Your piece on XR

Dear Peter (Rhodes of the Express and Star)

Is it fair for me to liken the Combined Authority/Network Fail to Extinction Rebellion?

You wrote, last week, "when ... Extinction Rebellion (XR) block a motorway they are, in effect, taking over the lives of thousands of other people without their consent."

Over the last 25 years, we have seen more than a doubling of railway passenger numbers to bring overcrowding on our trains and the continuation of 'Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Station Tagged Along As An Afterthought In The Basement Of The John Lewis Store' as one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK (BBC Midlands Today reporter, Peter Plisner but my name for Grand Central station).

In addition, the officers and politicians of the Combined Authority (CA) and the VIPs of Negligent Rail (NR) steadfastly insist that they can only finish the 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" with 6.7 Kms of shuttle trams, a trail of trees and an extended cycle-walkway in rural South Staffordshire.  This, on a mainline railway alongside or near to congested, slow moving traffic on the M5/M6 and main roads.

Therefore, am I entitled to say that our railway and transport authorities are acting like XR on nearly every day by refusing to do something positive, practical and helpful to relieve congestion by putting the much needed commuter, regional trains and stations on the middle 56 Kms of the 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby?  Like your XR, CA and NR even more frequently, make life more difficult for us all by deliberately impeding our progress on both roads and railways.  And nicely enhancing the natural greenhouse effect to copy planet venus.  Not a nice model to follow, unfortunately.