These top notch, fat cats are failing us at every turn

 XR BIRMINGHAM AT HSBC

Bank holiday Monday’s protest consisted of the XR Samba band and street theatre outside of the HSBC New Street branch. The demand was for the £67 billion that HSBC invests in the fossil fuel industry to be terminated. To illustrate the point, two rebels demanding divestment were covered in oil and sat through the hour-long proceedings on the carpet outside of the branch.

HSBC must be getting quite used to this. There have been many Palestine Solidarity Campaign protests outside of this branch as well as XR ones over the years.

Other well-known banks have been targeted as well.

This raises the question of why these institutions with vast financial reserves are in private hands anyway. Why not bring them into democratic public ownership, with transparent accessible accounting systems and with their employees being paid decent wages? Enough of fat cat unaccountable bankers treating the world as a giant casino, sloshing their huge wealth around the globe at the push of a button to make ever bigger profits, with no regard for the ethics of their actions.

Then the liberated money could be used to invest in renewable energy, mass building insulation, fare-free local public transport, electrified railways, and green jobs as part of a just transition.

So why not nationalise the banks and save us the trouble of all these constant protests?

HS2 FOLLY

The flyer given out to the public stated:

• ‘It is the poster child of a dangerously unjust system.

• The government claims HS2 will better connect people, especially in the north of England, but communities in the north were never asked. Most want better local services, not another unaffordable trainline to London.

• The cost of the line is an estimated £106 bn (that we know of). That is over £3,300 per taxpayer.

• HS2 will not be carbon neutral in its 120-year life span. As we head towards the 6th global extinction, our actions in the Global North will disproportionately affect Black and Indigenous People of Colour, especially in the Global South.

• HS2 is an express delivery service for massive airport expansion. Birmingham Airport is already spending £500 million to expand, thanks to HS2.

• 108 Ancient woodlands including 300-year-old oak trees, 5 Wildlife refuges of international importance protected by UK law, 693 Classified Wildlife Sites, 21 Local Nature Reserves and 18 Wildlife Trust Nature Reserves will be impacted.

• Barn owls, nesting birds, stag beetles, rare butterflies, badgers and greater crested newts are also threatened.’

(Information from; stophs2.org StandforThe Trees.org rethinkhs2.org HS2rebellion.earth hs2facts.co.uk @bearwitness2019 (on Twitter) wildlifetrusts.org)

As an aside, Birmingham City Council now plans to abandon its agreed target of going carbon neutral by 2030 in favour of 2041. Its plans, such as they are, make no mention of curbing aviation or HS2.

Bob Whitehead

The Last Rite of the Poms

 

Birmingham Left Unity

26 August at 13:09  · 

THE LAST RITE OF THE POMS

The rightists are upset that there will only be orchestral versions of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia on the last night of the Promenade concerts. They will not be able to sing along to the celebrations of the British Empire, with its military might, colonialism, exploitation, brutality, and slavery.

But why this half measure by the BBC? Why not finally pull the plug on the sunset industry that is known as the British Empire? How about a complete make-over?

A new, popular, set of songs could be chosen that reflect a quite different outlook.

“Redemption Song” by Bob Marley and “The Fields of Athenry” would be two top contenders for the finale. Then there could be “Imagine” by John Lennon, or even “Border Song” by Elton John.

Room could also be found for “Chimes of Freedom” or “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” by Bob Dylan. The former includes a reference to refugees and would be a good antidote to constant vilification of these desperate people by the British establishment. The latter would be particularly relevant in the wake of the death by starvation of Mercy Baguma, a Ugandan refugee in Glasgow, or the death by drowning in the English Channel of Abdulfatah Hamdallah, a Sudanese refugee.

Not much hope or glory in a land that lets such things happen.

10 ideas to address the Brexit/Covid/Climate/Ecological emergencies

 TO THE FOUR OF YOU - what are your ideas, please?

Would these help to hold off looming extinction?  Covid must the beginning of the nightmare we are sleepwalking into:

1. Extend my own (senior) age group fare-free, regional public transport to all age groups.
2. Paid for by abandoning Brexit, Metro tram extensions and HS2.
3. Phase out diesel buses for electric buses going directly onto the roads and not "bus on rails" trams on rails on roads.
4. Put passenger trains back on freight only and, our mothballed Black Country Railway that is only half used - used at the Derby and Worcester ends, only!
5. Upgrade the strategic 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway to encourage its use for fossil fuel free travel - walking, cycling and horse riding.
6. Bring back the 1973/4 fuel coupons to cut greenhouse gas emissions, without waiting for all the other 190+ countries to act first.  Strictly enforced 60 mph national speed limit to replace the 70 mph, to save fuel.  It was cut by 20 mph in 1973 (Marr: 'A History of Modern Britain', p 340)
7. Flying only for freight.  Redeploy the staff to future proof the nation.  1001 tasks to energise the nation!
8. Cutting deadly greenhouse gases means cutting frenetic economic activity.  Therefore, the wealthy like me must financially help all the very many that will suffer from loss of jobs.  So do what must be done to ensure that no-one suffers financially.  And get the solution jobs moving, immediately.
9. Do what Sir Jonathon Porritt advises in his new book, 'Hope in Hell: a decade to confront the climate emergency'.
10. Do what Sir David Attenborough says and what Greta Thunberg does!

To BMC over their 2021 Strategic Review

 I am concerned that Covid is like the canary in the cage warning of danger ahead.  Not just the runaway greenhouse effect that is dangerously affecting all life on earth but, the fact that our prodigious use of oil and gas means that we are now well and truly trapped into using vital hydrocarbons that are getting in shorter supply.  We are trapped in total dependency on using ever more oil and gas that are finite and, causing life support systems to fail.

I would like some recognition that we must learn to travel shorter distances in the years ahead and, starting now to cut back to preserve life.

Sacrifice to survive.  Restraint for ourselves to give a richer and fuller life to our descendants.

I have found that I don't need to make the six long drives to Scotland to climb the big hills that I did last year.  Perhaps, only one in October this year, because of lockdown.

Instead, I have contented myself with local and much closer to home regional walks and explorations as part of my daily coronavirus exercise.  I have discovered new walking territory and lower hills.  But also many misleading, wrongly mapped and missing footpaths and bridges on the legal definitive map that then get put on the OS maps.

There needs to be an encouragement for members to report the errors to the local authorities so that we don't end up trespassing quite so much!  Our maps, as regards the public rights of way (PROW) in England Wales, must become more accurate.  Where there is Open Access land, the maps must show the stiles, gates and bridges but the actual PROW from the definitive (often medieval) map must only be shown where they can be seen and actually walked, in my opinion.  Why are we still mapping footpaths in open access hill country that go in straight lines or in the most beautiful curves and, through rivers where there is no ford or bridge and, even straight through residential buildings?  Although, in this last example, the OS did draw their path around the garden and house.  But the legal, definitive map has it straight through someone's home!

So there you have it.  Much fun can be had very much nearer to home without doing quite so much damage to our descendants' prospects.

Access to more accurate maps, PLEASE!

Less long-distance travel but more under our own steam with urban, traffic-free cycle-walkways free of mud and puddles.

60 years of ecocidal behaviour to bring about Attenborough's dire warnings from the runaway greenhouse effect

 Dear Tim & Co

Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations" and "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings (Dec 2018).

Please ditch trams and, instead put the passenger trains and stations back on all 106 Kms - urgently!

Thanks for your decency in replying to my email.  Eventually, my reminders of what I think you all need to do will fall off - or continue to fall on deaf ears.  Your reply seems to indicate that some may be read and that is much appreciated!

It really is an embarrassment to live in the W Midlands.  Before I arrived, 51 years ago, the complete and extensive electric tram network had been completely wiped out.  Replaced by more diesel buses!  In the ensuing years, about 100 Kms of the railway network went the same way.  You started rebuilding the tram network instead of the train network and, in the process wiped out vital parts of the railway network for the trams to run on - permanently.  Astonishing incompetence!  And at the most colossal expense, too.  About ten times more expensive per kilometre than putting the trains and stations back.  SEE THE EVIDENCE:

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...

Two principal railway stations have been demolished and rebuilt, with New Street demolished twice.  The second time, relegated to the basement of a fine new shopping centre that looks nothing like a railway station.  Not even a prominent name plate for visitors to know that there is a station as well!  Snow Hill was thought to be redundant - never again to be needed, I believe.  Demolished in the 1970s.  Your predecessors soon realised their little slip up and rebuilt it but, to half its former size.  Amazing!  The Victorian station had eight platforms, the modern one only four and the fourth is now out of use since Metro trams now bypass the station to go straight to Grand Central.  But the business case justified the great expense by saying that Snow Hill would be linked to Grand Central.  The money was given on false pretences!

The authorities failed to build the much needed western approach tunnels for New Street when Brindleyplace was built in the 80s and 90s.  That was a serious omission.  Indeed, incompetence by the top people.  It continues the station being known as "one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK" (Peter Plisner on 'Midlands Today').

The Bull Ring Shopping Centre has seen its second demolition and rebuilding.  Yet the new eastern approach railway tunnels for New Street were never put in after the demolition, in the 90s and 00s.  Another lost opportunity and a tragedy for Brum's railways.

The main library in Brum has been demolished and rebuilt twice.  Centenary Square demolished and rebuilt so many times I have lost count.  Does Chamberlain Square survive?

We once had a fine inner ring road of fast underpasses, flyovers and roundabouts of free flowing traffic.  It did not last long before they decided to break "the concrete collar" by demolishing Colmore Circus, Masshouse Circus and St Martin's Circus.  In their place, we have yet more traffic lights, congestion and nose to tail traffic with all their attendant cocktail of poisonous, greenhouse gases right next to where people have to walk.  They call that progress.  Progress towards more greenhouse gases and the runaway greenhouse effect that means the END.

The Black Country and Brum also took passenger trains off 50 Kms of its railway network and thought that houses, shops and offices were meant to speed down railway lines - and some railway lines turned into roads.  Some of what was left is being turned into tram lines and test tracks, a trail of trees and the extension of the cycle-walkway in south Staffordshire, north of Walsall.

Manchester chose trams to replace buses and trains.  BBC Panorama,  'HS2: The Great Train Robbery' showed the disgraceful state of the railway network in northern England, centred on Manchester, with even slum-like Pacer commuter trains still used.  Money misspent.  Wrong priorities.

All the West Midlands authorities have constantly chosen the last six decades of never-ending building and demolition.  Deliberately destroying the tram network instead of modernising it; choosing trams that destroyed railway infrastructure instead of restoring trains and stations to the railway network.  All this is a very serious failure by our top VIPs in the city and region.  When are things going to be turned round to respond to the climate emergency instead of fueling it?

Please ditch trams and, instead put the passenger trains and stations back on all 106 Kms - urgently.  Get the buses turned into fareless, electric buses with 100% bus lanes and traffic lights turning green for them and red for the cars, whenever possible.  Use the nearly £2 billion you will save from abandoning Metro trams and Sprint diesel buses!  Get a sea change in social attitudes away from driving the car into city centres towards jumping on the bus, train or tram instead.  This way you free up the road network for essential vehicles.  My family is now using the bus or car/train to get into the city centre.  I cycle and have done for years.  Even using the bike for my social work in Brum for the last 15 to 20 years of my working life.  And still using the bike in my old age.

With best wishes

Addressing the Covid, Climate, Ecological inter-linked emergencies

Small to medium-sized homes for first-time buyers and to rent, which are all extremely well-insulated, need to be built in our town centres.  And, get them to live above shops, stores or, in shop units that are no longer shops.

My answer to transport and to hold off looming extinction is.

1. Extend our own (senior) age group fare-free public transport to all age groups.
2. Paid for by abandoning Metro tram extensions and HS2.
3. Replace diesel buses with electric buses going directly onto the roads and not "bus on rails" trams on rails on roads.
4. Put passenger trains back on freight only and our mothballed Black Country Railway that is only half used - at the Derby and Worcester ends, only!
5. Give financial incentives for working from home.
6. Bring back the 1973/4 fuel coupons to cut greenhouse gas emissions, without waiting for all the other 190+ countries to act first.  Strictly enforced 60 mph national speed limit to replace the 70 mph to save fuel.  It was cut by 20 mph in 1973 (Marr: 'A History of Modern Britain', p 340)
7. Ban/discourage flying as much as you possibly can.  Redeploy the staff to future proof the nation.  1001 tasks to energise the nation!
8. Cutting deadly greenhouse gases means less damaging economic activity.  Therefore, the wealthy like me must financially help all the very many that will suffer from loss of jobs.  So do what must be done to ensure that no-one suffers financially.  And get the solution jobs moving, immediately.
9. Do what Sir Jonathon Porritt advises in his new book, 'Hope in Hell: a decade to confront the climate emergency'.
10. Do what Sir David Attenborough says and what Greta Thunberg does!

Ultimately, we must be headed back to the horse and cart - plus walking and cycling!

 

• Tim Weller

  Thanks for this Jonathan. I fully support Greenpeace and FoE with a DD to the first and life membership of the second. I don't support the two main drivers of global destruction: fairy tale economic growth with its ever-rising production and consumption and, population growth, although I know I have benefited greatly from all of it over my lifetime. But you are aware of the unfortunate downsides.

  • Like
  •  · 
    Reply
  •  · 9 m
• Tim Weller

  The solution lies in restraint. Doing more local and regional travel, no international travel and much less national travel.

  We locked down for Covid. We must now lockdown for Climate. As a result, I re-discovered the two new footpaths I've kept open and the other path maintenance issues in the glorious countryside of Cleobury country. My car mileage was slashed as I snipped and slashed on nearby paths! The problem, the challenge is somehow to maintain that!

"an embarrassment to live in the W Midlands"

19 July 2019

Dear Tim & Co    (Tim Martin  Head of Governance  Clerk and Monitoring Officer)

e-mail subject field: 60 years of ecocidal behaviour to bring about Attenborough's dire warnings from the runaway greenhouse effect

Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations" and "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings (Dec 2018).

Please ditch trams and, instead put the passenger trains and stations back on all 106 Kms - urgently!

Thanks for your decency in replying to my email.  Eventually, my reminders of what I think you all need to do will fall off - or continue to fall on deaf ears.  Your reply seems to indicate that some may be read and that is much appreciated!

It really is an embarrassment to live in the W Midlands.  Before I arrived, 51 years ago, the complete and extensive electric tram network had been completely wiped out.  Replaced by more diesel buses!  In the ensuing years, about 100 Kms of the railway network went the same way.  You started rebuilding the tram network instead of the train network and, in the process wiped out vital parts of the railway network for the trams to run on - permanently.  Astonishing incompetence!  And at the most colossal expense, too.  About ten times more expensive per kilometre than putting the trains and stations back.  SEE THE EVIDENCE:

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...

Two principal railway stations have been demolished and rebuilt, with New Street demolished twice.  The second time, relegated to the basement of a fine new shopping centre that looks nothing like a railway station.  Not even a prominent name plate for visitors to know that there is a station as well!  Snow Hill was thought to be redundant - never again to be needed, I believe.  Demolished in the 1970s.  Your predecessors soon realised their little slip-up and rebuilt it but, to half its former size.  Unbelievable!  The Victorian station had eight platforms, the modern one only four and the fourth is now out of use since Metro trams now bypass the station to go straight to Grand Central.  But the business case justified the great expense by saying that Snow Hill would be linked to Grand Central.  The money was given on false pretences!

The authorities failed to build the much needed western approach tunnels for New Street when Brindleyplace was built in the 80s and 90s.  That was a serious omission.  Indeed, incompetence by the top people.  It continues the station being known as "one of the worst railway congestion bottlenecks in the UK" (Peter Plisner on 'Midlands Today').

The Bull Ring Shopping Centre has seen its second demolition and rebuilding.  Yet the new eastern approach railway tunnels for New Street were never put in after the demolition, in the 90s and 00s.  Another lost opportunity and a tragedy for Brum's railways.

The main library in Brum has been demolished and rebuilt twice.  Centenary Square demolished and rebuilt so many times I have lost count.  Does Chamberlain Square survive?

We once had a fine inner ring road of fast underpasses, flyovers and roundabouts of free-flowing traffic.  It did not last long before they decided to break "the concrete collar" by demolishing Colmore Circus, Masshouse Circus and St Martin's Circus.  In their place, we have yet more traffic lights, congestion and nose to tail traffic with all their attendant cocktail of poisonous, greenhouse gases right next to where people have to walk.  They call that progress.  Progress towards more greenhouse gases and the runaway greenhouse effect that means the END.

The Black Country and Brum also took passenger trains off 50 Kms of its railway network and thought that houses, shops and offices were meant to speed down railway lines - and some railway lines turned into roads.  Some of what was left is being turned into tram lines and test tracks, a trail of trees and the extension of the cycle-walkway in south Staffordshire, north of Walsall.

Manchester chose trams to replace buses and trains.  BBC Panorama,  'HS2: The Great Train Robbery' showed the disgraceful state of the railway network in northern England, centred on Manchester, with even slum-like Pacer commuter trains still used.  Money misspent.  Wrong priorities.

All the West Midlands authorities have constantly chosen the last six decades of never-ending building and demolition.  Deliberately destroying the tram network instead of modernising it; choosing trams that destroyed railway infrastructure instead of restoring trains and stations to the railway network.  All this is a very serious failure by our top VIPs in the city and region.  When are things going to be turned round to respond to the climate emergency instead of fueling it?

Please ditch trams and, instead put the passenger trains and stations back on all 106 Kms - urgently.  Get the buses turned into fareless, electric buses with 100% bus lanes and traffic lights turning green for them and red for the cars, whenever possible.  Use the nearly £2 billion you will save from abandoning Metro trams and Sprint diesel buses!  Get a sea change in social attitudes away from driving the car into city centres towards jumping on the bus, train or tram instead.  This way you free up the road network for essential vehicles.  My family is now using the bus or car/train to get into the city centre.  I cycle and have done for years.  Even using the bike for my social work in Brum for the last 15 to 20 years of my working life.  And still using the bike in my old age.

With best wishes

Tim

On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 at 08:44, Tim Martin <Tim.Martin@wmca.org.uk> wrote:

Dear Mr Weller,

Thank you for your email.

As I have pointed out before, there is a difference of opinion between you and the WMCA over the best way to proceed with these transport solutions however that does not  mean that we are acting in a way which is undemocratic or would lead to disciplinary action being taken.

In your email you mention an unresolved complaint. I am not aware of any specific complaint that is unresolved. Your correspondence with the Authority often raises the same or rhetorical points to which there is no specific “new” answer. If you could refer me to anything specific that has not received a response I would be happy to look into this.

Kind regards

Tim

Climate Action Network

 Thanks v much Jules for replying and the clarification.  So few do reply or even criticise and condemn!

I've been involved since the councillors 'Environment Forums' and 'Sustainability Forums' in the 1990s.  The councillors always mean well but, like Covid when the politicians failed even to prepare 'in case' and, finally, acted too late, so with climate/ecology nothing meaningful, I feel will happen until there are the metaphorical "bodies on the street".  More and more spending of big fossil fuel-guzzling projects, like the ones I'm so against for self-survival reasons, are always so impossible to resist while the stuff remains in the ground.  

But please persist and never give up!

Tim

HS2 IS SO FAST FOR SUCH A SMALL ISLAND THAT IT BECOMES A RICH MAN'S TOY FOR THE SMALL MINORITY OF PASSENGERS

 

• It goes so fast it can only stop at a few stations so you still have to keep the normal intercity services alongside!

  • Like
  •  · 
    Reply
  •  · 4 m
• Tim Weller

  An absurd project for such a small nation that, yet again is punching drunkenly above its weight to the derision of the rest of the world.

  • Like
  •  · 
    Reply
  •  · 2 m
• Tim Weller

  We have "a very Victorian railway network". So said Sir David Higgins when Chief Exec of Network Rail in 2013! HS2 comes nowhere near to addressing that stark reality.