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.

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.

Mixed-Use Railway nirvana

Heavy rail with far too many freight only lines in the West Midlands

Tram-train and train-tram

Metro

Light Rail

Very Light Rail

Ultra Light Rail

Sprint - the bus that thinks its a tram

All about turning buses and trains into even more railway modes.

At the most shocking cost!

At least half a dozen railway modes causes confusion as to which to use,

more changes from all the different transport modes,

means more delays.

Takes money and therefore finite resources away.

Gobbles up yet more finite fossil fuels to make fools of us all when none is left - long after I'm dead and buried.

Accelerates Climate horrors for future generations.

Greedily takes from future stores/requirements and today's people who simply want easier, faster, cheaper travel from good ol' buses and trains!

Gazans have nothing; we rich Westerners have the lot.

Greedy and selfish as we all go down the swanny to yet more jolly catastrophes - in future, not just confined to the Middle East!

We are far too entitled, privileged and expecting even more from a planet that cannot go delivering ever more for us wealthy types.

Front gardens, tree and grass embankment gone for a tramway or two in the West Midlands.  Nature takes a hammering from tram expansion and she gets her own back with worse Climate horrors.

MASS TRAGEDY

HMG's Task Force on rapid mass transit, so far, has worked out as not being rapid or a massive answer to congested/polluted roads.  23 Kms in 41 years of trying when they wanted 200 Kms by 26 years ago.  By that year they had precisely 21 Kms, 19 Kms on a former mainline railway that could have its trains back and stations years earlier!

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.

Action on Climate - from the Guardian

 ... Just as we know what is driving climate breakdown – humanity’s burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of nature, largely driven by animal agriculture – we also have all of the solutions to address it. We just need the political will.

A strong example of that is happening in Australia. In this piece, environment correspondents Adam Morton and Petra Stock explained how the country is at the forefront of a revolution in home renewables and battery use, a move that is already bringing down energy bills amid the upheaval of the crisis in the Middle East. The transformation offers lessons for the rest of the world. It’s an inspiring piece about a real shift.

We also covered the publication of a sweeping new vision laid out by a group of academics, including Thomas Piketty, setting out an alternative to climate breakdown, political extremism and economic tensions. Their ideas include a set of bold policy proposals, including wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets and a shift of investment from sectors, such as industry and mining, to education and health.

Katharine Viner, Editor in Chief, Guardian

This week, European environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan reported on the likely return of El Niño, the powerful weather pattern that raises global temperatures and worsens some rainfall. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, it has an 80% chance of forming before September and a 90% chance before November. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned that “El Niño conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world”.

The prospect of ever-rising temperatures and more extreme weather is deeply troubling, but this week we have also reported on how quickly we can change things for the better. Just as we know what is driving climate breakdown – humanity’s burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of nature, largely driven by animal agriculture – we also have all of the solutions to address it. We just need the political will.

Keep things simple and obvious; not complicated and difficult

When you have built a monorail which takes shoppers from the free car park at the Waterfront into the heart of the Merry Hill Shopping Centre, don't destroy it to build the mighty tramway which will deposit shoppers from the shops at Dudley onto the high canal embankment over 100 metres away from the main entrance!

When you have a principal mainline railway between London and Edinburgh through the 1 m population of the Black Country on the western side of the 1 m population of Birmingham, simply reinstate the monorail.  But this time, connect it to that same mainline railway "of national strategic significance" at the Waterfront free car park instead of turning it into:

part tramway

    part freight railway

        part Very Light Railway (VLR) test track

            part another VLR HQ and innovation centre

                part cycle-walkway;

and this, when you have already built all the tunnels, bridges and flyovers for the intercity and commuter trains to return!

YOU are destroying nature and open spaces at Merry Hill by your stunning stupidity in building and then selling the monorail to Australia!

YOU are also destroying nature, open spaces and gardens along Hagley Road by building the highly extravagant tramway.

This, to take funds away from extending regional Fare-Free Public Transport to ALL  age groups.

And YOU are complicating public transport journeys by adding more modes with Light Rail trams like Metro and, Very Light Rail trams as in Coventry.

YOU are obsessed with new transport modes like Sprint (the bus that thinks its a tram) instead of using that money to reward and discourage car commuters who leave their cars at home to jump on a bus, train or tram.

GO FOR A TRIAL of 'Hagley Road Rush Hour Trial, viz

essential road users in rush hours must register to avoid the cameras fining them for thoughtless behaviour.

Non-essential car users are fined but also rewarded by regional, Fare-Free Public Transport on bus, train, tram.

Paid for by abandoning expansion of the new modes, like the two main trams and Sprint buses being rolled out in the W Midlands.

Cameras fining unregistered vehicles between 0600 hrs and 1000 hrs; and, 1500 hrs to 1900 hrs.  8 hrs a day, Monday to Friday.

Even tourist/visitor drivers are not exempt.  But keep penalty to £10 per session (one session is the 4 hr window)

Ignorance is no excuse.

Unlike the dinosaurs, we only have ourselves to blame!

Lasted for 186 m years; wiped out by outer space asteroid or two - half a mile wide.

"The age of dinosaurs, known as the Mesozoic Era, lasted approximately 186 million years, from about 252 to 66 million years ago." AI overview

Good ol' humans around for less than one million years and our present very high standard of living has been enjoyed by only the 'lucky' wealthy section for 100 years.  And that very wealth is their/our undoing - fossil fuels are making fossil fools of us all!

350 millions to form them.  Good ol' English speaking world, plus Europe, China and Russia are ripping through the lot in less than 350 years!  Even if our ailing life support systems can last out to 2100.

Anthropocene is the 6th mass extinction period we are living through.  "The effects of human activities on Earth can be seen, for example, in regards to biodiversity loss, and climate change."  And, "Anthropocene epoch in the geologic time scale"   Wikipedia

Is this poetic justice?  We look down our noses at how unsuccessful the dinosaurs were but we, modern day know-alls on earth are the very ones who have not a clue how to live sustainably.  But the dinosaurs DID!

War fervour by UK government is leading to re-armament and ramping up the Climate Emergency

Top government politicians are speaking up the fear of war from an attack by Russia and, after the start of the 28 February unlawful and unprovoked war on Iran by America and Israel, an attack from Iran.

In addition, America's threat to attack Canada and Greenland has also alarmed HMG.  Hence, they are frightened and paranoid.  Even the Overseas Aid budget has been raided to get funds for armaments and yet more war in the Middle East.  This is as obscene as stealing people from other lands to work, not even for a pittance and living in hovels, to make the USA/UK the wealthiest band of reprobates, robbers and murderers there has ever been.

Here is a positive, practical, credible suggestion:

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/A456 in Halesowen 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 exactly?

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.

Please 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.  Thanks!

This is first rate writing

 https://brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-jeremy-bowen?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

Bowen quoting thoughts of a visitor to the Western Wall

Jeremy: I was filming near the Western Wall when a woman stopped with her own peace plan, "This is like the magnet site for sanctity.  Everyone who turns up in Jerusalem makes something out of it, unfortunately.  The only hostages are them and God and they need to move him somewhere else.

Jeremy: That is not going to happen.  Jerusalem and its holy sites sit at the heart of the Middle East like a time bomb.  Its sanctity is tangled intimately with nationalism and power.  Jews, Christians and Muslims have, at different times, controlled Jerusalem often for centuries.  Jewish kings, Roman emperors, Byzantines, Persians, Muslim caliphs, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, European imperialists and, most recently, Israelis.  All long to possess Jerusalem both above and below ground.