THE UGLIEST ROUNDABOUT IN THE LAND suggestion

Dear Hilary and Patrick/Balvinder

I refer to landscaping relying on weeds for one, which are growing out of the 99% black tarmac, Grange roundabout on the A456/A459, by the Halesowen cricket ground.  You grandly arrive at it from Jct 3, M5 on the nearest and only Gateway to Dudley, "the historic capital of the Black Country" and the motorway gateway to heavenly Halesowen.

In 61 years with a full driving licence, I cannot ever recall driving around the UK, seeing such a major, 30 metre diameter roundabout with nothing on it but tarmac and struggling weeds!  Many visitors have noticed, too, over my 50 years living in Halesowen.  "How odd" is the common comment.

Why is Dudley ALWAYS so odd and eccentric?  From six destroyed railways to masterly negligence over the UK's major, 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway/Mudway and the Netherton Canal Tunnel towpath slum disgrace (half in Dudley, half in Sandwell).

 6 scandals on the 45th anniversary of the W Mids Metro!

On the other roundabout at the Asda car park entrance, over 50% of the area is loose white/grey stone, with the fine centerpiece being a peculiar, 45 degree angled conifer collapsing, plus a large branch clearly torn from the main trunk.  It looks terrible.  There was 100% nature on the previous roundabout that you good people clear felled/wrecked/destroyed for the present shameful mess.  What IS the matter with you all?

 50% white stone rndbt 2.jpg

This is how it should be done

 20260728_113919.jpg

Are the Britain in Bloom judges suffering from poor eyesight, Hilary?  You do a magnificent job with HIB and BID but not as regards the two roundabouts, my friend.  And you are the more powerful and influential councillor than poor old me who is a complete nobody!

PLEASE REPLY (sorry you did do, Hilary once, earlier this year - thank you), especially Leader Patrick and other Leader Balvinder who both owe me an apology for never, ever replying.  And Balvinder once told me, I thought in all seriousness, that she would give some of her time when we met at a WMCA Board meeting in Brum Council House, shortly after her appointment as Chief Exec.  Of course, it never happened.  At least, I was once granted 15 minutes with Leader Patrick.  And a previous Leader, Fred Hunt, told me in the early to mid 90s that the Dudley Tram would be up and running on Dudley's principal mainline railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

by the year 2000 CE, 26 years ago!!

None of this is nowhere near being good enough, my friends.

to Helen Board, Dudley Gp NHS Foundation Trust

Dear Helen

I would also like to know what my Trust is doing over this report from an email I was sent from Operation Noah in June.

"Parts of mainland Europe also suffered and still are suffering from a heatwave which may be responsible for hundreds of excess deaths according to the World Health Organization, with Germany experiencing its hottest day ever recorded."

How is the Trust adapting to and mitigating the coming Climate horrors?

Bad health consequences from failing to act ...

... over Gornal/Kingswinford landfill site, over failing to upgrade routes separated from traffic for cycling, walking and wheeling.

Assumption that the more we spend, the less we have of fatal, finite, fossil fuels - the fools' gold of extraordinary advantages but also the most fearful downsides we stubbornly bury for the sake of our mental health!

UK's Top Active Travel Route because:

Yesterday, Sunday, I cycled from home in Halesowen to Castlecroft on the S Staffs/Wolves border, before turning back.

Yesterday, Sunday, I cycled from home in Halesowen to Castlecroft on the S Staffs/Wolves border, before turning back.

Since discovering the route last decade, the Dudley section is the worst I have seen it but the S Staffs section, where it is tarmaced, is the best with the greatest number of users.  Apart from Chris Barnett with whom I have cycled his wonderful 'Chris Barnett Circular' a couple of times, there is STILL zero interest from a single officer or member of that council.  But last week I met Cllr Jon Mucklow - hope!

Dudley Council, from my experience, will not send out a single member of their staff to cut back vegetation on the Pensnett/Kingswinford Railway Walk.  I did something some years ago but no longer!  It needs a wholesale restoration to keep the ASB brigade out who have wrecked the cycle-walkway, as here, with Dudley Council allowing them to do this destruction:

PROW = Public Right of WayOpen to all to walk/ride over the adjacent landfill site with its cocktail of poisonous gases.  Dudley's fault - again!:

In my opinion, the 20 Kms from Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill to NW Wolverhamton (and even on into deepest Staffordshire) is easily the Top UK cycle-walkway because:

1. It is in the heart of England in the West Midlands with its population of 2.8 million.
2. Its urban-rural-urban nature means it is vital for commuter, business and leisure use.
3. Climate problems make it essential for us car users to leave them at home more and to use our flat feet, two wheels and the Andy Burnham BUS!
4. Making the full 20 Kms length fit for purpose is one of many urgent ways to do something about Climate no 1 Emergency.
5. Yet, still no NCR number.  Shocking!
6. The two railway lines which make it up are now ideal for active travel, ONLY!  No more trams - the bane of my life for these past 40 years.

2 stations are Coffee Stops but 3 saved and another is a tram stop!

The Wombourne station is the coffee shop, called 'The Platform'.

The Tettenhall station on the Black Country Active Travel Route is another coffee shop, called Cupcake Lane, as here - https://cupcake-lane.com/.

The three new stations on the Camp Hill line were going to be tram stops under the West Midlands Metro tramway plan from 1981 to 2016.  Only in 2016, before Andy Street was elected, did they finally cancel the tram plan and decided on reinstating the commuter trains instead.  It took them ten years to achieve it!

I was writing from the 1990s opposing existing, three mainline railways being turned into tramways.  The first tramway on the first mainline opened in 1999.  The second on the London to Edinburgh, principal mainline railway through Dudley opens in time for Christmas - for the last two or three years - perhaps this year!

Please take a look at riversimple.com and tell me what you think.

Our side is STILL behaving like the Nazis of ...

... the 30s and 40s but, this time, towards Arabs/Muslims and, Palestinians, in particular. 

With no effective condemnation of Israel in word, let alone the BDS we impose on Russian aggression, we are supporting the Jewish hate filled, anti Muslim feeling in thought and deed.  Therefore, we are STILL treating Gazans and Palestinians like we did the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15 v 3 in our own Holy Book.

The Jewish-Zionist and Christian massacre and ill treatment of Muslims in Gaza, Judea and Samaria continues apace and we don't turn a hair. This is astonishing, despicable and hate-filled from beginning to end. Yet, we consider ourselves as the Righteous of the International Rules Based Order, upholding the cruel and callous behaviour of Trump and Netanyahu with their mainly American evangelical core base. But also some British evangelicals I know, love Bibi too.

His much loved reciprocation policy (I have read his memoir) means when the enemy Hamas/Gazans hit back, beloved Bibi hits back 70x7 in reciprocation. Mind you, never revenge, however! 1 Samuel 15 v 3 always takes precedence for our side over the life and teaching of Jesus Christ of the more noble and honourable values which our Judeo-Christian world has never been able to attain for the last 1700 years of control, domination and warfare around the world. 

Our popular new Prime Minister voted for all our recent wars on the Arab Muslim world. Israel, like our side always has, acts with impunity and is immune to criticism, always calling it antisemitism. It is their get out of jail free card which never expires.

No wonder Putin calls us the new Nazis. I think we are the biggest, immoral, international law breaking hypocrites out.

FoE Warehouse down for demolition and conversion to ...

... railway station platforms because NOT one other FoE member joined me in my vigorous and long running, writing and speaking efforts in opposing Metro destroying three mainline Brum and Black Country railways. I was successful in saving one - the Camp Hill (Kings Heath/Moseley) railway. The other two are lost forever, despite them saying, "Light rail (Metro) investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" (September 2000 letter).

I have just written in my submission:-

"Because what you want to do (demolishing the FoE Warehouse) would NOT have been necessary if you had followed my advice and stopped the part conversion of our regional railway network into tramways, buildings and roads. The Victorian railway network had everything we need today. But you never kept/safeguarded Beeching's quite properly closed railways, for future use."

IDF should escort officials from the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza

 This is us, our side, the upstanding and honourable, full of moral rectitude and honour, the Judeo-Christian world doing the most appalling wickedness, illegality and never ending oppression, quite apart from forever wars on Arab Muslims in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Lebanon.  And since the 28 February 2026, on Iran.

Why can't the IDF impose law and order on even the 60% of Gaza that they control and govern?

Why can't the IDF escort officials from the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza to allow them to do their work?

Fare-Free Public Transport

Burnham says he is going to devolve more of natiional taxation back to the regions, this would be an opportunity to kick start a FFPT scheme, or at the very least set up a feasibility study to look into successful schemes in Dunkirk, Malta, Luxemburg, Tallinn etc and how to start one here.

In the past, two really duff, inadequate, truly weird and wonderful traffic roundabouts have won it for ...

... HALESOWEN IN BLOOM!

Dear Hilary and Patrick/Balvinder

I refer to landscaping relying on weeds for one, which are growing out of the 99% black tarmac, Grange roundabout on the A456/A459, by the Halesowen cricket ground.  You grandly arrive at it from Jct 3, M5 on the nearest and only Gateway to Dudley, "the historic capital of the Black Country" and the motorway gateway to heavenly Halesowen.

In 61 years with a full driving licence, I cannot ever recall driving around the UK, seeing such a major, 30 metre diameter roundabout with nothing on it but tarmac and struggling weeds!  Many visitors have noticed, too, over my 50 years living in Halesowen.  "How odd" is the common comment.

Why is Dudley ALWAYS so odd and eccentric?  From six destroyed railways to masterly negligence over the UK's major, 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway/Mudway and the Netherton Canal Tunnel towpath slum disgrace (half in Dudley, half in Sandwell).

 6 scandals on the 45th anniversary of the W Mids Metro!

On the other roundabout at the Asda car park entrance, over 50% of the area is loose white/grey stone, with the fine centerpiece being a peculiar, 45 degree angled conifer collapsing, plus a large branch clearly torn from the main trunk.  It looks terrible.  There was 100% nature on the previous roundabout that you good people clear felled/wrecked/destroyed for the present shameful mess.  What IS the matter with you all?

 50% white stone rndbt 2.jpg

This is how it should be done

 20260728_113919.jpg

Are the Britain in Bloom judges suffering from poor eyesight, Hilary?  You do a magnificent job with HIB and BID but not as regards the two roundabouts, my friend.  And you are the more powerful and influential councillor than poor old me who is a complete nobody!

PLEASE REPLY (sorry you did do, Hilary once, earlier this year - thank you), especially Leader Patrick and other Leader Balvinder who both owe me an apology for never, ever replying.  And Balvinder once told me, I thought in all seriousness, that she would give some of her time when we met at a WMCA Board meeting in Brum Council House, shortly after her appointment as Chief Exec.  Of course, it never happened.  At least, I was once granted 15 minutes with Leader Patrick.  And a previous Leader, Fred Hunt, told me in the early to mid 90s that the Dudley Tram would be up and running on Dudley's principal mainline railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

by the year 2000 CE, 26 years ago!!

None of this is nowhere near being good enough, my friends.

Helen at RHH

Dear Helen

I would like to come along next month to the Board meeting if members feel able to let me present this Climate and Health related suggestion:

'Let's keep more patients out of hospital' by:

1. Supporting active travel - walking, running and cycling/wheeling (helmet on!).  Therefore,
2. Will the Board actively ask and lobby and then maintain the pressure for the nearby cycle-walkway to be brought up to the same standard as the sections in South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton?
3. This is the UK's Top and easily the most important, 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway, only 500 metres from the Trust's HQ front door!
4. On our doorstep but, it is grossly under-used because of its shocking state of disrepair and danger to health.
5. Further on towards Himley, the adjacent landfill site to the cycle-walkway is open and available but a danger to health from the venting of a cocktail of poisonous gases.

Should not Board members be urgently demanding action on this health hazard and the unmaintained, dirt bikers paradise through Barrow Hill Nature Reserve, all the way to the Dudley border with S Staffs District Council?

It is a paradise for the quad bikers and dirt bikers brigade.  But the rest of us are banished because of their trashing of the UK's Top and longest urban-rural-urban cycle-walkway.

Please reply and give me your own thoughts on these ways of getting better health and keeping us all out of hospital by physical activity; AND, breathing clean, unpoisoned air from your nearby landfill site when being more active.

In response to David Viner

That's great David - thanks for letting me know.  I would like to see Stuart's reply, please.  Who is Sam Henry?

Do you have any influence in getting an NCR number for the route from Fens Pool Avenue to NW Wolverhampton, David?

How important is Sustrans these days in getting NCR recognition?  I dislike their long winded new name and prefer the snappy 'Sustrans'!  Who is their best person to lobby?

Should we have a Facebook page, do you think?

With three railway names over the 20 Kms, are you happy with a generic name, like Black Country Cycle-Walkway?  Or, Black Country Greenway, which Chris (Barnett) likes?  Or, your own name and others chipping in with ideas/names?

Please could anyone try and engage with Beccy Marston, Active Travel Commissioner, at Beccy.Marston@wmca.org.uk who, if I remember correctly, has never replied to my emails or attended anything I have organised?  We have not met.  It would be good if a small group of us could meet up with her.  Beccy, may we discuss active travel matters with you, please at 16 Summer Lane (or wherever) and with Richard Parker, too?  A full hour would be needed, please.  Richard must be involved because of the serious health and safety/security implications from:

1. Himley Environmental Ltd allows public access from the cycle-walkway and other public rights of way (PROW) to a landfill site venting off a cocktail of poisonous gases - and right next to our cycle-walkway!
2. Anti social behaviour and criminal activity on the Dudley section of the cycle-walkway.  I complained to the Police over these people's threats and intimidating behaviour towards me.
3. The trashing of nature on the other side of our route from the landfill/sewage site in Pensnett/Gornal.  The destruction and negligence is worse than ever from what I saw on Sunday!
4. On Chris's fine circular cycleway which starts and finishes in Brierley Hill to take in what I consider to be the UK's Top cycleway for its location and potential to cut GHG emissions

A round table, major get together is very necessary, I think.  Before Covid we had one at Dudley's Lister Road depot over the Pensnett Railway Walk - but nothing came of it.  It was such a well attended meeting by officers, too.  The senior officer moved on to another authority and things got worse, in fact!

Keep in touch everyone, please and all the best.

to Cllr Claire Darke

Dear Claire - and copied to friend Stuart and to the even bigger bosses, Ed Cox and Richard Parker for them to put me right, please.  I'm longing to go to my grave having been corrected after these last forty years of writing and speaking about manic Metro mania.

Thanks for letting me see these stunning slides that took my breath away for their brave, controversial, dynamic, brilliant news of great things promised but never delivered for Wolverhampton but nothing for the 5 Kms in Dudley which really are the absolute pits out of the over 20 Kms total length!

Stuart is Director of Black Country Transport, the top man, so he must be on an enormous salary.  He has been in that job for at least the last ten years during which he has met me three times for discussion (got nowhere for me but triumphs for him) and he has had many emails from me since about 2013/14!  My disagreement with the good Stuart has been over the idiocy of him being in full agreement with everyone else, in turning TWO mainline railways (and bus travel sidelined) into tramways.  The full fun is recorded here:

​

 Trumpland Transport in the West Midlands since 1981

​and, the shorter (so just read this!):​

 6 scandals on the 45th anniversary of the W Mids Metro!

​I've also done many idiotic things in my 78 years.  But they only affected me, nearly killed me on occasions but, I've never been responsible for turning a principal, mainline railway​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​into a piddling little shuttle tramway on two tiny sections totalling 6.7 Kms which then mucks up the whole thing between London and Edinburgh - only costing a little matter of over a billion pounds before the full 10.7 Kms is finally opened to trams - but, we don't know when.  This century when it was meant to be the last one?!

Keep on getting standards raised with all your great work over many years, Claire.

Best wishes

Tim

Five Scandals Always Overlooked by ...

FIVE SCANDALS ALWAYS OVERLOOKED by every council leader over 50 years and two WMCA Mayors since 2017 - and every MP!

Yesterday, I missed out from my list of three scandals, a fourth!  The deteriorating, disgraceful slum of a canal tunnel which is the Netherton Tunnel towpaths - one closed and the other becoming unusable.  Becoming unusable, even for crazy outdoor adventurers like Chris and me because of its unlit, flooded potholed state, only made a little safer by an ancient rickety rail to prevent a slip into the murky waters!

This is my cycling and walking in the Black Country list of destruction and negligence, of incompetence and corruption by the authorities.  My sad conclusion on the 50th anniversary of my moving to the Black Country in 1976 :

1. Perhaps, one of the first two railways in the UK turned into an official footpath in the 70s or 80s but never improved/modernised and, certainly, never maintained.  Now a dirt bikers paradise to trash and destroy - exactly as is happening.

2. Himley Environmental Ltd (HEL - how appropriate) allows public access from the cycle-walkway and other public rights of way (PROW) to a landfill site venting off a cocktail of poisonous gases - and right next to our cycle-walkway!

3. Anti social behaviour and criminal activity on the Dudley section of the cycle-walkway.  I complained to the Police over these people's threats and intimidating behaviour towards me.

4. The trashing of nature on the other side of our route from the landfill/sewage site in Pensnett/Gornal.  The destruction and negligence is worse than ever from what I saw on Sunday!

5. The deteriorating, disgraceful slum of a canal tunnel which is the Netherton Tunnel towpaths - one closed and the other becoming unusable.  Becoming unusable, even for crazy outdoor adventurers like Chris and me because of its unlit, flooded potholed state, only made a little safer by an ancient rickety rail to prevent a slip into the murky waters!

Netherton Canal Tunnel must be included as part of our ‘Cycle Circular’ which takes in the UK’s Top cycle-walkway through the Black Country and South Staffordshire.

A round table, major get together is very necessary, I think.  Before Covid we had one at Dudley's Lister Road depot over the Pensnett Railway Walk - but nothing came of it.  It was such a well attended meeting by officers, too.  The senior officer moved on to another authority and things got worse, in fact!

Beccy, may we discuss active travel matters​ with you, please at 16 Summer Lane (or wherever) and with Richard Parker, too?  A full hour would be needed, please.  Richard must be involved because of the serious health and safety/security implications from the above scandals.

TIM WELLER             3 August 2026

Ukrainians welcome; Small boat people go home!

If you are fleeing the Russian enemy attacks on Ukraine, you are welcome; fleeing countries who have been under the cosh of Western nations military wars and our wars on nature to bring Climate devastation to them, can damn well GO HOME!

Our English Channel and North Sea moat was effective, for a time, to ensure there was no way we Brits took our fair share of these awful people thinking that we can give them, yet again, a better life.  We had already been all over the world for 500 years to give them the British blessings, culture, virtues and values they always lacked.  And now they come here.  Will it never end?

TODAY! For Climate and Justice, start to finish ...

 ... the magnificent 20 Kms Black Country Active Travel Route in Dudley's very poor 5 Kms.

WRITE to the Mayor above to turn the disgrace into the delight that this alternative travel route is in South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton.

COPY and PASTE the above sentence to the VIPs, above, for ACTION at long last.

VISIT it today, 8 Aug at 10 am at Himley Woodland Trust car park, Himley Lane, Wombourne, S Staffordshire

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/woods/himley-plantation/

Tim Weller - I want to cycle the lot BEFORE I'm too old and decrepit to do so.

Report of 8.8.2026 of Chris's Circular Cycle Route

Chris Barnett and I had our best turn out for our annual ride of his Black Country Circular Route. It takes in our annual inspection of the roughest and worst 3 Kms of a 70s/80s footpath on two Pensnett railway lines in Dudley, the historic capital of the Black Country. 

Yet, the very next section is the best, with a 2.5 m wide, tarmac smooth surface with walkers of all shapes and sizes and cyclists, too. It goes through the town of Wombourne in South  Staffordshire, to the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve in the City of Wolverhampton. 

There follows miles of towpaths - but no roads - to the next challenge. This is the mighty, black, unlit, flooded potholes and puddles of the nearly 2,000 yards of the 18th century Netherton Tunnel canal towpath. Forlorn and neglected for 200 years but a shortcut to connect the two Black Country towns of Sandwell and Dudley.

Forlorn and neglected too by the sidelined Canal and River Trust but also by the wealthy and powerful West Midlands Combined Authority. Made up of the local councillors of Brum, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell et al, they have had for the last 45 years as their top priority. to turn our two former mainline railways into tramways - plus, much else, too.  Now being achieved!

More twisting towpaths on the Dudley No 1 Canal to the 50 Kms finish at a beautiful canal marina.

All this is ideal for cycle commuters and business, leisure users. BUT WHAT A DEPLORABLE STATE OF AFFAIRS, too!

This paperback is essential reading ..

to get Britain's (parlous, pathetic, counter-productive, duplicitous, perfidious, cheeky, self serving, disastrous, catastrophic, so well meaning for supposedly British interests alone, cuck-handed, war oriented, whoopsy daisy foreign policy meddling, revengeful - take your pick) interventions in the Middle East into perspective.

Fair on all players; properly sourced; first hand accounts, unsensationalised and sober - but devastating:-

FROM:  https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Making_of_the_Modern_Middle_East.html?id=AgM10QEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

"supposedly" in our interests because acting selfishly is never in the doers interests in the long term.

If you use ...

I think - but open to correction - if you use violence/war you are showing hate, are part of the problem and being a total hypocrite in not allowing the other side to use violence because only you are allowed to use it. I am thinking of Putin, Netanyahu, Trump. One is our 'enemy', the other two are our side with no BDS against them (double standards by our side).

If you use coercion force violence you are being anti Jew, anti Muslim, anti Christian, anti Russian/Ukraine or anti anyone else. You are therefore part of the problem. 99% believe in violence and war, astonishingly!

I think, they are all anti humanity and bringing us all crashing down to be one of the shortest lived species Earth will have seen. Corporate suicide and ecocide. 

If Zach Polanski had been strong on non-violence, he would never have tolerated the vile Nigel/guillotine tweet by passing it on.

to Gerald

Thanks for this excellent piece that was so good to read. And informative. I've also read Porritt's 'Hope in Hell'.

In often chatting to car drivers sitting in their cosy cars beautifully air conditioned in summer or heated in winter, with their engine idling - sometimes for many minutes - none of them seem to have a clue that the petrol or diesel will one day be no more. It is inconceivable for them to understand that fossil fuels are finite! And that electric cars are also unsustainable and little better than combustion motors. Everyone is in denial that we are foolishly living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet. 

For these people, understanding of Climate science is zero. Some think it is up to governments to sort it, if they have heard of Climate concerns. It's nothing to do with them, they think.

I read on Wikipedia that some scientists fear that earth will turn into our sister or twin planet, venus. Venus is hotter than mercury because of its runaway greenhouse effect, although further from the sun than mercury. As we are doing to earth. 

Our thoughtless, care-less drivers live it up today and to hell with tomorrow are hastening the end for humanity. But I am guilty, too but, at least, I'm trying to minimise my impact in many ways while not living as a hermit. Perhaps I should be!

I love your akrasia and must give it some more reading from other erudite authors. I read a book by an XR man who calls our guilty pleasures but knowing they are damaging and totally unsustainable as "cognitive dissonance".

Keep up the brilliant work you are doing.