to Sir John Armitt

We all sit in traffic jams or on crowded buses and trains while our great National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has allowed the destruction of about 100 Kms of railway lines in the W Midlands.  It has allowed the powerful councillors and officers to have the bizarre, a truly eccentric policy of running roads and every kind of building imaginable down our urban railway lines. And, now, tram construction has wrecked part of the UK's only mothballed, supposedly safeguarded, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" on the former Oxford, Worcester, Wolverhampton Railway Co line and on the former, mothballed South Staffordshire Railway Co line between London and Stafford through the Black Country.

When will you act, Sir John Armitt?  I asked him a very similar question to the above, in a meeting at the NEC, outside Birmingham, last decade and he gave a wonderful, silver-tongued reply that showed he had no intention of taking responsibility as Chair of the NIC.

When it came to failing old water supply pipes and sewage discharges into rivers and seas, Sir John did admit this on 28 June on the 'Today' programme, at 2:16:00 in:-

Interviewer, Martha Kearney or Mishal Husain:  "What is your solution?"

Sir John: "I think the reality we have to face is that there has been under investment for a very long time.  SELF: Investment in Midland Metro since 1981 and in High Scam 2 since 2009!  The focus from government on the regulator has been to keep bills down.  There has been no real increase in bills at least over the last ten years across the sector."

Sir John:  "We have to get the balance right and that is the regulator's job."  SELF:  So your balanced priority is to fully support High Scam 2 then for £100 billion?

Interviewer, Martha or Mishal:  "Your bread and butter is infrastructure and that is one of the massive problems with this, right?"

Sir John said, "Yes."  SELF:  So why are you supporting the wrong infrastructure spending?

Martha or Mishal said, "We do not have the pipes, we do not have the capacity to deal with sewage overflows and the level of rainfall."

Sir John:  "By 2050, the Environment Agency and the water companies believe that about £50 billion needs to be invested to get sewage overflows down to an acceptable level ... and we have previously estimated that we need £20 billion to ensure that we have sufficient water by 2050.  You are talking very large sums of money to restore, to enable our water and sewage infrastucture to be fit for purpose."  SELF:  Never a problem in getting the BILLIONS for High Scam 2 and Metro trams, however!

"As a society we have to decide what level of infrastructure - water, roads, railway, energy - we require and then decide how we pay for it."

SELF:  Therefore, why has your priority and, certainly, with your full agreement, been on High Scam 2 and on £15 BILLION for 150 miles of Metro trams in the West Midlands by 2040?

Ask me why I call HS2 fraudulent, like trams.  (CLUES: The more money we spend the more it will ease road traffic congestion and pollution and deal with the climate crisis!  The HS2 lie, to justify its construction, is that it will give more trains and train services on other lines - the magic "it will increase capacity on the network" lie.)