent.

I think the names and boundaries of states change over the years and are not worth killing for.

As for Michael writing about the Devil Putrid and how important it is to kill and maim to fight him, I don't think he is worth the bother.  Just let the nasty Putrid strut and rage but don't kill others to fight evil Putrid by evil means.  The ends don't justify the means.  Like Jesus, I end up getting killed rather than killing.  So be it!

What's the problem with Putrid?

Our top notch Western nations, I think, were too bellicose, were not magnanimous in victory after the Cold War that, anyway, was ended by the Russians - not us!  Instead, we crowed over our mighty victory.  We stuck the boot in by expanding NATO, after clearing it with the EU/Russian Council, with all the former Warsaw Pact members being allowed in.  No wonder Putrid was not best pleased!

Danny Sriskandarajah, Ch Exec, New Economics Foundation

TRANSCRIPT of brilliant Danny who seems to be on the side of climate and social justice.  WELL DONE, DANNY!

His new book is 'Power to the People - Use Your Voice, Change the World' - a radical manifesto for change designed to inspire citizen action around the world.  Hardcover out 18 July '24.

On AQ on 15 March 2024, Danny said

75% of women of colour in the UK say they have faced racial abuse in the workplace.  We won't take money from companies that trade in arms, pornography or tobacco.  V important to foster trust in the charity.  Stand up for a set of values that are based on equality.

Net zero energy projects

We must have a stable climate to avoid the world's climates from wreaking havoc on humanity.  What is in the best interests of future generations?

About 0.1% of UK land is taken up by solar farms.  It will take about 0.5% of arable land in UK to meet our net zero target.  Community power projects needed, so empower local communties to make the best decisions for them.  So you get energy and food security.

We have a chronic, generation-defining challenge about what is happening to all of our public services.  Last week's buget chose not to invest in our public services, not to invest any further in our NHS, into our schools and transport systems.  We have to have a v different approach 'cos our public services are desperately in need of investment.  We need green investment to make sure we can transition to a green economy and yet all the major pol parties seem to be caught up in some sort of bizarre game of playing to the fiscal rules.  They are arbitrary rules about how much of a proportion of GDP debt should be, refuse to invest in basic services that we all need and instead cutting taxes.  This is a govt that talks about levelling up.  The cut in National Insurance last week will benefit London and SE households far more than it will benefit the households in the other regions.  The richest 20% of people will get 12 x more from the NI cut last week than the poorest 12%.  Yet, meanwhile our public services including schools, including the provision of school meals, languishes with chronic under investment.  We have to fix it.

ALEX: Should we borrow to fund public services because we know that the cost of servicing debt has consequences for the economy, too? 

DANNY:  Yes.  First of all, don't cut taxes.  Use that money to invest wisely. Investment is the thing that is holding us back. Ask any economist and they will tell you that. It is private investment and investment in public services.  So don't give away that money in tax cuts that benefit the rich disproportionately.

Instead, if you have to borrow but, borrowing for investment is a very different matter from borrowing to pay your regular bills.  Build a tax system that can pay for our everyday costs in running those public services but where you need to invest borrow and markets will look upon that very favourably, because they know that those investments will have long term returns.  Yet, politicians say we have maxed out the credit card.  Govt finances are not like household finances.  If you invest to grow that benefits everyone in the long term.

FFPT = Fare-Free Public Transport is "win, win, win" said Danny

DANNY: Investing in free or low-cost public services improves quality of life, improves social mobility, it reduces traffic, it improves the environment, and I think govt in the UK should go further. In Germany last year they rolled out a 49 Euro/mth pass for all transport.  In Luxembourg all public transport is free. So why don't we think about free/subsidised public transport as a central service that we all have a right to.  Funded by a well thought out tax system that does not have loop holes, that doesn't give the wealthy a free 'Get out of Jail' card.

Wikipedia on George Kennan

During his later years, Kennan concluded that "the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union".[132] At age 98, he warned of the unforeseen consequences of waging war against Iraq. He warned that attacking Iraq would amount to waging a second war that "bears no relation to the first war against terrorism" and declared efforts by the Bush administration to associate Al-Qaeda with Saddam Hussein "pathetically unsupportive and unreliable". Kennan went on to warn:

Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before  ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.[133]

The 2008 Russo-Georgian War: Putin’s green light

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/peter-dickinson/     By Peter Dickinson

On August 8, 2008, Russian forces began the invasion of Georgia, marking the start of Europe’s first twenty-first century war. The conflict itself was over within a matter of days, but the repercussions of the Russo-Georgian War continue to reverberate thirteen years on, shaping the wider geopolitical environment.

The international reaction to Russia’s military campaign in Georgia was to prove remarkably muted, with Moscow suffering few negative consequences. On the contrary, EU leaders led calls for a ceasefire that appeared to favor Russian interests, while the US under the new Obama administration was soon calling for a reset in relations with the Kremlin.

Understandably, many in Moscow interpreted this accommodating approach as an informal invitation for further acts of aggression in Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. Six years after the Russo-Georgian War, Russia embarked on a far more comprehensive military campaign against Ukraine, where Moscow continues to occupy Crimea and large swathes of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

The 2008 Russo-Georgian War is now widely recognized as a landmark event in the transition from the era of post-Soviet cooperation between Russia and the West towards today’s Cold War climate. The Atlantic Council invited a range of experts to share their views on the legacy of the conflict and its impact on the international security environment.

John Herbst, Director, Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council: Thirteen years ago, Europe experienced major power aggression for the first time since Hitler’s defeat in 1945. Russian troops attacked and defeated Georgian forces in a short war that Moscow and its proxies in South Ossetia provoked. The reaction of the West was slow and weak. French President Nicolas Sarkozy negotiated ceasefire terms that Moscow largely violated without consequence. The Kremlin learned that the West preferred to ignore or at least minimize Russian bad behavior in the so-called Near Abroad.

Moscow applies this lesson in Georgia today as it regularly moves the demarcation line between South Ossetia and the rest of Georgia a few meters further into the country. Russia also applied the lessons of 2008 in Crimea and Donbas. It took the West some time, and the July 2014 shooting down of the MH17 passenger airliner, to impose serious sanctions on Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine.

If US President Joe Biden would like to demonstrate the fresh resolve in dealing with Moscow that he promised as a candidate, he should announce contingency sanctions that the US will apply the next time Moscow “adjusts” that internal demarcation line in Georgia

Friday 15 March 2024

2 mins to select, copy, paste

Please select, copy, paste to customerservices@tfwm.org.uk with this suggestion, if you agree:

It will save over £100 m and, a similar weight of greenhouse gas emissions, if you abandon the plan to take the Dudley Tram off the railway line into Merry Hill to destroy public open space, nature, housing land and a vertical guerrilla garden.  Instead, keep it on the railway to connect it to the national railway network at Stourbridge Junction.

Your 400 m long, very energy intensive in construction, high climate impacting, concrete and steel tramway viaduct, is too destructive and the tram deposits Merry Hill shoppers on the high canal embankment towpath and not above the shops, as your previous monorail did.

Thanks so much.

'THE EXCHANGE' 3 Centenary Square B1 2DR - exchanging common sense for ... ?

Dear friends

You have no intention of having automatic opening/closing front or internal (front) doors - only at the rear entrance!

This foolish idiocy, this epitomy of irresponsibility, this climate denying, indeed climate accelerating practice, has now gone on since September 2021 when the lovely building was opened to visitors - and I first came in the week you opened.

Last year, it was one member of staff, on the door to welcome visitors, who understood the good sense of keeping the cold out and the warmth in.  This was a young woman and a most junior member of staff, who was making the correct observation that she was going to get cold in the coming winter!

What was the reason for not having automatic closures on the two sets of internal swing doors?! Ah! The awkward, semi-circular space above.  Do I have that right? 

Monica used the word "intimidating" because staff don't like being politely reminded of the urgent need for each of us to save energy to save the planet and it's life support systems.  My wife and I have been playing our part to protect the future for you youngsters for decades and our latest initiative is this:
Since 30.11.23, when the gas meter was taken out, my wife and I have been 100% solar powered or, importing cheap, otherwise wasted (?) night time/early morning electricity into a 14 kWp battery, for our domestic use.  Transitioned over about 18 mths - central heating gone first, then cooking and, lastly, water to instant electric hot water last October.
Hence, total energy bill in Dec 2023 £51 (including 5% VAT)
                                      January £42.
                                      February £28
                                      March - not yet arrived
For most of the year, the house is a mini power station, ie a big exporter of electricity.  Every building should be like our home!  Our setup is simpler and more effective than anything else, alongside regional renewable provision.

The eccentricity and absurdity of wide open front and internal front corridor doors is on a par with the idiocy and incompetence of turning two of our important Black Country and Brum mainline railways into short, shuttle, Metro tramways!

With best wishes

Tim    (Weller  28 Hunnington Cres  HALESOWEN  B63 3DJ)

Thursday 14 March 2024

£9.6 billion for the Midlands from cancelling HS2 (to save money!)

 

Written Answers - Department for Transport: Railways: Birmingham and Greater Manchester

12 Mar 2024

As announced in the Network North command paper, every penny of the £19.8 billion committed to the Northern leg of HS2 will be reinvested in the North; every penny of the £9.6 billion committed to the Midlands leg will be reinvested in the Midlands; and the full £6.5 billion saved through our rescoped approach at Euston will be spread across every other region in the country.

Network North provided £500m to improve rail capacity North of Birmingham and work is ongoing to develop value for money interventions using these funds. This includes upgrades around Handsacre, where the HS2 line joins the West Coast Mainline, and other potential enhancements on the network.

Centuries of blatant disregard for the most elementary moral code ...

 ... let alone the 10 Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. The last being particularly difficult for the mighty imperial conquerors amongst us.

to Bob Whitehead re WMCC and doubts over bus franchising

I would like a discussion which means disagreement or, certainly, questions and doubts raised.  If only others could disagree and, explain why, with what I think is so important to slow climate disaster - but, this never happens!

I have doubts over the wisdom of franchising because:
  • We had it for decades until the 1980s at a time when public transport was in decline and private transport in the ascendancy.  Dreadful things happened with public transport during that time!!
  • We already have the professional partnership between the officers at 16 Summer Lane and the bus companies.
  • The Bus Partnership fixes fares and routes, anyway.  So nothing is gained from franchising.
  • Council control destroyed the total tram network and a very large part of Brum's/Black Country railway network.
  • All 7 councils and cllrs leave public transport to 16 Summer Lane.  There is a serious democratic deficit because transport directors are sold on developing highly climate/resource-expensive, LR, VLR and ULR rail projects, plus Sprint buses.
  • Edinburgh City Council had discussions, debates and votes before going ahead with their two tram schemes.
  • Cllrs who change every year, are blinded by the engineering results, the stunning cleverness of the new, multi-modal magnificence of it all.  Checking, challenging, questionning does not take place.
  • Tens of millions for franchising that could go into FFPT.
  • Hundreds of millions from the 7 councils and cllrs for Metro should be going into FFPT and raising the status of buses at the expense of the dreadful road clogging car commuters.
  • Use the franchising and Metro extension money for bribing car commuters onto buses, trains, trams in the 6 hour rush hour every weekday.
  • My two year Hagley Road experiment suggestion is better!
  • Franchising is the theory.  The Bus Partnership is the working reality that franchising cannot possibly improve upon.
  • Let individual cllrs and officers become shareholders in the bus companies and even the TfWM, itself.  MAKE MONEY from the dividends in being shareholders!

Tuesday 12 March 2024

from Kevin Kendall

You are right about Bham Uni.  They are now erecting an 'energy institute' but they have failed to install any renewables. It is distressing that the basics of conservation, like your message on the Exchange doors,  need to get urgent attention. The same is true at Tyseley energy park where wind and solar have been long neglected

Our armaments are leading to genocide in Gaza

Dear friends

"Each year the Home Office brings together cops, spies, border guards, arms companies and delegations from other countries, many with poor human rights records, for its Security and Policing arms fair  This year participants will include Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, BAE Systems and L3 Harris, all of whom are deeply complicit in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel."  (from today's email to me from Campaign Against the Arms Trade)

The parties you are members of fully support - not just complicit in! - the manufacture and export of armaments and ammunition to the IDF to allow them, for the sixth month, to pummel Gaza to death in acts of genocide.

Is there one exceptional politician who will break ranks and speak out, if only to me, to say that you are as horrified as I am by Israel's cruel, brutal, vicious revenge attacks on men, women and children who had nothing to do with the 7.10.23 atrocity?  Acts leading to genocide of Gazans, so far 30,000, all under the disgusting lie of self-defence.

Six People of Non-Violence to remember and follow

Thanks so much, Carol for this lovely email and to hear that you are a Quaker, working for peace.  Brilliant!  I love the Quakers and their great work.

All my life I have been renouncing war and the weapons of war.  I was a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation for many years as a young man, and greatly admire men and women of non-violence like Donald Soper, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King Jnr, Mohammed Ali, Bruce Kent and, of course, the mighty powerful Gandhi.  I'm a financial supporter of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.

Monday 11 March 2024

I am writing from the perspective of ...

... ourselves and our nation needing to examine our own motives, behaviour and the very long history of exploration of the world that then led to trade with the people we met and the abomination of acquiring colonies and the control that came with it.  I find the history quite despicable but understandable; and also deliciously hypocritical.  Sometimes humorous and needing self-criticism of accepting, not ignoring, the sorry past.

This led to W European nations, especially England, settling in these lands and, lo and behold, taking over the indigenous peoples but, of course, for the best of all possible reasons - Christian civilisation!  So that's all right, then. Our ancestors had the most well-intentioned motives to save them and to show them a better way of life. One based on the Bible - and rather finite fossil fuels!

Colonialism and slavery seemed to have started with the white man, in our case, under Elizabeth 1's patronage and John Hawkins' "pioneering slave trading voyage in 1562". (Sanghera, 'Empireworld', p 10) Piracy, too. And the pirates were knighted!  The Queen "honoured Hawkins, (additionally) by giving him a coat of arms that featured a chained African" (ibid p 241) Despicable behaviour by us fine, upstanding Brits. But, also our history is a treasure trove of double standards, comedy and satirical opportunities to make fun of.  Especially when we had the supposedly unchanging moral code in the Bible!

I see Israel as a modern, wealthy, Western nation, firmly in the US/UK camp. But, unfortunately in the very heart of the Islamic World and brazenly boasting it's credentials to its neighbours as the Bad Samaritan or as the robber of land in the much-ignored Good Samaritan story.  Yet, it seems to have no shame, whatsoever. It has no insight, no self-reflection. So sad!

I've heard Muslims call Israel the cuckoo in the nest. I think, rather aptly.