to Cycling UK

Hi Connor

Thanks so much for getting back to me.

I am not wanting funding from yourselves but from Active Travel England and West Midlands Combined Authority (Beccy Marston)!  However, your action, please, to get the missing NCR number for easily the UK's most important, business, commuter, leisure route in the very middle of England, with its over 2 million West Midlands population!

Very important because it is an urban-rural-urban cycle-walkway connecting three large council areas on two unused railway lines.  Yet, after all these years of asking the authorities and yourselves there is still no interest - apart from one excellent former Labour councillor (climber and big cyclist) who has identified a superb circular route to take in three of the four Black Country boroughs and the 2,768 metre long Netherton Canal Tunnel, with its slum disgrace of a flooded, pot holed towpath.  His circular route includes our 18 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway!

I've even had a phone conversation with Duncan Dollimore but, still nothing!  Duncan does not agree with me over its importance and scandalous neglect.

Very important because it is longer than the 1970s Bristol to Bath railway path and, it was made into a cycle path I think in the 1980s, certainly in the 5 Kms Dudley section and has been neglected ever since in Dudley by Dudley MBC.  Now it is a dirt bikers, quad bikers, 4x4 paradise after the drought this year!  Law-abiding active travellers get inconvenienced and even excluded because of the dirt bikers brigade and 4x4s.

Very important because South Staffordshire District Council has, this year completed the tarmacking of their section through Wombourne town.  Everyone is delighted!

Easily the most important cycle-walkway because even famous John Grimshaw (founder of Sustrans) and Caroline Levett have ridden it and agree it must be an oversight regarding the missing NCR number.  That was this year, on the 24 March but nothing since then, even from them and their Greenways and Cycle Routes organisation!  Never a reply.

Very important because it has so many names over its 18 Kms length, plus three nature reserves, two cafe in two Victorian railway stations and a Woodland Trust property.  All it lacks is the King coming up from the Palace to walk or horse ride it!  Part is called the Monarch's Way, too, after a previous King Charles (no 2)!

Best wishes

Tim

Is this investment somewhat extreme?

 Improving the transport between Brum city centre and Solihull by:

• Building the UK's 5th mode of rail transport, a high speed railway when it already has the fourth mode, heavy rail.
• Spending tens of millions in price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions for the bus that thinks it's a tram, called Sprint when it already has regular buses.
• Spending billions in price and in weight of GHG emissions for superduper trams when it already has a good bus service.
• The UK tram promotion group (at WMCA HQ) calls the tram a "bus on rails".  Therefore, the third bus service and two different kind of railways over a distance of 12 Kms.

Ah, but you are wrong, Mr Weller.  The three new modes of transport go through deprived areas of transport.

And multi-modal transport is a GOOD THING.  Our Andy Street says so, echoed by our man today, Richard Parker.

Comments from Israelis who read Haaretz

 there's no rising antisemitism in the world, there's only rising criticism of israel, the most dangerous place for jews.

Would you want to come to a country where the government is gangs of Cossacks united by their ability to extort the Chief Hetman who will do anything, including send your children to battle, to stay out of jail? Where the Justice Minister changes the locks of the office on the Attorney General?

"Growing antisemitism is not driving Jews out of their countries, as Israeli immigration officials had predicted" - "had predicted", or had been expecting? Considering that there is an official and concerted strategy of sowing fear about increasing antisemitism abroad by conflating it with criticism of Israel's policies, could we infer that this campaign is part of a deliberate overall scheme to attract more settlers to Israel at a time when more land is intended to be grabbed from the West Bank and Gaza, like the two sides of the one coin? A wild thought, perhaps, but could Israel be that sick, manipulative, and treacherous towards Judaism? It has already sunk so low that this would hardly be surprising...

My comment was deleted but I can back up every word I said with either a Haaretz.com article or documentary by a global media. Why do you ask me to not believe my own eyes? For you who were born in the UK, France, Germany..., you know it is illegal to steal somebody's else land but you choose to partake in it in Occcupied West Bank, that you call J and S. I ask you: why? Why are you not doing it in France for example? Were you refraining yourself all the time. Unless you were faking your western values all the time? If you are stealing someone's land for religious reasons then you are violating the Ten Commandments already. The Land was promised to Abraham' s seed. But did he no buy land for a place to bury Sara ? So yes you are stealing . In your racial rage you even say Palestinians and Palestine never existed. That is the real genocidal rhetoric.

Reply to comment

"The Land was promised to Abraham' s seed." Yes! What people tend to forget is that the Palestinians/Arabs ARE descended from the seed of Abraham – through Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar! QED!

Why do trade union, left wing, environmental groups find it impossible ...

 ... to meet with and have a discussion over all of our mutual concerns with the actual decision makers at TfWM/WMCA HQ at 16 Summer Lane?

A plethora of great groups from Acorn, through pensioner groups to West Midlands Climate groups but never any attendance at meetings that the public are entitled to attend.

Why am I the only one?  Although I've had a break this year.

Am I the only one who has actually met with individual decision makers at 16 Summer Lane?

Am I the only one who thinks that to slow rather than deepen the Climate Emergency, we want the decision makers to minimise their spending on the wrong things?

What are the wrong things?

Would our respected Bob Whitehead's list, here help?

Will anyone else join me at a WMCA meeting in September?

TIM WELLER

We always have to be the world democratic dominant bloc - and definitely over Putin and Hamas!

Since the 2nd millennium BC, when the people of Israel committed aggression, the Lord God of Israel rewarded them with victory and ownership of the Land. 

In 1948, Yahweh gave them victory over the biggest and mightiest Empire the world has ever seen. With God on their side they won every war since 1948 - but they are STILL not living in peace and security. Their enemies remain surrounding them.  Tragic, unhappy Israel.

The mightiest, WMD-equipped, regional super-power still can't exterminate Hamas. Is the IDF simply incompetent, I have to ask myself?

Israel even has Emperor Trump backing them to the hilt.  He was saved, indeed by the Lord God Himself but, they still can't wrap up the war in a glorious victory to achieve the Greater Promised Land from the River to the Sea, as the Likud Charter puts it as their objective. Quite shameful failure, this time.

For the first time in over 3,000 years, under the most ultra-nationalist, right-wing Government, Israel has ever seen, they may be incapable of winning this never-ending, insurgent-led war (cf Vietnam War). Even with every modern military piece of kit supplied by the Judeo-Christian, American-led West.

What is the matter with our Bibi and his friends?  I started reading his autobiography when I was with some lovely Messianic Christian friends, of whom Linda is one.  All three are very pro-Israel.  Yet, I was disappointed that even after Mosad received reports of suspicious-looking, even suggested military activities, over the border in Gaza, prior to 7.10.23, the arrogance, complacency and disbelief of Bibi's Government, meant they still did not act.  As Head of Government, Bibi lacked the integrity to do the honourable thing and resign as the one responsible for this very serious and horrific security lapse.

Israel and its Judeo-Christian, American-led, Western allies have made enemies throughout the Middle East with their grasping of Arab oil to fuel their 20th-century wars; with their military bases on holy Muslim soil - the most mortal sin imaginable for some Muslims like Osama bin Laden.  Such men were appalled at the moral decadence and immorality, as they saw it, of the 'Christian' West.  We rarely were a good example with our democratic duplicity, democratic double standards, democratic coercion, force and violence and, in effect, giving ourselves a democratic American/European base in the heart of Muslim/Arab country as a blatant reward for their/our side's aggression.  We have not covered ourselves in glory over the last 125 years in the Middle East.

My jaundiced view of Christian ethics as actually practised and, of British behaviour around the world, was not helped by my reading and re-reading of Jeremy Bowen's 2022 book, 'The Making of the Modern Middle East'.  Measured, fair, accurate and always a seeker after the truth, the true facts.  And, like Sam, yourself and me - Bowen is also happy to be corrected!

Bishop Nick Baines has it dead right, again

My point is simple. The problem of the human bias to destructiveness is evidenced in religious conflict and the lust for power at any level. It is not cured by rationalism. How is that the culture, philosophy and idealism of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, etc. was so easily corrupted within a century or less by a populace drawn to populism, fascism and mass slaughter?

If the bloodbaths of religious wars in Europe led to a better way, then that better way also led to Buchenwald and the Stasi. Now listen to the rhetoric of the far right wing groups springing up in Germany and across Europe, blending the language of dehumanising hate under the guise of “cultural realism”.

https://nickbaines.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/the-fragility-of-civilisation/

Nick Baines on good governance in Germany

I was in Vienna recently and saw something that sums up the challenge of Germany in the last century. At one end of the Judenplatz is the haunting Holocaust Memorial by Rachel Whiteread; facing it, twenty metres away, is a statue of the philosopher, poet and Enlightenment hero Johann Gottfried Herder who re-shaped German education and culture. The question that cries out is this: how did Germany go from Herder to Hitler in a mere century?

This is the question that Germany has been unable to escape in the last seventy years or so. Walk around any German city and you will find yourself stepping on small brass plaques in the pavement bearing the name and dates of Jews deported to their deaths from the houses before which you now stand. They are everywhere – and they are called Stolpersteine: stumbling blocks that get in your way and compel you to face responsibility for what happened to your neighbours only a generation or two ago.

Because of its history Germany has had no option but to confront its past and choose its future. Yet, as time moves on and memory becomes history, revisionism becomes easier for some people. Recent changes in the political landscape come on the back of concerns about immigration in general and Islam in particular. Yet this phenomenon was almost inconceivable only a decade ago.

What it demonstrates is that human beings all too easily re-shape their worldview according to the world they now live in. We can accommodate all sorts of challenges to our ethics … until we find their foundation has been undercut and we have given away too much. Perhaps history teaches us that it is not a big step from ‘every human being matters’ to ‘some matter more than others’ to ‘these are not really people of value’.

If you go into Berlin Cathedral and look up at the dome, you will see in gold lettering words from the Lord’s Prayer: “Dein ist das Reich” – “Thine is the Kingdom”. I have sat there and thought of the generations of people – from the Second Reich through Weimar and the Nazis, through the GDR and the now-reunited Germany – and wondered what Christian worshippers thought that meant. And how could they so easily confuse the Kingdom of Caesar with the Kingdom of the Jesus we read about in the gospels? Whose Reich/Kingdom do we really serve?

The question goes to the heart of how human beings make sense of themselves and the world – and whether, when the heat is on, the foundation of our ethical frameworks is as sound as we like to think it is. Humility, generosity, loving your neighbour, protecting the weak – or self-preservation at all costs?

Every generation faces the same question. So does every nation.

Thought for the Day extract from Bishop Nick Baines

Every day in Parliament begins with the Lord’s Prayer. It will be said daily by millions of Christians and in most church services. But, how we say it reveals what we really think it means.

So, for example, should I stress “Your kingdom come” or “your kingdom come”?

I think it should be the former, with the stress on the “your”. Why? Because there are plenty of other kingdoms on offer and vying for dominance. When Jesus taught his friends to pray this way, you could get executed for claiming that anyone other than Caesar was ‘the Lord’. To pray “your kingdom come” was potentially – or maybe even essentially – seditious.

This isn’t a merely religious question. Whose kingdom we choose to serve has real-world consequences. For some people, it means protesting against the state or the law, thus coming into conflict over what they believe is more fundamentally right than what the dominant culture allows. Those taking part in protests against the proscription of Palestine Action are counting the cost of this ethical choice.

Why does the Israel/Palestine war get so much airtime?

"Why does this very small place generate so many headlines and why does the world look at it in the way that it does?  Firstly, it is uniquely divisive.  Everybody with a background in one of the three monotheistic religions, probably learnt about this place in their education; a lot of people think they know something about here.

"It also plays into people's world views.  If you are one of those people who believe there is a dominant Western agenda driven by American power, by finance capital, by Western attitudes towards the rest of the world.  And also if you have the other attitude that there are important issues of liberation, of freedom, of colonialism at play here, then I think not just the Middle East but specifically the Israeli/Palestinian conflict becomes a microcosm of all of that.  And people are able to play into that a lot of the things that they are passionate about and sometimes people are more passionate about those wider issues than actually knowing the detail, which can be a little involved about what is going on here."

JEREMY BOWEN on Feedback, 7 August 2025

to Footsteps re the importance of bus/trains over trams

All the trees, shrubs and plants have been clear felled in this photo, apart from the far left hand top corner that is on the far side of the canal:​

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

​As I explained to Toqueer, I have succeeded in preventing this totally unnecessary destruction when it was due to be completed in the year 2000.  In the 1990s the monorail was built at Merry Hill but then closed and removed to Australia to make way for the trams - now due to arrive at the end of the decade when the monorail could have been doing the job to reduce GHG emissions over the last 30 years.​

 1990s monorail map.jpg

​

I played a small part in stopping the conversion of the Brum to Bristol mainline railway to part tramway.  Since the 2016 announcement the plan is to rebuild the three railway stations (ongoing for years!)

I'm trying to explain to people that to fight the Climate Emergency, multi-modal public transport meaning Very Light Rail trams (VLR in Coventry), Light Rail Metro (LR), regular heavy rail trains (HR), High Speed Rail (HS2), Sprint buses and regular buses ... do not help!!  However, VLR or Stourbridge Shuttle on the world's shortest branch line (1.5 Kms) I asked for in the 1990s is sensible.

I don't want the Stourbridge Shuttle extended onto the London to Edinburgh, Black Country Mainline Railway to meet the Dudley Tram - one idea being discussed.  The tram is a "bus on rails".  Better to get electric buses directly on roads without the railway tracks.  Does this meet with Climate reduction measures, do you think?​

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

​

It would be wonderful if you three gentlemen and Footsteps could also help with getting the decision makers to concentrate on getting electric buses and trains, ONLY - and trains not trams on existing but unused railway lines.  It is supposed to be a Climate Emergency, after all!

Please write to customerservices@tfwm.org.uk - especially if you can go along with what I am suggesting.

To provoke your thoughts

We are the rich and powerful.

Or, are we like the priest and the levite in the story of the Good Samaritan?  Or the robber?

Israel is our friend, ally and member of our 'club'.  Therefore, it is we who pick off the Gazans/Palestinians in Judea/Samaria one by one as the enemy. 

We bomb and shoot them while we sleep easy in our beds.

We deprive them of food and water while we fatten ourselves on all the good things of life.

We give ourselves High Speed trains and Light Rail and Very Light Rail trams costing many billions while feeling so righteous in providing the poor with food banks and a little charity when they can't pay their energy bills.

 

We spend millions to convert road space and pavements for cyclists, while the UK's top, 18 Kms cycle/walkway lies a muddy, unfinished, neglected mess over the southern 5 Kms in the historic capital of the Black Country - Dudley.

We destroy Nature at Merry Hill Shopping Centre to get the nearby, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" - for trams, a test track and for dog walkers of all things, instead of TRAINS!

We spend millions on failing to stop the small boats while at the same time, officially, letting in a good few times more net migrants* to work/study while many enjoy early retirement and leisure and pleasure.

We let pariah Israel get on with it in Palestine while we turn over in our comfortable beds to sleep off the misery, suffering and death in Gaza.

Who is the real robber?

Who is the real victim?

And when will the Good Samaritan turn up - if ever?

Problematic, punitive Israel and the Vanished Samaritan.

* now (50 K) as the proportion of invited migrants (431 K in 2024. "This represents a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year." - Google search)

Questions for Tim Gregory, author of 'Going Nuclear', pub 2025

This must easily be the best pro-nuclear book ever published.  It is so well written, is clear but detailed and, for me, is irrefutable.  It raises these questions, however.

• Why do you play down the role of water in nuclear power when water is essential for cooling and in the operation process?
• If that is true, how are we able to build SMRs in towns and cities?
• Over-promised and under-delivered ever since the 1950s with the "too cheap to meter" promised but never delivered.  Please comment.
• You are on the side of the powers that be - the authorities who had our taxes to go ahead with nukes but have struggled for decades.  How come?  Is this to do with at least four nuclear accidents?  Or, five with the wrong button/dial operated by the Indian nuclear worker.
• Why has your side never succeeded as the French government has with nuclear elecy?
• Do you have a map of their nuclear sites, please?
• Does your book explain what went wrong to cause the nuclear accidents?  YES!  Chapter 9.  I'm on 8.
• Do you know why George Monbiot has gone over to your side, some years ago, now?
• How much nuclear electricity do we take from France?
• Do you approve of the 5 August pronouncement that the US will build a nuclear reactor on the moon?
• Which one person or organisation is the most active or, anti-nuclear electricity?
• Any others?
• Have you had any exchanges or debates with them?
• Should we 'Just Stop Oil' (meaning no more exploration for new fields) and go hell for leather with SMRs?
• Is the solution my wife and I have chosen of a mini power station for nine months of the year and the other three relying on batteries to import elecy in the middle of the night, any good?  SEE:-

• Thursday, 28 December 2023

  How we got rid of gas to arrive at 100% electricity

  I am horrified by the spread of war - now to the Middle East as well as eastern Europe/Russia and our own ecocidal behaviour from economic/population growth instead of ecological growth and sustainability.  My blog, timweller1.blogspot.com reveals more of my outrageous opinions​, concerns​ and my jaundiced/sad interpretation of human history.  Don't read it!

  ​I have changed my opinion on batteries to complement solar PV.  Our Nov 2021, 14.4 kWp set of batteries is working well to import Octopus (transferred in April 2022) Agile tariff in the early hours of the morning when electricity is very cheap and charges up the battery to make for enough electricity to last throughout the day.  In October we completed our transition from gas to 100% electricity and our total energy bill, last week was £50.85 for four weeks, 22 Nov to 21 Dec.  The house is a mini power station to power the UK in the summer months, instead of massive power stations feeding the grid.

  
  

  In March 2022 we stopped using the gas-fired central heating and now use only Herschel infrared portable electric heaters.  We next got rid of the old gas cooker and bought an inductive electric cooker.  Finally, from gas water heating to instant electric water heaters.  Expensive to do but I used my lifetime savings from 48 years in the one house.  The gas meter was taken out for free, by Octopus, on 30 Nov 2023.
• Is oil too precious to burn?  Perhaps, we need it for the 101 photochemical and other uses?
• How do you answer my assertion that the rich, American-led Western world is so addicted to finite fossil fuels that the power of the atom cannot possibly be a substitute for all the uses we use fossil fuels for.
• Our emissions of greenhouse gases will be so enormous for years to come and the Climate impacts are now so built in, all we can do is to rapidly go nuclear to postpone the inevitable. 

PLEASE RESPOND, TIM to help my conversion to nuclear.

Israel - throwback to wicked imperialism and King Herod

BRILLIANT.  Very many thanks, Andy.  My MP, Alex Ballinger is doing what he can but I'm calling for BDS - boycott, divestment, sanctions placed on pariah Israel.

I feel that the despicable State of Israel, on our Judeo-Christian Western side, in the heart of the Arab Middle East, the cuckoo in the nest, is a throwback to how our unrighteous British Empire - disgusting slavery for 300 years - was behaving for 500 years in many parts of the world until, officially, our colonial, imperial ways were eventually undone in the second half of last century.

The one World War in two halves, courtesy of our Judeo-Christian side, finally revealed the rottenness and wickedness of imperialism.  But it is still seen in the once-named Palestine to this day by our Israeli friends and allies, with our full funding and fueling of extermination.

You wonderful dad, Andy once told me that Israel was behaving like the robber in the story of the Good Samaritan.  How true!

NCR number is still missing - famous John Grimshaw told me on 24.3.25!

Can you, please, help with funding to allow our 18 Kms Black Country Active Travel Route to be used in its entirety, please?  Only 5 Kms in Dudley borough is a dirt bikers, quad bikers, 4x4 paradise!  3 metre wide and tarmac would help to make all the difference - but only you lovely Londoners have the money!  And, our influential West Midlands Mayor, Richard Parker.

MORE DETAILS:

1. An NCR number is needed for the cycle-walkway from Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill to NW Wolverhampton.  For many years the Ordnance Survey, on their Explorer map, has it down as a "Traffic-free cycle route".  Other names are Valley Parkway,  Monarch's Way, Smestow Valley Walk, Kingswinford Railway Walk, S Staffordshire Railway Path and The Mudway (my name for Dudley's 5 Kms section!).
2. Please Alice, do get the funds to widen the full length to the three metres width, Sustran standard and tarmacked, too.  We must go on asking for it to be accessible to all self-powered trikes, bikes, unicycles and horses.  Share with care with cyclists always slowing and giving way to walkers and horses.
3. Only constant, intermittent requests and reminders to the decision makers will ever get the full 18 Kms upgraded to a usable standard for all fossil-fuel free users, including horse riders.
4. Councillors, who I thought are meant to set policy for the officers to implement, must ensure that their decisions are carried out.
5. It is 18 Kms from Fens Pool Avenue/A461 to Aldersley Jct canal towpath.  Former councillor Chris Barnett and I are asking for the full length to be seen as so important for commuting, leisure and travel because of its strategic position, connecting two halves of the Black Country via South Staffordshire.
6. It seems to have been in use since the 1980s for active travel but neglected by Dudley MBC for their 5 Kms.
7. South Staffs DC were magnificent in tarmacking their section.  The smallest council has set the two big boys a superb example.
8. Active Travel England and Beccy Marston who is Active Travel Commissioner, WMCA are crucial players to be influenced, reminded over what has to be done and kept up to the mark!
9. The route goes through three nature reserves: Smestow Valley Nature Reserve, Barrow Hill NR and Pensnett NR.; two former railway station cafes and one Woodland Trust property called Himley Plantation at Wombourne.

Part of the Dudley section is through the middle, below.  It is OS Explorer map marked as 'traffic-free cycle route':

Best wishes and thanks for any funding, PLEASE!  40 years have shot by so far, and my legs are weller wearing out!!

My paraphrase of Bowen's 'The Making of the Modern Middle East'

Britain, as easily the world's biggest empire in 1914, got involved unnecessarily early when we declared war against Germany on the 4 August 1914.  Our side then won that World War, defeated Palestine and took over Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire.  We then found ourselves landed with the Mandate to rule Palestine with its Arabs and the Jews who were arriving from Europe in increasing numbers.

From the 1890s, the Zionists among the Jews were always wanting Palestine as their Jewish homeland after centuries of persecution by the Europeans, including England with our despicable discrimination, persecution and even expulsion of the Jews from our shores. 

Our Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised the land to the Jews because we had more in common with them than the Arabs and they would be more likely to help us defeat the Ottoman Empire.  But the vital condition which protected the rights and interests of the existing Arab Palestinians was always overlooked over the next 50 years.  By 1948, we had had enough of being bombed and shot at by the Jewish terrorist groups, one of which was Haganah and is now called the Israeli Defence Force.  We left the Jews and Arabs to continue to fight it out between them for the land.  

For 100 years, the Arabs have always been outmuscled and outgunned by the Jews/Zionists and Britain always acted more harshly towards the Palestinians for their massacres than the massacres by the Jews of Palestinians.

Hence, we Brits are responsible for the 125 years of impasse in the unHoly Land.  To put it more crudely, by 125 years of mutual slaughter but, more by one side than the other.

Therefore, British MPs need to understand the history of our involvement and how our ancestors are to blame for the tragedy that is Israel.  We have a moral obligation to help.  Our sins of the past are coming back to haunt us, once more.

'Going Nuclear' book with Tim Gregory

You are honoured!  This morning, from Halesowen Library I borrowed an OS Explorer map, another book from my favourite Robert Harris novelist and your book.  And it was 'Going Nuclear' that I delved into first when I sat down with cup of coffee!

It is an authoritative, impressive and clearly written book.  I sure do want your optimism to be justified because it looks as though, from your statistics, that we had better move back to nuclear.

You are a nuclear environmentalist and I'm a minimalist environmentalist to minimise my impact, my eco-footprint on life support systems, without being a hermit.

Bowen and Doucet

Jeremy Bowen is measured, fair and correct in all his reporting and in all his wonderful writings. Give the man a pay rise, a knighthood, an award. But he is far too important and precious to be allowed away from us on annual leave  - the only person who truly deserves an honour.

Lyse Doucet is also magnificent. 

THANK YOU, BBC.

How many years for GHG to be paid back by nukes?

How many years to payback the GHG emitted in construction?

Use the money saved from no more concrete nuke power stations to fully insulate every building, to put solar panels on every roof and to have every new

building fully electric

Follow my example of solar powered, minimum electric usage, as here.

Trains Back on the Tracks!: Our ideal mini power station of a home https://share.google/FvDqGmCH4nKkuRrNo 

BESS is also essential to provide electricity in mid winter. Battery Energy Storage Scheme 

No more HS railway lines or tramways. Use fully those railway lines that exist but are not used. Use that money for FFPT and to charge car commuters who do not need their motors for their job. Fare-free Public Transport 

In other words, waste not and URGENTLY minimise our expenditure to minimise our harm that future generations will have to suffer because of OUR thoughtlessness and over consumption.

For nukes, how many years does the nuke need to give low carbon electricity before it breaks even with the GHG emitted during the many years of constructing the station? Is it really worth it?

to Peter Plisner re BCIMO Innovation Centre

Dear Peter - and copied to Phil Bateman who is as active as ever, I'm sure.  For your side of the story; it would be wonderful to get a response from both of you, please.  Let's have a correct history for future generations to read and learn from.

Metro - The 1980s "Solution Looking for a Problem" (a professor interviewed by Peter(?) whose name escapes me)

I have read Peter's piece on the Dudley Innovation Centre in 'Rail'.  It prompts these questions:

1. Over the decades, Peter has been covering transport and rail matters in the West Midlands.  Can you recall or could you look back in your records, please over what is the truth about the Merry Hill monorail opening about 1990 and then closing two or three years later.  In particular,
2. Did the monorail have the agreement and support of Centro/PTA who were wanting the Metro WBHE built from the early 1980s?  Wikipedia once said 1981 was when the 'West Midlands Metro' was born under the prompting of Cllr David Sparks and Cllr Phil Bateman as WMCC councillors.
3. Can you throw any light on why Don and Roy Richardson in working with Centro, presumably, did not press for the monorail to be extended to the former principal mainline railway
    "of national strategic significance".pdf
   at that time, in readiness for the mainline to be opened to bring shoppers to Merry Hill by train and monorail, in due course, then?
4. Have you ever questioned why Metro trams were given top priority over reinstating passenger commuter trains on existing freight only or, mothballed railway lines like the Black Country's London to Edinburgh mainline - successful for about 100 years?
5. What response did you get, Peter?
6. On 'Midlands Today', you asked Laura Shoaf about that wasted but existing mainline.  She said, "passive provision" was being built in to enable the former successful liine to be reopened one day.
7. Did you challenge her at anytime as to why the vast extra expense was to be incurred with building a tramway over 7 Kms when there were 56 Kms available between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent?
8. Or, why trams to get trains was ever a sensible and efficient and a competent use of taxpayers' money to reopen the most important mainline railway in the very heart of England, while we all sit in traffic jams on motorways and main roads?
   
9. How can the railway "of national strategic significance" be reopened, as the authorities wish, now they have put the BCIMO HQ on the site of Dudley railway station?
10. Would you please be so good as to check over and correct or comment on what I have written here, Peter and Phil?
     Trumpland Transport in the West Midlands since 1981

Best wishes to you both.  And clarification from both of you would enable this old man to die in peace!!

The letter on Palestine signed by 221 MPs

"Whilst we appreciate the UK does not have it in its power to bring about a free and independent Palestine, UK recognition would have a significant impact due to our historic connections and our membership on the UN Security Council, so we urge you to take this step.

"British recognition of Palestine would be particularly powerful given its role as the author of the Balfour Declaration and the former Mandatory Power in Palestine.

"Since 1980 we have backed a two-state solution. Such a recognition would give that position substance as well as living up to a historic responsibility we have to the people under that Mandate."

The letter also recalls the 2014 parliamentary motion, overwhelmingly supported by the House of Commons, that stated: “This House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.”

"... anything that comes out of the sky that isn't killing them is welcome ... "

Sam Rose, Director of UNRWA, said on 'Broadcasting House' this morning:

"What my colleagues tell me what the people of Gaza say is that anything that comes out of the sky that isn't killing them is welcome but let's deal with the problems that we have ..."

Such was the emergency, Jordan and the UAE did air drops over the weekend - "their first air drops for months but one official said this was not a substitute for delivery by land" (Radio 4 News this morning).

“Repeat the Berlin Airlift to circumvent Israel to get food and water into Gaza.”

Although this does not give access anymore so I can't find my petition!

Trump says that immigration is killing Europe.  In fact, over centuries the glorious British Empire has been killing and enslaving people we have forced ourselves upon and, now, Climate catastrophe is bringing the hordes to Europe to escape environmental destruction, suffering and death.  In addition, it is the Global North Minority which has the most responsibility for the Climate Emergency than the poor countries of the world - the Global South Majority.

Our whole culture, religion, thinking and belief systems are not just suspect but pretty rotten, I think.  This conclusion was further reinforced after reading Jeremy Bowen's 2022 book, 'The Making of the Modern Middle East' which is measured and fair, readable but authoritative with masses of sources referenced.  We are continuing our strong identification with Israel, still after Britain and to a lesser extent France, caused the problems in the Middle East over the decades from 1914.

Heaven for Merry Hill SC and Brum shops

The full 10.7 Kms Dudley Tram is costing £1 BILLION to destroy the Black Country's London to Edinburgh mainline railway!

Our Dudley Station is now called Dudley Tram Stop near to the remaining and now wrongly named Station Hotel!

The Christmas present opening will make it easier for Dudley shoppers to try the tram to Brum shops!

The final phase to Merry Hill will take the rest of the shoppers from Dudley off to Merry Heaven!

The very final phase will take shoppers from Brierley Hill High Street to Merry Heaven!

Heaven for Merry Hill landowner, Sovereign Centros, given a fabulous new asset for free, by us taxpayers digging deep into our pockets and, never again having our mainline Black Country Railway reinstated to connect us to the North and South of Britain.

Nature clear felled at Merry Hill

Since the 1990s I have been writing to the authorities to reinstate both the nearby mainline railway and the monorail link to it. Since 1981, they have always insisted on trams only, not trains even. Trains and monorail could have been done for a fraction of the price of the £1 billion for 10 Kms of tramway. All nature trashed, everything gone in my photo when I find it!

Trashing Nature for unnecessary Metro tram extension

TO: Our dear Nature criminals who are obsessed with Metro trams destroying two of our mainline railways and, now this destruction - our only hope for Nature to fight back against concrete, brick and tarmac - everywhere - worsening their self-declared 2019 Climate Emergency!

Trashing Nature for unnecessary Metro tram extension to rush Dudley town shoppers to Merry Hill.

Please forward my email to the three Customer Services addresses above and everyone else above!!

That is really horrible Tim.. well done for going after them.    What do you want me to do?

On Wednesday, 23 July 2025 at 16:27:43 BST, Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Every single tree and shrub has been grubbed up, here:

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

apart from the trees in the far left, far distance, on the other side of the canal at the top of the embankment directly above the car in the photo.

Can your Dudley volunteer take a look, with me, to see how valuable the flowers and grasses are between the gabions and the post and rail fence above the road, called 'Embankment', in the photo - please?  A botanical paradise?  And a possible SSSI at Daniels Land, beyond the Dudley No 1 Canal in the photo.

Many thanks for your help.  Please reply.

Tim Weller

Tim Weller's petition on Gaza

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/733962/sponsors/new?token=jpL93KxcQbbQmtMmTkdP

Sideways: Chasing Peace - Matthew Syed on what caused the 2nd WW

"History has shown us the dangers of agreements that end violence on the surface while leaving deeper tensions and grievances unhealed.  Most of us learn in school that World War 2 didn't erupt in a vacuum.  Its roots were tangled in the aftermath of the First WW, not least in the Treaty of Versailles.  Though it officially ended the war, it did so by imposing heavy reparations, humiliation and blame on Germany.  Rather than fostering reconciliation, it fed resentment, economic hardship and, nationalist fervour, ultimately setting the stage for another devastating global conflict.  And maybe one of the lessons we can learn from this darker side of our history and from Betty Bigombe's experience is that real peace isn't just the absence of war."

to Kelvin Crombie of CMJ UK

Dear Kelvin - and to our local friend and Elim Pastor, Leon Evans whose church my son attends.

I have read every word of the paper you wrote in 2023 which is your sincerely held, important truth.  It was very good to read your perspective, which is also that of my wife and other Christian friends of mine at church and elsewhere.  You are all of the conviction that only personal repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the lasting solution to the world's troubles.  I once, for many years, believed that, too.  The main truth for me now is that true Christian/spiritual faith must embrace non-violence, social justice, peaceful co-existence and living in harmony with nature.  These are all matters that the human family is struggling with but are fully in accord with the life and teaching of Jesus Christ in the Gospels.

The next paragraphs are my summaries of the very measured, detailed but readable account in the BBC's Jeremy Bowen's 2022 book, 'The Making of the Modern Middle East'.  Always very fair, impeccably researched and fully referenced from so many sources.  Plus, his 35 years of first hand experience of covering world affairs on the ground.  Except in Gaza where outsiders are excluded by an Israel fully in control by land, sea and air.  Such is their shame.  They should hang their heads in shame.

From my reading of Bowen, it seems that the Jews/Zionists ended up with the land because they became useful to British governments in helping us in our imperial wars and, with our Christian traditions over many centuries, it meant that we had more in common with them than the Muslims.  The Jews, possibly, would never have got the land, after 50 years of Zionism, if we had lost the 14-18 war.  The second half of the Wild West's World War also ended with the traditional Christian West winning and then having to quickly find somewhere for the Jews to go.  This, after we had slaughtered six million of them and had a most colossal guilt complex, so needing to make amends.  Thus, we caved in to Jewish violence from the three terrorist gangs and, by 1948 we had had enough and slunk away.  We left it to the United Nations to sort out the sorry mess after thirty years of failed and bad governance under the British Empire and then the Mandate.

Incidentally, although the IDF (formerly called Haganah, one of the three Jewish terrorist gangs of the 1940s) has won every war that it has fought, it has never defeated the Muslim terror gangs, viz the PLO, Hezbollah and Hamas.  Eighty years of Israel's violence with the American led West funding them - yet, still no peace and security.  Tragic.  Ineffective.  Only horror upon horror.  Never ending slaughter of Gazans who are labelled terrorists to justify our massacres and our starvation.

We left the mess, the disgrace of the two warring Children of Abraham both wanting the same unHoly Land for only themselves.  Jews and Christians v Arab Muslims.  For them all, having and living in peaceful co-existence is a complete non-starter.  It is an incomprehensible notion for all of them.

The next 80 years saw intermittent wars and, each time with Israel - well and truly on our side now - winning and, of course, being allowed to keep the land gained by aggression because they were our Judeo-Christian representative in the heart of the Arab Middle East.  "The cuckoo in the nest" for some Arabs.  Normally, we fight wars to stop aggression, as with Russia's war on Ukraine.  Ukraine must be under our wing, not the Russian wing.  Something amiss here with balance and sharing, I feel!  Our side has won every war against the Arabs but there is still no peace and security - even after 80 years.  Neither side can be the Good Samaritan to the other.

FROM MY BLOG - no reply or acknowledgement was received from CMJ UK:

Sunday, 22 September 2024

Presentation on 'The Last Words of Moses' - my own words on the matter

Dear Aaron - Aaron Eime of CMJ UK

I much enjoyed meeting you at Hasbury Community Church and found your excellent address full of interesting details and insights.  The Lord has blessed you with great eloquence, and a great memory and intelligence.  You have a superb style of delivery that engages the attention of your audience.  Most attractive.

I have a somewhat jaundiced opinion of humanity's unhappy tenure of this planet to date and, with the record of Israel's leaders and kings in the Old Testament.  And no better since 1945, with the revelation of one Christian nation's horrifying holocaust, after centuries of European wicked oppression and persecution of the Jews; plus, Western and Christian wars around the globe followed, with dear Bibi being the final straw for my sensitive conscience.  Hence, not surprisingly, you kindly commented that you totally disagreed with me.  Great!

You said you did not want a two-state solution but, presumably, Jews/Christians and Arabs living together in peaceful co-existence.  EXACTLY!  However, it does not help when we Jews/Christians/Westerners continue our imperialistic endeavours of being the dominant, controlling force throughout the world.  Hence, we decide unilaterally, what happens to our subjects whether they be the black peoples of past centuries or today's Arabs, Muslims, Gazans, Palestinians, Lebanese.  This is called apartheid governance where we White Europeans/Americans remain firmly in control over every other human group with the wrong colour skin.  We see it in our US/UK/EU member or representative, Israel, in the heart of the Arab, Muslim Middle East.  That tragedy began out of the disastrous 1914-18 World War and continued with our British Mandate over Palestine.  And has never ended, with our allies Israel and Saudi Arabia as the All Dominating Powers in the Middle East.

We are all turning the Greater Promised Land, from the Jordan to the Sea, a land flowing with milk and honey, into a desert of death and destruction, "an unlivable wasteland" - awash with the blood and the tears of the people of non-violence like me and of the violent.  First Gaza and now Lebanon.  Because of Old Testament barbaric, brutal, war crime ethics instead of New Testament ethics of repentance, reconciliation and forgiveness.  We all know what Yahweh wants.

Our Hebrew/Christian Bible seems to be inspiring our side, our representative Israel to "utterly destroy" (exterminate) Amalek

Aaron, in your talk, you even mentioned the annihilation of the Amalekites by the people of Israel that was commanded by the God of Israel.  I know at least one Israeli government minister has talked of doing exactly the same to the Palestinians.  The Jewish annihilation of the Amalekites was many centuries before the Nazis attempted the same wickedness on the People of Yahweh but, this time, failed.  It looks to me as though modern-day Israel is bringing the same atrocities on the Palestinians and Lebanese.  Have the Jews learnt nothing?

Listen to the horrors on BBC Sounds, Radio 4's 6 pm News on 14 Oct 2024, 08:35 from the beginning to 13:20 (nearly five minutes of OUR war crimes).

I started off so well for the first thirty years, too!  I was brought up in an evangelical Christian family, was soon converted and spent my late teens and twenties on summer beach missions in England and Wales.

The problem is that as I have read widely, listened widely, thought deeply and been preached at for decades, including Linda's eloquent talks at church (my wife), I remain disappointed by my Christian friends' embracement of coercion, force, and violence on other peoples.

My God is my conscience and the God revealed in the life and teachings of my Master, Jesus Christ - the very best monarch out of a terrible bunch of miscreants from around the world, including those in the Bible.  

Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see."  It starts with personal integrity and example.  In addition, all we have is the power of the pen and word.  Much mightier and more moral than the US/UK/Israel sword that has solved nothing since 1945 but only ratcheted up the mutual hatred between the unhappy Children of Abraham, especially in the unHoly Land.  Violence begets violence.  War has not achieved peace for Israel. 

I was honestly impressed by your good self, Aaron.  I genuinely think highly of you and wish you every blessing and goodness throughout your days.

By the way, the most Christian book ('I Shall Not Hate') I have ever read was by a Palestinian.  Details of the author here, from Wikipedia:

"Izzeldin Abuelaish OOnt MSC is a Canadian-Palestinian medical doctor and author. He was born in Gaza, and was the first Palestinian doctor to work in an Israeli hospital and has been active in promoting Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. During the Gaza War in January 2009, his three daughters and a niece were killed by Israeli tank fire directed at his home. He had been calling in reports about the effect of the war by phone to a TV station. In his regularly scheduled report, in tears, he described their killing on-air, in a video that was widely circulated in Israel and around the world."

FROM COLIN:

"Very good, well said. I would be very interested to see Aaron's response, if you get one. Whatever the seeds of the current war, I can't use that to justify the actions of power greedy, egotistical men who have hijacked religion to befuddle the minds of the gullible. It is in the hands of Iranian & Israeli Gvts to end the slaughter. That they both seek the entire destruction of each other based on the writings of thousands of years ago signifies to me the shallowness of their morality. The persistence of violence is a matter of political will as is an end to it."

With every good wish and blessing be upon you, Kelvin