The Sprint corridor, Walsall to Solihull is being upgraded to allow the operation of articulated buses (aka Sprint). Much of this work is complete and existing bus users are benefiting from this infrastructure. Funding for the vehicles has been allocated, with procurement subject to final approvals. Service operating patterns will be integrated with wider bus services as part of bus franchising.
Thank you for writing to us regarding this matter.
Kind regards,
Geraldine O'Sullivan
Why is it so impossible to expect a professional, competent and ethical, quite apart from lawful, foreign policy?
Our foreign policy is so incompetent and duplicitous that we have made enemies out of many Middle East countries, left them in chaos and, with their people slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands. This is scandalous! In addition, this immorality boosted the survivors fleeing the chaos left their countries in and fled to the safe Western European nations, including the UK. Unlike Gazans, at least they can use small boats to cross the moat from the Europe mainland to England. There is never any attempt by Europe to share out equitably the asylum seekers.
We have sold WMD (chemical weapons) to Iraq and then attacked them for having WMD (nukes). This is typical British duplicity, known for centuries by our French neighbours as "perfidious Albion".
We sold Iran a whole host of arms and armaments because from 1980 to 1988 they were fighting our big Middle East enemy, Iran. Even so, we failed to win the war and it ended inconclusively. "During the conflict, Iraq received an abundance of financial, political, and logistical aid from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, and the overwhelming majority of Arab countries." (Wikipedia)
Counter-terrorism is overseen by judges.
Should the Islamic system be preserved?
2009 it had disputed elections
What should Iran's response be to bombing raids?
We have a foreign policy of making enemies of being dominant and triumphant and - rubbing it in, too! Any sense of an ethical foreign policy, as Robin Cook MP and a former Foreign Secretary, is as absent as snow on an African beach.
Balance and fairness in foreign policy is also rare or unheard of. In fact, torture is also used as Richard Moor confirmed with MI6 feeding questions to American torturers earlier this century.
From my research, it seems irrefutable that since 1945, my Christian faith and my nation has consistently funded the fight of the Zionists and Jews to have and hold land gained by aggression.
My taxes have funded this one sided aggression for every year of my life since 1948 when I was born.
Outside of the 12 years of Nazi industrialised slaughter by a Christian/Western nation, Palestinians and Arabs have died in much greater numbers than Jews, especially from 1945 but, in truth in greater numbers throughout the British Mandate over Palestine.
Throughout the Mandate, my side and adherents of my Christian faith showed clear favouritism towards Jews/Zionists and were not even handed.
Was this because our Bible contains, in the Old Testament, the history of the Jewish people and therefore Christians know more about them and, which the Bible makes clear, the Jews alone are God's Chosen People.
I say one sided because since the close of the 2nd World War, Zionists and Jews banded themselves into three terrorist gangs to gain the land of Palestine.
One of those gangs, Haganah, merged into the Israel Defense Forces in May 1948. The other two were Irgun and Lehi or Stern Gang, I understand.
Under international law, the Palestinians have always had the right to defend themselves from attacks by other groups and nations.
It seems clear that there has never been any kind of agreement between Arabs and Jews as to how the land of Palestine should be divided out between the two warring Children of Abraham, Muslims and Jews.
The Zionist/Jews used their American/Western funding to seize Palestine by coercion, force, violence and declared the State of Israel in 1948.
Not surprisingly, ever subsequent war funded by the most powerful Judeo-Christian bloc of nations the world has ever seen, has either been successful with yet more land gained by Israel and the West or, the outcome was inclusive but maintained the status quo.
To this day, Likud the governing political party in Israel has in their Charter that their ultimate aim is to have and to hold all the land of Palestine from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea.
International bodies call what my country, my side has done since 7 October 2023, as genocide.
My own politicians and people are unimpressed and the genocide of Palestinians and of Hamas fighters defending their land is not recognised as such.
Indeed, perfectly justified because we think we have every right to wipe out terrorists, as we call defenders of Gaza.
In other words, we have every right to use violence and slaughter because only our righteous, greater violence can wipe out, forever, the lesser violence of Hamas fighters.
The overwhelming acceptance of our unethical Christian teaching is one of using massive evil to utterly destroy evil. This is palpably absurd and, as we seen for over one hundred years since the unfortunate foundation of Zionism by Theodor Herzl, is counter-productive and gets both/all sides absolutely nowhere.
The solution is clear. The rather more ethical teaching seen in the Gospels of Jesus Christ of Nazareth two thousand years ago. Sharing, generosity and non-violence. All as applicable today and, rather urgent!
Dear Roger
ALICE IN WONDERLAND RAILWAY/TRAMWAY MIX UP!
Wot! Not another right mess they've got us into, surely?!!
The 200 Kms and ten lines of the West Midlands Metro drive began in 1981, according to Wikipedia years ago, to be completed in the year 2000 CE.
However, in that year, after 18 years, it came to a miserly 20 Kms with 18 Kms on the first, former mainline railway between Brum Snow Hill and Wolverhampton destroyed for trams!
Work began in 1981 only twenty years after the first electric tramway network had finished being utterly destroyed to make way for more diesel buses.
The first three Midland Metro tramways were to go on two former mainline railways and one existing.
Perhaps, because of the shortage of railways because of their conversion to roads, buildings and tramways, the decision was made to build HS2 in 2009 by Lord Andrew Adonis and Gordon Brown.
Like Metro, HS2 has also been a fiasco, ever since! Coventry may get a downgraded intercity service with the top priority for attention going to HS2.
Only in 2016 was the decision made not to put trams on the Bristol to Birmingham mainline through Kings Heath and Moseley but to rebuild the three stations demolished in the previous century - in favour of diesel buses of all things!
From an unknown date last century, the former principal mainline railway from Worcester to Derby of 120 Kms (74 miles) via the Black Country, was turned into a cycle-walkway on the section between Walsall and Brownhills in S. Staffordshire.
From earlier this decade, the decision was made to turn the rest of the railway, from Brownhills to Lichfield, into a cycle-walkway, too.
Yet, all the bridges, tunnels, flyovers and underpasses had been built to take freight and passenger trains BUT, they never put in an appearance!
Just evermore congested and slow moving motorways and roads as road transport and railways have trams taking them over or railways unused!
This London to Edinburgh railway is now to be a dog walkers' paradise of a railway line, devoid of any kind of train - and even trams!
However, trams are to go on this same mainline railway on the section between Wednesbury and Merry Hill Shopping Centre. It is taking from 2019 to do the first half of 5 Kms and it's still not open!
In the 1990s, Leader of Dudley Council, Cllr Fred Hunt, in all seriousness told me, "Don't worry Tim, it will be up and running in 2000." That was 26 years ago when half of it MAY open this year!!
120 Kms between Worcester and Derby via the Black Country on the railway
56 Kms of the Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance", according to Network Rail and the Dept for Transport, broken up into one tramway, one cycle-walkway, one Very Light Rail test track, one National Innovation Centre for VLR and fresh air!
In Jan 2020, ANDY STREET, Mayor announced 150 miles (240 Kms), 380 tram stops and eight tramway lines in total by the year 2040 for £15 BILLION in price and in weight of GHG emissions!
In 45 years of NOT getting Metro trams, about 100 Kms of railway lines in the West Midlands remain wasted - Camp Hill line, Sutton Line, Walsall to Wolverhampton, Walsall to Lichfield, Walsall to Sutton Coldfield to Water Orton to Brum.
You wrote, "I believe there are good reserves of both oil and gas. Its just that this country has decided to eliminate use of such fuels and is moving quickly to halt total use of such things asap and to totally focus on solar and wind only."
There are good reserves, Roger. Great lagoons of oil in the Earth's crust. But one day it will be too expensive to pump out of the ground and the ocean depths. Then, we really will be snookered, very nicely. Oil is far too important to be burnt. There are 101 other uses in the petro-chemical industry for oil. We are greedily burning it up as if there is no tomorrow.
We are foolishly living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet. We are part of Nature and cannot survive without her. Trump knows better, of course. One day we will come a cropper and my wife and I are trying to be good ancestors (as is the King and, son and heir William).
ALICE IN WONDERLAND RAILWAY/TRAMWAY MIX UP, aka, TRUMPLAND TRANSPORT!
Wot! Not another right mess they've got us into, surely?!!
The 200 Kms and ten lines of the West Midlands Metro drive began in 1981, according to Wikipedia years ago, to be completed in the year 2000 CE.
However, in that year, after 18 years, it came to a miserly 20 Kms with 18 Kms on the first, former mainline railway between Brum Snow Hill and Wolverhampton destroyed for trams!
Work began in 1981 only twenty years after the first electric tramway network had finished being wiped out.
The first three Midland Metro tramways were to go on two former mainline railways and one existing.
Perhaps, because of the shortage of railways because of their conversion to roads, buildings and tramways, the decision was made to build HS2 in 2009 by Lord Andrew Adonis and Gordon Brown.
Like Metro, HS2 has also been a fiasco, ever since! Coventry may get a downgraded intercity service with the top priority for attention going to HS2.
Only in 2016 was the decision made not to put trams on the Bristol to Birmingham mainline through Kings Heath and Moseley but to rebuild the three stations demolished in the previous century - in favour of diesel buses of all things!
From an unknown date last century, the former principal mainline railway from Worcester to Derby of 120 Kms (74 miles) via the Black Country, was turned into a cycle-walkway on the section between Walsall and Brownhills in S. Staffordshire.
From earlier this decade, the decision was made to turn the rest of the railway, from Brownhills to Lichfield, into a cycle-walkway, too.
Yet, all the bridges, tunnels, flyovers and underpasses had been built to take freight and passenger trains BUT, they never put in an appearance!
Just evermore congested and slow moving motorways and roads as road transport and railways have trams taking them over or railways unused!
This London to Edinburgh railway is now to be a dog walkers' paradise of a railway line devoid of any kind of train - and even trams!
However, trams are to go on this same mainline railway on the section between Wednesbury and Merry Hill Shopping Centre. It is taking from 2019 to do the first half of 5 Kms and it's still not open!
In the 1990s, Leader of Dudley Council, Cllr Fred Hunt, in all seriousness told me, "Don't worry Tim, it will be up and running in 2000." That was 26 years ago when half of it MAY open this year!!
120 Kms between Worcester and Derby via the Black Country on the railway
56 Kms unused between Stourbridge Jct, and Burton on Trent on the London to Edinburgh railway.
56 Kms of the Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance", according to Network Rail and the Dept for Transport, broken up into one tramway, one cycle-walkway, one Very Light Rail test track, one National Innovation Centre for VLR and fresh air!
In Jan 2020, ANDY STREET, Mayor announced 150 miles (240 Kms), 380 tram stops and eight tramway lines in total by the year 2040 for £15 BILLION in price and in weight of GHG emissions!
In 45 years of NOT getting Metro trams, about 100 Kms of railway lines in the West Midlands remain wasted - Camp Hill line, Sutton Line, Walsall to Wolverhampton, Walsall to Lichfield, Walsall to Sutton Coldfield to Water Orton to Brum.
Brendan O’Reilly, Sustainable Transport Manager at Coventry University, said: “CVLR is a first-of-its-kind transport system that offers huge benefits, not just for Coventry but for other cities across the globe of a similar size who may find a traditional tram system too costly or problematic.
“We have collaborated closely with the city council and it is fantastic that Coventry University’s Technology Park will be the first stop on the demonstrator line. With our focus on sustainability, being able to offer transport from the railway station in the city centre to the Technology Park will help us encourage people to leave their cars at home.
Citizens can make a difference and deliver the new clean energy horizon possible. It starts with cars, that we all understand but need changing fast. Then it shows that hydrogen beats lithium batteries by a big margin. But batteries are still essential, and integration of Wind, Solar, Batteries, Hydrogen and mini-Grids is defined as the way forward.
FROM my 'Coventry Observer' comment:
How can it be socially just and how can it reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to be spending £15 billion (Jan 2020 figure) on building 150 miles and 380 tram stops for 8 tramways in the West Midlands? This is Light Rail (LR).
PLUS, more tens of millions on Coventry Very Light Rail (VLR), in addition to LR billions and heavy rail running well! Is all this being greedy?
Especially, when that money could be better spent on extending free regional bus and train use to stop declining bus use and boost train use.
Especially when we need to invest in buses, trains and HGVs for green hydrogen fuel cell battery electric vehicles (HFCBEVs).
Especially when we need to invest in insulating the homes of the poorest and then get that money back from the landlords.
Dear Alex and team
Very well done, Emma. I particularly liked, “My faith teaches me not to compromise on truth or integrity. Through my work with local charities, I see the reality of what people in Redditch are facing every day — hunger, homelessness, mental health crises, and broken systems."
Thank you for your help for me, as here when I wrote on 17 Jul 2023: You were brilliant last Thursday in mentioning the Kiddermnster bus station slum disgrace in full council to Mike Rouse. You also stood up to Fran and explained things to her so well. I watched you on the recording and that was just what was needed. WELL DONE. I will continue to pursue the matter - if you could, too please! Worcs CC is losing out to the hundreds of millions spent on transport in the W Mids for luxury schemes (which have also destroyed two mainline railways) that are very nice but hardly essential, especially in the light of the climate/nature crises.Democracy, as we saw with bus franchising, involves a 500 pages report for senior councillors to read in an effort to understand the arguments. The public had the opportunity to read in the papers and online all about the bus consultation process. This is not democracy.
Who decided to start the whole expensive process, anyway?
Democracy is a rubber stamping exercise by volunteers becoming councillors who usually have full-time jobs which makes it difficult for them familiarise themselves with all the details of the lengthy reports that are placed in front of them by expert, professional officers.
They usually take the officers recommendations because it is so difficult to challenge, question and so, perhaps they feel, to be an irritant in the experts eyes.
With many matters there are no for and against statements which invites a debate and then voting.
Hence, wrong, foolish decisions are sometimes made.
Since cars seem to be doubling in weight every 50 years as the giant manufacturers try to sell us more steel, such that Paris has now banned big SUV cars, we must adapt to smaller cars in future to save energy and rescue the planet.
The conclusion is that China is on the right track with both battery and hydrogen vehicles.
Batteries are ahead and China is now dominating their manufacture, plus the delivery of battery cars. Hydrogen is more than 10 years behind. It does need a modest lithium battery to run effectively, but there is no doubt that long range taxis, trucks and buses will need hydrogen storage to travel a thousand kilometres per day. The rough rule of thumb still applies because of energy storage capacity:
A lead acid battery car runs for 1 hour
A Lithium battery car runs for 4 hours
A hydrogen car runs for 8 hours or as far as you want with more hydrogen cylinders; eg 18 hours for a bus shift
"The subsidies for BEVS dropped in 2018 but the hydrogen car support continued and is still
going on, making China by far the biggest country in hydrogen vehicles, hoping to reach 50,000
by 2025, contrasting with UKs 500 hydrogen cars/buses. By the same token, the predictions from
2016 in Beijing have led to 400 hydrogen refueling stations in 2024 compared to 3 operating in
Britain during 2024. The UK invented both hydrogen fuel cells and lithium batteries but failed to
recognize the global need in a timely plan. As the Tory Government said repeatedly ‘We are
technology agnostic and do not pick winners’. Time has proved that UK bureaucrats and
politicians have been losers not winners.
"Of course, Norway understands that their valuable energy
will cease to be wasted in cars dumping heat, so that their expenditure on car power is being cut
by half. Their mission began in the late 1980s when A-ha, the famous pop-music group, started
to drive around in a small battery powered Fiat, gaining publicity for civil disobedience in illegal
parking and unpaid highway tolls. By 1996, Norway had reduced annual car registration tax for
BEVs, followed by exemption from road tolls in 1997. Other innovative measures, like the 2001
exemption from value added tax (VAT), cut the electric car prices even further. The result was that
the BEV VW Golf became cheaper than a gasoline Golf, but only in Norway. It seems amazing that
such simple incentives can achieve public support for BEVs. The conclusion remains that
governments in many countries like UK are either incompetent or deliberately pushing back
climate change for corrupt reasons. Surely, saving half the UK imported fossil oil bill of £63bn is
worth doing? Prof Kevin Kendal
Rudderless, Well-meaning Leader Patrick is a great improvement on Dangerous Deluded Donald Trump
You can only alleviate capacity constraints on the WCML by building an exact duplicate intercity line to stop at all the stations of the present one. NOT a high speed line which means that trains are too fast to stop at the stations on the intercity line. Is that right? YES!
"HS2 doesn't duplicate and wasn't intended to duplicate. There is no need to duplicate, but there is a need for more capacity especially going further north than Birmingham
"The west coast line is old and in a poor condition, it can't really be widened because it goes right through big towns and cities like Coventry
"When I use Avanti I often go from Birmingham to Euston, i don't need a train that stops at other stops to do this, so passengers like me will go on HS2 which allows more capacity to be used on the old line. Is that hard to understand ? The old line will be used mainly by stopping trains." David Gaussen
Therefore, intercity stations like Coventry will get a worse service. A downgrade for the old intercity line and for the old intercity towns bypassed by super-duper HS2. I'm not impressed, David.
Thanks so much, John. Not one good, proper, evangelical, born again, Bible-believing Christian, it seems, agrees with me over USA/UK/Europe/Israel's behaviour towards the Palestinians. I think, only your good self and a retired Methodist minister have expressed concern to me in writing.
3 short Christmas reflections - nothing changes and revenge every time
Our Judeo-Christian War on the Palestinians must be reinforcing Putin's conviction that in attacking Ukraine (for becoming part of the West) he is truly attacking Nazis. (Our side slaughtering Palestinians and laying waste their scrap of land reminds me of what our side did under the Nazis.)
One December 2025 Radio 4 'Crossing Continents' is showing evidence that the 20% Israeli Palestinians are becoming the new Jews, ripe for persecution by the 80% Israeli Jews.
You and I are the problem in this sad world of ours. Only our side must dominate, and be The World Power Of All Time. Sharing and balance and toleration are all totally unacceptable!
Very Superior beings or so they thought, refused to listen when asked to reopen Wolverhampton low level to Birmingham Snow Hill railway, they ignored the rail linked Dudley flyer heavy rail line to Merry hill too
The same superior beings used £ millions of West Midlands Tax payers’ money to buy European trams that broke down in the rain and replaced them with more European Trams whose brand new Chassis cracked
Those superior beings in the local councils & WMCA wouldn’t listen then they’re not listening now, their hard left wing ideology comes before common sense That unloosening bad judgment has left us with their £2+ billion unusable and not fit for purpose Tram transport mess