Isn't it funny. Every business case ...

is called robust;

robustly justifies every kind of expenditure from spending £1 billion of public money on 14 Kms of tramline to duplicate a bus route in 2014;

to spending nearly the same but, this time, private money on the M6 Toll for 43 Kms in 2003;

to splashing out £17.6 billion of public money on 117 Kms Crossrail;

to justify spending £44,000 per metre to extend your £1 billion tram line to replace buses;

to justify spending £44,000 per metre to convert our ready made, but they forgot the trains and stations, 120 Kms mainline "of national strategic significance" into a piddling shuttle tram line on two short, middle sections, totalling 6.7 Kms.

All this, when there is never a business case to slash public spending on the Police, the NHS/social care or education to pay for all this largesse.

The money is always found for the flash, the glamorous, the most prestigious projects to hasten Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations" and "the extinction of much of the natural world" warnings from the COP24 in Poland in December 2018.

Are you good Scots getting in on the English act?  Don't follow the English way of the most perverse spending priorities and isolationism!

GLORIOUS ENGLISH ECCENTRICITY: the UK's only mothballed, easily reinstated, ready made but they forgot the trains and stations, mainline railway!

WHICH IS MORE SENSIBLE THINKING?

2 or 3 fast regional trains every hour and nine new stations to complete the

120 Kms between Worcester and Derby;  OR: 6 to 10 "bus on rails" trams every hour and 17 tram stops over only 11 Kms to STOP the reinstatement of the railway "of national strategic significance."

SMART POLITICIANS?

£449 m plus cost overruns to build the Black Country Tramline over 6.7 Kms that destroys the Black Country Railway over 56 Kms.  All 56 Kms can get commuter/regional trains back for less than £200 m (2015 figure).  Or, stupid politicians?

SMART RAILWAYS?

Why CUT a 120 Kms principal, mainline railway through the congested West Midlands with a tramline in two halves, a railway test track and a trail of trees, Japanese knotweed and undergrowth, when absent trains on 56 Kms of track could have their trains and stations back, FOR LESS MONEY than using trams on only 6.7 Kms?

WHY WE CAN'T POSSIBLY HAVE OUR TRAINS AND STATIONS BACK

WHY WE CAN'T POSSIBLY HAVE OUR TRAINS AND STATIONS BACK, to slow planet earth becoming like planet venus

Partly, from what Cllr Stewart Stacey, Brum’s Cabinet member for Transport and Highways, told me.  Partly my own conclusion and guess as to what the experts are thinking and saying:

• There is no demand for travel, no commercial interest, on the UK’s most important, unused but easily reinstated 65 Km main line railway in the Black Country and south Staffordshire.
• Everyone, travelling between London and Scotland and the North, wants to go via Birmingham railway stations and M6.
• The tocs have shown no interest in reopening their railway lines or, in growing their business and making bigger profits.
• Birmingham is the business and commercial centre of the West Midlands, not the Black Country.
• Network Rail, and Birmingham’s transport bosses, over many decades, has always wanted Brum’s total of 39 Kms railway lines to be reserved for freight trains only or as a bypass for passenger trains when it comes to the 9 Km Kings Norton to Moor Street line.  Homebase must remain on Kings Heath station.
• The fully trained experts and professionals at Network Rail and 16 Summer Lane must be right.  Mr Weller does not know what he is talking about and can easily be discounted.
• I was not sure that, since the 2015 Strategic Transport Plan, that Stewart was aware that all 39 Kms of freight only lines were down for reopening for stations and passenger trains (is that right?). But goodness knows when.
• This does not apply to the 65 Kms in the Black Country and Staffordshire that must have “bus on rails” slow trams on 7 Kms out of the 65 Kms.
• West Midlands' transport and tram HQ at 16 Summer Lane Birmingham must remain with the emphasis on electric trams, at £67 million per Km, to replace diesel buses like the Platinum and hybrids.
• The coming of HS2 means that the emphasis must remain with more bus-like trams linking in to HS2.  To Curzon Street, in the first instance and then onto Brum’s 5th railway station on the HS2 line in Solihull.
• Train drivers get double the salary of tram drivers.  Therefore, to keep down costs, the emphasis must remain on trams for roads and railway lines and not commuter and regional trains on railway lines where they traditionally ran. At least one VIP transport officer has mentioned this to me to explain their refusal to reopen existing railway lines.

STOURBRIDGE SHUTTLE EXTENDED to car park and shops!

Anyone interested to extend the John Parry, gas powered, flywheel tram that runs, so successfully and frequently, on the 0.75 mile branch line from Stourbridge Jct (on the half used Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance") to Stourbridge Interchange?

From time to time, over the years, I have asked John to work on extending it to the 350 space, now better used car park on Stourbridge Road (next to the Household Recycling/Reuse Centre).  From there, on to High Street/Market Street via Coventry Street and back to the bus station.  This would enable some pedestrianisation of High Street and/or Market Street and bring a much needed reduction in local air pollution and fewer international greenhouse gas emissions that seem to be 'slowly' turning planet earth into planet venus.

Please ask for Moor Street, Brierley Hill for the National Very Light Rail Centre instead of the only feasible site for the reopened Dudley Castle Hill railway station on the, eventually, finished 120 Kms Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby via Dudley and Walsall.

PLEASE RESPOND - everyone and anyone!

THE BACKSTOP!

The BBC Radio 4 definition on 12.3.19: "The Backstop is the mechanism designed to fulfil the pledge made by the UK and the EU that the Irish border will remain open after Britain leaves.  It will kick in if a trade agreement with Brussels was not reached at the end of the post Brexit transition period.  It is contentious because it involves, in part, Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK temporarily remaining in a customs union with the EU."

Journalists, like Jeremy Vine, have described it as ensuring a "no wall between the ROI and NI.  ... there must be no physical border.  It leaves NI closer to the EU and the ROI than the UK."

THIS MUST BE THE ULTIMATE ABSURDITY TO RIVAL BREXIT!

Dear Brad - and copied to people who can confirm, correct or deny the accuracy of what I have written here.

You are brilliant at not being so high and mighty that you cannot reply.  You have the common decency and courtesy to engage and to engage honestly, too.  THANK YOU!  Everyone of my local politicians and officers could learn a thing or two from your fine example.

However, I still don't think it has dawned on you that the mainline railway, almost adjacent to the Waterfront, will be wasted, unused, possibly for the rest of time.  A railway "of national strategic significance" being used as a shuttle "bus on rails" tram line to 'Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Basement Station', aka New St Sta. This is a most terrible waste of transport infrastructure that has already had millions of pounds spent on it and will now remain wasted, possibly for an eternity!  You will never be connected to the NE and the SW of England by fast, regional and even intercity trains.  Instead, you are being sold a pup - when you could have a mature, grown up dog!  Instead of the tram line at double the expense per kilometre of the M6 Toll when it opened in December 2003, you could have passenger trains from all parts of the country coming to Merry Hill - as used to be the case, of course.  They came to the station in Brierley Hill, itself because your site was Merry Hill Farmhouse and farmlands and the northern part was Round Oak Steelworks - either side of Level Street.  This was the case from around 1850 in the midst of the ultimately catastrophic, climate changing Industrial Revolution.  Even then, apparently, some scientists were warning of the terrible consequences of burning fossil fuels!

I don't think you get it, Brad.  No shuttle tram but a grown up regional and even national service on the full 120 Kms.  You would be able to get about that more easily in your car when driving through the Midlands.  Some motorists will use the mainline railway to allow you to have a more pleasant drive on motorways with fewer vehicles!

Anyway, it doesn't matter that you cannot see the grand scheme that could be yours!  You must settle for very much less than the best, as TfWM/WMCA also want.  You are in good company.

14 March 2019  

I wrote all that yesterday morning.  I have woken up today and feel that I must add this.  To be blunt, you are facilitating the permanent destruction of the UK's only/last mothballed mainline railway over 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby.  The northern and southern sections are in use but the most important section is YOUR section, in the middle through the Black Country and that bypasses "one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK", viz: 'Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Basement Station' aka New St Sta.  The intention of the 'experts' is for a railway "of national strategic significance" to be used as a shuttle "bus on rails" tram line to 'Grand Central'. This is a most terrible waste of transport infrastructure that has already had millions of pounds spent on it and will now remain wasted, until humanity is passed over in favour of other life forms!  Millions of pounds was spent in recent years for the flyovers and tunnels over the forgotten 56 Kms to allow new dual carriageways and motorways to be built.  But the idiots forgot to go on to the next step - the rather vital trains and stations!

Your Waterfront Mainline Railway station must be connected to the shops by electric buses or by electric, driverless, elevated monorail. NOT the railway "of national strategic significance" used as a piddling little shuttle tram line. The current intention is as shocking as the chaos of our government's Brexit. It was the stupid transport planners and small minded politicians who allowed an excellent top model, Swiss monorail from Von Roll to be built and opened in, I think, 1990. Yet, the foolish, ignorant, authorities failed to connect the last 400 metres, from Waterfront monorail station, to the nationally important railway at Round Oak. Even then, the much needed commuter/regional trains and stations should have gone back - in 1990! Round Oak is almost adjacent to the Waterfront that you own.

I think, Brad that only you and your company can knock some sense into the heads of the public sector top officials, politicians and 'experts'. It is your national duty to do so. Seriously!

Very best wishes

Brexit shambles is all part of the problem

Is a true Brexit really practical or possible?  Everything works well with trade so why upset it all?  If it ain't broke don't fix it.
There are so many different versions of Brexit

It is all a wasteful and wrong diversion from tackling the number one threat to all life on earth, viz human induced climate breakdown.

It is costing billions in paper, to-ing and fro-ing and, with all the hard work in preparation.
There has to be many more years of renegotiating trade deals once we do leave.  I think this is a complete waste and diversion of tackling climate breakdown and resource depletion.
The more we spend, the more fossil fuels we use and the more greenhouse gases are emitted to enhance, catastrophically, the natural greenhouse protective layer.

It is putting the Good Friday Peace Agreement under strain.  Republicans do not want anything that will distance themselves from the Republic of Ireland or make things even slightly more awkward and slower in crossing the border.  Jan 2019 car bomb.  March 4 letter bombs.  The murder of Lyra McKee.  It could lead to the 'The Troubles, Part 2'.  Certainly, smuggling will be given a nice boost to help the coffers of the criminal and violence wins fraternity.

Any excuse for the men of violence to restart the troubles.  England may not escape.

Measure twice; cut once.  The basic principle of all construction from engineering to sewing.
A second referendum is needed to check out whether this really is what the British public want, now we are a lot wiser about the intractable problems involved.
The debate on Brexit did not really start until AFTER the referendum.
For some voters it was pure pot luck how they voted.  Many did not know which way to vote.
Have we learnt anything over the last three years?
Are we not better informed over the conundrum of the Irish border that never got a look in before the do or die referendum?
Such a momentous decision should never have been left to a narrow, "1% margin is enough" to decide it.  It was never like that over the referendums held over devolution for Wales and Scotland.  They were not rushed.  Membership of the EU is even more important than an assembly or a parliament for those two countries that took years of voting in the 1990s.

Two smaller countries on the periphery did not want to come out of the EU.  Only England and Wales wanted out.

52/48% to leave was not nearly enough to justify the vast expense and disruption incurred when things were working smoothly.

This is all a throw back to colonial days when we ruled the foreigners, we knew best and were a cut above the rest.  After all, we did have the biggest and longest running empire in the history of humanity.
Our successful and glorious past leads us to think we can do without the EU.  Our Royal Navy ruled the waves and our Brave British Army kept the native hordes in the colonies under control.  We can do it again without any membership of the EU.
Brexit was partly an anti-immigrant, anti foreigner vote.  We heroic Brits came racing to Europe's 'rescue' twice in the last century.  Hence, we never joined at the beginning.  To reflect this superiority, we are the only nation with 'Great' as part of our name.  We great, peace loving, Brits are just too great for the war mongering Europeans!  Why do we need them?  (tongue in cheek)

A week before the June 2016 referendum, Jo Cox was murdered by a pro white racist.  I think, she would still be alive today if it had not been for the referendum.

Europe is showing immense patience, forbearance and still wants us in!
So many Germans I have met genuinely love us Brits!  What on earth for?  Some even sent us an official, German government backed, 'love' letter in 2018!

Brexit has too many pitfalls, too much uncertainty, too many risks - especially to peace in N Ireland; offhandedly and so typically dismissed as Operation Fear by the English who have never had much interest in the too often, most unfortunate history of our unwelcomed involvement in Ireland down the centuries.

It is a most unfortunate diversion from reversing the troubled earth turning into lifeless venus horror show.

Can Deborah Cadman, with Laura Shoaf, fix it for us all?

Dear Deborah, Laura and Waseem

Thank you so much for your reply.  But my examination paper of ten questions and suggestions went all unanswered!

Could you tell me who Paul Clarke is, please?  I don't think I have come across him.  Could I sound him out, please?  To get his feedback?

The most obvious and easiest suggestion for improvement is to put commuter/regional trains back on our 106 Kms of railway lines, starting with the 56 Kms "of national strategic significance" in Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall and on to Burton on Trent.  You are putting Metro trams on a total of 6.7 Kms so that only leaves 49.3 Kms that still need the commuter and regional trains and, Railfuture's nine stations back - PLEASE!​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​

I have been told it must be done first for the success of the Camp Hill line reopening.  This is because of overloaded, congested 'Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Station Tagged Along As An Afterthought in the Basement of the John Lewis Store', aka New Street Station!  Before you came, we had a cosmetic tarting up job done instead of the additional tunnels and platforms that are still needed.  In the past, Peter Plisner of BBC 'Midlands Today' has called it "one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK".  As usual, nothing has changed for the better.

Can you fix it for us all, please during your time in Brum so I can see it on my dying day?  You and Laura would then have achieved something really worthwhile that the hopeless men have been quite unable to achieve in my 50 years in Brum and the Black Country!

Anyway, very best wishes for whatever you can do to improve the daily traffic crawl and the sardine packed trains in the rush hours.  And, the relentless grinding out of greenhouse gases to tighten up the screw on poor planet earth nicely transformed into another planet venus.

Tim

Isn't it funny. Every business case ...

is called robust;

robustly justifies every kind of expenditure from spending £1 billion of public money on 14 Kms of tramline to duplicate a bus route in Edinburgh in 2014;

to spending nearly the same but, this time, private money on the M6 Toll for 43 Kms in 2003;

to splashing out £17.6 billion of public money on 117 Kms Crossrail;

to justify spending £44,000 per metre to extend Edinburgh's £1 billion tram line to Newhaven to replace buses;

to justify spending £44,000 per metre to convert our ready made, but they forgot the trains and stations, 120 Kms mainline "of national strategic significance" into a piddling little shuttle tram line on two short, middle sections, totalling 6.7 Kms.   

"The latest work to refine the scheme and the efficiencies to be developed within the Midland Metro Alliance give a good level of confidence that the project can be delivered within the current funding envelope (SELF: of £44,000 per metre, times 11 Kms.  Eleven times the cost per kilometre of the second attempt at returning trains between Wolverhampton and Walsall.  The first attempt was a failure, last decade!)."  Report to WMCA Investment Board on 11 March 2019

"the scheme has a benefit to cost ratio of 2.03:1."      

Every business case comes up with a great Cost Benefit Ratio that compels massive expenditure, eg to dismantle/destroy the tram network and to rebuild it on the road and railway networks a few decades later.  This is called high Value for Money when it is 2.03:1.  In other words, you double your money.  Therefore, whatever you pay up front, you get more than double that back in destroying yet another urban and intercity railway line, in the case of trams taking over the UK's one and only mothballed mainline.

"As part of the arrangements for the transfer of part of the abandoned South Staffordshire rail corridor (SELF: anachronistic, out of date, inaccurate name DfT now call 'The Black Country Railway') to Metro an agreement with Network Rail is being negotiated to ensure passive provision is made within the Metro works for future rail service use of the route. Implementation of future rail services will be subject to consultation between Network Rail and WMCA and appropriate powers and funding being secured." 

All this, when there is never a business case to cut public spending on the Police, the NHS/social care or education to pay for all this largesse.  "Don't worry your little head over it all, Tim.  You know that you will get back double whatever the final cost is because cost benefit analysis tells us so.  It is another of Mrs May's magic money tree tricks."

The money is always found for the flash, the glamorous, the most prestigious projects to hasten Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations" and "the extinction of much of the natural world" warnings from COP24 in Poland in December 2018.

MY CONDITIONS FOR WITHDRAWING TO FAVOUR ANDY

And copied into the Mayor's Office for their information and action to get me on board, out of the running and well out of the way - please!  MAYOR'S OFFICE, please confirm receipt and action, quickly.

My conditions for withdrawing to help Andy in 2020

I also think Andy was an excellent choice and hope he gets in, again next year.  I do like him and support him whenever I can.  I really don't want to take votes off him, if I do go ahead with standing as an Independent.  But, he must be outspoken against tram extensions; but, for putting the commuter/regional trains and stations back, starting with the completion of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway - extremely urgently and before the Camp Hill line; and, introducing a sea change in our commuting habits.  That is, twelve month, A456 Hagley Road experiment of:

• never taking the car into Brum city centre unless it is essential for your major business livelihood or, there are at least two adult passengers in the car.  Strict enforcement by random roadside checks when traffic is stationary; and CCTV.  Hefty financial penalties for transgressing.  Once you are down to one passenger or solo, you must go into the slower, outside lane immediately.
• This is done by 100% bus lanes on every nearside lane of the no 9 bus route and traffic light priority for buses and other vehicles permitted in the bus lane.
• Cancellation of elite, very expensive Sprint to allow for every bus to be similarly favoured.  The roll out of Platinum buses makes Sprint unnecessary at this time.
• Electric buses, asap, must be the mass transit for commuters and not anymore tram extensions.

MASS TRANSIT FOR ALL AND NOT THE LUCKY FEW on a tram line.

Common misunderstandings over Metro trams

To be fair this isn’t my area of understanding.  If I get elected, I don’t believe this will be a subject I will be invited to contribute towards.  Because the vast majority are oblivious to the phenomenal cost of trams to replace buses and trains and to push buses out and to turn our local mainline railway into a piddling little shuttle tram line, a test track, a trail of trees and a cycle-walkway.  If the money can't be used to get Network Fail and TfWM/WMCA to FINISH the railway with the forgotten trains and stations, then the money should go to offset years of cuts to the Police, NHS/social care, education.

Trams of course seem to be very much part of WM combined authority vision. Because they have been improperly influenced by vested interests.  The national tram promotion group is in the same building as TfWM/WMCA that have easily been influenced to go for trams instead of the more obvious and sensible measures to reduce urban congestion and air pollution.  Earlier this decade, three top people in UK Tram Ltd were also top people in Centro.  Complicity + collusion = corruption.  And since their introduction they have been very popular as a form of rapid transport.  PTA/Centro got the money in the 1990s by declaring (exaggerating/lying) that passenger numbers would be 15 to 20 million every year.  Only with the extension, that misses out Snow Hill and goes straight to Grand Central Shopping Centre did it rise to 6 million a year.  They got the money because the sole reason for the extension was to connect Snow Hill with Grand Central - NOT to bypass Snow Hill as has been shown to be the true objective!  They have become the WM version of the Tube.  Yes.  The WM version of putting Tube trains on the Eurostar, HS1 line to Paris, in the case of the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill extension.  Pretty idiotic!  They have more money than sense.

Rail is an alternative means of transport and reintroducing the historic lines is an infrastructure cost that perhaps should be argued in addition to rapid light transport, from memory the Wolverhampton segment utilised a fair amount of former rail infrastructure.  Please read my:

 THE TRAGEDY OF TRAMS WRECKING OUR RAILWAY NETWORK

and,

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

 Raillfuture text 01.pdf

 Raillfuture text 02.pdf

Thanks for responding.  I am a fan of trams, although I don't like the cheap and nasty hard, plastic seats on our Metro trams!  If the 1950s was today, I would be insisting that the authorities should NOT dismantle the tram network for diesel buses.  Simply modernise the trams instead of destroying them.  Wise and sensible expenditure.  Like my proposals for seeing a sea change in social attitudes towards bus/bike commuting instead of car commuting to free up the road space for essential business vehicle users.  My family has started!

IAN AUSTIN'S ARTICLE ON CHURCHILL

Dear Ian - copied to Express and Star reporters who published your piece and to your assistant Cllr Keiran and to former Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo for comments/correction, please.

You are as enthusiastic for dear Winston as Andrew Roberts.  We all have our prejudices! But do take a look at Andrew Marr's book, 'A History of Modern Britain'.  My own thoughts on Britain's Greatest Briton are these that gives a different perspective and are influenced by Marr and the 99 year old interviewed on the 'Today' programme earlier this month.  I think we are all a mixture of good and evil and of hero and villain. We are all frail and flimsy. Please hear both sides of the argument.

1. Churchill loved action, militarism, imperialism, nationalism and the thrill of warfare.  He loved nothing better than a good scrap.
2. He would have loved the British empire to have lasted "for a thousand years" to rival Hitler's Third Reich.  But both were no more after the one World War in two halves. Winston's greater love for war did it for Empire - both Germany and ours.
3. He was a leading protagonist for war in the Cabinet discussions up to 4 August 1914 declaration of war, from what I have read.
4. Yet, this was a war that was nearly lost, by our side, in the first few weeks.
5. This was war, more than once, that could have gone either way.  Only the USA intervention in 1917 turned it in our favour.
6. There was a 'peace' treaty that seems to have failed to recognise the above facts. It was hardly a treaty that was magnanimous in victory - a wonderful phrase attributed to dear Winston.  Akin to "justice tempered with mercy."
7. Even IDS, the former Conservative leader, has spoken of how that disastrous war led to its sequel in 1939.
8. According to Marr, on the 28 May 1940 at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, if it had been only Conservative politicians present who wanted to cut a deal with Hitler, Churchill would have been outvoted.  The Conservative Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax had found "Hitler most sincere and Goering frankly attractive." However, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, the two Labour men in the Government of National Unity, "were solid for fighting on and so, by a squeak, Churchill had his majority." (Marr)
9. Marr has most of the Establishment and many Conservatives, looking on Churchill as "a rather ridiculous, drunken, dodgy man with a penchant for wild speeches and silly hats.  Behind their gloved hands, they called him the rogue elephant, even the gangster." In Labour circles, he was seen as an enemy of the working class, a pink faced toff who called in the army against strikers.  Tonypandy, first time?
10. When he won his majority for war on the 28 May 1940, Churchill told the full War Cabinet, that they were all to fight on to the death.  There would be no parley or surrender. "Let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."
11. Therefore, twice, Churchill wanted all out total war to the death.  The first half imperial war led to the second half in 1939. Surprisingly, two Labour MPs gave him his majority for our nation to fight on after Dunkirk.  One was the Labour leader, Attlee and the other was Arthur Greenwood.  The Conservatives, Halifax and Chamberlain wanted to parley and surrender.  It was the Labour Party that won the war (and lost the peace) and not the Conservatives!!
12. Much later, Attlee led us into the Korean War that had disastrous consequences for that peninsular to this day.
13. It was Attlee who gave us our own deadly WMD with their amassment and renewal by every government, including Labour, ever since.  So much for Labour politicians being wimps for glorious, heroic war! Only in 2015, did the latest new Labour Party leader pronounce that, for him, "war must be the last resort".  And the man still hangs on to this day. Extraordinary!
14. For Churchill and the War Cabinet, when victory was certain for our side in February 1945, it ended for 24,000 Dresden residents not in blood but in fire, flame and burning flesh.  Listen on BBC Sounds. My e-mail to Ian on 14 Feb, here: "Did you hear that 99 year old hero soldier, Victor Gregg, from the 2nd World War who was interviewed on Monday 11 Feb on the 'Today' programme?  He survived the war solely because Churchill and Harris ordered the fire bombing of Dresden in February 1945. His book is called 'Dresden: A Survivor's Story'. His interview starts at 0742:50 hrs."
15. Churchill might easily have lost the war in 1940/1 but the USA came to our rescue in 1941.
16. Radar was an important factor in us winning the Battle of Britain, together with the young pilots and not Winston's magnificent, morale boosting oratory.
17. As Margaret Thatcher was so lucky with her enemies (Galtieri and Scargill), Winston was lucky with his friends in North America and the Empire that won it for him.  Give credit where credit is due.
18. Was it Churchill who thought up the idea of convoys to protect our merchant shipping?  That was a real brainwave.
19. There was Hitler's massive mistakes, of course that helped the Brits and Americans and, the Empire to win.
20. The Soviet Union and Stalin diverted the Nazi war effort onto the Eastern Front.  Did Churchill ever formally thank the USSR for their invaluable help and sacrifice?
21. 20 to 30 million Russians died defending our shores from Hitler.
22. Have you ever bowed your head in silent remembrance of the death and sacrifice of those millions of evil Commies, Ian?
23. Correlli Barnett wrote something like, "In 1945, we were psychologically victorious but, materially defeated and economically bankrupt."

​Anyone is welcome to correct my history or to expand on these notes, here - please.

Will it take school children to shame us into action?

Dear Deborah, Laura and Waseem

I am hoping to stand as an Independent candidate in next year's election for Metro Mayor because I am so concerned that after fifty years of studying, working and living in the Black Country and Birmingham, road traffic congestion is as bad as it has ever been.

I am asking if you two chief officers and leaders in our community, would please consider giving bus passengers faster journeys into the city centre at the expense of car commuters.  Modal shift from car to bus, in particular is urgent, if only to free up road space for essential car users who need to get about on their lawful business.  Quite apart from the urgent action needed to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

My own suggestions are these:

1. An experiment on Hagley Road from Halesowen bus station to Five Ways where the nearside lane that carries a bus route is used in its entirety for buses, coaches, taxis, bikes and three to a car sharing.
2. Car sharing for the driver and two passengers over 18 to use the bus lane.
3. Legitimate vehicles in the bus lane to have traffic lights weighted in their favour to the disadvantage of the outside lane.  Or, only buses approaching a traffic light changes it to green.
4. Has this been tried anywhere else in the world?  What do progressive nations like Norway do to boost bus use?
5. Can we learn from TfL who seem to be more successful in getting people to use buses?
6. There is a total of £1.41 BILLION to 2026, for five tram extensions, now going into digging up roads on the nearside lane to replace some buses and to prevent commuter/regional trains from returning to our full 120 Kms mainline railway.
7. Instead of "buses on rails" on rails on roads, buses on roads.
8. Can this money, under devolution, be used to slash bus fares or to even give fareless buses for all and not just the few lucky ones like me?  And, the money used to speed the transition to electric buses?
9. Random or constant camera enforcement at traffic lights.
10. Every bus becomes a Sprint bus.

Is any of this practical?  There has never been an experiment of this nature, as far as I am aware.

Can my suggestions be officially put on the table for you all to discuss, please?  I welcome being put on the spot with difficult questions slung in my direction!

With best wishes

Report on 6 Feb 'Ask the Dudley Leaders' Question Time'

Four Dudley leaders.  These were the Police - Chief Superintendent Sally Bourner (she used the bus and ran to join the panel - brilliant!); Health - the Director from the Clinical Commissioning Group; Dudley College Principal; and, Cllr Qadar Zada, Leader of Dudley MBC

Cllr Qada's top three issues are rough sleepers, fly tipping and community trouble, said the Chair.

FLY TIPPING

"Assist those who want to do something about fly tipping", said Cllr Qadar.  "I have invested several hundred thousand pounds in a deep clean programme to target every fly tipping zone in the borough and will increase enforcement ... We will clean the borough up ... Clearing 7,500 gullies so we don't have flooding ... Together we can solve some of the problems ... empowering local residents to help them deal with anti-social behaviour and litter ... we are targeting troubled trees.

CAVENDISH HOUSE

Due for demolition ... dilapidated ... £664,000 from the Black Country LEP to demolish it.  £82m will be invested by the company to redevelop the site.  Qadar would like to demolish the building in person if that was possible.

SELF Can the site be used for one and two bedroom apartments to reduce the housing crisis and help rough sleepers?

DUDLEY HIPPODROME

Qadar said, "We have an exciting set of plans from a consortium ... with £9 m of investment" (for that site).

SELF: Keep the facade and convert to apartments, as above.

TRAVELLERS

"Travellers on Flood St for the last 3 weeks with a porta loo", said Qadar.  "This is an isolated case.  We have agreed a departure date for them" but we were not given the date.  "We do not want illegal encampments in our borough.  Our approach to travellers is very robust ... We will have a permanent travellers site with a range of other measures.  We are still committed to that.  W, e will have borough wide injunctions.  We will lock down the parks ... People are not prejudiced in Dudley."

SELF:  Flood Street is to have the swish, glitzy, glamorous "bus on rails" Metro tram gliding down it to Merry Hill.  £343 m to achieve this; yet, Qadar said that the council has been denied £71 m since 2010 in reductions in government grants to run their services.  The lost £71 m has gone to Metro to replace some buses and trains.

POTHOLES

"Talk to Dudley Council Plus website to report a pothole", said Qadar.  "We must make roads safe for people to drive on."

BURGLARY

"One of our top priorities alongside violent crime and organised vehicle crime", said Sally Bourne.  "We will use overt and covert resources to target these gangs.  Four or five burglaries a day.  Targeting car key burglary."

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE CENTRE

"It will make us one of the leaders in advanced technology to make sure we don't get left behind" - Qadar Zada

"With it taking over the Hippodrome site it will become part of Innovation Park which will have the VLR centre, plus autonomous vehicles and the Institute of Technology" - Neil Thomas, Principal, Dudley College.

LOCAL TOWN CENTRES

"The High St is a challenge up and down the country ... with online shopping.  We are taking on board the Preston model by growing the local economy.  It adds social value.  Our contracts will purchase within Dudley.  Free car parking has not had a major impact on footfall.  No overwhelming attendance.  More people want to live in the town centre - Qadar

BRING BACK SPEEDWAY

Qadar: We are committed to bringing it back.  Tell us where it can go.  I have asked officers to look at those sites.

Self: What about bringing back the railway, to finish it, instead of the short tramway to cut it in half to make for a train-tram-train mainline railway - a world first?!

PROPER RECYCLING BINS WANTED

We will introduce in every ward, recycling bins for segregated waste in every town.  It is a massive part of our agenda.

ROUGH SLEEPERS

No mention by the four leaders or the public in Facebook comments.  Only by the Chair, once.

ENVIRONMENT AND TRANSPORT

My question was read out by the Black Country Radio chair.  Who was he?  He never told us!

Cllr Qada - copied into this e-mail - said, "I'm in constant dialogue with Tim".  CORRECTION: He might get constant e-mails from me (like the rest of you!) but it is all one way.  A monotonous monologue and no dialogue, so far!  He will not send a single e-mail or deign to see me - as yet.  He is not interested in hearing the other side of the case.  A one sided leader with a closed mind.

In his answer to my question, he said that "improving cycling routes is being worked on."  Does this include the 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway; and, signs and leaflets for the Dudley town centre to Brum city centre traffic free cycling route to tell people about it and to keep them on the route?

Qadar said that he wants to reduce nitrogen oxides, a greener housing agenda and is getting more mobile air sensors.

"The environment is very important to us ... We can't deliver on what Tim would like us to do ... Lots of other people do want Metro trams and they are a modern way of improving public transport ..."

MY RESPONSE: I love riding on trams (apart from the hard plastic seats!) but their enormous cost of installation has been at the expense of commuter/regional trains returning to our existing urban, double track railway lines that have not yet been turned into roads, housing and trading estates by planning committees of Dudley MBC.

LATEST NEWS:

This week, the Birmingham Post reported that the Metro Eastside extension has now gone up to £152.2 m for 1.7 Kms and will not be opened in time for the Commonwealth Games in 2022.  Just think how the £1.41 BILLION to 2026 on trams replacing buses and trains could be used to reverse the decline in bus use and more greenhouse gases!

BBC NEWS SITE:  Roger Harrabin on 5 Feb -  Headline: "TRANSPORT WAS THE LARGEST EMITTING SECTOR OF GREENHOUSE GASES IN 2017  On aviation, planes are getting more efficient - but that’s being overtaken by the growth in the amount people fly – and the government is expanding capacity at airports.

It’s a similar picture on trains. Humble local trains help reduce motoring– but commuter services are starved of cash whilst billions are poured into HS2."

SELF: Yes.  Humble local trains help to reduce motoring but trains are not allowed on the 120 Kms Black Country Railway through Dudley because of the obsession with trams at UK Tram Ltd HQ at Transport HQ.  Vested interests at work, aka collusion, complicity, corruption.  Network Rail has also banned commuter trains until the 2040s at the earliest and, then, only freight trains are allowed - aka incompetence, idiocy, illogicality!!

Donald Tusk on his special place

There is a special place in heaven for all those who repent.  Especially, those bright sparks at transport HQ + every cllr, MP, MEP and one Metro Mayor who all think that Metro trams are the silver bullet to solve our road and railway congestion problems in Brum and in Dudley (rundown) town centre. Their sketch of a plan features the second most expensive transport mode after HS2. Tram extensions are up to 3 times more expensive, per Km than building a 6 lane motorway. All this to supplant existing buses and trains. Brexit just can't compete with this idiocy!

Brexit is costing us billions and ratcheting up fossil fuel use at the very time when we should be reversing this ecocidal behaviour.  Even more is being spent on vanity, prestigious projects like HS2 (£55.7 billion) and £1.41 billion, for installation alone, on replacing only a few buses and trains with trams at £3 m each.  This is ecocidal idiocy.  Retrenchment is urgent out of self interest, alone.  That means trains and stations, urgently, on the 106 Kms of surviving train lines.  Fareless, electric buses on 100% dedicated bus lanes with traffic light priority for them, not commuter cars.  SCRAP £112 m ​spending on ​SPRINT buses​ for the few​, too.  Put the money into existing buses​ for all​.​  BUS FIRST, NOT CARS or, trams for the lucky few.​

A sea change in social attitudes is urgent to free up road space for essential users, by commuters using fareless buses, trains on train lines, biking and walking.  Give businesses less congested roads to cut their fossil fuel use.

Moral choices are vital; not vanity choices - HS2, Metro and Sprint - that entrench us in enhancing the natural, protective greenhouse layer.

READ today's IPPR report on reducing our over consumption, over-fishing, decarbonising our economy, carbon neutral homes, carbon sequestration, the impact of human climate change and the loss of life giving habitats on the planet.  Halve our emissions by 2030.  "We have to do multiple things simultaneously in an integrated way ... working together."  ('Today' on Radio 4, 12 Feb 2019)

The Stumbling Block to Brexit

Your correspondent Peter Hill is gung ho about the success of Brexit - deal or no deal.  The snag is that our Disunited Kingdom is now split down the middle.  Our remain Prime Minister converted to leave has done her level best to sort out the wishes of the 52% but, after two years of talks, things are at a pretty pass.  She has failed miserably and MPs are taking over to see what they can do.

In addition, two of our kingdoms voted leave and the other two voted remain.  From last week's excellent Radio 4 programme called 'Brexit and Ireland: What's at Stake?', about 30% of N Irish voters vote DUP that is propping up London's government and there are about equal numbers of English nationalists in N Ireland wanting to remain with England, as there are republicans wanting nothing done to distance themselves from the Republic of Ireland.  Ireland and the border barely got a look in three years ago in the referendum campaign.  We now learn that this matter is a major stumbling block to Brexit.  A week or two ago, dissident republicans exploded a car bomb in Derry/Londonderry.  It seems that they are getting very on edge about English nationalists in their own community and in England voting for Brexit that may destabilise the twenty year old Peace Agreement that brought sensible compromise, a cessation of violence and Paisley and McGuinness being called the Chuckle Brothers they got on so well in government.

Will Brexit now bring about the 'Troubles, Part 2' in N Ireland?  Are we all a good deal wiser about a break up that may have deadly consequences for N Ireland, in particular?  I, certainly, am better informed.