This is a lamentable, no holds barred, 'hilarious' history lesson/diatribe/tirade/
WARNING: I AM VERY CRITICAL OF THE POLITICIANS WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MESS. Quite shocking language, here:
In the fifty-three years I have studied, worked and lived in Brum and the Black Country I have seen so many of the wonderful, glossy transport plans that, always, are so beautifully and convincingly presented. However, the reality has been disappointing. Both road and railway congestion have got steadily worse over the fifty years - and, Metro Mayor Andy Street, agrees. This very year is the 40th anniversary of the Metro trams scheme and the undelivered, failed, promise of 15 tram lines over 200 Kms by the year 2000.
Even the tram, the wonderful Wednesbury to Brierly Hill Extension (WBHE), taking over the principal mainline railway through the heart of the Black Country, was never delivered by 2000, as I was personally promised by Cllr Fred Hunt, Leader of Dudley MBC in the mid-90s. Instead, we've had six railway lines completely destroyed in Dudley borough, alone!! The seventh, the Derby to Devon via Dudley principal mainline railway is now being destroyed by the WBHE for only 6.7 Kms on the mainline railway (on two nibble sized sections out of the wasted, unused 56 Kms), plus 4 Kms on roads and a canal towpath (see the photo of the canal bank, below). This, for over half a billion pounds of deadly greenhouse gases, is the ultimate idiocy, the grand finale of urban railway destruction - for there are no more to destroy - to make for the biggest transport and financial scandal in the history of the UK!
You wrote, "it's time to start checking projects against broad social objectives". I think it is about time we start checking if giving Broad Street over to the tram is really encouraging modal shift from car to public transport. Certainly not, when every one of the eleven bus routes now has to join the two queues of cars to get round the roundabout when previously all eleven routes used the underpass. Cyclists, like me, are now inconvenienced, too. We, also have to divert on, an admittedly, shorter three sides of an oblong route than the buses, before we can get onto Broad Street to ride in a narrow gap between the widened pavement and the tram tracks. We can't use the underpass, either.
Their fine motto is 'Forward' - since 1839. As it happens, the year of our first out of four disastrous invasions of Afghanistan. 'Backwards' would be more truthful. Unlike you sensible people in Coventry, we began to destroy our fine, free-flowing, complete inner ring road a few years after construction. St Chad's Circus on the ring road was bulldozed, as was Masshouse Circus Queensway and St Martin's Circus Queensway. I believe St Martin's was the first to be bulldozed. The inner ring road did last over ten years but a disgracefully short time after all that concrete pour of greenhouse gases. It was replaced, would you believe, with traffic lights and longer one-way road systems to spew out yet more of the cocktail of poisonous and deadly greenhouse gases we need to very urgently cut!! How stupid is that?
Your "local policy makers are coming from" are coming from cloud cuckoo land. They all mean so well but the task is completely beyond them. Ancient old crocks like me are blamed for the mess we have left the world in for the young to have to pick up and, somehow solve. I think the young are as clueless as the useless politicians who have begun to talk the talk but then do nothing, except all the wrong things. What hypocrites! At least I'm reducing my hypocrisy quotient by cycling every local journey and cutting my 2019 car mileage by 50% for this year and in future. 70 mpg when I do drive. And, I had abandoned the car for the bike for almost all work journeys in the mid 90s.
USELESS AND INCOMPETENT POLITICIANS AND TRANSPORT EXPERTS COMPETE FOR TOP PRIZE WITH OUR PATHETIC POLITICIANS AND THE INCOMPETENT MILITARY:
In less than 200 years, our politicians and the military have attacked the people of Afghanistan four times. Only with our second attack, does Wikipedia conclude that our second war was a victory for our miserable military but, only after "setbacks".
Our fourth attack and invasion that commenced on the 7 October 2001 was a brutal, unjust and the most foolish revenge and overreaction to the 9/11 attacks by 15 Saudi Arabians with four other men. For many decades, Saudi Arabia has been a strong friend and, in war, ally of ours that has fueled our immoral and most profitable arms industry with billions of pounds of purchases of our military equipment. Those most responsible for 9/11 were all killed by their suicidal attack. Those 19 men may have been distressed by our Western military "infidels" occupying, for decades, what they considered was their holy Muslim soil - a sacrilege. Far from considering whether that might have been their motivation, our politicians and military launched twenty years of revengeful attacks that were disproportionate and reinforced, repeated, continued the offence, for some Muslims, that had prompted 9/11 in the first place!
Apart from a handful of left-wing MPs, every other politician and all of the military are up in arms at their War on Terror, lasting only 20 years, being so abruptly terminated. After all, their turn of the century Project for the New American Century left five more countries still to be attacked and overthrown to bring compliant American/Western governments installed.
These so self-declared upright and honourable politicians and moral military personnel, did nothing to dissuade Joe Biden when he announced the ending of the War on Terror and withdrawal, some months ago. It seems, they all fully agreed and supported Biden from the outset. Not a murmur of concern. Not a whisper of disagreement within NATO to think again!
NATO is made up of failed states and not Afghanistan. Certainly not Afghanistan that is our so convenient victim and target for our four failed, incompetent, unjustifiable wars of aggression. And, we kid ourselves that we are fighting, killing terror not realising that we are the real terrorists. And, next decade will see the 200th anniversary of the start of our enthusiastic aggression against Afghanistan!
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