Weller Jnr on the bike

When we relocated to the Waterfront at Brierley Hill, I identified a fun and scenic mixed terrain cycle route to the office and made the commitment to use this as my primary commute going forward. As an added incentive for me, I used the Cycle to Work scheme to make good financial savings on a brand-new high quality ‘gravel’ bike, meaning I can ride on various surfaces, including roads, canal towpaths and woodland paths, with comfort and confidence. I now look forward to the commute each day and the mental and physical benefits, not to mention the extra satisfaction knowing I’m avoiding traffic, saving money on fuel and car maintenance and reducing my carbon footprint, and I’ve never looked back!

Jonathan Weller Sustainability Manager

Lower Pertwood Farm and Restore

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/29/farm-create-biggest-natural-grassland-southern-england?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

"Delighted to see the launch of our @RestoreNatureUK flagship project, the Pertwood Plain, in @guardian today. This is an exciting chance to restore at scale; reinstate lost processes and demonstrate what a true living ecosystem should and can become."

Lwr Pertwood Farm is set in rolling hills S of Salisbury Plain.  This spring its owners of nearly 3,000 acres will start the transformation of some of that land into the biggest grassland rewilding project in southern England. The Pertwood Plan project is being master minded by Restore, the land management company specialising in large scale restoration and led by the naturalist Benedict Macdonald.

A strong biodiversity decline.  A real bioshpere of nature.  The whole of the farm will be taken into a very high nature creation exercise.  We will continue to produce food but from a truly climate resilient, sustainable and by a most biodiverse landscape.  A grassland very rich in insects, like beatles and grasshoppers.

There is a whole set of myths underlying that statement.  Very large areas of the UK like the 8% is grouse moor and 8% that is deer estate don't produce any food at all.  Look at the absurd ratios between the amount of grazing land and the amount of food that that land produces.  The obvious example is the lamb that constitutes less than 1% of human diet but covers 80% of the Welsh land area.  So there are vast inefficiencies in the British food system quite apart from the fact that we waste over 30% of the food that our farmers produce.  So all of that must be addressed first before we believe that restoring nature is some kind of secondary or optional imperative.  If we don't have a few of these biospheres in all of our counties our nature will collapse and if nature collapses farming will collapse too.

https://ben-macdonald.co.uk/restore/

TRANSPORT SCAMS

HS2, Metro and Sprint are highly expensive transport projects that divert money from low-income groups, from insulating their homes, from giving everyone Fare-Free Public Transport.

Diverts public funds from dealing with the climate emergency, from rush hour congestion, from building the right homes to address the urgency of transitioning out of finite fossil fuels.

Instead, High Scam 2, Metro and Sprint all show that the top priority is for flash, fancy, vanity, wealth-flaunting projects to impress the foreign tourist and visitor.  They show that Birmingham must compete with Paris, Milan, Tokyo or, Manchester, Edinburgh and London for everything extravagant and grandiose, quite regardless of climate, nature and ecological realities.

No wonder Big, Brash, Beautiful but Blind Brum is bankrupt.

TO THE COMMISSIONERS AND POLITICAL ADVISORS

TO THE COMMISSIONERS AND POLITICAL ADVISORS: Max Caller CBE (Lead Commissioner)  John Coughlan CBE  Chris Tambini  Pam Parkes FCIPD  Myron Hrycyk  Jackie Belton  Lord John Hutton  John Biggs   REPLY EXPECTED

1. The failure of regional government to condemn the region's armaments industry, for nearly six months, fueling acts of genocide in Gaza by persistent selling of armaments to kill non-combatants and to deny humanitarian aid to wholly innocent civilians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.  This criminality is breaking international law.
2. The failure of regional government to condemn but, in fact, has gladly accepted £6.1 billion for mainly Metro and Sprint extensions to replace buses and trains with trams when Birmingham City Council, their major and largest member, is bankrupt and its low income population is suffering from bills they cannot pay.
3. The failure of regional government to tell the truth.  On the 25 July 2023, on Radio WM, their top officer, Mayor Andy Street told me that the Dudley Tram (aka WBHE) construction to Merry Hill/Brierley Hill is continuing "full steam ahead".  In fact, such was the financial crisis in the previous year, 2022, three major transport projects were put on hold.  One was the Dudley Tram that had to be re-programmed into four phases.  Work could only be finished as far as Flood Street in Dudley town centre that was named in 2022 as Phase One.  The other three phases were called 2(a), 2(b) and 2(c) to take the tram to Cottage Street, yet still not connected to the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct, over four Kms away.  This has now gone on since 1981 when the Metro tram network of 200 Kms was launched.  All of which was to be completed by the year 2000, 24 years ago!  23 Kms is the tally, so far in 40 years of endeavour.  3 Kms, out 23 Kms, are on roads.  So 20 Kms on the first mainline railway!
4. Andy misled me and the Radio WM listeners into thinking that Dudley Tram Phase 2 had never been put on hold, let alone for  serious over-spending.  That makes it even worse!  Nearly two years on, WBHE has still not re-started to Merry Hill.  And a good thing, too.  Forget it, now.  Or, keep the tram on the railway to meet the trains at Stourbridge!
5. WMCA failure of competence.  Two mainline railways (HR) have been turned into light rail (LR) and very light rail (VLR), costing hundreds of millions of pounds and in weight of deadly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
6. WMCA failure of justice.  I've had free regional bus, train and tram travel by virtue of my old age for 16 years, but not for other age groups.  The billions, over forty years, wasted on rebuilding the tram network on the railway and bus networks could have gone into bribing car commuters on to public transport with Fare-Free Public Transport (FFPT), to help free up rush hour road space for truly essential vehicles.
7. WMCA failure of priority selection.  A major report is being prepared on bus franchising for the 19 July WMCA Board meeting, when it is blindingly obvious that this will cost yet more public money to implement and, therefore, should be avoided at this time.  The money must go to the poor in our midst.  FFPT before franchising.

to Black Country Transport

Many thanks, Tim and Stuart.  I'm hoping you might read my stuff and be influenced.  And even engage by showing an interest, as you have done on this occasion.  Brilliant!

Does your transport strategy service include asking Active Travel England to move away from spending funds on LTNs and to use that money to bring every towpath up to standard for responsible shared use; and, for the UK's only major 25 Kms, Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway be made available as the UK's major commuter, business and leisure route, that it should be?

Stuart is important to influence because of his status as Director of Black Country Transport.  He is the Director and I am one of his consumers of Black Country Transport.  I live in Halesowen in the Black Country and I'm a stakeholder in Stuart's transport.  I help to pay his salary, so for that reason as well, I have considerable interest in what is happening or not happening as is more normally the case.  One 120 Kms Black Country Railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

has been wrecked by LR and VLR trams, as we all sit and cogitate, over this eccentricity, in road traffic congestion.  Madness!  PHOTO that says it all

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

Best wishes and thank you for continuing to help me get around on my (non-electric) bike between Halesowen and Wolverhampton.

Comment on Brum CC cuts

Although the £6.1 BILLION for mainly Metro and Sprint extensions up to 2032 in the city and Black Country is not coming directly from council taxpayers, it sends out the wrong message of luxury, greed and extravagance.  Quite apart from the totally unnecessary expenditure to replace buses and trains with trams.

Existing bus and train services must be brought up to scratch and not be replaced by highly expensive trams in both price and weight of greenhouse gas emissions.

ACORN STANDS WITH THE OUTCASTS, THE BADLY HOUSED, THE FORGOTTEN

Is my subject field correct or, is it what Acorn aspires to, perhaps?  Or how would you put it?

1. The following scandal, I think, must have the concern, the interest, the action of Acorn.  It is the ongoing, fifth decade of converting two mainline railways into tramways!  On the 25 July 2023, on Radio WM, Andy Street told me that "it is full steam ahead" with the Dudley Tram between Wednesbury and Merry Hill Shopping Centre on the railway
   
    "of national strategic significance".pdf
   This is incompetent, it is idiocy and, it is costing hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and in weight of deadly greenhouse gases to accelerate climate breakdown.  And, it is hardly "full steam ahead", too - even after 40 years.  Only the first half, from Wednesbury, of the full 10.7 Kms opens by Christmas, supposedly.  And this, after five years of work on the ground, too!
2. What is more, the totally ineffective £6.1 BILLION between 2017 and 2032 for mainly Metro and Sprint extensions is also scandalous when that money should be used to insulate the homes of the poorest and, to house the most badly housed in 1/2 bedroom apartments at High Plateau but, which is due to have the totally unnecessary Dudley Tram running across one corner of it, as here:
   
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg
3. In my opinion, this current misspending of £6.1 billion by 2032 (12 March announcement from Tram HQ) is verging on being a scam.  Metro's track record shows that in no way has it reduced road traffic congestion or polluted city air.  Sprint is also all style over substance, is grossly over specified to make it, like Metro, wealth flaunting and grandiose beyond measure!  In other words, such bad value for money it IS a waste of money - an Establishment scam.
4. Andy Street's Independent Review into Metro - ordered in 2021 after things going so very badly wrong with Metro - I believe has never seen the light of day.  What the hell is going on?  This all points to wrong priorities, of misgovernance, of failed governance, of useless governance.  Max Caller must be told but no-one will give me his contact details!
5. Tram HQ (16 Summer Lane) has a large force of employees devoted to transport to spend their enormous transport budget on Metro and Sprint Grandiose Stupidity.  Those employees must be redeployed into retrofitting the homes of the lowest incomes.  To insulate and solar power, first, smaller homes of those on State benefits.  And then take it from there.

My bus/business lane suggestion to reward car commuters who give up their cars for bus, train, tram is far more helpful in every way.  See

 Bus and businesses at the centre of a virtuous circle

Can we all discuss/debate and agree something on the above lines for a motion or motions to be ready for twelve months time, perhaps?

Profiting, Big Time, from Aggression

On every occasion over 76 years, WE have colluded with our friend and ally profiting from its aggression. With every victory they have got away with more land. Not surprisingly they are unable to live in peace and quiet with their neighbours who have never been impressed. Both sides are the Very Bad Samaritan to the other. Both are their own worst enemies. Those who take the sword perish by the sword.

However, Israel and the West have the primary responsibility to act as the ones with the wealth and the power and, with all the land to do something - after 76 years of injustice and of depravity from time to time.

Lunar Society hustings

Dear Wendy and friends - and copied to Labour Party member, Cllr Peter Lowe who is mentioned here.

Thanks so much for organising this excellent evening.  However, the dreadful acoustics left me uncertain, at many times, over what was said.  Admittedly, my old man's hearing and eyesight doesn't help either.  I would like to make these points:

1. It was quite disgraceful that there was no Labour Party representative to answer questions.  Why was the candidate not present?  Was he unwell?  If he was, why was there no substitute like Sion Simon or Cllr Peter Lowe or many other capable Labour Party members who could have stepped in at the last minute?
2. As you are aware, the meeting room was entirely inappropriate.  It was far too big, impressively brand new but, hopelessly grandiose.  Please, next time, a venue that has a good proven record for holding public meetings with satisfactory acoustics.  Even the seats were cheap and uncomfortable!
3. Would you please be so good as to give me the names and email addresses of the Reform Party, Peter who stood in for the actual candidate, and the LibDem man who also stood in for the actual candidate, Sunny Virk.  I have the addresses of the actual candidates but not the stand ins.
4. Self-declared Independent candidates, like me, who have no intention of going beyond the cut off point when the £5,000 deposit has to be paid (8 April) but who have given the deposit to an international humanitarian charity (UNHCR in my case, this time) should be allowed, up until getting confirmed, on 8 April.  It all adds to the interest and entertainment of the occasion to have outspoken and rare individuals like me!
5. Such is the prestigious founding of the Lunar Society and its Establishment roots, I do think that nationally important matters like the WMCA 2019 declared Climate Emergency should have been addressed.  In addition, we need to face up to the fact that West Midlands armaments manufacturers are contributing to the wholly innocent citizens of Gaza being killed by those well meaning residents in our midst making drones and weapons used in air strikes to kill, so far, 32,000 people.  Why are our Mayoral candidates not calling for a ban on regional arm sales to Israel when such a ban is required by international law?
6. The further scandal that must have the concern, the interest, the action of the Lunar Society and that stops with the Mayor is the ongoing, fifth decade of converting two mainline railways into tramways!  On the 25 July 2023, on Radio WM, Andy Street told me that "it is full steam ahead" with the Dudley Tram between Wednesbury and Merry Hill Shopping Centre on the railway​
    "of national strategic significance".pdf
   ​This is incompetent, it is idiocy and, it is costing hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and in weight of deadly greenhouse gases to accelerate climate breakdown.  And, it is hardly "full steam ahead", too - even after 40 years!
7. The totally ineffective £6.1 BILLION between 2017 and 2032 for mainly Metro and Sprint extensions is also scandalous when that money should be used to insulate the homes of the poorest and, to house the most badly housed in 1/2 bedroom apartments at High Plateau but, which is due to have the Dudley Tram running across one corner of it, as here:​
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg
   ​Thanks so much for raising your profile with the excellent events the Lunar Society has organised in recent months.  Last night's was the third I attended.

Israel demands hostages back. Gazans demand their homes back and the Israelis to go back, too.

Why should surviving Gazans not expect to return to their homes and all IDF troops return to their own land?

This was, once, their land but given to Israel by their Western allies after 1800 years of Arab, Jewish, Christian settlement but which had never before been the world's first Jewish state - until 1948.  And, extraordinarily, after a war of aggression that was rewarded by the US and the former European colonial powers 'gifting' the land to the aggressors and the Palestinians becoming refugees in their former homeland.

QUESTIONS FOR 6 pm TODAY - Lunar Society hustings for Mayoral candidates

QUESTIONS FOR 6 pm TODAY - Lunar Society hustings for Mayoral candidates

Should our Mayor now be speaking out against West Midlands armaments industry fueling the slaughter of wholly innocent Gazans (and West Bank Palestinians) who simply wish to LIVE and to live in peaceful co-existence with Israel?

Should our Mayor be resisting the hundreds of millions going into multi-modal public transport that actually means regular trains and buses being swapped with Metro trams and Sprint buses?

Should the Mayor be acquainted with the uncomfortable fact that these kinds of extremely expensive expenditure (armaments and multi-modal public transport) simply accelerate the climate emergency and divert private and public funds from helping low incomes with, for example, regional Fare-Free Public Transport for every citizen?

POSSIBLE QUESTIONS FOR MAYORAL HUSTINGS - answers to me, please to help you prepare

 

1. Whether or not you are elected, will you work for our (WMCC) Climate Action Points​​​
    Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalition to lobby the West Mids CA in support of a zero-c...
   ​to be urgently implemented?
2. Which one are you able to name and will you work for its implementation asap, regardless of the election outcome?
3. Why do you approve the spending of £6.1 BILLION between 2017 and 2032 on swapping buses and trains for mainly trams and Sprint buses?
4. How come this has been reduced from £15 billion between 2020 and 2040?
5. Can you explain how there is a lethal connection between money spent and accelerating climate disaster?
6. Can you make clear the difference between bus franchising and the present Enhanced Bus Partnership scheme?
7. Which do you prefer and why?
8. Have you worked out the cost of bus franchising compared with extending the regional Fare-Free Public Transport for older citizens to everyone?
9. As money is tight what is your order of priority for spending:-

tram extensions  -  Sprint bus extensions  -  putting trains back on urban railway lines not yet destroyed  -  bus franchising  -  Fare-Free Public Transport extended  -  bus/business lanes to free up road space in rush hours for essential vehicle users and to reward bus, train, tram users?

• Within the United Nations, what does IPCC stand for and can you summarise the danger that human activity and behaviour is putting us all in?
• Should the Dudley Tram, when it is extended from Dudley town centre on the mainline railway​
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
  ​ via that railway, should it come off the railway to divert into Merry Hill or stay on the railway to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct?

Tim Weller  (0791 380 4363)

Melanie Phillips on QT = Quite a Tirade! 14 March 2024

Gazans are NOT being denied food and humanitarian supplies.  Hundreds of trucks go through Gaza and been stopped because the food is stolen by Hamas.  The Gazans themselves say this.  UNRWA operatives are in Hamas - dozens of them.  The UN is entirely compromised.  You can go on YouTube and see the stocked food markets.  (No time stamps on the pictures)  The crocodile tears and hypocrisy from Stephen Flynn.  Ceasefire means pogroms with Hamas and Hezbollah killing every Jew and wiping out Israel with more slaughter.  Israel does not want to kill Gazans.  It's the last thing they want.

Hamas made Gazans into human shields and cannon fodder.

Hamas shoot Gazans when they try to find safe areas.

Hamas are in tunnels for their own safety.  Not one shelter has been built by Hamas for the Palestinians under bombardment.

They bomb Gaza because they can't get at the infrastructure of mass terrorism and genocide which has been put underground.

Collective punishment is how Israel is preventing genocide and a 2nd holocaust.  What else can that possibly mean when they say we want to kill every Jew, but genocide.  The slaughter of 1200 Israelis is the proof of their intention.  They say they will do it again and again and again.  Why do you call the defence against mass murder, collective punishment?  Did you call it collective punishment when the Allies bombed Germany?  That was a defence against fascism and Nazism.  Israel is trying to prevent a 2nd holocaust.  That is not an exaggeration.  That is what is threatened.  You don't understand what it is like to be in Israel.  There is hardly a single household in Israel that is not touched by this.

Israelis are dying every day.  There are 100s of rockets coming from Hezbollah in the north.

From Porritt's March blog

APPENDIX A: RECORD BREAKING WEATHER EXTREMES IN 2023/EARLY 2024

First, a word of caution is need here. Many of these extremes will have been strongly influenced by the current El Nino, just as was the case with the previous hottest year ever in 2016. The shift from the much cooler conditions of a 3-year La Nina started in late 2022, and scientists predict that this current El Nino will weaken from the middle of the year.

Global temperatures breached 1.5°C for a record 12-month period (at 1.52°C).

February 2024 was the hottest month in human history – a full 1.77°C above pre-industrial temperatures..

Worst ever wildfires in Canada, Hawaii, Europe.

Record temperatures in Arizona and Southwest USA, France, Germany, Poland, Australia and so on.

Heatwaves in the middle of winter in Chile and Argentina.

Highest rainfall levels (and consequential flooding) in many countries.

Levels of sea ice in Antarctica at a new low in both the summer and the winter.

Global average ocean surface temperatures “off the charts” – as warm in February 2024 as would typically be the case in mid-July.

A record number of billion-dollar climate-induced disasters in the USA in 2023.

Hottest May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December 2023, and now January and February 2024. 140 countries broke February heat records.

Some reflections on all this from leading scientists:

‘Insane”, “climatic history rewritten”, “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” etc etc.

As Professor Katherine Hayhoe has pointed out, “our previous projections underestimated these extremes”.

QUESTIONS TO ASK THE MAYORAL CANDIDATES

Dear Maria - and copied to Laura Shoaf who gave me one hour in February (to confirm I have now given the deposit to UNHCR).

As in 2021, I am again standing as an Independent Mayoral candidate up until I have to pay the £5,000 deposit that I will not pay to the government, because it will not be refunded as I will receive very few votes, of course.  Therefore, I have paid the £5,000 to the international humanitarian charity, UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to maintain my integrity.

My question for Maria and Sir John Peace is:

What would each candidate do over the idiocy of putting Metro trams on the UK's last principal, mainline railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

when it runs to Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Brierley Hill to destroy nature, housing land and public open space OR, alternatively, for over £100 m less, be connected to the national railway network at Stourbridge Junction?  Which option do you prefer?  Both are still possible because work has not started on Phase 2.

Now, guerrilla hillwalker in the 50th year of my hillwalking career!

Today, I found an illicit (therefore guerrilla) route up the very Private and completely woodland-encircled, Berrow Hill - the 15,387th highest peak in the British Isles.

It is on a remarkable ridge of delightful hills that extend N from the Malvern Hills, above the beautiful Teme Valley.

Berrow Hill is 183 m and has no cairn or anything to celebrate the summit except a very obvious grassy mound for the high point.  To reach it, I was helped by a very robust, fancy-looking, luxury, crossover 6 steps ladder like the somewhat inferior ones found in the Eryri National Park.  I was hindered by a low fence, topped with barbed wire that had to be gingerly stepped over to avoid a sensitive body part!

Its category is Hump and Tump but is NOT a Marilyn as I first thought until Wikipedia put me right, just now.

The hill was officially opened to Berrow Green villagers to mark the Millennium and the King's Coronation - and to me, today, unbeknown to anyone else!  I am now a Hump and Tump trespasser, along with a Munroist and Corbetteer but failed/uncompleted Graham and Donald summiteer!

NO WONDER BRUM IS BANKRUPT AND OBLIVIOUS OF CLIMATE REALITIES

I do hope you are right (over bus franchising making all the difference to road traffic congestion, air pollution and with car commuters returning to the buses in their hordes!)  With my 56 years of studying, living and working in the Black Country and Brum I have seen everything done and not done!  Glossy brochures, ad nauseam, promising the earth, roads and tramways have come and gone and, lots of railways have gone for good by being turned into roads and buildings.  It does mean, I have little confidence in local councils doing anything sensible, let alone running things any better under their wise stewardship and control!

After the Post Office Debacle, the biggest & longest running scandal in the history of the UK ...

Constant building, demolition, rebuilding ... of Centenary Sq, Brum ring road, tram network and W Midlands railway network.  Years of umpteen tower cranes scraping the skyline of Brum.

MORE DETAIL

Centenary Square in the first two decades of this century was rebuilt three times!

The Brum inner ring road was built and then demolished in two places within 20 years.

The tram network was obliterated in the 50s;

the urban railway network from the 60s onwards.

In the 80s, the Metro tram network began to be rebuilt on the railway network, of all things, not yet used for roads and buildings. 

In the 2020s, we find TWO mainline railways have been wrecked by Metro. The most recent is the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline Railway "of national strategic significance"!!

This second tramline ALSO destroys the only public open space, nature, housing land and my vertical guerrilla garden - at Merry Hill Shopping Centre!

Nov 2023 to Fiona Rendell

Dear Fiona - and copied to Peter Sargant to confirm or correct me, please, where he is mentioned.

We met yesterday at the Ask Andy meeting.  Andy wants your company and others to help finance and build HS2 - Brum to Manchester.  Is that your understanding, Fiona?  If so, I'm asking if you could ask your company to help in some or any way with halting the conversion of the UK's very last principal, mainline railway 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

being converted to tramway (Wednesbury to Brierley Hill) and cycle-walkway (Walsall to Lichfield).  Please don't stay silent in the face of wrong priorities.  Peter Sargant,  Head of Rail and Rapid Transit Development•TfWM and WMRE, told me last Monday that the Black Country Railway was on their wish list but is at the very bottom in terms of priority!!

 

For me, more modest and highly energy efficient housing and land to grow food to feed us all must have priority over more motorways and high speed railway lines.  Even HS2 has been cut back twice, despite the government’s desperation for growth/greed! Hence, the urgency of halting the further destruction of railway lines closed very properly by Beeching in the 60s and 70s and not turning them into roads, buildings and tramways.

 

Far more important and useful than HS2 is the 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby principal mainline railway “of national strategic significance”. It is both a north-south and an east-west railway because it runs from SW to NE, as you'll see in this map in Railfuture's leaflet. ROUTE: London, Oxford, Worcester, Black Country, Derby to relieve congestion on M5/M6:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

Andy & co simply have to do exactly what Railfuture says here and forget HS2 that is for a very select clientele who simply want to travel between Old Oak Common and Curzon Street.  Every intercity train must remain to serve those places HS2 is far too fast to stop at.  Therefore, no gain in capacity!  Yet, we can afford to spend over £50 billion in price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions.

 Raillfuture text 01.pdf

 

 Raillfuture text 02.pdf

 

Below, is near Brownhills on the half used 120 Kms Black Country Railway,  The unused section is the 56 Kms Stourbridge to Burton on Trent.  Trams will run between Wednesbury and Flood Street, Dudley from 2024/5 to make it the world's first TRAIN-TRAM-CYCLE/WALKWAY-TRAIN mainline railway!  This is the section that gets the planned cycle/walkway extension.

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

Below, the railway tracks have long since been nicked by metal thieves!  Looking towards Lichfield.  Every crossing of motorways, roads and canals are in place but, we never see the trains and stations!

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

MORE HERE, if you wish to read further:

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

My thoughts, below on why priorities are all important.  Top priority is our wish to be stuck in traffic alongside or near the 120 Kms wasted railway!

 

There are the external costs of liquidating our assets and drinking deep from the chalice of rich finite fossil fuels that the climate scientists are telling us is a poisonous chalice.

Our forebears lived for thousands of years simply but sustainably.  We in the rich North of the planet are living very richly and comfortably but unsustainably and very briefly in the geological time scale of things.

Financial costs of our activities do not accurately reflect the impact of our unsustainable and very energy rich lifestyles on the planet's life support systems, as Mrs Thatcher rightfully reminded us in 1988.  She said "We have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself."

The blessed Margaret said that we must live within our means, our limits and our boundaries.  How right she was but, such a pity she didn't put any of it into practice!

We never factor in any cost for the impact of our human activity on the planet's ecosystems.  Never factor in the cost from the sheer numbers of us on the planet.  Or, even on burning up a one off geological inheritance that took 350 million years to form, in about 350 years - 1750 to 2100.  In other words, we get everything on the cheap without the slightest thought for how future generations are going to get on.  Live now, pay later economics!

Our money, all our riches and all the wealth in the world, even our ever so smart technology can't change the weather from day to day or the climate from one season to another.  Can't stop wildfires and floods or volcanoes erupting or sea levels rising as the Arctic melts and the glaciers disappear.  We humans are so clever we invent and build WMD that can wipe us all out many times over and take every other life form with us, too!

So clever we can send our machines to far-flung planets in our solar system but find it impossible for us all to migrate to another planet once we've well and truly mucked up this one.

We can even calculate how our sister or twin planet has an atmosphere so concentrated in CO2 that some scientists say is from a runaway greenhouse effect, as we are probably doing to earth.

Foote and Tyndall in the 1850s showed how CO2 heats up more than air.  However, we know better and we simply cross our fingers and hope for the best with all our rapid conversion of fossil fuels into CO2 to change the chemical composition of the atmosphere - and not for the better..

What is the matter with us extremely intelligent humans?!

From the 5 April to 22 August 2022 with Octopus, for my wife and I, total gas and electricity worked out at only 75p/day for the two of us.  We just live frugally, simply but still very comfortably.  And we both think we lack for nothing!

Questions for Conservative Central Office

Dear James

Could Central Office answer these questions please:

1. After five months of intensive and, supposedly, competent warfare on Gaza, shouldn't the IDF, by now, have finally stopped all the Hamas rockets and killed every Hamas fighter?
2. Therefore, has Hamas's military wing been eliminated and the IDF can now finally claim victory and immediately stop the bombardment of Gaza and the further killings?
3. If not, how does Hamas in Gaza continue to acquire armaments and ammunition to still kill Israelis?
4. From Egypt via the tunnels into Gaza?
5. Strict occupation, control and tight restrictions bring starvation and famine for many Gazans.  There is a pittance of aid coming in but still plenty of Hamas armaments and ammunition.  Is that right?
6. 30,000 death toll of Palestinians.  What is it for Israelis - please?
7. When will the IDF go into the tunnels to bring out the hostages?
8. Did the IDF, themselves, shoot dead three hostages who were surrendering, stripped to the waist and with their hands up? 
9. After 76 years of intermittent wars, how is it that Israel, the most powerful and nuclear weapons-equipped country in the Middle East, still, has not won the war on Palestine by stopping Palestinian attacks on them?
10. How many more decades will it take for Israel to defeat the Palestinians and bring peace and quiet to all Israelis - Arab and Jewish?
11. Was it, overwhelmingly, the Arabs and Turks who occupied the land of Israel from the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE to 1948 CE?
12. Does that make it over 1800 years in mainly Arab/Turkish hands?  "The bride is beautiful but she is already taken." (report to Theodor Herzl)

Added on 22.3.24:

Why is the Incompetent Defence Force not able to put an end to Hamas after nearly six months of trying but failing to eliminate Hamas?

32,000 Gazans killed of which 13,000 are children and, Israel says 8,000 are Hamas fighters.

How many more Hamas fighters do they have to kill before the Incompetent Defence Force finally succeed and, once again, is victorious?

YOU CLLRS ARE MEANT TO HAVE THE POWER AND AUTHORITY, not the senior directors!!

Dear Councillor and MP - you are meant to be in charge!

DUDLEY TRAM TO SHOPPING CENTRE OR RAILWAY STATION?

On the 12 March, it was announced that the WMCA is spending not, now, £15 BILLION by 2040 on mainly Metro trams and Sprint buses but £6.1 BILLION between 2017 and 2032 on mainly Metro and Sprint.  This vast expenditure has no democratic authority, whatsoever.  There have been no discussion groups, no debates in a single council chamber and no voting anywhere.  The TfWM/WMCA compliant Committees and Boards will automatically rubber stamp the decision without a murmur of dissent or, possibly, even a question!  THIS IS AUTOCRACY AND CORRUPTION, NOT DEMOCRACY WITH ORDINARY PEOPLE AND STATE PENSIONERS PUT FIRST AND FOREMOST.

At a time of severe low income poverty from the multiple crises confronting the nation, this is in no way good enough.  Low income pensioners and the WASPI women and all low incomes need this money much more than the idiocy of the vast and unnecessary extravagance of swapping buses and trains for trams.

It is so typical of the WMCA directors, Council leaders and top councillors that they wish to help the very wealthy Merry Hill SC owner and the property manager by giving them, for free, a tramway rather than helping low income groups and struggling families to pay their bills.  Or, to do the blindingly obvious and to take the tram to Stourbridge Jct station, with freight at night, as the millions spent on "passive provision" is meant to be allowing.  Quite apart from the 24 years old stunning statement, never withdrawn, from the Experts:

"Light rail (trams) investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services (trains) at the appropriate time."  (Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro)

Please tell me what YOU want done, now you have spent untold millions of public money, instead of Network Rail, on doing up Parkhead Viaduct, on the former, London to Edinburgh mainline railway through Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall.

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

Retrofitting is urgent

FROM:  https://zerocarbonhousebirmingham.org.uk/open-day/?like_actor=72545554&like_hmac=ba6472ba5a20b84165616f2d836edae7&postid=4851&commentid=8830&like=1&source=sub_email

Retrofitting means proper insulation to walls, floors, roofs; new windows and doors; ventilation with heat recovery, heat pumps, solar panels etc. The different measures will vary as every house is different. 

zero carbon house is proud to be UK’s first zero carbon retrofit, now 13 years old.  But by now there should be millions of others too….

Our old leaky homes seem to be the forgotten Cinderella, haemorrhaging massive amounts of heat. It’s really important these homes – and the people who live in them – are not left behind.  People’s physical and mental health is badly affected by poor housing with mould, damp, condensation – and massive fuel bills.

Retrofitting our old homes properly, carefully, and to really high standards, we can make dramatic savings, with huge benefits to people’s lives. 

We’re using so much energy now that, as David Attenborough, the UN and others have shown, we’re destroying a liveable planet.  Our homes generate a massive chunk of CO2, and at the same time push people into fuel poverty.

Please stand up and ACT on pensioner poverty

Yesterday morning I had 2 minutes to ask the 20 gathered at our Halesowen Pensioners meeting if they wanted the Dudley Tram to come off the railway into Merry Hill Shopping Centre or, to stay on the railway to connect with the national railway network.

There were lots of blank faces.  Some incomprehension.  No enthusiasm for either option, but the upshot was 4 wanting the tram to come off the mainline railway into Merry Hill; 2 put their hands up for getting the tram to meet the trains at Stourbridge.  Last week the committee felt they could not decide one way or the other.

On the 12 March, it was announced that the WMCA is spending not, now, £15 BILLION by 2040 on mainly Metro trams and Sprint buses but £6.1 BILLION between 2017 and 2032 on mainly Metro and Sprint.  This vast expenditure has no democratic authority, whatsoever.  There have been no discussion groups, no debates in a single council chamber and no voting anywhere.  The TfWM/WMCA compliant Committees and Boards will automatically rubber stamp the decision without a murmur of dissent or, possibly, even a question!  THIS IS AUTOCRACY AND CORRUPTION, NOT DEMOCRACY WITH ORDINARY PEOPLE AND STATE PENSIONERS PUT FIRST AND FOREMOST.

At a time of severe pensioner poverty from the multiple crises confronting the nation, this is in no way good enough.  Low income pensioners and the WASPI women and all low incomes need this money much more than the idiocy of the vast and unnecessary extravagance of swapping buses and trains for trams.

You are the Campaigns officer, Brian in the West Midlands Pensioner movement.  You are influential and important.  It is vital that you take this seriously and act on what I have written here, please.

It is so typical of the WMCA directors, Council leaders and councillors that they wish to help the very wealthy Merry Hill SC owner and the property manager by giving them, for free, a tramway rather than helping low income groups and struggling families to pay their bills.

What will WMPC do, Brian?

The West and Israel, are the problem

Thanks for engaging and debating and giving your honest thoughts and conclusions.  It is always good to hear from you.

It does seem that the Arab nations have the greatest claim on the Holy Land.  YET ... !

I am not sure that it is useful to think in nationalistic or even racial terms.  Modern Muslims are the former Christians, Jews, polytheists.  “Arabs” as such would never have been more than a small part of the population.  I think that this sort of nationalism is a major source of the problem!

Please explain what you mean by "this sort of nationalism is a major source of the problem!"

By nationalism do you mean Zionism?  A homeland for the Jews who will sometimes, reluctantly, allow other peoples as long as they toe the Israeli/Zionist line.  The Jews must remain in charge and the Arabs, the Palestinians and everyone else must accept Jewish control in Israel.  Is that the problem?

Or, is this the problem?  There are 193 nations each of whom should be content with the boundaries recognised by the UN and are not meant to win more land from acts of aggression, as happened when we Brits were 'forced out' (Jeremy Bowen in 'The Making of the Modern Middle  East'p 19) of Palestine to make way for the State of Israel.  We were defeated by terrorism, by lawlessness, by violence.  Should we not have held our ground with the help of the surrounding nations until the UN, with the Arab and Western nations, came to a negotiated settlement as to how the land was to be shared out?  Jewish aggression was rewarded with the 1948  State of Israel because this aggression was excusable and, anyway, Israel would be OUR Western, democratic 'colony' in the heart of the majority Arab/Muslim Middle East to protect and project our interests.

Another mistake was when Ariel Sharon gave tiny Gaza to the Palestinians without their agreement or that of any neighbouring  nation.  A sorry scrap thrown to the Palestinians from the rich man's table, so that Israel could continue settling, illegally, in the Occupied West Bank with a slightly clearer conscience.  So generously giving Gaza away was a second unilateral action that has turned out to be a disaster, along with Israel being seen as a firm ally of Western Judeo-Christian imperialism in the Middle East.  Israel is seen by some as a cuckoo in the nest.  Seen as the Christian West throwing its weight around in the mainly Muslim Middle East.  What a recipe for disaster!  Israel, a nation with everything, with every material blessing imaginable but is unable to live in peaceful co-existence with its neighbouring nations.  A failed state that has lost the message of the Good Samaritan that we all have to live by.  We all live as brothers/sisters of the one human family or, we perish as fools.

Israel even has the cheek to tell the Palestinians to become a second Singapore while holding them down with a firm boot on their neck!

A 76 year tragic history of control, coercion, of stealing land that was meant to be for a Palestinian state.  A tragic history of intermittent warfare, always totally victorious of course but, somehow, it fails to bring them peace.  I wonder why?  Asymmetric warfare every time but it never wins them friendship and respect, as we saw on the 7.10.23 atrocity.  Warfare that is, regrettably, found in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures but where killing is meant to be forbidden by both faiths, by both Yahweh and the Son of God.  Such disobedience leads to death for all sides, for the lot of us, if ecocide doesn't get us first!

The British seem to be not just largely to blame but wholly to blame for the Israel/Palestine tragedy

Deception, lies and intrigue.  How violence and warfare has always created more problems than it solves.

Perfidious Albion left the Palestinians in the lurch.  They rose up in violence against the invader over-running their land from 1948 to the present day.  They could have chosen a more honourable non-violence to still maintain their identity but be subsumed by the Jewish Israelis over these eight decades.  Non-violence would have left them as part of a Greater Israel from the 'River to the Sea' but, with a much higher standard of living and more of them alive.  Would they have been left as second-class citizens, though?  Perhaps so, but better than the present state of affairs and they would still have been clearly identifiable as Palestinians within Greater Israel.

I am reading Jeremy Bowen's most recent book, 'The Making of the Modern Middle East' and the chapter, 'Mission Impassable', p 18 onwards.

We read, "The Middle East attracts outsiders, and the desire to control it has led to suffering and slaughter." (p 18)

"The slow fall of the Ottomans presented hungry European Christian powers with an imperial buffet in the Middle East."

I have doubts over the wisdom of franchising (= 100% council control) because:

• We had it for decades until the 1980s at a time when public transport was in decline and private transport in the ascendancy.  Dreadful things happened with public transport during that time!!
• We already have the professional partnership between the officers at 16 Summer Lane and the bus companies.
• The Bus Partnership fixes fares and routes, anyway.  So nothing gained from franchising.
• Council control destroyed the total tram network and a very large part of Brum's/Black Country railway network.
• All 7 councils and cllrs leave public transport to 16 Summer Lane.  Little interest is shown by cllrs.  2 cllrs told me to contact TfWM.  
• Tens of millions for franchising that could go into FFPT.
• Hundreds of millions from the 7 councils and cllrs for Metro should be going into FFPT and raising the status of buses at the expense of the dreadful road clogging car commuters.
• Use the franchising and Metro extension money for bribing car commuters onto buses, trains, trams in the 6 hour rush hour every weekday.
• My two year Hagley Road experiment suggestion is better!
• Franchising is the theory.  The Bus Partnership is the working reality that franchising cannot possibly improve upon.
• Let individual cllrs and officers become shareholders in the bus companies and even the TfWM, itself.  MAKE MONEY from the dividends in being shareholders!