to theologian, Baptist minister, Sior Coleman

Is it an impertinence for me to call upon 1 or 2 OT quotes to try and stop further tram extensions?

Fabulous looking but also a fabulous price for what the UK tram promotion group is simply saying is a "bus on rails".​  ​A wealth flaunting sop to the poor when a big rise in Universal Credit or, Fare Free Public Transport might be more helpful?

Your opinion and guidance, please?

Origins of war and HS2!

Donald

Thanks so much for replying - and for your truly brilliant, heroic, giant of a grandfather.  So very few reply, to even argue back, as you have done so well!

I have the paperback edition and read part of it.  I've also read part of AJP Taylor, 'The Origins of the Second World War' but not 'The Peacemakers'.  I must get it.  I remember AJP as a boy in the 60s on black and white TV, with his amazing, spell-binding monologues for 30 minutes!  That is why I wrote, "after decades of peace between the European nations."  I also prick my ears up when I hear Margaret MacMillan on Radio 4.  Even Max Hastings called the 1914 War a European "catastrophe".  On the back cover, "a peaceful continent descended into a chaos that was far from inevitable."  In the July 1914 Cabinet, Churchill, far too much in a hurry, argued for war and won all the others over.  Disgraceful.

I think I'm right in saying that we would never have won either war without the help of Russia and many lives were lost as we sought to supply them with all the essentials of war.  It is the men and women of violence who go to war and then end up killing my friends, family and me.  I would never dream of killing  - from my Christian discipleship and from my belief that we either live in peaceful co-existence or, we perish as fools.  We have gone for the latter in the most destructive and evil century that humanity has ever seen.  All thanks to the supposedly, civilised, democratic Western nations that supposedly had the Bible at the heart of their governance and culture and in every British Coronation for centuries.

The scam of HS2 lies in the deception that you mentioned.  All the existing intercity services must remain for all the stations that HS2 is far too fast to stop at.  Therefore, it cannot "free up more capacity on the West Coast main line in order to get more freight off the roads and onto rail."  Unless, the present intercity service is considerably slowed or services cut to make room for more capacity of other kinds, like slow freight trains.  Some intercity travellers will have to use the MegaBus or their cars!

It does give extra mileage to the network but that was offset by the destruction of the Great Central Railway up the backbone of England and our own 120 Kms Black Country Railway.  It does give the choice to plane passengers to either fly through the air on their usual plane or, to have a change of scenery, and to fly through the air on land on HS2.

THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS, SCANDALOUS THAT LIBDEM, NORMAN BAKER MP, ALLOWED!

This is no exaggeration:-

The original objective of the business plans and the Transport Works Act Order were to give us a first-class public transport system. They have achieved 70 years of wiping off the face of the earth the entire tram network, followed by about 100 Kms of the Black Country and Brum railway lines.

The 1990s saw Moor St to Smethwick Galton Bridge railway and Walsall to Rugeley railway both reopened.  But no more trains and stations reinstated since 1998.  Only 23 Kms of tramline has been achieved between 1999 and 2023. 19 Kms of the 23 on a mainline railway that also destroyed a mainline station, Low Level, plus 3.5 Kms of railway lines either side of it.

25% of Snow Hill station also remains wasted, unused because the trams bypass it and the trains can never again return to platform 4.  Yet, our gormless government (Transport Minister, Norman Baker MP) gave the money for trams to connect Snow Hill station to grandiose Grand Central station.  Baker was deceived/lied to by Centro (now WMCA's Transport for West Midlands).  Like very nearly all politicians, he never checked, challenged, or questioned the supposed transport experts - just gayly and gladly signed it off with the stroke of a pen!!

Inclusive and tolerant Andy Street, has overseen this debacle over the last 6 years and wants more of the same with his multi-modal, mixed-up, mish-mash of:-

 

HS (High Speed);

HR (Heavy Rail);

LR (Light Rail) trams, like Metro of 8 lines, 150 miles and 380 tram stops by 2040 for £15 BILLION!;

V (very) LR trams, as we have on the site of the destroyed 100-year-old and popular Dudley Mainline station at the foot of Castle Hill;

U (Ultra) LR trams like Stourbridge Shuttle, to also go on our railway "of national strategic significance"!!;

Sprint buses;

regular buses -

making for a whole host of public transport modes. Astonishingly useless performance by our Top People on Very Big Salaries.

MY MANIFESTO:- The Stupendous Sermon on the Mount

Richard, this is very helpful and illuminating.  Thanks so much.

However, you and I are on the left and I'm a Christian eco-socialist.  The people, the public, the electorate are on the right.  This is seen by the popularity of newspapers like the Mail, Telegraph and Express that are right-wing and most unrighteous over what they want.  It is seen by Conservative governments ruling the UK for very many more years than less right-wing governments of the Labour Party.

Democracy is no friend of you and I because we can never get our way through the ballot box.

In 1914, after decades of peace between the European nations themselves, the First World War broke out with great enthusiasm from the British public.  In other words, democracy won.  The people spoke, they agreed with that war enthusiast, dear Winston and we had the most stupid and unnecessary war in the history of humanity.  It led to the 1939 war, followed by the Cold War, followed by the West's takeover of almost every former USSR satellite state - much to the ire of Russian nationalists like Pariah Putrid.  And now, from 2014, the ecocidal, almost a civil war between Ukraine and Russia but, fueled by the taxpayers of almost every country in the West and, Russia.

Democracy is no friend of you and I because we can never get our way through the ballot box.

The public want flash, impressive, prestigious projects that are gloriously expensive and wealth flaunting like Metro trams and the 150 miles of tramlines, both overground and underground.  In 2020 the 150 miles was estimated to cost £15 BILLION.  This, only one year after they had piously declared a climate emergency and, four years on, still fail to act to cancel the W Mids Comedy Authority's most climate-damaging project after High Scam 2 - now four years of blatant hypocrisy, and rising!

The people want and love Metro but, like High Scandal 2, they make all our ecocidal behaviours and problems worse.  Hence, democracy will never work for you and me.  Only through lobbying have I seen off the KBH and WOM (motorways), the upgrading of towpaths and cycle-walkways, the DfT 'Restoring Your Railways' project and the abandonment of one mainline railway being converted to tramline.  I failed over two mainline railways that are lost to trams because that was democracy - what the public wanted.  Still, not a bad record!

All you and I have is the power of the pen and voice and, reducing our hypocrisy quotient by being model eco-citizens, leading from the front, by example.  Hence my pretty low-carbon, low-impact lifestyle.  "Be the change you want to see in the world"  Gandhi

Being left and socialist is being left out but, on the side of the poor, the disadvantaged and marginalised in society (re-read the Sermon on the Mount).

Tim Weller

SIR JONATHON PORRITT: There is 'Hope in Hell' (his book) - things can still be turned around

What total funds have been found to build WBHE Phase 2 through the only public open space, designated housing land and my vertical guerrilla garden at Merry Hill?

Is the possible SSSI at Daniels Land going to be bulldozed during Phase 2 works?

 QUIZ: Select 5 given answers to 5 questions

 

This is no exaggeration:-

The original objectives of the business plans and the Transport Works Order was to give us a first class public transport system. They have achieved 70 years of wiping off the face of the earth the entire tram network, followed by 100 Kms of the Black Country and Brum railway lines. All this, in exchange for 23 Kms of tramline, 20 Kms of the 23 on a mainline railway that also destroyed a mainline station, plus 5 Kms of railway lines.  25% of Snow Hill station also remains wasted, unused because the trams bypass it and the trains can never again return!!

 

Lovely, inclusive and tolerant Andy, has overseen this debacle over the last 6 years in post and wants more of the same.  Astonishing performance.  Yet, since 2017, he has held public meetings - very rare, if not unknown, among politicians - and got my vote twice on the strength of his decency in meeting the public and being challenged by all and sundry like me.

to Express and Star

Will you, now please speak to your editor about the Star exposing this 40 years of incompetence and lack of democracy?

QUESTION FOR ANDY STREET on the Radio 4 'Any Questions' panel this evening at Kingswinford Academy:

Should there be full, for and against debate and vote by our councillors, before our 120 Kms (74 miles) Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" is converted into multi-modal heavy rail, light rail and very light rail between Worcester and Derby?

The writing of business cases always trump democracy.  Why?

Andy Street's decision contrasts with Edinburgh City Council who, with both of their tram projects, had committee discussions, followed by debates and then competently conducted votes in full Council to decide whether or not to go ahead.  Conservatives opposed trams on grounds of cost.

Former Cabinet member, Cllr Ian Kettle and Dudley MBC Deputy Leader, Cllr Paul Bradley at last night's Stourbridge Forum were unable to reassure me that there has ever been a for and against discussion with vote in any Dudley Cabinet meeting over turning their own half-used, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

into a multi-modal heavy rail (HR), light rail (LR) and, very light rail (VLR).  Even the Stourbridge MP, Suzanne Webb, suggested ultra light rail (ULR - the short 1.2 Km Stourbridge Shuttle) to meet the trams at Brierley Hill from her Stourbridge Jct station.  Two out of three of these unsuitable rail modes have now been put on the Derby, Dudley, Devon mainline aka Burton on Trent, Brierley Hill, Bristol mainline.

In over forty years of Metro tram development, it seems there has never been a for and against debate followed by vote in a single Council Chamber of any of the seven councils of what is now called the WMCA.  The CA is a massive new layer of unaccountable bureaucracy and hierarchy of officers and, members of the regional councils being subsumed into it to give an appearance of democracy when all their committees and boards are simply talking shops and rubber stamps.  Never for and against debates and never votes, it seems!!

This contrasts with Edinburgh City Council who, with both of their tram projects, had full committee discussions, followed by debates and then competently conducted votes in full Council to decide whether or not to go ahead.

4 reasons why we all love trams!

The trams are attracting people out of their cars and onto public transport.

For the last 70 years of tram and train destruction, there is only evidence that it is that policy that has made public transport worse, less attractive, caused road congestion, crammed trains and worsened the climate emergency.

They also make public transport users feel like they are not second-class citizens. 

First class citizens like lawyers and other VIPs all use public transport.  It was 10th rate work by our councillors and transport planners who are responsible for the complete wipe out of the trams in the 1950s followed by the double tragedy of urban commuter railway lines being turned into trading/housing estates, roads, innovation centres and test tracks that is STILL going on in this decade in Dudley.

They beat buses for speed and comfort.

In fact, 95% of bus stops are request stops but the tram MUST STOP at every tram stop.

Trams beat buses for speed only when you have the former mainline railway turned into a tramline running parallel to the traffic choked A41 between Wolverhampton and Brum.  Even then, the average speed is only 15.5 mph for the trams and 12 mph for the vehicles.

Comfort is also a misnomer when my posterior comes to a sudden juddering halt as I sit on a tram seat with only a thin piece of cotton between my bum and the very hard plastic seat!

I think it is a good investment in local infrastructure.

Such a good investment that in over 40 years of rebuilding the tram network on the railway network, we still have only ONE tramline between Brum and Wolverhampton St Georges Sq, not even to the bus station, let alone the railway station.  200 Kms was promised by 23 years ago. What a truly pathetic performance for the hundreds of millions spent and £15 BILLION MORE by 2040!

Such a good investment that the 2nd Brum mainline, after 40 years, is no longer to get trams but is still awaiting its commuter trains and the 3 stations (Kings Heath, Moseley and Stirchley) - now delayed 12 months!!

Such a good investment that all work on current Metro extensions (£1.3 billion) have had to be suspended or curtailed, since 12 mths ago.

FROM Nick:

The original trams ran in the roads. The new trams mostly reuse disused railway lines, keeping them apart from the buses, cars and bikes. SELF: A right ol' mix up, in fact. If they had maintained the old tram network then the roads would have had to be changed. Buses were a better alternative at the time.  SELF:  All other European nations modernised their tram networks over the years.  Eccentric England, once again.  England always has to be the odd one out in Europe.

The train network was cut as it was uneconomic. If it had not been cut then the rail network would probably not exist at all today.  SELF:  Beeching was right but he did not expect his closed railway lines to be wiped off the face of the earth.  How very foolish!  What idiocy!

As for the seats, I'm sure Linda or Jayne can design you a very comfortable, personalised, reusable, maybe even recycled cushion.

Business Plans are a hoax!

Many thanks. Business plans always come up with exactly what the paymaster wants them to say. They are an academic, bureaucratic, go through the hoop exercise that has justified all manners of stupidity - High Scam 2 for mainly plane passengers to sometimes use the train (instead of the plane) to fly through the air on land!

Also, 70 years of tram, then train destruction, followed by rebuilding, over the last 40 years, not the surviving train lines but the tram network on that surviving railway network.  I exaggerate not! All down to biased business plans. Next it's the 1000 trees and shrubs that get the chop on the S side of Hagley Road - all for the tragic tram to solve our road traffic congestion and poisoned air problems! And I'm one of the biggest fans of tram travel - seriously.

Public transport is an embarrassing 70 years saga of confusion, multi-modal mix up and incompetence

The very VIPs who boasted in the 1980s of 200 Kms of tramline by the year 2000, have their predecessors promising us 150 miles and 380 tram stops for £15 billion by 2040!

These were the Top Professionals who obliterated the first tram network in the 1950s, then set about the urban railway network from the 1960s onwards. What was left of our urban railway lines, from the 1980s was begun to be converted to - you've guessed it - to the solution looking for a problem, the TRAM. Not the train on train lines. Oh no! That was all too obvious. 

It was to be the answer to all our traffic-choked urban roads!

The silver bullet to bring us fast, convenient, irresistible connectivity - the planners and politicians favourite word.

Instead, we still sit in traffic jams literally alongside or near to the forgotten railway "of national strategic significance". Ready built, too except for the 7 stations recommended by Railfuture, way back in 2003.

But this is the railway that must have:- "Light rail provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" - top officer in a letter to me in September 2000. Last decade this was underlined by Top VIP, Laura Shoaf as "passive provision" for trains to return between the 56 Kms of Stourbridge and Burton on Trent on the middle section of the 120 Kms railway "of national strategic significance" between Worcester and Derby. 

What a long-winded and frankly stupid way of 'Restoring Your Railway' from the DfT, that is another victory my side has won. The first victory we won was last decade when they finally decided not to convert the Kings Norton to Grand Central Station into a tramline as part of the 200 Kms of trams we were meant to have by 2000 AD!!

WHAT A PANTOMIME 

WOT A JOKE

WHAT ASTONISHING INCOMPETENCE!

to Sandra Green re REWARDS for all

Dear Sandra - what do you think?  Would this work?

I do so want buses under public control.  Keep up the brilliant work you are doing, Sandra.  However, nothing will really change until this radical measure is tried over two years on Hagley Road:

1. We have to get much stricter with car commuters and make it as antisocial to be one, as smoking in public.
2. It is they who clog up our roads, accelerate climate horrors, take up car parking land needed for apartments for people to live in and, poison the air we breathe.
3. Car commuters delay those who must use their vehicle for their business, even car commuters who are sharing. 
4. Car commuting is inefficient and wasteful and worsen all our problems.  THEREFORE, BRING BACK THE WORK BUS!
5. Reward those who are wedded and welded to their cars with Fare Free Public Transport that I've had for 15 years.
6. Rewards for car commuters who leave their cars at home to free up road space for buses, work buses and essential business users.

The reward is Fare-Free Public Transport for all ages and not just my age group.
The reward is a quicker journey into work for everyone.
The reward is the right to use both lanes along Hagley Road.
The reward is traffic light priority for registered car users who must have a vehicle for their work, along with the bus users.

The reward is cleaner air and, thus lower health bills for the NHS.

Those who don't register can only use the outside lane and are held up at traffic lights as priority is given to buses and the registered, essential vehicle users.  And the unregistered pay a charge for the privilege of driving into work instead of using FREE public transport.
Restrict car parking in Brum city centre to free up land for residential apartments.

Car commuters have to be saved from their fatal addiction and get use to saving their cars for more essential use.

I gave up my essential car user status to take to the food fueled bike for all social work visits in the mid 90s!

My reward was 15p/mile on official council business.  It went up to 20p/ml before I retired as a working cyclist and commuter at 65.5 years.

IN A COST OF LIVING CRISIS LET THE POOR HAVE TRAMS AND FOOD BANKS

A LITTLE TONGUE-IN-CHEEK AND STRAIGHT-TALKING:

You may swan around in a car but give the rest - the 2nd class public transport users - flash, glam and gloriously expensive trams to feel important.

A Metro network is a greedy luxury we cannot afford and is immoral, anyway, in the face of so much poverty, shocking housing for too many and, poor diets leading to obesity and health problems.

The politicians and transport experts have had 40 years of trying to rebuild the tram network but it has ONLY resulted in railway lines being destroyed to get nothing that can be called a tram network!

Yet, there is always top priority for the tram network to be rebuilt rather than the train network reopened.  In six years of Mayoral action, not one railway line has reopened and only the tram from Grand Central to Edgbaston - but planning for that started well before Andy's arrival!

Trams are naughty but nice because:

• They do glide from one stop to another at an average speed of 22mph.
• Unlike buses that are 95% request stops, trams have to stop at every stop strung out at about every one Km, on average.
• They are meant to be the silver bullet to solve all our congestion and poisoned city air problems.
• How come, then the roads are clogged and railways crammed even on the A41 that runs parallel to the mainline railway, now a tramway? 
• Everyone, especially disabled people - and me - love the "bus on rails" trams for their step-free access and gap-less platform to tram.
• However, bus stop platforms can be provided, as well, to avoid a total tram takeover.  Where there's a will there's a way.
• Trams are so loved, we can easily lose 1,000 trees and shrubs felled on the south side of Hagley Road for the tram extension to the Kings Head pub.  Bang goes that carbon capture and storage as climate disaster has another turn of the screw!
• Seven UK places have trams and they are found on the mainland of Europe.  Why don't the other 93 have them too?
• With our growing food banks, it is what a top-rate, wealthy country like ours can easily afford, along with £100 billion High Scam 2 fast-to-stop train.
• Metro is 8-10 times more expensive per Km to build than rebuilding a 50 Km railway in Scotland.  But money is no object, even at £4m per tram.
• At such a price, they make a stunning sight on our two former mainline railways.
• It's worth all the blunders causing work to be changed and redone correctly on the short 700 m extension to get it to the bus and railway stations that they forgot at their first attempt with the first tram in 1999.
• If the trains and stations had gone back in the 1990s instead of the trams, the 700 m extension would not have been necessary!
• The 2020 planned 150 miles of tramlines are a scandalous and immoral waste of our money to worsen the climate emergency.
• Especially when people at the bottom of society and migrants are suffering from poverty and ill health.

Multi-choice answers for this Comic Quiz

WE ALL SIT IN TRAFFIC JAMS next to or near to, an unused railway “of national strategic significance” because of bizarre spending like this:

Q1 How do you deal with the daily crawl into work on Hagley Road?

By carry on with business as usual?

OR

by clear felling 1,000 trees and shrubs on the south side of Hagley Road to the Kings Head to make way for a tramline?

OR

a bus and business lane to discourage car commuting and free up road space for essential vehicles like buses and work buses?

Q2  Is the still unfinished University railway station so gi-normous because WMCA wants it to compete with the impressive, new, big buildings on either side, at the QEH and the University?

OR,

Is it to make up for the five stations STILL not built on two wasted railway lines? One is no longer reserved for trams but, is now for commuter trains and stations?

OR,

Is it irresponsible spending?

Q3  Does their "Light rail provision provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time",

mean that only trams running on 6 Kms of the missing 56 Kms will allow the commuter and regional trains, plus freight, to return on all 120 Kms?

OR,

that they believe 22mph average speed trams are the most sensible transport mode to finish a former 100-year-old successful mainline between Worcester, the Black Country and Derby?

OR,

this is complete gobbledegook and they don't have a clue how to run transport?

Q4   Will this UK's last principal, mainline railway "of national strategic significance" be finally finished in its middle unused section?

Once they’ve put the Dudley Tram on its two nibble-sized sections, totalling 6.7 Kms?

OR,

the magic "passive provision" is finally built in to the tram line?

OR,

TfWM/WMCA don't have a clue what to do?

Q5  Does TfWM believe that their bosses' "passive provision" means:

that their tram track will be the same width to take both trams and trains?

OR,

that they will rebuild the former Oxford, Worcester, Black Country, Derby line to allow trams in the daytime and freight trains at night?

OR,

they are so befuddled and bewildered they are all over the place?

Q6  Why has Midlands Connect ignored the half-finished 120 Kms Black Country Railway?

They are so concentrated on new ideas and schemes, they can't be bothered with the ready-built, former principal mainline railway in the Black Country and south Staffs, so let it go for trams and a cycle-walkway?

OR,

Road building for more connectivity is their top priority, anyway?

OR,

They don't have the guts to challenge the idiocy of 40 years of hard endeavour in turning two former mainline railways into tramways?

timweller1@gmail.com    0791 380 4363

Two smiling leaders and 7 Quiz questions no 2

Portfolio Holder

Councillor Ian Courts

Leader of Solihull Council

Lead Officer

Ed Cox

Executive Director - Strategy, Integration and Net Zero

When the planet is burning from our vast burning of finite fossil fuels, should we give top priority to tram extensions or trains/stations reinstated or, something else?

When the authorities in 2019 declared a climate emergency, should they be spending an increase of 45% to £650 m for 9 Kms to build trams on the built but unused section of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway or, turn it into a road or something else?

When we are told that there is an obesity epidemic, should we continue with business as usual or support Henry Dimbleby in promoting his recommendations for lower carbon-impact eating and healthier food?

When vast parts of the planet are both burning and flooding from our human climate-induced, on top of natural changes, should we continue to destroy buildings and transport infrastructure to then have to rebuild them or, insulate them to save burning fossil fuels?

Humanitarian aid or ecocidal armaments to promote war around the world or much more of both?

When a hazardous orange haze from out-of-control forest fires in Quebec extends down the E side of the USA, meaning high-grade face masks must be used - should we do more active travel or oil-based travel?

Solar power in our homes or gas heating and cooking?

TimWeller1@gmail.com     0791 380 4363

URGENT COURT INJUNCTION IMMEDIATELY - TODAY

Dear Cllr John - and for Richard Parker who is also responsible as the very likely next metro Mayor of the CA.

Congratulations on your elevation to Leader.  You are now responsible for W Midlands transport and I would urge you to do as I am suggesting, below.  Please will you respond?  Please give your opinion.

This matter over transport misspending and incompetence has been disastrous for decades and is completely the wrong way to go.  I would like an urgent phone or face to face meeting, please John.

The biggest ever UK finance/transport scandal is all evidenced here, John:

 The biggest and longest running scandal in UK t...

 THE SCANDAL IN FOUR LINES

 40 short statements never corrected or even cha...

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

Many thanks for sensible, responsible action at long last.

Tim   (Weller)   0791 380 4363    28 Hunnington Cres  HALESOWEN  B63 3DJ

Dear Tony (my barrister brother in law)

I am asking you that you please arrange, at my expense (up to £10,000 maximum), today to ensure by injunction:

That the first item on the agenda at Friday's WMCA Board meeting on 9 June 2023 be this resolution to be debated and voted on:

In the light of the WMCA climate emergency and ecological/economic pressures,

1. This WMCA Board authorises an immediate halt on all expenditure on new immoral Metro light rail (LR), together with very light rail (VLR) and ultra light rail (ULR like Stourbridge Shuttle) extensions.
2. This means expenditure ends on anymore work on Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Extension Phase 2 (LR) and Coventry work on VLR.
3. This Board recommends a halt, immediately, all expenditure and work on extending High Scam 2 beyond Birmingham, ie towards Crewe (Phase 2a) and NE to East Midlands Parkway (HS2 East).
4. This Board authorises all WMCA staff working on Sprint, LR, VLR and ULR extensions be rapidly retrained and redeployed into addressing the climate emergency by putting a rocket under the present lethargic work on retrofitting to ensure every building in the WMCA region is effectively insulated with minimum fire risk and maximum solar power.
5. This Board authorises that the major WMCA transport budget wasted on replacing perfectly good buses and trains with trams, be relegated in importance and diverted into retrofitting and PV solar installation having the major slice of the WMCA financial pie.

Many thanks

Support the fight for freedom in Ukraine OR, freedom from being killed, injured, maimed or suffering from radiation sickness?

Is it really worth all the deaths, maiming, possible nuclear radiation and the flattening of towns and cities to be officially part of NATO and the EU?

The UK is out of the EU but Ukraine wants in - to spite Pariah Putrid.  Yet, our expansion eastwards right up to Russia's border, our wish to dominate as much of the world, for the best of all possible reasons, has gone on for centuries.

Centuries of exploration, of stealing resources and whole peoples for 300 years of slavery.  Colonialism on a massive scale by us Brits.  The scramble for Africa by European empires did not set a good example to Russia.

The welcoming of the former Soviet satellite states into the Western fold has been intensely provocative for Russian nationalists like Putrid who, understandably I think, wanted it stopped.  The Feb 2014 Western Revolution of Dignity was the last straw for Putrid.  Then, eight years of war with no talks, nothing being done to end it, led to the full-scale invasion of Feb 2022.  No efforts to understand, empathise or even to sympathise or, to make concessions - like no more NATO exercises in the former Soviet states; nukes to be taken out of the former USSR states; and no more former Soviet states becoming part of NATO.

Any concessions, any compromise, any restraint by our side was seen as appeasement.  We would be seen as ignominious "cheese-eating surrender monkeys."  How absolutely pathetic as we all go down with the killing of people like my family and me by the truly evil men and women of violence on both/all sides.

Mutual suicide is what it amounts to, I think, like the ecocidal consumption and growth of 250 years from the greedy, unthinking exploitation of finite fossil fuels for all their worth.  Plus, the unfortunate deadly consequence from changing, disastrously, the chemical composition of the atmosphere to change the climates of the world for the worse.

WE CALL ALL THIS FREEDOM - and it really does mean that we all end up dying.  Stupid, foolish humanity finding ourselves outlived by the dinosaurs by many millions of years!

Desperation by WMCA as they dig an ever deeper hole for themselves - and us lot!

Thanks for what you have written.  Very good, too.  But can you send me the link, please?  But I must try and get it for myself from the WMCA website.  My comment:

How absurd but so accurate: "Commuters could be asked to walk, cycle or bus the last leg of the Wednesbury-Brierley Hill Metro line after bosses admitted they don't have the cash to finish it."

The public open space may still destroyed by a massive earth embankment or concrete and steel viaduct for the section into Merry Hill, plus many trees and shrubs and the rest of Nature needed to slow climate ecocide from all our burning up of finite fossil fuels for unnecessary projects like this.

All they need to do is to keep the trams on the former, principal mainline railway so they connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.  The freight trains will have to run at night.

I still maintain that the Star should be running a major campaign to keep the trams on the railway to Jct station.  In the 1990/00s the Brum Post led the campaign for the £750m Grand Central Station.  What about your editor doing similar?  Please ask him/her.  I have been a successful failure over Metro misery since I started writing about it in the 1990s!!

Not just a solution looking for a problem but a solution that worsens all our problems, particularly climate and resource depletion.  The Metro tram project money and all the staff must be diverted to mitigate and adapt to a worsening climate horror, by insulating and solar powering every building.

Andy Street's Metro review was never published or made the slightest difference!

Dear gentlemen - much ammunition here for you to make mincemeat of the hopeless Tories!

I believe Andy Street ordered the Metro review in 2020.  It could not have been independent because it was to be conducted and written up by Mark Smith, Chair of Audit, Risk & Assurance Committee of the WMCA, I understand.  Therefore, totally biased and useless from the start!

Was this review ever carried out?

Why have I never been able to get to the bottom of this mystery?

What was going wrong with Metro that prompted the review announcement?

Was one reason, the financially irresponsible and enormous cost of a project whose sole reason for its existence was Andy's much vaunted "multi-modal transport" that he wrote to me about?  

Like for like comparison of construction costs:

In 2003, when opened, the M6 Toll was £21m/Km

In 2015 when opened, rebuilding the Borders Railway was £7m/Km

In 2022, Metro Westside extension was £80m/Km, I believe (Andy's one and only feather in his cap!)

“The 1,350m Birmingham to Edgbaston extension cost £149m, including phase one from Grand Central to the library.” = £110 m/Km, up from £75 m/Km at the start. (Peter Madeley in the Express & Star)

 Like for like comparison of infrastructure buil...

What went wrong with the three transport projects that meant that they had to be suspended last year?

A 700 metre section of Metro is taking very many years to build because of stop-start work from mistakes having to be corrected. This suggests serious incompetence at TfWM/WMCA.  Did work on the ground start in 2015?  Surely not!

SCANDAL:

The first idiocy and incompetence was turning a former mainline railway that was unused, into a tramway.  It opened in 1999.

Folly no 2: it was never connected to even the nearby Wolverhampton bus station, let alone the railway station.  As, of course, the railway trains between Wolverhampton and Snow Hill did for 100 years.

Scandal no 3: Commuter and regional trains could have been re-introduced at, literally, a small fraction of the cost that Metro is turning out to be to, eventually, get it to Wolverhampton's last railway station.  And, even then, it permanently bypasses the other station, Snow Hill.  Yet, the go ahead was given by HMG (actually, Norman Baker MP, Transport Minister) to connect Snow Hill to Grand Central that has never come about and never will.  That really was its sole justification.  The epitomy of incompetence!

Why was a new University Station given the go ahead when there were far more urgent transport projects, like re-opening or, simply finishing with freight and passenger trains, the 120 Kms (74 miles) Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby?

In Andy Street's six years, not one railway project has come to fruition because he gave Metro expansion top priority.  Yet, he has only achieved the completion of one tram project in six years (that started way before him, anyway!).  That one scheme is Westside Extension that was shortened to end at 54 Hagley Road instead of seeing the demolition of the fine Calthorpe House on Hagley Road (the original plan).  Metro is a grossly extravagant, prestigious, wealth-flaunting project to impress the tourists and to entice businesses to a city that is wanting to rival the Paris, Milans and Tokyos of this world.

Remember, WMCA transport I believe, takes the biggest slice of the finance pie.  Insulating and solar powering the Midlands buildings should have that slice in the light of your self declared climate emergency that is bringing us all a bleak future.

Please ACT.  And a decent reply would make my day!

REWARDS for Hagley Road Bus/Business Lane for those who register to avoid the Car Charge

TWO YEAR EXPERIMENT

Rewards for car commuters who leave their cars at home to free up road space for buses, work buses and essential business users.

The reward is Fare-Free Public Transport for all ages and not just my age group.
The reward is a quicker journey into work for everyone.
The reward is the right to use both lanes along Hagley Road.
The reward is traffic light priority for registered car users who must have a vehicle for their work, along with the bus users.

The reward is cleaner air and, thus lower health bills for the NHS.

Those who don't register can only use the outside lane and are held up at traffic lights as priority is given to buses and the registered, essential vehicle users.  And the unregistered pay a charge for the privilege of driving into work instead of using FREE public transport.
Restrict car parking in Brum city centre to free up land for residential apartments.

from Operation Noah, 1 June 2023

Researchers say there is now a 66% chance we will pass the 1.5C global warming threshold between now and 2027 due to emissions from human activities and a change in weather patterns expected this summer. If the world passes the limit, scientists stress the breach, while worrying, will likely only be temporary. But breaking the limit even for just one year is a sign that warming is accelerating and not slowing down. Read more.

Wind turbines have generated more electricity than gas for the first time in the UK. In the first three months of this year, a third of the country's electricity came from wind farms, research from Imperial College London has shown. Read more.

Operation Noah Trustee Steph Lake will participate in a panel discussion on fossil fuels and divestment at Bristol Cathedral on 16 June at 7pm. The discussion is one of a series of events the Cathedral will hold as part of a new art installation called ‘Oil Fountain’ by Luke Jerram which highlights society’s reliance on oil and the need to move away from it. Details.

Green energy projects worth billions of pounds are on hold because they cannot plug into the UK's electricity system. Some new solar and wind sites are waiting up to 15 years to be connected because of a lack of capacity in the system, also known as the 'grid'. Read more.