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.