SOUND BITES!

GET TRAINS NOT TRAMS ON OUR SURVIVING RAILWAY NETWORK.  More info from timweller1@gmail.com

PUT PASSENGER TRAINS/STATIONS BACK ON OUR SECOND SUTTON RAILWAY LINE.  More info from timweller1@gmail.com

PUT PASSENGER TRAINS/STATIONS BACK ON OUR SECOND STOURBRIDGE RAILWAY LINE.  More info from timweller1@gmail.com 

TRAMS ARE SO EXPENSIVE THEY ARE IMMORAL.  ALL YOU NEED IS THE £1.5 BILLION to give us electric, fareless buses for everyone.  More info from timweller1@gmail.com

SCRAP SPRINT DIESEL BUSES NOT PLATINUMS.  Use the over £300 million, instead, to give us fareless, electric buses for all.  More info from timweller1@gmail.com

VANITY, FLASH, PRESTIGIOUS, STATUS SYMBOL TRAMS are un-green, un-ecological and unethical.  More info from timweller1@gmail.com

BUSES NOT TRAMS MUST BE "THE FIRST CHOICE OF URBAN TRANSPORT", said George Monbiot.  More info from timweller1@gmail.com

OUR REGIONAL (SAD/HOPELESS/PATHETIC) POLITICIANS STILL PUT EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK ON OUR, NOW, MUCH DIMINISHED RAILWAY NETWORK!  More info from timweller1@gmail.com

THE ESSENCE OF WHY THE BLACK COUNTRY RAILWAY MUST BE FINISHED:

GLORIOUS ENGLISH ECCENTRICITY: the UK's only mothballed, easily reinstated, ready made but they forgot the trains and stations, mainline railway.  Our Great Brave Brexit Britain for you!

WHICH IS MORE SENSIBLE THINKING?

2 or 3 fast regional trains every hour and nine new stations to complete the 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby;  OR: 6 to 10 "bus on rails" trams every hour and 17 tram stops over only 11 Kms to STOP the reinstatement of the railway "of national strategic significance."

SMART POLITICIANS?

£449 m plus cost overruns to build the Black Country Tramline over 6.7 Kms that destroys the Black Country Railway over 56 Kms.  All 56 Kms can get commuter/regional trains back for less than £200 m (2015 figure).  Or, stupid politicians?

SMART RAILWAYS?

Why CUT a 120 Kms principal, mainline railway through the congested West Midlands with a tramline in two halves, a railway test track and a trail of trees, Japanese knotweed and undergrowth, when absent trains on 56 Kms of track could have their trains and stations back, FOR LESS MONEY than using trams on only 6.7 Kms?

Tim Weller   Prospective Independent candidate for W Mids Metro Mayor 2020 to instil some urgency into how changes in transport, jobs and housing policy can reduce the impact of human climate breakdown and postpone Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations" and "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings.

For a more sensible, cost effective and easier ways to reduce congestion and pollution.  Fareless, electric buses for ALL; not for the few, like me!  To free up road space for essential users.  Paid for by abandoning Metro, diesel Sprint and CAZ.  Workplace parking levy to reward parents who drop off and pick up their school children by two wheels or two legs or, who run the school walking bus.  Payments at the end of term for fossil free, self-powered parents who sign their weekly claim form.

What Vote Leave leaders really said about no-deal Brexit

From the Guardian 30 July 2019:

Raab’s comments provoked the People’s Vote campaign to accuse him of trying to rewrite history. It said: “The reality is that neither the official Vote Leave campaign or any of its prominent spokespeople – including Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab – promised anything other than a deal with Europe and a continuation of free trade.”

The one Balfour pledge cancels out the other!

In 1917, the British government wrote:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people ... "

However, on the next line of the letter and in the very next sentence to Lord Rothschild, this was made impossible to achieve by the pledge: "It being clearly understood, that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine". 

I think, since 1948, the civil and religious rights of all the existing non-Jewish communities have been prejudiced.  Indeed, trampled all over with our own kith and kin being in the ascendancy and the non-Jewish communities being sidelined, marginalised and crushed.  They just could not compete with the enterprising, highly successful and powerful Jewish community that made up God's Chosen People (out of 193), to bring untold blessings to the nations of the world.

The November 1917 letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur was written at the very time the Jewish and non-Jewish communities were all helping our side to beat the predominantly Muslim Ottoman Empire to bring victory to our own, greater and longer lasting British Empire.

27 June 2018  from Alan Lunt  Dep Chief Executive

Dear Tim

 

I respond as promised to the 7 questions posed in your paper that you handed to me last night.

 

While nobody can doubt your commitment to railway it is frankly frustrating and unproductive to continually respond to your repetitive emails and this is the last time that I shall do so.

 

You have been advised by the Leader of the Council that he nor his members will respond again so please, consider this the final response on such matters.

 

1. This is a question for TfWM.

 

2. Network rail have confirmed that freight trains can co-exist with Metro

 

3. Is it right that commuters have to change trains to access urban light rail systems ? Yes.

 

4. I disagree that the journey to work would be slower. Because Metro takes priority over road traffic, it will be quicker. Heavy trains do not run into and around Town Centres in Dudley.

 

5. Metro will greatly improve connectivity in Dudley MBC

 

6. Heavy rail does not run in and around town centres. Network rail have no plans to resurrect passenger services until at least 2040 and doing nothing for 22 years in the forlorn hope that there is a robust business case to do so is not an option.

 

7. Your idea is noted

 

 

Best regards

Many thanks, Alan for yesterday's e-mail.  I wrote this, below on the 18 Jan 2018 when, in the evening, I attended the Amblecote, Cradley, Lye Community Forum.

"For fifty years, we have a railway network and a road network.where we build yet more roads, homes, shops and offices on the railway network!

The huge growth in train travel began in the 1990s and is set to continue.  Yet, the politicians in charge of the professional experts refuse to put passenger trains on freight only railway lines and on the UK’s only wasted, half unused, 120 Kms Black Country Main Line Railway “of national strategic significance”.

Road/railway congestion and city air pollution is as bad as ever.

YET, all the MEPs, MPs, councillors and experts want to do is to shuttle people by immorally expensive Metro tram from rundown, dying Dudley town centre on their own main line railway “of national strategic significance” to the West Coast Main Line in their neighbour’s borough of Sandwell!

In the other direction, the attractive tram will entice local Dudley people to shop at Merry Hill Shopping Centre, instead.  Dudley’s car parks will be even emptier. The main line railway will remain an unused, linear jungle of undergrowth and wasted, double track railway lines alongside or near to us all crawling along motorways and dual carriageways.

How foolish and ecocidal is that?"

Tim

The Brexit brickwall = the tram rut = we Brits are going nowhere fast.

The Brexit brickwall = the tram rut = we Brits are going nowhere fast.  As well as by tram, train, bus or car!

"The link between Brexit and the increase in fossil fuel use" comes from the billions already spent over these last three years of referendum and, all the to-ing and fro-ing with meetings galore and documents.  The more we spend the more we use up our fossil fuel reserves. At the same time, as we burn them up, we tighten the grip of the runaway greenhouse effect to cause the collapse of the planet's life support systems.  We are all druggies addicted to fossil fuels. They have given us unheard of comfort and wealth but also a nasty and deadly downside that will continue to roll out this century, methinks.

With the over £60,000 per metre extension to Grand Central, the annual passenger journey figures have gone up to over 6 million.  This is still well short of what they said in the 1990s, in order to get the money out of government. Putting the trains back on the same 20 Kms mainline railway would have cost about £3,000 to £4,000 per metre in the 1990s.  Probably, less than that. And, of course, there would now be no need for the expensive Metro extension to Wolverhampton railway station. The nation has more money than sense. And every penny we spend tightens the screw on future devastating consequences for all life on earth from human climate change.

I was trying to be clever in making use of Donald Tusk's statement about "I have been wondering what the special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it safely".  I was comparing it with all those in Transport HQ, since 1981, giving top priority to trams rather than reinstating trains and stations. In addition, our councillors and officers are not at all bothered about their colleagues, in our district councils, giving planning permission for roads, but mainly buildings, obliterating 100 Kms of urban railway lines in the Black Country and Brum.  However, there is still 106 Kms that survive as freight only and mothballed, double track lines. All this destruction of transport infrastructure and refusal to countenance the return of commuter and regional trains on the 106 Kms, as railway passenger numbers have more than doubled since the mid 1990s with overcrowding on our commuter trains and longer traffic jams on our roads. Only trams are allowed.  Installing trams and tram stops is working out at about ten times more expensive per Km than simply rebuilding the stations and putting the commuter/regional trains back!!

We cannot afford to go on wasting, or misusing, perfectly good railway infrastructure, in my opinion.

Do you want our railway lines for trams or trains, Kevin?  You once said, so correctly, "We have to pay twice to get the trains back!"

Do read these writings of mine to understand what has been going so wrong:

THE TRAGEDY OF TRAMS WRECKING OUR RAILWAY NETWORK

FAKE NEWS, MISLEADING STATEMENTS AND LIES

Transport costs per kilometre

TUSK'S QUOTE:

"We will not gamble with peace or put a sell by date on reconciliation.  (Self: The Troubles in N Ireland may restart with any difficulty between or, distancing of, N Ireland from the Republic)  This is why we insist on the backstop. I have been wondering what the special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it (out) safely.  The EU 27 is not making any new offer. Let me recall that the December European Council decided that the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation." The European Council President, Donald Tusk.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/feb/06/brexit-latest-news-developments-pmqs-theresa-may-faces-further-backlash-after-backstop-comments-in-belfast-speech-politics-live

All the best

Don't sacrifice our children and young people

I would add, don't let us sacrifice our children and young people in any kind of war.  The West has been too ready to wage war - N America with guns and, germs interpreted as God wiping out the native, first inhabitants.  The American Civil War that killed more Americans than died in any subsequent  war, I have heard!  But 58,000 died in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.  The War that ended the peace in W Europe and that led to our side, our very own nation involved in killing in every single year up to the present, since at least 1914.  Only in one year, in 1968, has a member of the British armed forces not been killed somewhere around the world.  A most disgraceful track record!

Our great friend and ally killing children and young people in Gaza in asymmetric warfare to avoid conflict resolution, conciliation, compromise and any loss of land in Judea and Samaria.  Here, my Good Samaritan/Bad Jew story from the Master Jewish storyteller Himself, comes in.  But that is all wishy washy, left wing, loony liberal rubbish.  And very anti-Semitic!

Aristotle on Brexit!

Author: Sotirios Frantzanas

"To make this clearer, joining the EU made it obligatory for the UK to accept and enact on EU laws and regulations. This means that the UK parliament’s supremacy over making laws has been arguably reduced, even though the UK participated actively in the EU’s decision-making processes. This is also despite that it enjoyed possibly the most privileged membership that enabled it to be selective, and opting out from EU legislation on various occasions; the European Monetary Union, the Schengen Agreement and so on.6 

"It seems that the fact that the UK, much like Denmark, Poland and Ireland, had the opportunity to negotiate and opt-out from EU legislations is evidence that sovereignty, at least in terms of the power to negotiate, remains with the member-state; it is not exchanged for membership. That could be the case, if the UK parliament had lost its authority to withdraw the UK from the EU.7 That would be the case in which it could be said that the supremacy of the UK government has been lost.

"However, Brexit is the best example that the UK has remained a sovereign country throughout and there is no reason to believe that this would not be the case for an independent Scotland joining the EU as an equal member. In other words, the necessary sharing of sovereignty, in terms of having to accept EU legislation, is inevitable in the same way it is inevitable for everyone that decides to be a member of a democratic society to follow its laws and norms as well as to participate actively in their making. This is actually something that arguably enhances rather than reduces sovereignty.

"Being part of a community of nations requires putting the whole above the individual parts and thus voluntarily sharing individual sovereignty, to gain access to a larger pool of opportunities for development alongside other member-states. As Aristotle said, thousands of years ago: ‘those that live in isolation and not in political communities are either beasts or gods.’8 Similarly, any country in the modern political world that chooses isolation over participation in the global political community is either not rational or is suffering from delusions of grandeur. Without saying that the EU, or any other political community for that matter, is perfect, Scotland should be wise and choose participation over isolation."