Love Letter to Councillors ...

LOVE LETTER TO COUNCILLORS ON A​ MISSION FOR TRAMS TO MERRY HILL

I'm so pleased for you that you have your long-awaited (from the 1980s) Metro trams at long last.  But, don't rest on your laurels; there is still very MUCH more to do, my friends!

I quite understand that you must continue your 60-year-old policy of destroying, this time, Dudley's very last railway, to relegate our town from having back the mainline Castle Hill Railway Station to, instead, a piddling little tram stop and test track.  Dudley's New Fame:- the largest town in the UK by population without a railway station.  Yet, the line was successful for 100 years until we all fell in love with cars.  And, to this day, nearly 50 Kms, already built, are left with nothing!

What is your personal wish for the former mainline railway and existing freight line from Stourbridge Jct to Brierley Hill and, the mothballed, former passenger and freight railway from Wednesbury to Burton on Trent?  Nearly 50 Kms still wasted alongside or near to congested main roads and motorways.  It has every motorway, road and canal crossing already built but you good politicians forgot to finish the job - with, you know what!

What are you doing to respond to your own Council's Climate Emergency motion that you passed in 2020 and then passed over ever since?

Why did you bring it forward when it does look, so far, as though you have every intention to change nothing?  You now lay yourselves open to the charge of hypocrisy, of course.

Have you ever considered reforming your actions to ones of retrenchment?  Retrenchment to minimise deadly greenhouse gas emissions and to maximise economic growth in insulation, Passivhaus standards in housing, solar PV on every E, W, S roof and small to medium-sized, highly energy-efficient homes for the homeless and badly housed?

Have you ever considered the carrot, the reward of regional Fare-Free Public Transport that old crocks like me have had for 15 years, so far?  This OAP and friends in Brum are championing the same perk for you youngsters!  Campaign with us over this iniquitous inequality and blatant discrimination against the young and middle-aged.  Co-operation and partnership working, please.

Remember, too the UK's major, urban-rural-urban, 25 Kms, business, commuter and leisure route that is the fine, the upstanding, the disgraceful Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway through four nature reserves and one Woodland Trust property.

And a decent mosque for Dudley town Muslims.  Stop that discrimination and Islamophobia.

And a cycle-walkway on the other side of Duncan Edwards Way from the tramline.