Many thanks for this feedback, Dave. Can I please show you, in person, the canal embankment from Level Street towpath southwards to where the tramline crosses the canal into Cottage Street, Brierley Hill? I can fit in with what is most convenient to your good self. My number 0791 380 4363.
I don't want to confront in a nasty way that, perhaps you think I have come across as, this time. So thanks so much for telling me and I will start deleting! However, I do want to challenge and question and put another point of view to the experts. It is the beauty of living in the UK that we can do that. My own attachment in the PS below, I think, does use humour and satire, that helps to get the message over. Please read it and tell me what you think.
41 years is exactly how long this saga has gone on for, according to Wikepedia's history of the West Midlands Metro project. Do check it out. It is now, very, very slowly (why is that?) coming to fruition as regards the Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension only, on the UK's only, safeguarded/mothballed mainline railway - the Black Country Railway from Worcester to Derby.
70 years is how long the authorities have been destroying first our extensive tram network in the W Mids and, then would you believe, they started on the railway network from the 60s to this present day!
I am a past Chairman of the Birmingham Consumer Group when we were successful in the almost total pedestrianisation of New Street in Brum city centre. My background is that of being a watchdog and of probing possible misdeeds and hypocrisy. It is not confined to 10 Downing Street, I can assure you!
Why do reporters now shun every Dudley Council committee meeting I have been to in more recent years? BBC's Rob Mayor did attend one, last decade and put me on Radio WM with Cllr Khurshid Ahmed, shortly afterwards.
Why has only Mark Andrews (reporter on the 'Express and Star') ever followed up what I have uncovered but I do have the ear of those in authority who, like Sandeep, have all been unable to show that I am mistaken in my evidence and conclusions.
Will you please explain Dave, why the obliteration of the only official, public green space at Merry Hill and its burial in concrete, brick and tarmac is of no interest to you and your listeners? Why can't it be saved as Nature rewilded that is now occurring, naturally and, as part of the Black Country Urban Forest that I have contributed to with my much appreciated by some, guerrilla gardening over the decades?
Why are you not on my side, Dave - as are, at least, one or two Dudley councillors and many others who totally understand that I am on to something? Even Railfuture, the national lobbying group for a bigger and better railway, gave me the brilliant strap line for our forgotten, half-finished railway, as "Burton to Bristol via Brierley Hill and Derby to Devon via Dudley". How very true!
Over the years, Mark Andrews of the 'Express and Star' has included my findings and conclusions in the pieces he has written about Metro and railway re-openings. Do speak to him, Dave.
Do please re-read Sandeep's letter and my sentence by sentence rebuttal that is certainly straight talking but is polite, fair and reasonable - don't you think? His letter does nothing to address my perfectly reasonable request to keep the tram to the railway line so that it still serves Brierley Hill but also connects with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct. Merry Hill can be connected by electric bus from the Waterfront tram stop. It does not need the official, over indulgent, flash, grossly expensive "bus on rails" Metro tram. What is so stupid about that, Dave? And why did Sandeep not answer or rebut that alternative of mine? Very much cheaper, too at a time of fast rising inflation and energy prices!
Many thanks for writing and telling me what you think, Dave. It is wonderful to have someone who cares and engages!
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