Gifting tram to very wealthy property developer to boost their assets - using taxpayers' money

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO YOUR COLLEAGUES - in the hope they might show some interest and act

Dear Max

Your refusal to act on my serious accusations and warnings is unacceptable.  It shows you are part of the problem.

You are fully supporting the financial irresponsibility of using public funds to gift the Metro tram extension at over £100 m to Merry Hill Shopping Centre owners (Sovereign Centros and Savills Property Management).  This also further wrecks the UK's only principal mainline railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

that would have been of much greater help to ease road and railway congestion in the heart of the UK and, slow climate disaster, than High Scam 2 will ever do.

More importantly, your full support and agreement for all this destruction to benefit the wealthy Establishment, is not only accelerating the climate emergency but is preventing the hundreds of millions for WBHE Phase 2 to be used to help 1.14 million Birmingham people who have had a massive increase in their council tax and smaller increases in energy and food bills.

As you know only too well, where there is the political will, funds can quickly and easily be transferred from one pot to another.

If you Commissioners are people of integrity and honour, you must stop the over £100 m from destroying nature, housing land and public open space at Merry Hill.  Keep the tram where Phase 1 ends at Flood Street, Dudley.  Or, keep the tram on the railway to connect it to the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct station.

Your apathy, acquiescence and your guilty silence in this folly is tantamount to diverting money from Brummies with cold, damp and mouldy homes to give the very comfortable well off yet more riches.  Birmingham CC has always been the leading authority of the seven, in the scandal of Metro tram billions, in price and weight of greenhouse gas emissions, doing so much climate and social injustice since 1981.

With best wishes for wise decision making.  REMEMBER: As ever, must level up the rich to level down the poor.

Citizens/People Assemblies

Is the Jula Grun email fake/mischievous?   My writings, below are important for freedom of speech and right decision making.  People like ourselves must be allowed to speak at committee, board meetings to avoid blunders.  A Citizens Panel, another layer of bureaucracy, would not then be necessary.  People who want Citizens/People Assemblies should attend existing public committee/board meetings (open to the public) to speak informally to officers and members, as I do from time to time.  They are poor at replying to emails, texts, phone messages so they have to be approached at meetings open to the public.    Tim Weller

Climate and the poor get subordinated to power, privilege and wealth

Dear Raj

Climate and the poor get subordinated to power, privilege and wealth

The first duty of regional government is to protect the interests of the poor and the weak.  You don't do that by spending £15 billion by 2040 on a gross, grandiose, but very nice, 150 miles of tramways when urban railways are unused or partly used and the existing bus network needs car commuters rewarded for leaving their motors at home to travel on a bus, train, tram to work.  This, to free up road space and bring greater efficiency for essential vehicle users.

The second duty of government is to do what it says.  It piously declared a climate emergency in 2019 but then carried on with business as usual.  It was all words and no action apart from the most determined action, from the 1980s, to rebuild the tram network the powerful elite had completely destroyed in the 1950s.  And, what was more, to simply rebuild it on the urban railway network that they had not obliterated in the last decades of the 20th century!  That action, far from mitigating climate breakdown, accelerates climate disaster.  Concrete and steel, heavily used in High Scam 2 and Metro construction, are both very energy intensive and, therefore, accelerate climate catastrophe.

Throughout, integrity and honourable behaviour (the Nolan Principles) are meant to be at the heart of government.

 How the Nolan Principles are applied by the WMCA

PHOTO - the likes of which you have never seen before, I'm pretty sure!

 NOLAN cannot possibly approve this two tier practice

Yet, morality is sadly lacking in regional government as well as national.  The people and politicians are quite happy to support a never ending war of self-righteous defence in wiping out Palestinians because they cannot hit back.  Murdering them, in their case, is morally acceptable and reasonable because of 7 October.  However, it's a very different matter when it comes to attacking Iran for their 300 drones and missiles on 13/14 April or, fighting Russia to the death for invading and attacking Ukraine.

Bankrupt Brum means poverty for more and deepening poverty, too.  Is it, therefore, acceptable to pour billions, in price and in weight of greenhouse gases, into flaunting our wealth in a very fine and prestigious new tramway system of 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops, as the WMCA wants?

It would be good to meet, please Raj, to chat over these knotty problems.

Best wishes

Tim    0791 380 4363   28 Hunnington Cres  HALESOWEN  B63 3DJ

Power, privilege and wealth to do the poor down - letter to Ed

Dear Ed

She knows it all, so it's not news for her!  We've been married 41 years during which I've departed from born-again evangelical Christianity to emphasising the non-violent Christ of the Gospels, especially all the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.  The secret of domestic bliss is peaceful co-existence which our Jewish and Arab friends in Israel need to learn when it comes to the Palestinians! 

The powerful, privileged traditional Christian West departed from the Christ of Matthew 5,6,7, soon after the followers of the Way were subsumed into the Roman Empire after the unfortunate 'conversion' of Constantine in about 300 CE.

The powerful, wealthy and entitled 'Christian' West in the form of the mighty British Empire caved into Jewish terrorism in the 1940s to allow our Jewish friends to profit from aggression, violence and opportunism.  The 1917 Balfour Declaration was 'all things to all men', a pretty meaningless letter but, it put the Jews first before the existing Arab inhabitants.  The Christian West has always had more sympathy with the Jews than the Muslim Arabs.  Partly because the Hebrew Scriptures form part of the Christian Scriptures, of course.  Always preferential treatment and duplicity to benefit ourselves and to break our promises to the Arabs, to land them in it, as Lawrence of Arabia discovered.

More aggressive land grabbing by the Israelis went unpunished in 1967 and 1973.  When we, our side, take to warfare and land grabbing that is totally acceptable.  If the other side does it all hell breaks loose except with the unfortunate, battered Ukraine, the West will not defend it as resolutely and as generously as we defend Israel from hundreds of drones and missiles.

The Western rulers of the world which include our great buddies Israel, can get away with murder.  So far, tens of thousands have been murdered by our side and our weapons.  The murder of wholly innocent men, women and children who simply want to live and to live in peace with neighbour Israel in the spirit of being the Good Samaritan to Israel.

That outstanding story is the best thing in the Bible but, is the most ignored by the violent, powerful 'Christian' West.

We believe, because "Israel is an ally of the UK, is the victim of a brutal terror attack and clearly has a right to defend itself" (Guardian 15.04.24), our ally can defend itself for time immemorial in murdering rampage.  In other words, for as long as it likes.  And we call ourselves civilised!

Similarly, our powerful, wealthy country can wreck railway lines, front gardens with 1,000 trees and shrubs felled and, hammer nature as we give an almighty boost to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with greedy, grandiose grossly extravagant tram extensions to accelerate the climate emergency.  That is levelling up for the wealthy, powerful types.  They run the immoral tram into Merry Hill to increase the value of that estate for the already wealthy owners.  They profit mightily from the tram coming to their shops at the expense of Dudley and Brierley Hill traders.  The rich get what they want; the poor want warm homes and food and energy bills they can pay.  But they are not the ones in charge.  We wealthy types are.  We're not so bothered about the poor or the poor Palestinians being murdered and starved to death in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.

£7m/Km for the 2015 Borders Railway construction to rebuild a 50 Kms railway through the Southern Uplands of Scotland.  £144 m/Km is the 2023 figure for Brum Eastside Metro extension that also includes public realm works in Digbeth.  A big difference between £7m and £144 m after only eight years of inflation.  It is clear corruption, incompetence and scandal at 16 Summer Lane B19 - HQ of the national tram promotion group and of TfWM/WMCA.

REMEMBER: As ever, must level up the rich to level down the poor.

Tell me what you think, Ed

My one hour Tourist Trail of Treats

 My one hour tourist trail of treats.  You see:

1. Dudley's top canal next to the planned Metro tramway, the Dudley Tram aka Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE)
2. The remains of the magnificent monorail from the 1990s.
3. The 22,000 sq m housing land, High Plateau, that is available but unused since the 90s.
4. The rusty metal sheet piling and attempts at hiding it.
5. My vertical guerrilla garden started in the 90s - destined to have the 400 metre concrete and steel tramway viaduct built over the top of it, would you believe!
6. The Waterfront marina and the nearby 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance".​
    "of national strategic significance".pdf
   ​
7. Green deserts that could be used to finish the Black Country Urban Forest
8. The possible SSSI on Daniels Land adjacent to the canal.
9. MAP:​
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg
   ​

QUESTIONS FOR THE HUSTINGS

 Dear RICS

• Why are the main candidates for Mayor believing that "light rail provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" on the UK's only 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" between Worcester and Derby?
  
   "of national strategic significance".pdf
  In other words, they believe that Metro trams must return first on two tiny sections in order to get the commuter, regional and intercity trains back on this nationally important railway between London and Edinburgh - one of only two, north-south, between Brum and the Irish Sea!!
• Could my suggestion of rewards for car commuters in using buses on Hagley Road, be more effective in relieving car congestion and polluted air than destroying 1,000 trees/shrubs and front gardens along Hagley Road, for the latest, planned Metro extension?
• Since "passive provision" is built in to the current construction of the region's second tramway to allow the passenger and freight trains back, would the candidates support, therefore, keeping the tram on the railway to connect the Dudley Tram to the national railway network at Stourbridge, rather than boosting trade and profits at Merry Hill Shopping Centre at the expense of Dudley town traders?
• Do the candidates believe that their self-declared Climate Emergency means saving nature is essential, rather than wiping it out with more concrete, brick and tarmac with tramways replacing and duplicating buses and trains? 
• Do the candidates believe that freight and passenger trains must return to our unused or partly used W Midlands railway lines?
• Is a carrot and stick approach to relieving road congestion and pollution more cost effective than highly expensive and difficult to achieve Metro tramway extensions?
• Andy Street's kind of multi-modal transport 'Ultimate Solution' is not found in London.  Why, therefore, is multi-modal transport seen as the obvious answer to Climate disaster, chronic road congestion and air pollution in the W Midlands?
• How will wiping out housing land, public open space and so much nature, including my magnificent vertical guerrilla garden - all at Merry Hill SC - help to ease warming oceans and land?

Reform UK's Elaine and Vic

Dear Elaine and Vic​

 Mayoral Hustings 2024.jpg

​

In the light of Vic casting doubt on the practicalities of putting trams on the Black Country Railway to Stourbridge Jct with Port Talbot freight trains at night to Tata Steel at Round Oak - despite the facts:

•  of the magical "Passive Provision" being built in already to allow double running;
• "light rail provision provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time"; and,
• Network Rail wants the full Black Country Railway back "for freight in the 2040s at the earliest".

ABOVE QUOTES: from Network Rail, Tom Magrath of Centro in 2000 and Laura Shoaf, now Chief Exec of WMCA.

The professionals at 16 Summer Lane MUST HAVE taken all that into account because they are so assiduous, competent and professional!

If you agree, please select, copy, paste and send to customerservices@tfwm.org.uk

Monday 15 April 2024

STOP THE DUDLEY TRAM IN DUDLEY. USE THE MONEY SAVED FOR ...

 ... decent buses and Fare-Free Public Transport for ALL and to give the most badly housed 1/2 bedroom apartments that are highly insulated, energy efficient, solar powered and without cars.  At the 22,000 sq m of High Plateau, Merry Hill, Brierley Hill.

Give genuine treats, as above and not the deceptive, all that glisters is not gold, trams.

Do you go along with my contention that the most badly housed do not have cars and would want 1/2 bedroom apartments of low cost for rent and purchase?  They have the choice of shops at Merry Hill or Brierley Hill High Street to walk to.  1/2 bedroom apartments at Merry Hill may put the wealthy off from buying second and third homes there as an investment.

Please read the blue sheets because they contain useful information to 'get at' the Mayor when out campaigning - 365 days of the year - day off on a leap year!!

SWANKY METRO IS NOT A TREAT FOR LOW INCOMES DEPENDENT ON CHARITY

Dear Max - please forward this to your other commissioners and political advisors, especially to John Coughlan who knew me in the 1980s.  And please forward my previous emails to each of them, too - thanks.  Tim Weller

The ordinary people are the sacrificial pawns to allow the political leaders to have their grossly extravagant, fancy, flash trams gliding slowly through the city while 100 Kms of railway lines are mothballed or only partly used.  STILL, NOT ONE RAILWAY LINE OR RAILWAY STATION IS RE-OPENED AFTER DECADES OF NEGLIGENCE!

Ian Ward was the leader of BCC for some years when he was also the Transport portfolio holder for the WMCA.  Ian and his fellow members of the leadership team at 16 Summer Lane, along with the Conservative and Labour leaders, with their Opposition leaders, of all seven local authorities are wholly responsible for -

1. Advising and guiding Andy Street, from his election in 2017 to put his multi-billion plan for 150 miles of Metro trams of 8 lines and 380 tram stops by 2040.
2. That Jan 2020, £15 billion plan for mainly Metro and Sprint roll out duplication has now been cut to £6.1 billion between 2017 and 2032.
3. Andy's 2021 requested, supposedly 'independent' report into Metro failures has still not been published.  He was ignored!
4. Birmingham leaders of all parties have always had 16 Summer Lane as their HQ for their glitz and glam road building and then road destruction projects - like the free-flowing Inner Ring Road built and then destroyed in two places to bring traffic lights and one way streets for worse air quality and congestion.
5. Bankrupt Brum and the other six over ambitious, over spending authorities are all obsessed with trams since they destroyed the entire tram network in the 1950s and one third of the railway network from the 1960s to the present day.
6. The last 43 years has seen Bankrupt Brum lead the way in getting only 23 Kms of tramway built in all those decades.
7. Of the 23 Kms only 3 Kms are on roads to duplicate and replace buses.
8. Nearly all of Metro is on a former mainline railway between Snow Hill station and Wolverhampton Low Level station that is now a conference and events centre!
9. The second Metro line to be built in 43 years is finally being built, this very day, on an even more important, this time the UK's last, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance"
   
    "of national strategic significance".pdf
10. Under Bankrupt Brum's leadership at 16 Summer Lane (Tram HQ for both the UK tram promotion group and the WMCA, incidentally), one of only two north-south UK mainline railways on the western side of Bankrupt Brum has now been wrecked with Light Rail trams due to operate in time for Christmas and a Very Light Rail tram test track, of all things, already in use!
11. Under Bankrupt Brum's leadership, not only did they destroy their former free-flowing Inner Ring Road but also accelerated their own self-declared Climate Emergency by wiping out the London to Edinburgh, Black Country Railway that was supposedly safeguarded for TRAINS to return, not trams.  What mind-blowing idiocy and incompetence!
12. The remaining 50 Kms of fresh air on this railway line still await commuter, regional and intercity trains to take the pressure off "one of the worst railway bottlenecks in the UK" which is now grandly called, the £750 million Grand Central Station (Peter Plisner, BBC transport correspondent for the Midlands in the 1990s.  On 'Midlands Today')
    
13. Metro was supposedly extended to connect Snow Hill station to Grand Central.  That was a lie.  When it opened, we found that the Snow Hill tram stop soon had to be renamed because that tram stop and Snow Hill station were not linked, so you could not get the tram from Snow Hill to Grand Central!  The funds for the work were granted by the gullible Transport Minister, Norman Baker MP who was misled or did not read his brief thoroughly.
14. Bankrupt Brum/WMCA accelerated their 2019, hypocritically declared Climate Emergency by boosting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in totally unnecessary spending to increase road congestion and pollution in the West Midlands by giving their top priority to trams brought back on railway lines instead of trains re-introduced and, buses modernised!
15. The Dudley Tram extension off the railway "of national strategic significance" into the privately owned Merry Hill Shopping Centre to boost the profits of the two international companies, will destroy much needed housing land, vital nature needed to counteract GHG emissions, and public open space.
    
16. One sensible answer to chronic congestion, air pollution and Climate breakdown can now, at best, only ever be a TRAIN-TRAM-TRAIN mainline railway between London, Oxford, Worcester, the Black Country, Derby and all stations north to Scotland!
17. Bankrupt Brum and the West Midlands saw three major transport spending projects suspended in 2022 but totally denied by Top Man, Andy Street on Radio WM on 25 July 2023, in an interview with me!

THE TRAGIC THREE TRANSPORT OVER SPENDS:

A  In the 1990s, Brum transport bosses forgot to connect the first tramway to both the bus and railway stations in Wolverhampton.  Extending it cost over £50 m for 700 metres that took seven years to build!

B  From tiny, overcrowded University railway station to Gigantic Towering Red Brick railway station cost another £50 m.

C  Work on the ground, after 38 years of planning to build the 10.7 Kms Dudley Tram, began in 2019. This is the second Metro, this time on 6.7 Kms of the missing, unused 56 Kms of the 120 Kms railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

between Worcester and Derby, that had to be broken up into four phases in 2022.  Phase One may open as a bonanza of a Christmas present, this year, after decades of 'work'!

Under Bankrupt Brum's leadership we see failure, low standards in performance and obvious incompetence.

EVERY NOLAN PRINCIPLE IS BROKEN - see here:

 How the Nolan Principles are applied by the WMCA

 NOLAN cannot possibly approve this two tier practice

TO ALL Commissioners and Political Advisors - not just Max Caller:

You cannot separate out Bankrupt Brum's leadership from the shenanigans at the WMCA, as you are so anxious to do.  They are all integral one to the other under Andy Street's guiding hand, along with Birmingham, Black Country and Coventry councillors and their very highly paid Chief Executives who have advised them so badly.  All have missed the blindingly obvious, time and time again - even when told - for nearly thirty years by me!

With best wishes for some sensible action, at long last, where the pawns are treated as royal princes and the king and queen are brought to order on the Birmingham, Black Country and Coventry chess board.

REMEMBER: Level up the rich to level down the poor - is your motto.  Should it change, do you think?

Tim Weller

Metro gives nature a hammering AND levelling up for the wealth flaunting types as the poor go to the wall, yet again

Hi Bob - thanks for the action points.

I love:

"support nature recovery across the WMCA; by increasing tree cover, identifying, protecting, and enhancing nature, and eliminating greenspace deprivation in line with the 30 x 30 biodiversity principles agreed at the biodiversity summit December 2022."

This is excellent but is at odds with "Pause tram development" because with tram extensions going "full steam ahead" (Andy Street on 25 July 2023 on Radio WM) we are now going to get not railway lines turned into tramways but nature, public open space, housing land and front gardens taken for trams.

Andy Street and Cllr Patrick Harley, Leader of Dudley MBC, both insist that the money is now in place for the Dudley Tram to go to Merry Hill and so boost their trade at the possible expense of Dudley shops.  This means that the destruction of nature is now full steam ahead at Merry Hill SC which desperately needs more trees, shrubs and plants and not fewer!

Full steam ahead means less land for 1/2 bedroom apartments for the most badly housed without cars, with the tram coming to take a slice of the designated housing land between the Merry Hill stores and the shops at Brierley Hill.  So more farming land is taken to compensate for High Plateau housing land made smaller.

Full steam ahead means all the public open space is concreted for the 400 m tram viaduct, plus all the trees wiped out.  I would love to show you, Bob the extent of the damage, indeed destruction wreaked upon an already nature-deprived area.  Please come over and meet me, I'll treat you to drinks and cake as your reward - I promise!

Full steam ahead means my Merry Hill SC guerrilla garden has the tramway going over the top of it - and more nature destruction.

Full steam ahead means 1,000 trees and shrubs and front gardens, in 3 Kms, get wiped out by infernal concrete and steel between Edgbaston Village tram stop and the Kings Head, Bearwood on the south side of Hagley Road.

I'm getting near to double figures of the people I've shown round  - both councillors and others.  Bill from Walsall FoE today and Elaine, the Reform UK candidate on Monday.  PLEASE Bob, your good self too.  Seeing is believing.  1 hour trail of the treasures of nature and then drinks and, food if we time it for lunch.  All on me!

FULL STEAM AHEAD TO ECOCIDE

The hundreds of millions greedily, selfishly, wanted for tramways to replace and duplicate buses must go to low incomes, to the most badly housed, to those struggling with paying bills, using food banks, to insulate their homes ... in line with our eco-socialist principles.  NOT to make Brum look powerful and prestigious in line with international cities like Paris, Milan and Tokyo.  How sick and sad at such immature attitudes and all to accelerate the climate emergency well and truly upon us.

All the best

Roger Harrabin

 Roger Harrabin

@RHarrabin

·

Apr 11

I am not arguing about decimal points. I merely point out that we are experiencing damaging extremes already and that our emissions will substantially grow. We are being given wake up call after wake up call. And instead we water down policies in the UK.

Tony Gillie (@drtonygillie.bsky.social)

@DrTonyGillie

·

23h

The data you present shows monthly rainfall figures. A Google search: "According to the Met Office, 1,695.9mm of rain fell from October 2022 to March 2024, the highest amount for any 18-month period in England in recorded history. The Met Office started collecting data in 1836."

Paul Haigh

@paulhaigh

·

Apr 11

Climate change doesn’t necessarily mean extreme weather we’ve never seen but more frequent extreme events. Isolated events have limited impact, regular and widespread events have bigger impact, especially when combined with different extremes elsewhere- eg drought.

Dr Charlie Gardner

@CharlieJGardner

·

Apr 11

If climate change was all a big hoax so that governments can implement terrible pro- climate policies, wouldn't they have tried to actually implement some pro-climate policies by now? Rather than going full-on for every last drop of oil?