Sprint is extravagant and unnecessary

Sprint is far too expensive and is NOT even electric.   “Low emission vehicles (Euro VI or better emissions, with an aspiration to operate with zero emission vehicles when practicable)”

Use the money to extend free bus and tram travel from the disabled and elderly like me to EVERYONE and start a sea change in attitudes to free up road space for those who really do need their vehicles for their businesses.

Bus use is declining, routes cut and fares rising faster than inflation.  In the House of Commons, at PMQs in July, Jeremy Corbyn said, "Fares are increasing, routes cut, passenger numbers falling, isolating elders and disabled people, damaging communities and High Streets and causing more congestion in our towns and cities.  People are spending more time to travel to work and school. It is bad for our climate change commitments, bad for our air quality. Often, the only mode of transport for many people is the bus."

THEREFORE:

Turn the nearside lane into bus lanes instead of digging up the roads for trams.

Give traffic light priority to ALL buses with their fareless passengers.

Use the money to give us ALL electric buses.

Use Metro and Sprint money to bring ALL towpaths and bridleways and shared footways into use by cycles.  Smooth all weather surfaces, please.

Use the money from abandoning the WORLD’S  FIRST project to turn a mainline railway into a tram line.  This is the 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby mainline “of national strategic significance” into a piddling little tramline of 6.7 Kms plus, of course, a test track, trees and, Japanese knotweed!

TELL THESE VIPs AND COUNCIL LEADERS WHAT YOU THINK:

andy.street@wmca.org.uk andrew.browning@wmca.org.uk cllr.mike.bird@walsall.gov.uk roger.lawrence@wolverhampton.gov.uk rsleigh@solihull.gov.uk   Ian.Ward@birmingham.gov.uk Cllr.Patrick.Harley@dudleymbc.org.uk steve_eling@sandwell.gov.uk george.duggins@coventry.gov.uk

Useless Idiots

Dear Editor  - exclusive to the Times; NOT for publication in the Express and Star or the Birmingham Post.

Useless Idiots

You wrote, “Nato was created in 1949 as an alliance of free nations to deter Soviet expansionism and aggression.” THE TIMES 15 September.

The ‘Guardian’ in February 2014​,​ proved in their four page spread that it was not the USSR but the UK that has had their armed forces in action in other countries in every single year since at least 1914.  It was hoped that 2015 would be the first year since at least 1914 that the UK was not killing foreigners in their own lands.

It seems that the Cold War was stoked and Nato formed by the West out of paranoia that it was about to be attacked and overrun by the Soviet Union.  This, mind you, after the Russians had just sacrificed about 25 million of their people to help us win a war they had no part in starting! Nato was formed in 1949 and continues.  Their equivalent, the Warsaw Pact lasted from 1955 to 1991. In other words, ​formed ​in response to the West’s unfriendly alliance that they felt threatened them.​ They dissolved their military alliance in 1991.  Since ​then​, the West has continued to spread its influence eastwards to diminish Russian influence and to expand the West’s EU and Nato membership.

Fear of attack by Russia was also used to justify a huge arsenal of weapons of every description.  Nato helped to give respectability to the three leading members for their many wars of expansionism, aggression and regime change around the world.  So much for setting a fine example to other countries! If you make yourself an enemy, you must expect to be treated as an enemy.

The West has unilaterally strengthened itself while the Russians dissolved the Warsaw Pact and saw it Eastern bloc friends go over to the West.​  Ukraine was the most damaging, led to Crimea annexation and civil war that continues to this day.​ The West stirred things up. Useless idiots.

Tim Weller​  (contact details at the foot)