Can your success be imitated by other companies and organisations?

PLEASE, Do what Prof Dr Kevin Kendall writes here.  This man is a world expert on hydrogen-electric-battery buses and has written books on the subject.  A professor with his head screwed on the right way, with much of his working life in industry and inspiring his students.  In answer to my question about his former job title, he wrote:  "I was Professor in Chemical Engineering at Brum Uni.  I was committed to getting all students working with industry.  Without that, the Unis are not so beneficial."

Hi Tim,

I now use the Bham buses every day because it is a very regular service and is free for me as a pensioner.   I avoided buses for 60 years before I saw the light.

My recommendation is to change the payment method so people get a free card.

Of course it is not free but the idea that you take as many journeys as you want makes a big difference to peoples' reactions.

My emphasis:

The buses should move to 2000 hydrogen-electric-battery buses ASAP.  National Express has got it all wrong as have many other bus companies.  And WMCA with City Council are not well-informed.

Wikipedia has of him:

"Kendall's invention of fine cell tubes allowed rapid start-up and led to many academic papers and two books that were highly cited.^[28][29][30] Kendall moved to the University of Birmingham in 2000 and built a substantial group in Chemical Engineering working on hydrogen and fuel cells.^[31] He and his colleagues, Prof. Dr. Bruno Georges Pollet and Dr Waldemar Bujalski opened the first UK green-hydrogen station refueling five fuel-cell-battery-taxis in 2008^{[23][32][30][33]} and has continued since his retiring from teaching in 2011 to encourage city/industry leadership in clean-energy transport, not achievable by academics, linking with Asia where the growing car population nearing 1 billion is a desperate problem.^[30] He was first in showing that the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle used 50% less energy than a comparable combustion car.^{[34]"   (my emphasis)}

On Friday, 12 June 2026 at 08:53:18 BST, Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear friends

Can your success be imitated by other bus companies to get more people using buses than their own private, individual cars?

What do you consider is your very best practice in attracting bus passengers?

Have you ever compared and contrasted and talked with other companies as to who has the best model for making public transport more popular at the expense of private, individual travel?  Especially, to reduce wasteful, unnecessary, one to a car commuting when the car is not needed for the driver's employment.

Are you gradually moving towards more non-fossil fueled vehicles?  Hydrogen fueled cell electric buses, perhaps?  Or battery electric vehicles?  Which do you prefer and why?

How are bus companies helping isolated communities, like Clun in Shropshire, to be weaned off private car dependency towards more bus travel?

Should your spending priorities be more towards that than electric buses?  Or do both together?

Is there an academic study that shows how success is more likely in persuading car owners to choose some inconvenience and to wait for the community bus to Ludlow, Welshpool or Shrewsbury in the case of Shropshire?

Does a range of vehicle sizes help to get the right size for the right location?

Does regional Fare-Free Public Transport and, free nationally for buses for my pensioner age group make any difference or is it just a waste of taxpayers' money?

I would be glad to read, please, what you think is the best way towards saving finite fossil fuels, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and lessening the Climate Emergency.

Tim Weller   Halesowen  West Midlands

from David Gray

"You talk of “our” shame, but I personally have no sense of shame for what is happening in the middle east; only a profound sense of sorrow for all those affected by it.  You have sorrow but not shame.  I think they are very similar.  Shame, I think, is a stronger word to more accurately describe what our ancestors and fellow Christian believers have been up to over the centuries.  Every single one of them had a conscience, the clear guidance of more moral behaviour in the New Testament.  Living in a bygone age should no longer be an excuse for obvious immoral behaviour then.

Does your deep sorrow and my shame be about:

• the conversion of Constantine to Christ and forever after - disastrously - no strong witness for non-violence, non-collaboration to fight an unsavoury government?
• the Christian Crusades?
• the Church for centuries missing out on St Francis of Assisi pattern of Christ-like living of utter simplicity?
• Christian involvement in colonial ways of domination, forcing our style of doing things upon indigenous people who never invited us into their settlements and lands?
• making our wealth out of stealing other whole tribes and peoples to grow our cotton, tobacco and sugar?
• that we never paid them a pittance and housed them in hovels?
• two Bengal famines - one under Churchill who didn't want the Japs to benefit from food we sent to Bengal in the 2nd WW?
• our colonial ways meant we ended up with Palestine in the dying days of empire, when we were already taking on more than we could cope with - but never realised it;
• and then we had much more in common with the Zionists/Jews as they, at first, trickled into Palestine.
• then the flood of desperate people fleeing the worst persecution visited upon them after many centuries of despicable behaviour by the Christian nations towards Jews.
• Would we have had the Israel/Palestine problem if we Bible believing, devout Christians had treated them, each and everyone, as Jesus Christ Himself would have done?

Could our sorrow/shame drive us to question how it came about that two branches of the Children of Abraham both suffered under our British Mandate - the Muslims and the Jews?

"The British were carving up the Middle East and making contradictory promises to Arabs and Jews and setting them up for conflict" over who had the land. (Jeremy Bowen in the Radio 4, 'Our Man in the Middle East' series)

Is this is our shame and sorrow for our ancestors role in bringing about the Middle East mess?

That our close attachment to the Bible led the 1917 Cabinet to be more sympathetic to the Hebrew Scriptures story of the Jews and therefore to them wanting to return to Palestine?

Shame implies guilt, flowing from personal responsibility for a moral failing or misdemeanour. The Bible teaches that we are each held responsible for our own actions, but none of us can carry responsibility for the failings of others. Only one man took that on, when he was nailed to the cross for us, and for our salvation!"

You wrote,  "The Bible teaches that we are each held responsible for our own actions, but none of us can carry responsibility for the failings of others."

Where exactly does it teach us that we are each responsible for our own actions?

But is that always true?  If we know of clear wrong doing but do nothing, are we not to blame?

Are we not all implicated to a greater or lesser extent if we know but do nothing?  Or, even if 

For the person of honour and integrity, he or she has to say, "My first allegiance is to my conscience and to my Lord and Master who taught the way of non-violence."  And then, of course, honour and integrity demands resigning, rather than having anything to do with prosecuting an obviously illegal war on Iraq in 2003 which did not have that final UN resolution to authorise and make it legal in the eyes of man (NOT God!)

Only Carne Ross (in 2004) and one woman in the now called Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had the honour and integrity to resign from their very much loved and well paid jobs in the FCDO.

I think, more importantly, our own sense of right and wrong or conscience should tell us how to behave.  Every individual Jewish and Christian believer has had all Ten Commandments to live by for the last 3,500 years.  For all those millennia the most important, Sixth Commandment has been broken by the very individuals, Jew or Christian, who so admire all ten and claim to live by all of them.

I call it the most important because we humans have been so enthusiastic in breaking it!  Even, in the Old Testament, claiming that we are only doing God's Will when slaughtering even the suckling infant and mum.  1 Samuel 15 v 3.

Even Jesus reinforced His Way of non-violence by suffering a tortuous death on the cross rather than to do what nearly every believer and follower of the Way of Jesus has done since the year 300 AD.  He refused to use aggression to try and save Himself.  He failed to call up the hosts of Heaven to come to His rescue.

The whole ghastly business of dispatching our fellow humans by crucifixion was so popular for centuries in the Roman Empire.  Only to be out done by our Christian and non believers all being involved in mass slaughter in two Bengal famines, 300 years of vicious slavery and 500 years of our British Empire founded on control, domination and occupation.  With the full knowledge and support of individual Christian believers - and everyone else.  The top people in charge all had the Bible!

Individual Bible believing, God fearing, devout, evangelical Puritan Christians were caught up in Cromwell's cause and army which ended in the only British monarch in a thousand years, being executed by the State!  Astonishing.  And, it was all about who had the right to rule, on God's behalf, on earth - King or Parliament.

During our side's quite despicable and illegal war on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from the 1950s to 1975, I never heard of an upstanding Christian believer in America going to prison instead of going off to cold bloodedly murder the people of SE Asia.  Only the Muslim boxer, Mohammed Ali!

Donald Trump's core base include the vast majority of evangelical Christians.  I heard on Radio 4 that 80% of them voted for him in 2024.  I heard Pastor Michael Youseff say he would vote for Trump because of his strong stance on abortion.  Never mind the slaughter of the living!

Is this the ugliest major roundabout in the land? But, to be fair, it has no weeds!

CELEBRATE - no landscaping here, not even grass or a pot plant - mine was removed and given back to me after a short period of confiscation!

PHOTO:

 A456 roundabout.jpg

2026 is the 50 year anniversary of this 30 metre diameter, A456/A459/B4551 monstrosity being upgraded from being all tyres to all concrete and tarmac - success.  But still no landscaping because of all the supposed myriad of pipes and cables just under the tarmac!

MORE DETAILS

Very odd, eccentric behaviour from Dudley councillors and officers

Dear Councillor Jeff

Many thanks for this and the S Staffs Water plan which is very helpful.

It does mean, from what you have written and from the route of the water main down Lapal Lane South that all the trees, on both sides of the lane, now need to be clear felled to prevent root penetration and leaks.  This would allow Tom Russon's idea in April that a footpath should be provided down that W side of the lane to the stile and network of paths.

May I have a similar plan, showing the utilities/services under the Grange roundabout, please?  Could you also ask the professionals why this appears to be the only major roundabout of 30 metres in diameter without landscaping in the whole of the UK, from my motoring around over these last 60 years?

Why is grass not even allowed?

We have never had a full written explanation from a senior officer for the strange anomaly.  Now is the time, please.

Why in the 90s or 00s did we see that thick planting of trees and shrubs where, eventually the lollipop cherry trees were planted and where the remnant remains at the Shell station (not Maybank, as I previously wrote) and on the E side of the Manor Lane traffic lights up to the cherry trees.  Yet, reinstatement is STILL not complete!

Why are you failing to give me the contact details of your tree officer whose predecessors I have spoken with in past decades?

This Grange House roundabout is:-

The Gateway from Jct 3, M5 to the Historic Capital of the mighty but barren, backward, bleak Black Country which has destroyed seven of its railways!  SEE

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mids Metro!

TIM WELLER   0791 380 4363   28 Hunnington Cres  HALESOWEN  B63 3DJ

Persevering with UK's Ugliest Roundabout

Dear Jeff

Many thanks for this and the S Staffs Water plan which is very helpful.

It does mean, from what you have written and from the route of the water main down Lapal Lane South that all the trees, on both sides of the lane, now need to be clear felled to prevent root penetration and leaks.  This would facilitate Tom Russon's idea in April that a footpath should be provided down that W side of the lane to the stile and network of paths.

May I have a similar plan, showing the utilities/services under the Grange roundabout, please?  Could you also ask the professionals why this appears to be the only major roundabout of 30 metres in diameter without landscaping in the whole of the UK, from my motoring around over these last 60 years?

Why is grass not even allowed?

We have never had a full written explanation from a senior officer for the strange anomaly.  Now is the time, please.

Why in the 90s or 00s did we see that thick planting of trees and shrubs where, eventually the lollipop cherry trees were planted and where the remnant remains at the Shell station (not Maybank, as I previously wrote) and on the E side of the Manor Lane traffic lights up to the cherry trees.  Yet, reinstatement is STILL not complete!

Why are you failing to give me the contact details of your tree officer whose predecessors I have spoken with in past decades?

Thanks for your help.  Can we still meet next Sunday at 9 am?

From Colin

Thanks for email.

We, in the UK, are terrified of Trump, perhaps with good reason. Starmer has had to steer a difficult path. I sense that nothing would please him more than to tell Trump to foxtrot oscar but he knows this would have dire consequences for the UK economy (not to mention our nuclear deterrent).Are we as a nation prepared to sacrifice our standards of living on the altar of principle ?

I can understand Starmer's need to genuflect at Trump's feet, although I don't condone it, but, what I can't understand is Trump's fear of Netanyahu.

Don't have nightmares, 

Colin.

CAF trams to Israel?

That company supplies trams to Israel, that important friend and ally of ours.  Israel and ourselves are keeping the people of Gaza under such tight domination, control and occupation, they continue to live in the most inhumane conditions we would not dream of allowing our pets to endure.  Yet, our government has only the most trivial of sanctions on Israel, with our military alliance supplying every kind of weapon imaginable to Israel, except WMD which the Israelis already have.

The two million population survive in a wasteland of destruction after over 70,000 of them have been disproportionately and indiscriminately slaughtered, suffering a horrific death from our NATO weapons.

from Sir Jonathon - two extracts

As I wrote in my last piece about this, I believe the Party is absolutely right to be emphasising justice issues (taxation, wealth, human rights, militarism, cost of living, public services etc), even as I’ve simultaneously argued that it’s self-defeating to have relegated climate, nature and pollution issues (the biophysical sustainability side of the coin) to a secondary role.

So, keeping it simple, how will broadly progressive voters in the UK (still the majority) ensure that our archaic, first-past-the-post electoral system doesn’t end up giving that right-wing front as big a majority as Starmer managed to win in 2024 – even though he persuaded half a million fewer people to vote for him than his apparently unelectable predecessor Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 election!

Shenanigans showered down from our right ol' shower!

Parmjit is included to represent my Halesowen MP, Alex Ballinger

Simon is the member for Highways who owes me because I don't think I have ever had any kind of communication from him - ever!  Am I wrong, Simon?

Dear councillors - and could each of you please respond, rather than each thinking someone else will!  It is very rare to get any replies, without my having to attend committee meetings - a real bind when I have to get the self-powered bike out and cycle five miles up to the top of the hill when I'm 78 years ancient!

In this decade, Halesowen councillors and our MP, Alex could be central in the fight to mitigate and adapt to the Climate Emergency which Dudley Council declared in 2020 and national government in 2019.

In either the 1990s or the 00s, the national highway authority at the time, did the most magnificent and extensive nature recovery programme on the central reservation of Manor Way that there has ever been on that section of road.  However, it was soon partly destroyed by the major carriageway reconstruction programme carried out by national highways.  It is now Dudley's responsibility.  Who is the Cabinet lead, please?  Is it Simon Phipps - copied in here?

There did remain the thick section of trees, shrubs and plants opposite the new Maybank housing development.  It was the same further east between Manor Lane traffic lights and Lapal Lane South where the planting was clear felled to make way for the carriageway works.

After many years of writing to the authorities asking for the reinstatement of the earlier scheme, I was eventually rewarded by the planting of the cherry trees where, previously there had been a thick and extensive woodland of trees and shrubs - exactly like what remains opposite Maybank.  The cherry tree planting was NOT full reinstatement which the authorities should have carried out after the carriageway reconstruction.

However, they still have the opportunity to act positively and constructively in the international efforts to slow Climate breakdown.

I would like each of you to write an email to Dudley Council asking for the reinstatement of the nature recovery programme that they have shown is possible, practical and, was once done by national highways decades ago.  Could you please copy me in to the email you write.

Earlier this year, I met with Cllr Tom Russon on site at Lapal Lane South who wanted to pursue the suggestions we both agreed then for the 5G site.  I wonder if we might all meet at the 5G triangle site on the corner of Lapal Lane South and Manor Way, please?  I would like to suggest a Sunday morning at 9 am when there is the least amount of traffic and we can talk more easily.  Can you make this Sunday, 7 June at 9 am?

I will be there, anyway in eager anticipation to see who turns up!  There is room to park on a Sunday morning and, then, it is safer, too.  Please impress me with your zeal!  I will cycle from home.

Best wishes and thanks for all your help and interest.

Our side is openly criminal in the Middle East

The militarisation of diplomacy for many decades in the Middle East.

Failure, negligence, disorder and destruction even locally by the authorities.

International thuggery from Israel/USA/UK towards Lebanon and Iran that sets a very bad example to our small time thugs in N. Ireland, part of the Wicked Wild West, much loved by our Lord and Master, Donald Trump who is allowed to get away with anything - illegal or immoral or plain daft.

From ping pong diplomacy to tit for tat slaughter.  Our side should be hanging our heads in shame.  We must contain our arrogant aggression around the world.

Very odd, eccentric behaviour from Dudley councillors and officers

Dear Jeff

Many thanks for this and the S Staffs Water plan which is very helpful.

It does mean, from what you have written and from the route of the water main down Lapal Lane South that all the trees, on both sides of the lane, now need to be clear felled to prevent root penetration and leaks.  This would facilitate Tom Russon's idea in April that a footpath should be provided down that W side of the lane to the stile and network of paths.

May I have a similar plan, showing the utilities/services under the Grange roundabout, please?  Could you also ask the professionals why this appears to be the only major roundabout of 30 metres in diameter without landscaping in the whole of the UK, from my motoring around over these last 60 years?

Why is grass not even allowed?

We have never had a full written explanation from a senior officer for the strange anomaly.  Now is the time, please.

Why in the 90s or 00s did we see that thick planting of trees and shrubs where, eventually the lollipop cherry trees were planted and where the remnant remains at the Shell station (not Maybank, as I previously wrote) and on the E side of the Manor Lane traffic lights up to the cherry trees.  Yet, reinstatement is STILL not complete!

Why are you failing to give me the contact details of your tree officer whose predecessors I have spoken with in past decades?

This morning's news - Mon 8 June 2026

I've switched on Radio 4's 'Today' programme and am astonished by the continuing popularity of revenge and war in the Middle East by all the Children of Abraham.  This, from the richest and supposedly the most civilised and 'Christian' nation in the world, the people of the USA, down to one of the poorest, Lebanon, now being turned into wasteland, exactly as Gaza remains with our side's (Judeo-Christian) tight grip on it.

The 3 Fs for transport nirvana

Deal with Climate, congestion and our love of all things shiny new and prestigious and extravagant by ...

Scrapping the £15 billions and 240 Kms of tram expansion by using the money to reward and entice and to coerce car commuters to leave their beloved motor at home and to jump on a bus!

Fare-Free Public Transport could then be afforded throughout the region for all on all modes.

Follow the 'Kev's Cars and Coaches' model to provide more popular vehicles for different scenarios and locations.  Glam buses instead of glam trams!

Financial inducements for all, including car commuters who get free travel along with everyone else and who get to work quicker.

Constraints on wasteful, unnecessary car commuters but rewards for them using bus, train and tram instead.

Every essential road user gets about more easily and efficiently.

Defending the American cause

One line of argument in Parliament was that Americans should pay a share of the costs of the French and Indian War and therefore taxes should be levied on them. Franklin became the American spokesman in highly publicized testimony in Parliament in 1766. He stated that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of the Empire. He said local governments had raised, outfitted and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France—as many as Great Britain itself sent—and spent many millions from American treasuries doing so in the French and Indian War alone

From:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

Financial costs from the British Empire and the wars that it spawned have never been a deterrent to domination, control and war.  Ordinary people like you and I, Don doing the bidding of the authorities end up killing and being killed.  This is not good enough!  Hence, my non-violent resistance to unnecessary wars in particular but, of course for all wars as they simply lead to revenge wars!  The 1WW led to the rise of Nazism and Hitler, by a longstanding, traditional Christian country, too.  War historian, Gary Sheffield seems to say so here, quoting his book, ‘A Short History of the First World War’:-

Immoral and Climate deepening CAF trams also support immorality and illegality in Israel

This is our moment to turn up the pressure on CAF. On June 13, CAF, a Basque transport company registered in Spain, will hold its shareholders’ meeting. CAF is deeply complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid against Palestinians: it maintains and expands Israel’s illegal Jerusalem Light Rail in the occupied Palestinian territory.

This project connects illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank to West Jerusalem. Israeli colonial settlements are built on stolen Palestinian land and are sustained through the ethnic cleansing and forcible displacement of Palestinians. They constitute war crimes under international law. CAF is therefore included in the United Nations database of companies implicated in activities in Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

CAF fully support's Israel's project to claim ALL of the land from the River to the Sea

By providing the technical backbone for Israel’s colonial Jerusalem Light Rail, CAF directly enables Israel's illegal occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem and the consolidation of Israel’s colonial settlements that ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland.

For years, a global BDS campaign has targeted CAF through factory strikes, peaceful direct actions at construction sites, interventions at shareholder meetings and legal challenges to contracts in countries like Belgium, Mexico and Norway.

For years, CAF’s board has ignored these demands. Instead of disengaging, it has expanded its role — even as Israel carries out genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Scandal at CAF - trams for unjust Israel and the folly of trams to replace buses and trains

CAF supplies the Midland Metro trams to Transport for W Midlands/WMCA.

Since 1981, this has been a wholly unnecessary vanity/glamorous scheme to spend £15 billions by 2040 on 240 Kms of tramway to replace buses and, for trams ("a bus on rails") to go on disused railway lines.

Railway trains must go on our remaining wasted or, partly used lines, as we succeeded in doing with the re-opening of the railway line from Kings Norton to Grand Central via Kings Heath and Moseley, in April. It had been down for Metro trams from 1981 to 2016.

The billions should be spent on the other scandal of car commuters clogging up roads when they don't need their cars for their jobs. Enticing and coercing them onto regional Fareless Public Transport which I have had for 18 years, I'm so ancient but modern!

Honest to Humanity

I think, out of all living species, we humans are an aberration on the planet, simply because of our unique suicidal and ecocidal behaviour.

The planet, teeming with life, is an anomaly in the universe.  Yet, also inevitable when time has no beginning or end, of course.

The arrogance of we humans and our acquisitive, or rapacious or grasping ways seem to be confined to ourselves.

All this indicates, I think, that our dismissive, negative view of dinosaurs is so typical of our hubris, our short sightedness and over confidence that our intelligence will come up with something else once the fossil fuel age is over.

Our folly will be our undoing and our time on the earth will be very much shorter than the dinosaurs.

Humans depend on hydrocarbons to give us fertilisers  which are essential for our food.

Living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet.

Brum CC for Transport, Sustainability and Climate Change from June 2026

Transport, Sustainability and Climate Change: Rob Grant, Greens, Kings Norton South; deputy Izzy Knowles, Lib Dems, Moseley

MASS TRAGEDY of mass rapid transit from the W Midlands record of disaster!

HMG's Task Force on mass rapid transit, so far, has worked out as not being rapid or a massive (or mini) answer to congested/polluted roads.  The total today is 25 Kms in 45 years of trying when they wanted 200 Kms by the year 2000, 26 years ago!  By that year, they had precisely 20 Kms, 18 Kms on a former mainline railway that could have its trains and stations back years earlier, for a fraction of the price.  And platform 4 at Snow Hill railway station is still not used/wasted where the tram went from in 1999 when opened!  (Distances measured again, to check, using the OS digital tool.)

Since Jan 2020, the Mayor of the W Mids has wanted 240 Kms, 8 lines and 380 tram stops by 2040.  Only costing £15 billion (money grows on trees and both Mayors are also Climate deniers from their actions).

THE TRAGEDY OF TRAMS - has resulted in them being:

All too devastating of roads, buildings and of nature.

All too expensive at a time of Climate breakdown of extreme weather and disturbed climate patterns, plus rapidly depleting gas and oil which, with coal, are the worst offenders when burnt.

All too diverting of time, staff and money from addressing Climate and sustainability issues which we ignore like dumb sheep, so we can live foolishly, infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet.  Human folly.  As stupid as two police officers being unable to see that their top priority was to save the life of the man at their feet and flat on his face, pleading for help as he lay dying.

Political killers like Bibi and Donald are losers in 'vanquishing' their enemies only to find they are not subdued after all!

Our war-loving politicians always get the backing of the people for their violent escapades - war criminals, the lot of them. 

Political killers like Bibi and Donald have still not beaten their enemies into the ground - after 80 years.

Of all the Israeli PMs, Bibi has been the longest and most persistent but has still not been able to subdue all his neighbouring nations into submission. Those nations are even more angry and hate-filled for Israel. Wot losers. Wot failures and war criminals!

Dear Bibi even boasted in his 654 pages book that the Gazan tunnels had been made unusable, just one year before 7.10.23.  His book was published in 2022.