Each of us must walk the talk on climate - and do what we can to help

“This is a call to arms,” he says. “So if you feel the need to glue yourself to a motorway or blockade an oil refinery, do it. Drive an electric car or, even better, use public transport, walk or cycle. Switch to a green energy tariff; eat less meat. Stop flying; lobby your elected representatives at both local and national level; and use your vote wisely to put in power a government that walks the talk on the climate emergency.”

Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide by Bill McGuire is published by Icon Books, £9.99

President Putrid's new naval doctrine

Vladimir Putin has signed a new naval doctrine that casts the US and Nato as the biggest threats facing Russia, Reuters and AFP report.

The 55-page document, signed on Navy Day, sets out the broad strategic aims of Russia’s navy, including its ambitions as a “great maritime power” which extends over the entire world.

The main threat to Russia, the doctrine says, is “the strategic policy of the USA to dominate the world’s oceans” and the movement of the Nato military alliance closer towards Russia’s borders.

Russia may use its military force appropriately to the situation in the world’s oceans should other soft powers, such as diplomatic and economic tools, be exhausted, it adds.

Quote from comment section in YouTube - Maximilien Robespierre

"If you cut off all 'legal' routes and make it as difficult as possible for desperate asylum seekers, you can then claim that you have the right to block them when they have no choice but to try and get here anyway. It's deliberate and pointless cruelty: These people are in need and could contribute so much to our country by doing the jobs we need filling. Racism is always self defeating."

SELF: We spent centuries treating these people as commodities, as products, just like cows and sheep that can be shipped about as supposedly insentient objects. We then DID pay compensation, that's true. However, not to them or their descendants, but to the very people who enslaved them. How stupid is that? How bizarre and eccentric to reward the most disgusting behaviour imaginable. And this was under monarchs who, at their Coronation, swore to uphold the morality and law of the Bible as the very "living oracles of God" that must be obeyed. And God said to His Chosen, the Jewish people that they must "welcome the stranger in their midst". NOT to treat them as little better than dirt.

Observer editorial on Lovelock, 31 July 2022

"Mavericks such as Lovelock who look beyond the confines of their laboratories and who reject attempts to restrain their activities are becoming a worrying rarity. An example of Lovelock’s broad-ranging thinking is provided by his studies, while working for Nasa, of the harsh, carbon dioxide atmospheres of Venus and Mars. By contrast, on Earth, nitrogen and oxygen dominate, he noted in the 70s. Together with the biologist Lynn Margulis, he argued that early lifeforms that began to extract carbon dioxide on Earth eventually led to the evolution of a biological system that manipulated atmosphere and water to its own advantage. Gaia had been born.

"Gaia was a major influence on the green movement, though Lovelock was suspicious of its claims and aspirations. “Too many greens are not just ignorant of science, they hate science,” he argued, and likened them to “some global over-anxious mother figure who is so concerned about small risks that she ignores the real dangers”. Such a judgment is perhaps a little harsh, though it also reveals an independence of mind that was the hallmark of a great scientist whose vision and creativity will be sorely missed."

The earth can do perfectly well without us humans - oh, no!

Not the system but WE all exploit the planet for its finite resources. There are vast disparities in the income and wealth in the rich industrial nations but an even bigger chasm between the rich and poorest nations of the world.

I want the powerful railway unions to do what one boss said last decade on TV and to take industrial action to boost the salaries of our nurses and care workers.

And, the union bosses to give themselves a wage no more than 20 times that of their lowest member.

We all need to tighten our belts for the sake of those truly poor and future generations that will have a less fertile and rich world of untapped resources and wonderful abundance.

There is no right to have ever rising standards of living and economic growth/greed/GHG emissions.

We just can't go on living infinitely on a finite planet and living so unnaturally on a natural planet.

JAMES LOVELOCK on Desert Island Discs in 1991:

Evan Davies said, "The inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, named after the Greek goddess of the earth. It stated that life on this planet is a self-regulating community of organisms and their inanimate surroundings.

He's been an enormous figure in the environment movement over the decades and died today at 103 years, actually on his birthday", said Evan Davies on 27 July 2022 on Radio 4's 'PM' programme.

Lovelock: 

"The fact that earth lived for 3.5 billion years, if lived is the right word, is I think ample proof that it can do without us and run very well without us whatever we do. I don't like the idea of stewardship that applies to humans because I don't think we have reached that state of grace where we are capable of being stewards."

Sue Lawley:

"But conversely, from not being in charge in that way, it would be possible for the whole of planet earth to stop being in a place where man could live. To slip into some other mode where it would be too hot for him or too cold for him or too much water for him."

Lovelock:  

"That's right. Well, the rules of the game are very like the rules of the old goddesses - Gaia (Greek goddess of the earth) and Kali. They were feminine and kind and all the rest of it. But if you broke the rules you would be zapped without doubt and eliminated. And it's just the same with Gaia. Any species that adversely affects the environment will not succeed. It will be eliminated. Where those that favour the environment that favour it for their progeny will automatically be rewarded."

Union/Management Incompetence and Guilty Silence

Thanks, Carol who wrote, "I have discovered that one of the main arguments being put forward for metro vs rail is the number of stops where people can get off and on. Increasing footfall and revenue compared to rail???"

The wasted, still unused, principal mainline railway bridge built when the motorway opened in Dec 2003.  Built for slow "bus on rails" invisible ghost trams? :-

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

The up line nicked by metal thieves! :-

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

More tram stops than train stations over the same distance makes the tram much slower than the train - average speed of the tram is 22 mph between Wolverhampton and St Chads tram stop in Brum on a former mainline railway between Shrewsbury and Brum.  Therefore, flash, over indulgent "bus on rails" trams are more suitable to replace diesel buses than trains.  In fact, to end up foolishly duplicating the bus service as we see on Hagley Road and Broad Street in Brum (for a scandalous, corrupt £110 m/Km construction cost).

Yet, it is not buses but regional and commuter trains that are getting mostly replaced by trams!  This is stupid, foolish and incompetent.  Two mainline railways have now had or having this treatment of trams on part to prevent, for ever, the regional and commuter trains being able to return on the full length of mainline commuter railway.  This is complete idiocy!

The UK Tram HQ at our Transport/WMCA HQ at 16 Summer Lane (vested interests at play here to corruptly influence decision makers) argues that trams are "buses on rails".  This was said by tram promotion group Director, Andrew Brodick in November 2016 when 7 passengers were killed and many tens of people had serious injuries when the Croydon tram crashed in a morning rush hour.  They should have just kept to the trains and buses, of course and the 7 would still be alive today.

Wealth flaunting "bus on rails" trams are totally unsuitable for a former principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" as they are doing in the case of WBHE.  Sheer stupidity!

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...

Tim Weller   0791 380 4363

To Ben Godfrey of 'Midlands Today'

Hi Ben - and copied to the Mayor's Office for them to confirm Andy's support for trains back on the tracks (my blog's name - timweller1.blogspot.com).

Thanks for the email.  Is there any link you can send me, please to the "news in brief segment" and the details of the WMCA public meeting that I may have missed.  Many thanks.

Please keep my contact details on your database.  Please take account of what I sent you on Sunday.  For fair reporting, I would like to suggest that you need to have a rounded picture of what has been going on for over forty years as regards Metro.  As here:​

 One horrible history of truly terrible transport

​  ​

 7 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

​Over the 25 years I have been involved in this tortuous saga, I have sent Midlands Today countless press releases and emails.  Only the wonderful Peter Plisner has shown any interest.

Peter heard about me soon after he arrived on 'Midlands Today' (in the 90s?), via Brum FoE and, occasionally, included me in his pieces to camera on the issue of Metro taking over the two Black Country mainline railways and thus preventing commuter and regional trains from returning to the full lengths of both lines - still to this day!

I always write on my own behalf, above my own name but, I am a life member of national FoE and Stourbridge FoE agree with me and have included my recommendations in our Stourbridge FoE Climate Action Plan for Dudley Council to implement.  My widely supported recommendations are for trains back on the 106 Kms in Brum, Black Country and in South Staffordshire that are either freight only or mothballed.  I think I can say that Andy Street agrees with me.  Do check it out with him for he knows me and I attend most of his public meetings to support him.  I voted for him in 2017 and 2021.  Last year I was an Independent candidate for Mayor up until the time came to pay the deposit, that I then gave to three international charities - and still voted for Andy.

I have many people who agree with me, of whom the most notable remains the current train driver, Dave Parsons who lives in my own constituency of Halesowen and Rowley Regis and is worth interviewing.

I would welcome any questions you might have for, if I am wrong, I would like to be told!

Many thanks, Ben

Zelensky is supposed to be a comedian

Dear Jonathon and Alastair

Would you like to comment, please with your own opinion?  This is my pathetic, wishy-washy, plant and cheese-eating surrender monkey stance for no killing, even of invaded, occupying, foreign armed forces in my country.  Do put me right.

Zelensky is supposed to be a comedian, not a great military conqueror of Russia with armaments supplied by the American-led West.  As a result, humanity is accelerating downhill even faster to ecocide and catastrophe.

My action as President would not have had my armed forces fighting an impossible to win with violence one of two super-powers.  The only realistic option left for me, if I was Zelensky, is for none of my citizens to be slaughtered but to use non-violence, non-collaboration with the invader, occupier and, flight if living under Russian control is so impossible.  One death is not worth violent resistance but only non-violent resistance and non collaboration, including humour, satire and protest if I thought I could get away with it under President Putrid!

Such is our almost 100% reliance on finite fossil fuels, we have to reckon that every pound cost of armaments sent to Ukraine to beat Russia is a pound weight of GHG emissions warming the world and denying the poor and future generations their wealth and even their food as grain, oil and gas shortages hike prices.

Best wishes

Preferential treatment for migrants of all colours and all places

Would you help this cause of mine to welcome migrants and others badly housed in our borough by asking the authorities to give preferential treatment to "the stranger in our midst" by putting small, highly energy efficient and very low fossil fuel dependent apartments on High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre?  Plan here to show you where High Plateau is:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

HELP SLOW THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY

PLEASE SEND THIS (select, copy, paste as you wish) TO: customerservices@wmca.org.uk

Put v low, finite fossil fuel apartments for those most badly housed (including those seeking refuge from war, famine and climate breakdown) on ALL of High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.

This means permanently keeping Metro "bus on rails" trams off High Plateau.

Save nature at Merry Hill by permanently keeping the trams off the 400 m canal embankment with the planned £100m double track railway viaduct.

Let it be naturally rewilded with NO MORE MOWING to allow plants, shrubs and trees to sequester CO2 on the embankment, instead of the climate damaging concrete and steel viaduct.

STOP £0.6 billion, 10.7 Kms, Metro trams destroying the UK's only mothballed, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" in the heavily congested, densely populated Black Country.

  Metro map with my notes.pdf

Best wishes

Peter Hennessy on B Johnson Esq

This today from Peter Hennessy the historian, now Lord Hennessy who is a “cross bencher”, neither Labour nor Tory nor any other party.

Johnson "has sullied" the office of prime minister "like no other, turning it into an adventure playground for one man's narcissistic vanity and ….shredded the ministerial code".

"The Queen's first minister is now beyond doubt a rouge (rogue) prime minister, unworthy of her, her parliament, her people and her kingdom, I cannot remember a day when I have been more fearful for the wellbeing of the constitution."

from Quora

Clear negligence, incompetence and immorality explained

Dear Helen - and copied to the current Chair of Dudley's Future Council Scrutiny Committee, Cllr Ed Lawrence and other critical players on Dudley Council

Thank you for the email.  However, could you ask Sandeep to please respond to my rebuttal to his letter dated 5 May 2022 to Cllr Angus Lees, as here:

 Letter_Dudley MBC Midland Metro 2022-05-05.pdf

and my rebuttal, here:

 Dear Sandeep rebuttal

Could Sandeep or Anne Shaw also confirm what the latest position is on the WBHE being built in two stages and the reasons for this, please.  I missed the 29 June meeting with the W Midlands Pensioners Convention that gave some details of a postponement, I understand.  I would like to read the official report or press release as to what is now going on.

Many thanks and best wishes

Tim

Subject: ​Clear n​egligence, incompetence and immorality at Merry Hill​ - explained​

 

Dear David - and Wendy, could you forward this to Helen who stood in for David yesterday at the Board meeting.  Thanks!

 

Since the 1990s, I believe I am correct in saying, High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre has been a valuable brownfield site, designated for residential, that has not been used.  It remains wasted.  PLAN, here:

 

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

 

This is a very serious oversight that may have partly arisen because of the Metro extension (WBHE) that is due to take a corner slice of this much needed site.  A site for low running costs, highly energy efficient, solar powered apartments, using only electricity for heating and cooking, for sale and rent from, preferably, the Combined Authority.  Metro trams must keep off and keep out of ALL of this site.

 

Metro trams must also keep off the only public open space at Merry Hill.  This is also the valuable, green space that is essential to continue to sequester CO2 thanks to the area of grassland, shrubs and trees that extends for 400 metres.  In addition, if you do as I advise, you will save £100 m.  This is the likely cost for the two double track tramway bridges over the Dudley No 1 Canal and for the massive, standard gauge, double track, concrete and steel tramway viaduct to obliterate the beautiful, nature rich canal embankment.  Add to the destruction, my landscape enhancement scheme to hide the rusty iron wall that holds up the High Plateau!  PHOTO of only a part that gets destroyed:

 

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

My own nature planting is off to the left of the photo and is not in view.  It also gets obliterated.

INSTEAD, keep the trams running on the "railway of national strategic significance" from the Cinder Bank roundabout on Duncan Edwards Way, through Brierley Hill and on to Stourbridge Jct station to connect with the national railway network.  Tram stops at the Waterfront, Brierley Hill and Withymoor on the railway route to Stourbridge.

 

Turning the UK's only mothballed, principal mainline railway ​"​of ​national strategic significance", stretching for ​120 Kms into a piddling little shuttle tramline over two short sections totalling 6.7 Kms is incompetent.  ​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​And the enormous cost of well over £500 m is immoral in the face of increasing poverty for those who are struggling both to eat and to heat their homes.  It is socially unjust and proves you are climate deniers, when you should be climate champions.

 

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

 

I hope you and the CA will act, urgently, David.

 

Very best wishes as you David, Mayor Andy and the seven leaders act, in this way, to address the climate, nature, ecological, housing and cost of living crises.

 

Tim

Discrepancy or dishonesty or my mishearing?

Have I got this right, please?

Yesterday 20 July 2022, Cllr Mike Bird, the Walsall Council leader, told me that they are short of £300 m but, would want the Metro coming to his Walsall, if given half the chance.

"No I said there is no benefit for Walsall from Metro now or in the near future"

Councillor Mike Bird

Leader of the Council

I'm very pleased to read that but it does mean you need to actively stop the Jan 2020 expansion plan, from Andy, of £15 billion to 2040 for 8 lines over 150 miles and 380 tram stops.

And it also, Mike raises the question as to why, throughout your long time of living in the West Midlands, why you have been so ineffective in stopping Metro taking over two mainline railways, many roads destroying our railway lines and homes, shops and offices being built on them too, including railway stations.  And, it has all cost many hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money being misspent and wasted.  It amounts to financial abuse and transport incompetence.

Or, have you only recently had a change of heart?

HELP SLOW CLIMATE EMERGENCY

PLEASE SEND THIS TO: customerservices@wmca.org.uk

Put v low finite fossil fuel apartments on ALL of High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.

This means permanently keeping Metro "bus on rails" trams off High Plateau.  The whole of the area for small, highly energy efficient homes​ to welcome migrants and all without their own place.

Save nature at Merry Hill by permanently keeping the trams off the 400 m canal embankment with the £100m double track railway viaduct.

Let it be naturally rewilded with NO MORE MOW to allow plants, shrubs and trees to sequester CO2 on the embankment.  Instead of the climate damaging concrete and steel viaduct.

STOP £0.6 billion Metro destroying the UK's only mothballed, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" in the heavily congested, densely populated Black Country.

to Principal Dawn Ward, Burton and S Derbyshire College

Dear Dawn

It was lovely to meet you briefly at the Board meeting, yesterday.  Unlike your good self, I still live in heavenly Halesowen - that is less so without you!

Would any of your students like to write to Andy Street at andy.street@wmca.org.uk and customerservices@tfwm.org.uk asking for commuter and regional passenger trains to return to your local railway station to finish the line that they built but forgot to complete with the rather vital trains and stations?  I'm referring to the line from Burton on Trent, via Lichfield to Walsall and even on to Dudley Castle Hill tram stop (the former railway station)?  Map here:​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​​

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

​

​The view on top of the nationally important railway bridge featured above:​​

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

​

You do have freight to Lichfield, past Alrewas but no passenger trains and station serving the National Memorial Arboretum that is next to the freight only railway.  It is the 120 Kms between Derby and Worcester via the Black Country.  Hence, everyone has to pile into their cars to deepen the climate emergency.  Yet the line is already built and or mothballed and is the UK's only mainline railway "of national strategic significance".​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​

​We car drivers, wanting less congestion and a deepening climate emergency, need to take back control and persuade the politicians and officers to do the blindingly obvious!

​

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

​

Thanks so much if you would like to help, please in motivating your students to act to their advantage.

The task of eco-socialists, in my opinion

The task of eco-socialists, in my opinion

I don't think, trying to overthrow an oppressive, tyrannical and capitalist regime like Russia under President Putrid is the task for eco-socialists like ourselves.  Our task is minimum collaboration with such an unsavoury state or, to get out altogether to a safer and more congenial country.  To fight the Russian invasion and aggression, minimise your use of gas and oil because some comes from them.

HOWEVER, I would like my dear socialist comrades to get right behind me in this endeavour that has more chance of success:

COPY OF EMAIL TO ANDY STREET:

Dear Andy and Ashvir

I restrained myself, admirably in not putting my hand up in the meeting yesterday evening!  I had an enjoyable cycle ride from Halesowen.  Thanks for the chat after the meeting.  I had been a City Council social worker in the area in the 80s and 90s.

Since the 1990s, I believe I am correct in saying, High Plateau at Merry Hill Shopping Centre has been a valuable brownfield site, designated for residential, that has not been used.  It remains wasted.  PLAN, here:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

This is a very serious oversight that may have partly arisen because of the Metro extension (WBHE) that is due to take a corner slice of this much needed site.  A site for low running costs, highly energy efficient, solar powered apartments, using only electricity for heating and cooking, for sale and rent from, preferably, the Combined Authority.  Metro trams must keep off and keep out of ALL of this site.

Metro trams must also keep off the only public open space at Merry Hill.  This is also the valuable, green space that is essential to continue to sequester CO2 thanks to the area of grassland, shrubs and trees that extends for 400 metres.  In addition, if you do as I advise, you will save £100 m.  This is the likely cost for the two double track tramway bridges over the Dudley No 1 Canal and for the massive, standard gauge, double track, concrete and steel tramway viaduct to obliterate the beautiful, nature rich canal embankment.  Add to the destruction, my landscape enhancement scheme to hide the rusty iron wall that holds up the High Plateau!  PHOTO of only a part that gets destroyed:

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

My own nature planting is off to the left of the photo and is not in view.  It also gets obliterated.

INSTEAD, keep the trams running on the "railway of national strategic significance" from the Cinder Bank roundabout on Duncan Edwards Way, through Brierley Hill and on to Stourbridge Jct station to connect with the national railway network.  Tram stops at the Waterfront, Brierley Hill and Withymoor on the railway route to Stourbridge.

Turning the UK's only mothballed, principal mainline railway of 120 Kms into a piddling little shuttle tramline over two short sections totalling 6.7 Kms is incompetent.  And the enormous cost of well over £500 m is immoral in the face of increasing poverty for those who are struggling both to eat and to heat their homes.  It is socially unjust and proves you are climate deniers, when you should be climate champions.

I hope you and the CA will act, urgently, Andy.

Very best wishes as you and the seven leaders act, in this way, to address the climate, nature, ecological, housing and cost of living crises.

Tim

40.3C prompts Greta Thunberg to tweet

 

Greta Thunberg

@GretaThunberg

This is not “the new normal”. The climate crisis will continue to escalate and get worse as long as we stick our heads in the sand and prioritise profit and greed over people and planet. We are still sleepwalking towards the edge.

from Stop the War

 

Revelations about SAS killings in Afghanistan, revealed by the BBC's Panorama programme last week, only underline the brutal nature of that war and occupation. The disturbing new evidence brings to light scores of secret killings of unarmed people by the SAS. These were known about by senior figures in the British armed forces. There is evidence of war crimes. Stop the War demands that this evidence must now be used to hold those responsible for the atrocities.P We opposed the war in Afghanistan from the very beginning. Last year it ended with the return of the Taliban and the humiliating defeat of US, UK and allied forces. It was a catastrophe that must never be repeated.

Support Our Work - Join Stop the War Today

For the last two decades, Stop the War has opposed wars, sanctions and military interventions. We have tirelessly campaigned against the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, against the bombardment of Libya and Syria, against British involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. We campaign against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also against NATO's expansion and demands for much higher military spending in its member states. Despite the recent attacks on Stop the War for our positions, we will continue to organise and campaign against wars, imperialism and NATO’s militarism.

Putrid Putin is seething with rage ...

... at the hated American-led West dancing on the grave of the USSR, ever since its collapse in 1991.  In 1999, he inherited what Gorbachev and Yeltsin did, with their perestroika and glasnost and their overtures to the West.  But our behaviour over 31 years has done nothing to assuage his slow-burning, self-destruct rage over the 22 years he has been President.  

Our so self-righteous revenge is fueling the war and fueling the ecocidal, maniacal fueling of the climate emergency as we all, Putrid and Zelensky/Bush/NATO, angrily race into self-destruct idiocy.  And sleepwalk into a nightmare of entirely their/our own making.

Written after hearing John Sweeney talking on the Jeremy Vine Show on 20 July 2022.

The pro-American/EU/Western firebrands in Ukraine brought the Feb 2014 war upon themselves by not waiting for an election to overthrow their pro-Russian president.

Metro likely to be extended further along Hagley Road

"There remains some public realm work to complete following the opening as well as some work to prepare for future public transport infrastructure along Hagley Road."

WMCA press release, 15 July 2022

METRO - the answer to all our prayers!

1.  Is multi-modal public transport, as we now have and with many more extensions planned, able to tackle the climate emergency better than having only bus and train?
2. If so, in what way and where is the independent research that brings the cast iron evidence that 'the more Metro the merrier'?
3. Is there proof that the three main modes of public transport (bus, tram, train) are the silver bullet to end road traffic congestion and pollution?
4. Does the second most expensive mode to construct after HS2, even so, lessens congestion and air pollution on our streets more effectively and with better value for money than electric buses directly on roads without the railway tracks having to be laid first, as is the case for trams?
5. Is there evidence that in the Walsall, Brum, Solihull corridor with three different kinds of buses and heavy rail, that a higher proportion of car commuters have permanently switched to trains and the three different kinds of buses?
6. Is there proof that spending the most money possible on grandiose transport projects like Metro and HS2 really do cut greenhouse gases in the short, medium and long term?
7. Can one safely say that more spending = more greenhouse gas emissions = fewer finite fossil fuels left in the ground = an uncomfortable future for our descendants?