AN ALTERNATIVE 'CHRISTIANITY BEGAN ... ' FROM THE INNOCUOUS ONE THAT I READ!

Christianity began well ... and ended in ...see below!  

Christianity began in Galilee as 12 disciples of Jesus and then by many more as Followers of the Way. Only later were they called Christians - as a taunt.

Saul was converted and interpreted the death of Christ as atoning for the sins of the world, rather than the ultimate act of non-aggression and non-violence. A crucifixion that spoke volumes of the iniquity of capital punishment and, indeed of corporal punishment that was also used on this good man. Yet, both punishments are so beloved of the righteous of the Lord - and has been for centuries. They certainly don't believe in sparing the rod, because the Bible tells them so.

The Apostle Paul took Christianity to Asia Minor and Greece but it never became a philosophy, even though the intellectual Greeks loved to debate religion.

It went to Rome and it changed from being almost unheard of for Followers of the Way to enter the army, to it becoming acceptable to do so - and ever since.

It went to Europe and the rot really did set in. Non-aggression and non-violence became not just unheard of but completely non-existent amongst the supposedly faithful of the Lord. The words even, were never used such was the popularity of the soldiers of the Cross being literally warring crusaders against evil Islam and, even the wrong kind of Christianity! No longer were they faithful followers of the way of the Lord who taught and practised loving enemies rather than aggression and violence.

It came to America and that most devout nation; indeed, the nation with the mostest - the most of absolutely everything, including Bible believing, born again Christians. Yet, for the last six decades, along with its best buddy, the UK those most righteous nations have warred, have attacked, have invaded, have occupied nations with their godless and evil Communism. Only the tiny, Christian sects and branches of Christendom have been noted for their non-aggression and non-violence. Only they have remained true to the roots of Christianity and its Founder's 'unsuccessful' Way of non-aggression, non-violent direct action and of, literally loving those who have come to war, attack, invade and occupy.

The worst heresy, the ultimate irony and the final insult is the Bible reading and prayerful duo who launched the War of Terrorism against two Muslim nations who had done nothing to deserve the judgement of the righteous of the Lord from the US/UK. This Christian war or crusade against evil shows just how far the supposed disciples of the King of Love and the Prince of Peace have departed the Faith. They, who talk the most about defeating evil, need to first repent of their own much greater evil, methinks! There is the Jesus parable of the mote and the beam or, the splinter and the plank. Judgement begins in the House of the Lord - and, indeed on all who take the sword and the rod to punish the evil, sinful, rogue and failed nations of the world. Except, the US/UK/Israeli hegemony gets away with it. There is no judgement for their injustice, aggression and violence because they are all powerful - unlike their founder, Jesus Christ; all powerless, non aggressive and all failing!

Fraudulent Claims for High Scam 2

 Thanks, Tony.  On the fraudulent claims for High Scam 2:

1. N edge of London to Manchester with some trains only diverting off into Curzon St and Crewe.
2. Otherwise, stops at Brum and Manchester airports, only.  No other stations, so all the intercity trains will have to remain!
3. Capacity, therefore is improved but mainly for plane passengers giving them more choice between flying through the air on a plane or on a train.  Why can't they stick to the plane?
4. What a colossal cost in price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions to give high speed to climate disaster and shortages of all resources!
5. Nature gets yet more of a battering.  Not a good idea.

Tim

On Thu, 28 Sept 2023 at 09:02, Anthony Whitehouse <whitehousea970@gmail.com> wrote:

I have two points about your latest tirade.

1 Haven't you heard that we live in a democracy and not a police state or autocracy. 

2 I notice that you never have a go at the biggest culprits and they are the school runners.Usually two people in a car for a journey of usually approx half a mile.If you really want space created on our congested roads then they are the ones you should be tackling.

Plus I also notice that you never make a comment on the power used to drive trams.Is it because it is clean power I.e. electricity and not dirty power I,e petrol or diesel?

The trams are a viable form of public transport and their expansion is here to stay.So get over it.

Why don't you have a go at HS2 instead? Then you would get my support. 

On Thu, 28 Sep 2023, 08:36 Tim Weller, <timweller1@gmail.com> wrote: 

WILL PENSIONERS BACK THIS - from one old crock?

For your feedback/criticism, please - something from me, Tim Weller with thanks, here:

 STOP Metro expansion to 2040 for 150 miles of tramways for 8 lines and 380 tram stops.  Instead:

Use the £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure) for Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT) for all and all day and to finish the electrification of existing buses and trains.

Bus/business lanes to reward car commuters who will be enthused and not enraged to free up road space for essential vehicle users.

MORE DETAIL:

• I'm suggesting a virtuous circle by more reward than penalty to educate and appeal to car commuters that they must free up the limited road space for essential business vehicle users, like buses, HGV drivers, district nurses, midwives etc who have to use their vehicles.

• These drivers must register to have the right to drive in daytime, Mon to Fri, because of their work.

• The car commuters who do not register are then picked up by CCTV and pay a charge.

• The money goes to Fare-Free Public Transport for all and the phasing out of diesel buses for electric.

• Essential vehicles use the nearside and overtaking lane with traffic light priority for them.

• Car commuters who pay the penalty every day are only allowed to use the overtaking lane.

• This encourages more people to leave their cars at home and jump on a free bus, train, tram throughout the region.  

• Thus healthier, safer communities that are doing more to slow the climate crisis/breakdown and resource depletion.

Protect our future and improve our prospects by …

• No more duplication and replacement of buses and trains with trams

• This saves finite reserves of oil and gas and slows climate breakdown

• Saves 1,000 trees, shrubs and front gardens on the south side of Hagley Road, Edgbaston if tram expansion was stopped and bus use boosted instead.

Tim Weller

The Basics

No more electric trams but just finish getting electric trains and buses.

No more electric trams until everyone has what we pensioners have - Fare-Free Public Transport for all, all day.

Do the basics and just finish the basic and obvious like electrification and not destroying our railways for flash, wealth flaunting, super expensive Midland Metro

to Richard Hatcher

Richard, You do have "HS2, supposedly the region’s most visible symbol of levelling up, is becoming a symbol of incompetence and mismanagement."

Do you agree that levelling up for the poor must mean levelling down for the rich?  It never happens because the wealthy are in charge.  For me, this is important to build a fairer, more equitable society w here we share what we have rather than greedily taking ever more without a thought for tomorrow.  Let's take fewer finite resources, to leave something for our descendants because the planet is not expanding in line with our ever greedy demands.   A more sharing, caring society for rich and poor less distanced.

It is the idiocy and incompetence of Metro expansion that is more the responsibility of our own councillors, MPs and officers than the idiocy and incompetence of fraudulent High Scam 2 that only benefits plane passengers in giving them a choice of plane or train.  Only stations for the airports!

Metro and idiocy and incompetence because of railway lines taken for tramways when, 200 years ago, we were converting tramways to railways.  Far from our 'Forward' motto, we are going back to the past.  Astonishing!

I do like, "it chose to spend vast sums of money on prestige projects".  But you do have to spell them out:-  hundreds of millions on trams to destroy urban railway lines.

Tens of millions wasted on three manifestations of Centenary Sq between 2000 and 2020.  Not much better for Victoria Square!

The inner ring road completed only to be destroyed in two places after a few years!

No more electric trams but just finish getting electric trains and buses.

No more electric trams until everyone has what we pensioners have - Fare-Free Public Transport for all, all day.

Finish the basics and obvious like electrification and not destroying our railways for very nice but flash, wealth flaunting, super-expensive Midland Metro.

Earth ‘well outside safe operating space for humanity’, Guardian 13 Sept 2023

First complete ‘scientific health check’ shows most global systems beyond stable range in which modern civilisation emerged

Earth’s life support systems have been so damaged that the planet is “well outside the safe operating space for humanity”, scientists have warned.

Their assessment found that six out of nine “planetary boundaries” had been broken because of human-caused pollution and destruction of the natural world. The planetary boundaries are the limits of key global systems – such as climate, water and wildlife diversity – beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing.

The broken boundaries mean the systems have been driven far from the safe and stable state that existed from the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, to the start of the industrial revolution. The whole of modern civilisation arose in this time period, called the Holocene.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/earth-well-outside-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-scientists-find

to Suzanne Jeffery

Dear Suzanne - you are so right.  I'm on your side.  You are doing a wonderful job and thanks for your emails.  But please give me some encouragement, too - only if you agree, of course!!  And an excellent piece from Paul Atkin.

I am NOT a lone voice in calling for an urgent move away from finite fossil fuel consumption - that is like a poisoned chalice - superficially, highly desirable and thirst quenching but, ultimately, a potent poison.  A poison because oil/gas reserves are becoming exhausted and world climates unable to support life on earth from burning up the emptying chalice of oil and gas.

This means all the unions MUST oppose the fraudulent High Scam 2 that has two regional airports to stop at and only some trains that will divert off into Brum and Crewe on their way to Manchester.  But no other intermediate stations!!  The High Shuttle 2 train is isolated from HS1 and only connects the edge of London with Manchester.  It is very mainly an alternative provision for plane passengers, only.  All intercity services must continue for the current stations that HS2 is too fast to stop at.

PLUS,

Well over half a billion pounds (£650 m is the 2022 figure) worth of deadly greenhouse gases to destroy our principal, mainline railway 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

for 1 million people in the Black Country. I refer to the Derby to Devon via Dudley railway.  Or, Burton on Trent to Bristol via Brierley Hill and NOT Brum!  See Railfuture's map, here

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

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

PLEASE, Suzanne I need your written endorsement to the top officers, members and council leaders at the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) that what they are doing, in spending £15 BILLION to 2040 for underground and overground Metro trams, is wrong and totally unnecessary.  The money must go to stop the destruction of further railway lines and to boost bus travel with the Fare-Free Public Transport that I've had for 15.5 years.  And, for bus/business lanes, as here:

 Bus and businesses at the centre of a virtuous ...

 

Could you write something where you DO agree with what I've written, please?

Conscience is paramount

Conscience is paramount, personal integrity is essential and doing what is right in your own eyes is all that matters.  You must be true to your own lights and live by them.

My turn to sound off!

Matthew 25 v 31-40  The Inasmuch of the Gospel is Christian socialism in action. Like 2 Cor 8 v 13-15.

Jesus is hungry.  In the 60s, Point 5 Oxfam w/e conference at Stowe School.  Late 80s I ran 10 Kms/miles for Feed the World, organised by Bob Geldoff.

Jesus is thirsty.  Parliamentary committee of MPs says we are going to have shortages of drinking water.

I WAS A STRANGER

Jesus is a stranger.  Our ancestors were strangers to the lands and people when they went all over the world.  First to explore, then to trade and to make disciples, and to make the most of other nations’ resources.  That led to violence and wars on other nations' land.  The disgraceful (Portillo) Opium Wars on China.  The Boer War with us upright, honourable Brits introducing concentration camps to the world.

Jesus is not a warrior, never a soldier and never killed anyone; but he was the subject of capital punishment.  So we should be against capital punishment.

Jesus is a refugee when he, Mary and Joseph had to flee to Egypt.

Jesus is an asylum seeker wanting a better life (actually just to live, in many cases!)  and to escape the horrors of OUR wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen now and, in previous decades in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

I WAS HOMELESS

Jesus was thrown out of his home in Diego Garcia by us, so very democratic lot.  Everyone was forcibly deported between 1968 and 1973.  But none of them ended up in the UK!  No way was that to happen!

“Diego Garcia is an island of the British Indian Ocean Territory, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. It is a militarised atoll just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, and the largest of the 60 small islands of the Chagos Archipelago.” Wikipedia

Jesus flees environmental destruction brought about by our greedy, love of luxury, over consumption and overpopulation.  The Royal Society in the 1990s said:-  “the two main drivers of global destruction were … “

The level of sea ice in the Antarctic is the lowest ever recorded.  And it was thought - and very much hoped - to be acting as the planet’s refrigerator.  The planet is burning, said Greta Thunberg in 2018.

Jesus was naked, sick and a slave over the 300 years of OUR criminal, disgusting, the truly iniquitous and evil slave trade.  The perpetrators got bought off, handsomely.  Never the victims or their descendants.

I WAS A PRISONER IN GUANTANAMO BAY and you did nothing.

Jesus is a prisoner suffering an outrageous miscarriage of justice that even the Criminal Cases Review Commission refused to act on, not just once but twice, to leave the poor guy languishing in prison for 17 years when, all along, he was the wrong man because of clear incompetence by those who should have known better!!  A small charity, Appeal had to do the Commissions work for them.  Scandalous!

Last Sunday, Martyn Joseph sang on ‘Songs of Praise from Greenbelt’, about Albert’s Place in Sunderland, with these words,

“The unemployed, the homeless and the lost

The abused, misused, refused, that gather here.

The measure of a country’s prosperity is not the wealth it holds

But in the absenceof poverty and, equal opportunity for us all.”

Rose Hudson-Wilkin - Bishop of Dover and Bishop in Canterbury - “they are here because we were there.”

The work of city missions is both hands on and spiritual - a holistic ministry.  Excellent!

Do something for the lowest of the low, the Untouchables in India, rough sleepers in the UK, the voiceless and you are doing it to the Jesus Christ of the Gospels - my Lord, my Inspiration, my Hero.

from Cockburn Association

Tim –

Thanks for your message.  There is much research out there on this subject.  Secondary glazing, properly fitted, will provide almost the same benefits as double glazing and there are many products that can easily be retrofitted into historic buildings successfully.  Indeed, in some instances (and always subject to the local planning offices’ advice) may not need listed building consent as they are completely reversable and may even be installed by a competent DIY-er. Installing double-glazing as a form of secondary glazing is not something I’ve seen done here although “twinning” is done in some arctic areas.

 

The starting point is always ensure proper maintenance and draughtproofing of existing windows, which can be done for a third of the cost of retrofitting double-glazing.  A poorly fitted window regardless of glazing type will always cause problems.

 

All the main state agencies have very comprehensive guidance on the subject.

Terry                 Terry Levinthal director@cockburnassociation.org.uk

to Dewi and Daniel of Savills Property Management

Dear Dewi and Daniel

Thank you for all this excellent news that was so good to read.  Well done.  However, I am sure you could afford three standard, native trees to complement my own, nearby landscape enhancement scheme.  I'm suggesting, please, the three trees to go alongside the post and rail fence where I have one silver birch and one oak.  There's a section of missing fencing to give a broken gap of a few metres.

I'm now an old man and need help, please for a professional job to be done, this time, in October or November.  I will undertake to do weekly Sunday watering next spring/summer using water from the canal - as I have done in the past with my own plants, until the three trees are established.

Could I please show you my own vertical guerrilla garden for your approval, hopefully?  I can do any day except Tuesdays.  You need to see it for me to hear what you think.  I welcome feedback and even critical comments.  Could you do something similar at the cinema end of the iron wall, perhaps?  Ivy is a cheap and very successful climber up the iron wall without needing netting or support.

In addition, management of my vertical guerrilla garden will need, one day on my death, to be done by Mitie or other estate manager  - PLEASE!  Therefore, tell me honestly what you think of my planting scheme, now before my demise!

The Black Country Urban Forest was started by the four councils in the 1990s, I believe but, soon faded and never finished.  You have sites on your land that you manage for Sovereign Centros that would be ideal for woodland to give nature a helping hand to fight back, as we concrete, brick and tarmac over ever more of our land.  A rather humanised landscape, as I recall from school Geography!

Best wishes

Tim

to Mal Drury-Rose

Dear Mal Drury-Rose

Welcome to your new post.

Malcolm Holmes knew of me and even met me on one occasion in a half hour session with him and Andy Street, last decade.  However, it made not a scrap of difference.  For the second time, next year, I hope to stand as an Independent candidate in the Mayoral election but, my £5,000 deposit will go, again, to international humanitarian causes and NOT to HMG.  This, simply to be invited to election hustings in an attempt to highlight climate and resource concerns where almost total inaction of the right kind, by you all, is bringing about what Sir David Attenborough said in December 2018 at the COP of that year when he spoke "of the collapse of civilizations, the extinction of much of the natural world and time is running out" warnings.

I would urge you to please read the emails I sent to Malcolm over his time in your post and to tell me, please, what you think.  I was given your name by an officer at the Transport Delivery Overview and Scrutiny Committee yesterday afternoon.  I attend WMCA committee meetings as a member of the public to lobby for commuter and regional trains to return to our remaining railway lines that have not yet been destroyed by, mainly, buildings of all descriptions, roads and, two mainline railways turned into tramways.  However, about 100 Kms remain as mothballed or freight only railway lines.

I am asking, now for you to please resurrect the proposal from last decade, when the tocs were out to win contracts to operate, for Snow Hill/Jewellery line commuter trains to meet trams at Flood Street/Cinder Bank in Dudley by reversing out of Stourbridge Jct Station on the 120 Kms Black Country principal mainline railway between Worcester, Dudley, Walsall, Lichfield and Derby. They then use the freight line through Round Oak to Flood St or to Cinder Bank roundabout tram stop. The tram would have to be extended to that roundabout on the principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance".

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

This would avoid spending over £300 million for WBHE Phase 2, to destroy more of the railway "of national strategic significance" as well as nature, housing land, public open space and my vertical guerrilla garden at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  I would welcome the opportunity to take you on my one hour tour of the planned destruction and to show you the remains of the last transport tragedy the place has seen.  I can make any day and any time except Tuesdays when I'm on grandad duties.

Please refer to this very important Railfuture map from 2003, where absolutely nothing has changed for the better:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

A reminder of the Nolan Principles, here:

 How the Nolan Principles are applied by the WMCA

Is my suggestion to save £300 million, above, feasible?  I believe, WBHE Phase 1 is expected to be £400 million.  Has Network Rail contributed to the work on Parkhead Viaduct when they plan to use it for freight trains only, later this century?

The money saved to go for Fare-Free Public Transport in the region for everyone.  I have had it for over 15 years.  Why only my age group?  I did not write this but it got the approval of all of us:

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

Best wishes

10 questions for Mike Rouse and Simon Geraghty

My questions to Mike Rouse and Simon Geraghty but to everyone present on Thursday 14 September at 1000 hrs - 3 minutes to read out:-

1. In my recent emails to you, have you read a single one because there has not been a reply from either Mike or Simon?
2. Do you actually believe Attenborough's dire warnings about the runaway greenhouse effect?  He talked of:-
   "the collapse of civilisations", the "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings (Dec 2018 at COP 24)?
3. What are your personal reasons, Mike and Simon, as leaders of this council, acting in ways to deny climate science and to deny that burning of fossil fuels is dangerously enhancing the natural greenhouse effect?
4. As important non-constituent members of the West Midlands Combined Authority, why have you failed to challenge your colleagues over destroying about 100 Kms of railway lines, including your very own 120 Kms Worcester, Kidderminster, Stourbridge, Dudley to Derby railway "of national strategic significance"?
5. How did this come about that you have shown no interest whatsoever in restoring passenger and freight trains to one of only two north-south railways west of Birmingham and, that goes through your county town?
6. Why have you failed to act to replace the slum disgrace and joke of a bus station at Kidderminster while being fully aware that your fellow councillors, up the unfinished mainline railway, were splashing out on putting the most expensive form of public transport after High Scam 2 on the Worcester, Black Country, Derby railway?
7. Were you aware that hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on replacing buses and trains with wealth flaunting, glitzy, glamorous trams?  Did you know that only 23 Kms have been built in 42 years, with 18 of those 23 Kms on the first mainline railway destroyed?
8. How do you explain, if only to yourselves, that you have subsidised and cosseted motorists while forgetting and failing in your duties towards the "households outside of London where 16.7% don't have a car.12 Dec 2022"  (Wikipedia) and have to use buses and trains?
9. Have either of you ever been to Kiddi bus station and seen the broken roof panels with rainwater dripping on your heads if you stood in the wrong place?
10. And when did either of you actually travel by bus?  Did you know it was national 'Catch a Bus Month', this month?  When did you last try bus travel?

Tim Weller

Time to debate/vote over Metro expansion

Dear friends

This email from Mark calling on FoE members to attend the committee meeting on Thursday at 6 pm is brilliant.  Please attend and have your say, as I hope I will be allowed to.

However, I am very concerned that all of you who fully understand the dangers we are all in from climate breakdown, resource shortages and pursuing lifestyles in defiance of respecting and living in harmony with nature and her life support systems, are failing to oppose the idiocy of expanding multi-modal public transport.  Coming up, below are my reasons for opposing light rail trams (LR), very light rail trams (VLR) but fully supporting ultra light rail trams (ULR or Stourbridge Shuttle) on the world's shortest (1.8 Kms) branch line - that I helped to get, incidentally, with my letter writing, followed by emails, in the 1980/90s - and by supporting John Parry.

• In my opinion, there is not a shadow of a doubt that both main mayoral candidates (one of whom will win) are far too weak to stop the roll out of eight more tram lines over 150 miles with 380 tram stops over the next twenty years and costing £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure when it was announced by Andy Street's team).
• Since 1981, when it all started, hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and weight of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been squandered on replacing perfectly good buses and trains with trams.  A paltry 23 Kms in 42 years of effort!
• Those buses and trains should have been electrified but, instead this mad, mad world we live in went for rebuilding the tram network (obliterated only 20 years previously) on what was left of the destroyed railway network, to also destroy even more of that!
• Hence, the UK's very last mothballed but virtually ready built, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance"
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
   has gone for ever because nearly everyone wanted the 11 Kms Dudley Tram to rush Sandwell and Dudley residents on the former mainline railway to Merry Hill to shop.
• All they had to do was to give us electric buses between Dudley town centre and Merry Heaven.  From its opening, there has always been diesel buses between the two bus stations.  All they had to do was to make them electric and not to bother with the highly expensive, in climate/resources and price, railway tracks for the flash "bus on rails" to run on!
• Just because something is public transport - like constructing then going on High Scam 2 and flying - does not make it sensible or right in the light of our totally unsustainable lifestyles.  How we all adore speed instead of sense, choosing style over substance and vanity of vanities!
• Under the Victorians, tramways were turned into railways.  In our so,so sophisticated, modern, highly intelligent age, we turn our railways into tramways.  We're just too clever by half!

Such is the seriousness of our plight and the accelerated worsening of our predicament from tram expansion, for the first time ever in any of the seven councils since 1981, there should be a discussion, debate, vote amongst the full elected members of the Climate Change Select Committee over this suggestion.  Edinburgh City Council did so, twice (opposed by the Conservative Group because "the money could be better spent") before building their two tramways.

As was wanted by one train operating company (toc) when all the contracts were up for grabs last decade, Jewellery line trains from the two Brum stations must reverse out of Stourbridge Junction station to use the Black Country freight line to meet the trams at Cinder Bank roundabout where the tramway must end.  An electric bus can take passengers from Brierley Hill transport interchange on the railway into Merry Hill.  For 100 years the Victorians and Edwardians ran passengers and goods trains on the same lines.

MAP to help you see what I mean:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

I will send this suggestion to the committee members and to the two Cabinet members who attend as observers.  But do any of you have any doubts over this idea, please?  Or, does anyone like it?  And these nine action points from the W Mids Climate Coalition that was none of my doing but I so like.  What do you think?:

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

See you on Thursday

Affordable housing

"Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index."  Wikipedia

A crisis of affordability

Commentators increasingly refer to a crisis of affordability in England. In the foreword to the June 2017 IPPR report, What more can be done to build the homes we need?, Sir Michael Lyons said: “We would stress that it is not just the number built but also the balance of tenures and affordability which need to be thought through for an effective housing strategy.”

Home ownership has been difficult to access in recent years, particularly for first-time buyers, while access to social housing is constrained by limited supply. The private rented sector has benefited, it now houses more households than the social rented sector. Private sector rent levels in high pressure areas have increased in response to demand. ...

Historically, homes for social rent (with rents at around 50-60% of market rents) and affordable home ownership have been the main source of new affordable housing. The introduction in 2011 of social sector units with rents of up to 80% of market rents has, in the view of some commentators, undermined the ability of even the social sector to supply housing that is truly affordable. 

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7747/

"expected additional capacity"

You wrote, "Transport chiefs plan to use the expected additional capacity created by passengers moving onto HS2 to improve local and regional services between Birmingham and Rugby."

FROM:  https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/plans-long-term-rail-improvements-27648499?utm_source=businesslive_newsletter&utm_campaign=west_midlands_newsletter2&utm_medium=email

The "expected additional capacity" simply means more space, more choice of where to sit, on the intercity trains for passengers not going to London or Brum Airport.  They cannot use HS2 because it is too fast to stop at Rugby, Coventry and Birmingham International stations.  In fact, won't HS2 mean fewer intercity trains because London and Brum Airport passengers are expected to use HS2?  Or, the present intercity trains might have more stations to stop at so the intercity service becomes slower?  Certainly, a second class provision with HS2 being the main, most important intercity service in England.

Please put me right, Tamlyn.

Andy is being disengenuous, to put it mildly!

Dear Helen and Sarah

FINE WORDS, in blue, BUT EMPTY, VACUOUS, MISLEADING NONSENSE.  This is simply not good enough, Helen:-

"Since the first strategy was published five years ago, we’ve made tangible (tiny) progress, drawing in more than £200 million in funding for new and redeveloped stations"  Andy Street.  Self: Only 7 tram stops (NOT stations) have ever been delivered, by Andy, my friend - since 1999!  Your wrong, stupid priority.  All 6 stations STILL not delivered!  And Tettenhall station, due for re-opening, is now a cafe on the UK's august, one and only, 25 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway and can never have trains or even your beloved TRAMS back.  Yet, Tettenhall station is another to be reopened according to your incompetent officers and members of the West Midlands Comedy Authority!!

BLUE QUOTE FROM    https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/plans-long-term-rail-improvements-27648499?utm_source=businesslive_newsletter&utm_campaign=west_midlands_newsletter2&utm_medium=email

Please ask Andy how, exactly, the £200 m has been spent, when not a single new train station or railway line has reopened in the six years (and much longer - actually, since 1998) since he became Mayor in 2017.  Even the short Metro extensions opened in 2016 (1 Km) and 2023 (2 Kms) were both started before he was elected.  However, he IS responsible for the work started in 2019 to destroy the UK's last, supposedly safeguarded, principal mainline railway and to turn it, eventually by 2100, into the world's first 120 Kms train-tram-train railway between Worcester, the Black Country and Derby.  By next year, 5.5 Kms will have trams running on it.  It will then be a train-freight only-test track-Metro tram-fresh air-cycle/walkway-train railway.  Wot a joke!

What, exactly is this tangible progress?  Is it not all plain dishonest, exaggerated spin, to deceive the gullible public?

Probity, integrity and competence are all sadly lacking in the fine but empty words from dear, so likeable, Andy.  And his 2021 independent review into Metro is still not published.  An all round shocking performance.

WHERE IS THE PROOF I AM WRONG?  I wish I was.  The Green Party supposed 'opposition' in Solihull is also truly dire and a total waste of even a waste bin