Centuries of the most unChristian foreign policy resulted in the most destructive, violent and plain evil century - all thanks to the 'Christian' nations!

The nations of Israel and India must be the most tragic legacy of 'Christian' Britain's foreign policy of going into all the world to make disciples of every nation.  This was a foreign policy of colonising the most nations for itself in the history of humanity.  Not for disciples of Jesus Christ.

In reality, Britain stole the most nations, stole their people for slavery and looted their possessions.  Not quite what Christ meant by going into all the world!  Britain controlled and captured all these lands in order to govern, to dominate and to grow rich.

In Palestine, it ended with favouritism towards the Jews with the Arabs losing out in the interwar years, despite their help in us 'winning' the 14 - 18 war. This was followed by the Jews/Zionists wholesale assimilation into the US/UK empire of W European nations as the State of Israel.  Some Arabs call Israel the cuckoo in the nest.

A tragedy of tragedies when the people of Israel gave birth to Christianity and from the Arabs came Islam.  Yet, all were the descendants of Abraham.  And, from Abraham's descendants of Jews, Christians and Muslims all the nations of the world were to be blessed!

Not quite the blessing the Good Lord intended, methinks!

An impressive matrix to score their active travel schemes, as to which will get the precious funding

Have I got things right, here?:

My major concern is this.  Our transport experts, including the consultants they call in to help them, do have an impressive matrix to score their active travel schemes, as to which will get the precious funding.  However,

1. Does the matrix take into account an existing 20 Kms, off road cycle-walkway that seems to have been done by the very low standards of decades ago in the 20th century?  A score for the length of time since first opened and for so little (if any) improvement over those decades.  The longer the oversight, the bigger the score.
2. Does the matrix take into account the very variable state of the route with three different councils having three different approaches over maintenance?  From adequate with the route in the City of Wolverhampton to down right negligent and disgraceful for decades in the case of Dudley MBC.  Only in this year did South Staffordshire DC act to get rid of the mud in the old railway cutting.  Well done to them.  A score for the numbers of different councils responsible for the cycle-walkway.
3. Does the magic matrix take into account that our Black Country Route connects three substantial centres of population, with a combined population of 600,800?  A score for the population of the places the cycle-walkway passes through.
4. Was it the matrix that gave the funding to a ready built section of the London to Edinburgh principal mainline railway to be turned into a cycle-walkway between Brownhills and Lichfield, total population 47,738?  A MINUS score for the group, 'Back the Track' who have been campaigning for their Two Capitals, principal mainline railway to be used only by a few cyclists and walkers instead of thousands of passengers relieving road congestion and full trains!
5. One is 20 Kms that is starved of funds when commuters and business users like me would like to use it between Dudley, Wombourne and Wolverhampton but the other is 8 Kms long through S Staffordshire countryside with few people commuting between the two small towns, Brownhills and Lichfield.  Is the matrix working correctly in coming up with this anomaly?  A score for the length of the cycle-walkway being proposed.
6. Has the matrix really been set up correctly to give funding to the 8 Kms mainline railway between two small centres of population?
7. Has the matrix taken into account that both Network Rail and the DfT agree that the 8 Kms being funded is the northern extension of the UK's only available but unused railway ...​
    "of national strategic significance".pdf
   ​A MINUS score because Network Rail and DfT want their freight and passenger trains on the planned and funded cycle-walkway.
8. Has the matrix worked out that stopping car and train users from using this mainline alternative to HS2 will mean that cyclists will have to tolerate congested roads?!  A MINUS score for doing the least to lessen road congestion and the least to lessen jam packed commuter trains by doing the cycle-walkway rather than putting commuter, regional and intercity TRAINS back.
9. Is the matrix able to understand that the benefit to society is greater from finishing the railway with trains and stations than putting walkers and cyclists on it?  Especially, with Brum to Manchester HS2 unlikely to be resurrected.
10. From all this, my super-duper Black Country Cycle-Walk Super Highway would score 100%!!  Campaigning cyclists, Back the Track, would get ZERO for destroying the railway forever (it would never get its trains back, what with trams on 5.5 Kms in Dudley)!!

By the way, I'm against upsetting motorists with cycling schemes when there is so much to be done with thousands of miles of off-road cycling routes - FIRST!

The origins for the taking of 251 hostages on 7.10.23; 108 not released today, 27.8.24

MILITARY MEANS WILL NOT RESOLVE THE PROBLEM, ONLY NEGOTIATIONS AND PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE

Below, from Jeremy Bowen's 'The Making of the Modern Middle East - a personal history'.  Published 2022

Page 54 - last paragraph:

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat on how Israel/USA/UK are convinced that the Palestinians will never give up terrorism even if Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Gandhi were involved on the Palestinian side in peace negotiations with the Israelis and Americans.

Page 55

The problem is "the collision between the rights of Palestinians and the success and legitimacy of Zionism, the movement founded in Europe to create a homeland for the Jews in Palestine."  And not in Argentina, as Theodor Herzl suggested in his 1896 book 'The Jewish State' or Uganda that was suggested by the British government (p 56).  "For a while Herzl favoured the barren scrub of the Sinai Desert."

Herzl wrote an essay called, 'What made me a Zionist was the Dreyfus trial'.  A state for the Jews was a necessity for the founder of Zionism.

Page 56

"Zionism's challenge was always that Palestine was not empty."  Hence, the Rabbis reporting back to Theodor Herzl, 'The bride is beautiful but she is already taken'

"Palestine had well-established Jewish communities ... part of the Ottoman Empire's religious mosaic."  At the beginning of the 20th century Palestine was overwhelmingly Arab.  But Jerusalem had a "Jewish plurality".  But what does that mean?  A much higher proportion of Jews in Jerusalem, I believe.  Or, even a majority were Jews?  The Jews in Jerusalem 125 years ago were more religious than those who followed, it seems.

Page 57

"Unsurprisingly, a people whose own presence on the land went back millennia saw Zionism imposing an alien creed on their land, but the Jews argued that their claim was older and had greater moral force."

The Jews who came from Europe had wealth to buy land from often absentee Arab landlords.  It was worked by Palestinians who lived off the land and depended on it for their very existence.  This caused "competition and clashes about possession and control", wrote Bowen.

The new incomers were seen to displace and even forcibly remove the indigenous Arab farmers.

Theodor Herzl wrote in 1895:

"We shall try to spirit the penniless populations across the border by procuring employment for them in the transit countries, while denying them employment in their own country."

Referenced by Bowen in his book on p 340, quoting Tom Segev in his book, 'A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion'.

"For the Zionists, a Jewish majority was a necessity in their future independent state, and it was clear from early on that the Arabs were not going to agree."

"Although the conflict has many other layers, at its heart is a long and violent saga between two peoples competing for one piece of land." (my emphasis)  Competing and intermittent warring since the conquest of Canaan?  ("began somewhere about 1240 BCE", Lion Handbook to the Bible, p 209, 2nd edition 1983)

All quotes are Jeremy Bowen's from 'The Making of the Modern Middle East', on the pages stated.

“Grant Thornton has ‘questions to answer’ over Birmingham council bankruptcy”

George Monbiot, with his excellent critique of neoliberalism, needs to join me over these matters of concern:

For years, if not decades, Grant Thornton has been oblivious to or, actively supporting by signing off accounts that have been squandering taxpayers' funds on destroying transport infrastructure for TRAINS to only have them replaced by TRAMS!

Actively supporting and signing off accounts on the most expensive transport mode to construct (and subsidise) after High Scam 2 (aka HS2). I refer to tramways taking over two of our mainline railways and, an increasing number of bus routes as the 150 miles of Metro lines, £15 billion (2020 figure) to 2040 gets rolled out.

I have written to Grant Thornton, to the Brum Commissioners and to the WMCA but not one person is at all concerned! Are you, dear reader?!

"The fees for commissioners are set by the Department for Levelling up Housing and Communities (DLUHC). The fees are: £1,200 per day for the Lead Commissioner. £1,100 per day for the other commissioners", my Google search revealed.

Reflections, somehow prompted by yesterday's Summer Faith Walk!

George Monbiot, with his excellent critique of neoliberalism, needs to join me over these matters of concern, below.  Every word he wrote was true and enlightening, for me but, it now needs to be put into practice by some action, viz with George joining me over my concerns that I've been on about for decades in pointing out the bleeding obvious!  Hence:-

The Ramblers (in their current magazine) are now using "people from Global Majority backgrounds", instead of ethnic minorities.  Hence, is this fair comment on my part?:

We have the obscene spectacle of our 'White Global Minority' people spending billions on greedy, glamorous, totally unnecessary projects like High Scam 2, Metro and Sprint, while fueling the slaughter and wholesale destruction of Gaza by our good friends and allies, the Israelis.

For me, it continues the despicable business of the White Global Minority ruling over the Global Majority.  It started with piracy on the high seas and quickly degenerated into collecting colonies around the world, looting their treasures, then enslaving whole peoples to satisfy our lust for cheap cotton, sugar and tobacco.  We even had "the disgraceful Opium Wars" (Michael Portillo) on China.  We grew extremely rich on the backs of the Global Majority.  It finished with the equally obscene Scramble for Africa, the Boer/S African War and the devastating World War in two halves that was wholly the responsibility of the greedy rich White Global Minority using their colonies in the Global Majority to help them fight that war.

Equally reprehensible was the centuries of persecution of the Jews by this same White Global Minority.  It ended with them stealing the land of Palestine from the Arabs, with our help and, then, the Rich West White Minority funding their wars for 76 years to ensure that they remained firmly in the camp of the Global White Minority in the centre of the Arab Middle East.  The Global Majority, this time the Palestinians, continue to be picked off, one by one, family by family, under the guise of the never ending and, ever so righteous, War of Self Defence by our side.

This is all the height of immorality and pure wickedness, in my opinion.  But the very Christianity that is meant to be so upright and perfect has always been at the heart of violence down the centuries.  Even to this day, one branch of Christendom is firmly on the side of acts of genocide and war crimes in the selling of armaments to Israel.  And every one of us wants all things greedy, glamorous and, the wholly unnecessary extravaganza of HS2, Metro and Sprint!

Non-violence, non-collaboration, sharing out the land, living in peaceful co-existence with your neighbours in the spirit of the Good Samaritan and the JC of Nazareth in the Gospels is all too rare but not unheard of!

Tim Weller

to Bellway

Dear Lauren

Thank you for the appointment at 11 am on Monday 26 August.  My wife and I will be there.

Please pass this on to your Head Office - for a reply:

It is brilliant that Bellway has taken over this brown field site for housing development and that the front building is being converted into modest, eco-apartments.

My concerns, as they were with the Gables housing development in Hagley, are these:

1. There is a moderately fast, growing population in the UK to exacerbate a worsening housing crisis that started last century.
2. Gracious and spacious housing provision, as we saw last decade with the Gables, is certainly less obvious at Harvino so that is great.
3. However, in my opinion, each unit is still too large on the main site behind the front block of eco-apartments in the Blue Bird building.  Housing units must be more densely provided because land is in limited supply and must be used for growing our food and for giving nature more room to breathe and survive.  We are part of nature, after all!
4. Most of us want an ever more prosperous lifestyle but that cannot be delivered on a planet that is not growing and never can grow to keep pace with our ever more greedy demands placed upon it (called economic growth).
5. Most of the housing at Harvino is for the wealthy with every adult owning a car, as my wife and I both do.  But, since 1976, we have been living and, brought up two children, in a modest, eco-home that is a mid-terrace, three storey town house at 28 Hunnington Crescent, Halesowen.
6. This house has been plenty big enough over these 48 years!
7. Even the wealthy, like ourselves, must be prepared to live more simply so that others may simply live.
8. This home of ours is a mini power station with, literally, every roof tile covered in solar panels since 2013.
9. As a result, since we had the gas meter taken out on the 30 November 2023, we spent 50p/day on total energy and 50p/day on the electricity standing charge to Octopus, over these first eight months.
10. If every roof was pitched E/W and plastered with PV solar, like ours, on your new Bellway housing estates, every home would supply nearly all of their energy needs from the sun, so fewer power stations would be needed.  And fewer solar farms and fewer battery storage sites, too!

RECOMMENDATIONS

Every new home must be 100% electricity.

Must be E/W oriented to have 100% covering of PV solar panels.

The battery storage must be double the power of the solar array.

To save energy, every new home should have the lounge, dining, kitchen on the first floor with bedrooms and bathrooms on the ground floor.  Upside down living!  Old age infirmities and disabilities are catered for in this way, too!

The garden, front and back, should be no bigger than our own at 28 Hunnington Crescent - pretty modest, so a tall order!

I would like comments, feedback, criticism from your experts at Head Office - PLEASE!

Hagley Causeway footway/cycle path

The footway/cycle path on BOTH sides of the A456 from the county boundary westwards to Hagley needs widening to ease the squeeze with the increasing popularity of walking and, sharing with care, cycling.  The footway/cycle path further east in Halesowen on both sides is open and used between Grange roundabout on A459 and Manor Lane.

Your reference number for your records is #59461. Please quote this number in any correspondence.

Your 4-digit tracker pin is 1097. You will need your reference number and your tracker pin if you wish to track your report online.

Thank you for your Footway (Pavement) Widening request.

The reference number for your application is #1622509

Bike buses and cargo bikes

Lovely to hear this chat.  Bike buses and children on the back of cargo bikes are just brilliant.  My daughter is about to get one for her children AND as an alternative to buying a bigger car, although their sole, tiny, 20 year old Yaris will have to be replaced one day!  But the family are putting it off for as long as possible.  The other weekend, in Shropshire, they all went bikepacking from Pontesbury to Clun and back using country lanes and minimum main roads.  Superb trip!

The Black Country Active Travel Route

'The Black Country Active Travel Route' for walking, cycling and horse riding through three nature reserves, a Woodland Trust property and close to both Himley Hall/Park and Baggeridge Country Park.

"It links the DY5 Enterprise Zone at Brierley Hill with the canal network in NW Wolverhampton.  There are two cafes in two railway stations and, possibly, room for a third at Dudley's Queen Street (not Queens Road) in Pensnett missing bridge site, for a budding entrepreneur.

40 or 50 years of the UK's most important business, commuting, leisure route for active travel is overlooked!!

Dear Tim and Stuart - perhaps, could Stuart reply with good news, this time, please to give a little joy to this old and quickly ageing man!  Years have gone by since we last met, Stuart.

"To make this LCWIP (= Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan & Delivery Plan) both manageable and deliverable over the 5-year period, it was agreed that 2 cycle routes and 1 walking zone per Local Authority area would be shortlisted to take forward to the Route Audit and Concept Design stages."

Please answer these points.

1. For forty years, hundreds of millions of pounds in both price and weight of GHG emissions (GHG = greenhouse gas) are going into converting railway lines and bus routes into tramways.  Eight more Metro tramway lines over 150 miles by 2040 is the intention.  200 Kms by the year 2000 CE reached 20 Kms by that date but 28 Kms by the end of 2025, all being well.  All but 3 Kms on two mainline railways are now lost forever!
2. Can the potential for modal shift from car commuting to bike commuting be considered, please?  I started for my social work even in the early 1990s - for both commuting and for my social work visits!
3. Therefore, the UK's most important regional, in the heart of the Midlands conurbation, cycling and walking route to connect Russells Hall Hospital plus two major centres of population and one large town, Wombourne, has been improved - except in Dudley!
4. This is a major achievement for S Staffs and Wolverhampton.
5. Therefore, are you able to authorise a cutting back of vegetation on the Dudley section, please in the vicinity of the old Crooked House, near Himley?  I do this, myself (snip, cut and slash) on public rights of way that I walk.  But the Dudley section of the Black Country Trail is more than I can manage.  PLEASE HELP!

Very many thanks

Extracts from Omer Bartov - Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov

As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel

This summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history – and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking degree

By Omer Bartov

The Hamas attack on 7 October came as a tremendous shock to Israeli society, one from which it has not begun to recover. It was the first time Israel has lost control of part of its territory for an extended period of time, with the IDF unable to prevent the massacre of more than 1,200 people – many killed in the cruellest ways imaginable – and the taking of well over 200 hostages, including scores of children. The sense of abandonment by the state and of ongoing insecurity – with tens of thousands of Israeli citizens still displaced from their homes along the Gaza Strip and by the Lebanese border – is profound.

The second reigning sentiment – or rather lack of sentiment – is the flipside of the first. It is the utter inability of Israeli society today to feel any empathy for the population of Gaza. The majority, it seems, do not even want to know what is happening in Gaza, and this desire is reflected in TV coverage. Israeli television news these days usually begins with reports on the funerals of soldiers, invariably described as heroes, fallen in the fighting in Gaza, followed by estimates of how many Hamas fighters were “liquidated”. References to Palestinian civilian deaths are rare and normally presented as part of enemy propaganda or as a cause for unwelcome international pressure. In the face of so much death, this deafening silence now seems like its own form of vengefulness.

Of course, the Israeli public long ago became inured to the brutal occupation that has characterised the country for 57 out of the 76 years of its existence. But the scale of what is being perpetrated in Gaza right now by the IDF is as unprecedented as the complete indifference of most Israelis to what is being done in their name. In 1982, hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested against the massacre of the Palestinian population in the refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in western Beirut by Maronite Christian militias, facilitated by the IDF. Today, this kind of response is inconceivable. The way people’s eyes glaze over whenever one mentions the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and the deaths of thousands of children and women and elderly people, is deeply unsettling.

By the time I travelled to Israel, I had become convinced that at least since the attack by the IDF on Rafah on 6 May 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions. It was not just that this attack against the last concentration of Gazans – most of them displaced already several times by the IDF, which now once again pushed them to a so-called safe zone – demonstrated a total disregard of any humanitarian standards. It also clearly indicated that the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory. In other words, the rhetoric spouted by Israeli leaders since 7 October was now being translated into reality – namely, as the 1948 UN Genocide Convention puts it, that Israel was acting “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part”, the Palestinian population in Gaza, “as such, by killing, causing serious harm, or inflicting conditions of life meant to bring about the group’s destruction”

These were issues that I could only discuss with a very small handful of activists, scholars, experts in international law and, not surprisingly, Palestinian citizens of Israel. Beyond this limited circle, such statements on the illegality of Israeli actions in Gaza are anathema in Israel. Even the vast majority of protesters against the government, those calling for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages, will not countenance them.

Since I returned from my visit, I have been trying to place my experiences there into a larger context. The reality on the ground is so devastating, and the future appears so bleak, that I have allowed myself to indulge in some counter-factual history and to entertain some hopeful speculations about a different future. I ask myself, what would have happened had the newly created state of Israel fulfilled its commitment to enact a constitution based on its Declaration of Independence? That same declaration which stated that Israel “will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations”.

What effect would such a constitution have had on the nature of the state? How would it have tempered the transformation of Zionism from an ideology that sought to liberate the Jews from the degradation of exile and discrimination and to put them on equal standing with the other nations of the world, to a state ideology of ethnonationalism, oppression of others, expansionism and apartheid? During the few hopeful years of the Oslo peace process, people in Israel began speaking of making it into a “state of all its citizens”, Jews and Palestinians alike. The assassination of prime minister Rabin in 1995 put an end to that dream. Will it ever be possible for Israel to discard the violent, exclusionary, militant and increasingly racist aspects of its vision as it is embraced there now by so many of its Jewish citizens? Will it ever be able to reimagine itself as its founders had so eloquently envisioned it – as a nation based on freedom, justice and peace?

It is difficult to indulge in such fantasies at the moment. But perhaps precisely because of the nadir in which Israelis, and much more so Palestinians, now find themselves, and the trajectory of regional destruction their leaders have set them on, I pray that alternative voices will finally be raised. For, in the words of the poet Eldan, “there is a time when darkness roars but there is dawn and radiance”.

Questions over origins of the Black Country Trail/Mudway in Dudley

I refer to the walking, wheeling and cycle path from Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill, past Fens Pool at the Pensnett Nature Reserve, over Queen Street and on through Barrow Hill Nature Reserve towards Himley Hall/Park.  It is known as the 20 Kms Black Country Tourist Trail and as the Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway because the mud is, as from this year, only found where the path runs through our borough.  In the last twelve months, the other two councils have worked hard and seem to have resolved the mud/waterlogged sections.  Dudley has not even tried.

When were the two disused railway lines turned into an official walking and cycling path/trail?

When was the railway bridge over Queen Street taken down?

What was the total cost of turning the two railway lines into a walking, wheeling and cycle path?

What was involved?

From many years ago, there remain obvious wooden edging boards to mark the path.  What was the designated width?

What was your chosen surface?

What is your inspection and maintenance regime for this path?

What was the design criteria for the path?

Many thanks

Black Country Tourist Trail

Saturday, August 10, 2024 Dudley, England

With a little investment it could be the Black Country equivalent of Birmingham's much loved Rea Valley Route. From Fens Pool to The Platform cafe in Wombourne. Years since a Beacon club run visited but still good. Off roading on the Brompton quite an experience.  David Cox

Blue Brick pub at the Centre of Black Country Transport

Thanks for the Strava record and photos that I was able to open and enjoyed viewing.  Both Linda and I do use Strava but she uses it more than me.  Thanks so much for coming out on the ride with me.  Next year, too, to check on what improvements have been made?

In readiness for next year's ride, I'm asking if you and Dudley Council could join me in insisting that they use their existing workforce to cut back the vegetation to make for a 3 m wide track.  At least, from Barrow Hill NR, north of Pensnett High St (A4101) to the border with S Staffs.  What do you think?  The email address is:- dudleycouncilplus@dudley.gov.uk  You will get a reply but action is more doubtful!  So far, I'm the only one asking.  The more people ask for vegetation to be cut back, the more likely it might, just, possibly, be done!

The Cabinet councillor is Cllr Damian Corfield, at  Cllr.Damian.Corfield@dudleymbc.org.uk   who has responsibility for Highways and Environmental Services.  He does know me.  He put two of us in Dudley on a committee he was chairing as non-voting members for a short time.  Brilliant of him!

I want to continue working to remind our officers and councillors of their TWO north-south transport routes.  One is our Black Country Tourist Trail of 20 Kms that meets the second, the Black Country Mainline Railway, at the old Blue Brick pub at 153 Dudley Rd, Brierley Hill DY5 1HG.  The pub is on the main road, near and south of Fens Pool Ave where we met.

The second is that former, principal mainline railway between London and Edinburgh, as on this map:-

Nothing has changed in 21 years!!

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

Trams and a Very Light Rail test track is on the railway in Dudley town and in Sandwell, where it meets the first tramway on the first mainline railway used, at Wednesbury.

MY IDEA/SUGGESTION:

The Tourist Trail for all active travellers and the Black Country Railway for train and tram users.  The problem is that the UK's Top Wasted Railway is being turned into a cycle-walkway between Brownhills and Lichfield where the railway in my photo, below, is being funded for active travel use.  Have Cycling UK and your good self been wanting this?  Have you and Duncan Dollimore both been supporting active travel for the railway, rather than intercity, commuter and regional trains, David?

Looking towards the M6:

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

Looking towards Lichfield.  One track nicked by metal thieves since construction and opening in Dec 2003!

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

What do you think of my twin transport idea in the heart of England, connected at Blue Brick pub, to relieve road congestion, air pollution and Climate problems, David?  A lovely old pub at the Centre of the Universe!!!

All the very best.  Please keep in touch.  Next year's dates are Saturday, 2nd and 9th August 2025

23 June 2023 to Express & Star

Good morning Peter,

Will you, now please speak to your editor about the Star exposing this 40 years of incompetence and lack of democracy?

QUESTION FOR ANDY STREET on the Radio 4 'Any Questions' panel this evening at Kingswinford Academy:

Should there be full, for and against debate and vote by our councillors, before our 120 Kms (74 miles) Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" is converted into multi-modal heavy rail, light rail and very light rail between Worcester and Derby?

The writing of business cases always trump democracy.  Why?

Andy Street's decision contrasts with Edinburgh City Council who, with both of their tram projects, had committee discussions, followed by debates and then competently conducted votes in full Council to decide whether or not to go ahead.  Conservatives opposed trams on grounds of cost.

Former Cabinet member, Cllr Ian Kettle and Dudley MBC Deputy Leader, Cllr Paul Bradley at last night's Stourbridge Forum were unable to reassure me that there has ever been a for and against discussion with vote in any Dudley Cabinet meeting over turning their own half-used, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

into a multi-modal heavy rail (HR), light rail (LR) and, very light rail (VLR).  Even the Stourbridge MP, Suzanne Webb, suggested ultra light rail (ULR - the short 1.2 Km Stourbridge Shuttle) to meet the trams at Brierley Hill from her Stourbridge Jct station.  Two out of three of these unsuitable rail modes have now been put on the Derby, Dudley, Devon mainline aka Burton on Trent, Brierley Hill, Bristol mainline.

In over forty years of Metro tram development, it seems there has never been a for and against debate followed by vote in a single Council Chamber of any of the seven councils of what is now called the WMCA.  The CA is a massive new layer of unaccountable bureaucracy and hierarchy of officers and, members of the regional councils being subsumed into it to give an appearance of democracy when all their committees and boards are simply talking shops and rubber stamps.  Never for and against debates and never votes, it seems!!

This contrasts with Edinburgh City Council who, with both of their tram projects, had full committee discussions, followed by debates and then competently conducted votes in full Council to decide whether or not to go ahead.

Wednesday, 21 June 2023

4 reasons why we all love trams!  But I put it in context.

The trams are attracting people out of their cars and onto public transport.

For the last 70 years of tram and train destruction, there is only evidence that it is that policy that has made public transport worse, less attractive, caused road congestion, crammed trains and worsened the climate emergency.

They also make public transport users feel like they are not second-class citizens. 

First class citizens like lawyers and other VIPs all use public transport.  It was 10th rate work by our councillors and transport planners who are responsible for the complete wipe out of the trams in the 50s followed by the double tragedy of urban commuter railway lines being turned into trading/housing estates, roads, innovation centres and test tracks that is STILL going on in this decade.

They beat buses for speed and comfort.

In fact, 95% of bus stops are request stops but the tram MUST STOP at every tram stop.

Trams beat buses for speed only when you have the former mainline railway turned into a tramline running parallel to the traffic choked A41 between Wolverhampton and Brum.  Even then, the average speed is only 22 mph for the trams and 12 mph for the vehicles.

Comfort is also a misnomer when my posterior comes to a sudden juddering halt as I sit on a tram seat with only a thin piece of cotton between my bum and the very hard plastic seat!

I think it is a good investment in local infrastructure.

Such a good investment that in over 40 years of rebuilding the tram network on the railway network, we still have only ONE tramline between Brum and Wolverhampton St Georges Sq, not even to the bus station, let alone the railway station.  200 Kms was promised by 23 years ago. What a truly pathetic performance for the hundreds of millions spent and £15 BILLION MORE by 2040!

Such a good investment that the 2nd Brum mainline, after 40 years, is no longer to get trams but is still awaiting its commuter trains and the 3 stations!!

Such a good investment that all work on Metro extensions have had to be suspended or curtailed, since 12 mths ago.

FROM Nick V:

The original trams ran in the roads. The new trams mostly reuse disused railway lines, keeping them apart from the buses, cars and bikes. If they had maintained the old tram network then the roads would have had to be changed. Buses were a better alternative at the time.  SELF: More sensible European nations simply modernised their trams over the years.

The train network was cut as it was uneconomic. If it had not been cut then the rail network would probably not exist at all today.  SELF: Beeching never intended his closed railway lines should be wiped off the face of the earth.

As for the seats, I'm sure Linda or Jayne can design you a very comfortable, personalised, reusable, maybe even recycled cushion.

Posted by Tim Weller at 21:10 No comments:   

Labels: 4 reasons, investment, St Georges Sq

Business Plans are a hoax!

Many thanks. Business plans always come up with exactly what the paymaster wants them to say. They are an academic, bureaucratic, go through the hoop exercise that has justified all manners of stupidity - High Scam 2 for mainly plane passengers to sometimes use the train (instead of the plane) to fly through the air on land!

Also, 70 years of tram, then train destruction, followed by rebuilding, over the last 40 years, not the surviving train lines but the tram network on that surviving railway network.  I exaggerate not! All down to biased business plans. Next it's the 1000 trees and shrubs that get the chop on the S side of Hagley Road - all for the tragic tram to solve our road traffic congestion and poisoned air problems! And I'm one of the biggest fans of tram travel - seriously.

Posted by Tim Weller at 20:53 No comments:   

Labels: Business plans

Tuesday, 20 June 2023

Public transport is an embarrassing 70 years saga of confusion, multi-modal mix up and incompetence

The very VIPs who boasted in the 1980s of 200 Kms of tramline by the year 2000, have their predecessors promising us 150 miles and 380 tram stops for £15 billion by 2040!

These were the Top Professionals who obliterated the first tram network in the 1950s, then set about the urban railway network from the 1960s onwards. What was left of our urban railway lines, from the 1980s was begun to be converted to - you've guessed it - to the solution looking for a problem, the TRAM. Not the train on train lines. Oh no! That was all too obvious. 

It was to be the answer to all our traffic-choked urban roads!

The silver bullet to bring us fast, convenient, irresistible connectivity - the planners and politicians favourite word.

Instead, we still sit in traffic jams literally alongside or near to the forgotten railway "of national strategic significance". Ready built, too except for the 7 stations recommended by Railfuture, way back in 2003.

But this is the railway that must have:- "Light rail provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" - top officer in a letter to me in September 2000. Last decade this was underlined by Top VIP, Laura Shoaf as "passive provision" for trains to return between the 56 Kms of Stourbridge and Burton on Trent on the middle section of the 120 Kms railway "of national strategic significance" between Worcester and Derby. 

What a long-winded and frankly stupid way of 'Restoring Your Railway' from the DfT, that is another victory my side has won. The first victory we won was last decade when they finally decided not to convert the Kings Norton to Grand Central Station into a tramline as part of the 200 Kms of trams we were meant to have by 2000 AD!!

WHAT A PANTOMIME 

WOT A JOKE

WHAT ASTONISHING INCOMPETENCE! 

A trio of states for the sin bin

I think the Mayor of Nagasaki was right to put the State of Israel in the same sin corner as Russia and Belarus.  3 pariah states.  The West is not far behind, however, in fully arming the one shameful, despicable, disgraceful ... Israel.  The Global White Minority nations have the worst record for violence and killings - and around the world, for centuries, too.

Report on 2nd Annual Cycle, Walk, Ride the Mudway

Dear friends at RHH and in my Dudley Health contacts group.  This is a vital health matter.

On Saturday, a former Dudley councillor and I cycled the 20 Kms (and much more in a superb circle!) and found the whole section in South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton is FREE of mud and puddles!  WELL DONE  to those two councils.

Even dud Dudley Council made a small effort where a short section looked as though it had been mown to make the path less narrow.

PLEASE could we all email dudleycouncilplus@dudley.gov.uk, as I am doing with this email, if they could ask their Dudley Council workers to cut back much more and put stone in the mud and puddles, as a temporary measure, until the full length is properly and professionally finished - as is found in Scotland with every one of their cycle-walkways I have seen.

This urban-rural-urban Mudway is the UK's top cycle-walkway for business, commuter and leisure route that complies with Parliament's Climate Change Committee's recommendations, once upgraded for business, commuter and leisure use.

I will meet any walker or cyclist at 1000 hrs on Saturday, 10 Aug who wishes to see the Dudley route in its two important nature reserves that the mudway goes through.  Five days for dud Dudley to get its act together.  PLEASE, DUDLEY MBC (MBC = Mighty Borough in fighting Climate)

TWO TRANSPORT ASSETS WASTED, UNFINISHED, MISUSED - worsening Climate!

The 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby on the London to Edinburgh mainline railway, is being turned into a Light Rail tramway, a 2 Km Very Light Rail test track, a cycle-walkway, heavy rail trains and fresh air!

I am highlighting the regional disgrace of the 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway that links the above 120 Kms Black Country Railway in the DY5 Enterprise Zone, with NW Wolverhampton and the national canal towpath network.

The authorities will not finish, so we can actually use, these two major UK transport assets that WILL lessen the climate and nature emergencies.

to Halesowen Pensioners

You wrote, talking about Merry Hill ( comment in blue): 

"It provides employment/livelihood's for at least a thousand people. Attracts people from near and far thus benefiting the local economy. The housing, now well-developed is a thriving community similar to a small town.  This is even more reason for you to support me in wanting 1/2 bedroom apartments for the most badly housed in our borough, at High Plateau.  They then have the choice of either walking to the shops at Merry Hill or walking over the footbridge to the shops in Brierley Hill.

Regarding the metro.  Having had opportunity to use the metro many times I find it a great addition to the transport systems we have. It is quick and convenient and when complete in 2040 but costing £15 billion in Jan 2020 will be a boon to the area helping move people quickly,  complementing the existing modes but being electric has the advantage of being a much a cleaner mode of travel. Perhaps it's possible to have some dialogue with the planners and find a way of mitigating the impact.  The destruction of nature, my guerrilla garden like these

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

Also, housing land at High Plateau and, the only public open space with a massive £100 m concrete and steel double track tramway viaduct.  Could the £100s million be better spent to extend our regional Fare-Free Public Transport to our children and grandchildren, Bob? 

I think you may also find that the metro runs on specially laid rails due to insulation requirements.  The Metro runs on the railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

between London and Edinburgh that stops commuter, regional and intercity trains on the full, wasted and unused length between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent.  SEE THIS MAP:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

Your "specially laid rails", Bob are normal standard gauge as used on the railway network.  Part of their passive provisionOur experts genuinely believe that to get the freight and passenger trains back, the railway must be turned into a tramway first!  They did not have to do this with the Camp Hill line which is getting its commuter trains and three stations back.  Trams first to then get trains back in some future decade is unheard of anywhere else in the world, I believe!  The exact quote is here:

In a letter dated 18.9.2000, from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director:

"light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time."

To tell me that light rail Metro was needed to be put on the Black Country Line in order to be able to restore heavy rail services at a later date on that line is complete nonsense.  That idiocy is now repeated with the insistence that Very Light Rail must go on that inter-city line but that it will not stop express and local trains returning at a later date (conversation with David Golding, Principal Strategic Planner, Network Rail at ITA meeting on 16.7.2015)  No wonder, I am thinking that there is something very corrupt, very wrong at the heart of the West Midlands Combined Authority, Network Rail, ITA, Centro - and, for decades, too.  They all want express and local trains returning but want Light Rail and Very Light Rail, first to help get the everyday trains back! WRITTEN 14 December 2015

 Scandal at Centro

YOU WROTE;

Do you think that following Brexit and the fact that the West Midlands does not get such a generous level of funding as it did from the European Regional Development Fund, that this has had an impact on the prosperity of the area, disproportionately affecting the less well off?  ME: The less well off have always got the worse deal for many centuries because things are run by the most well off.  And, unconsciously they will be biased towards how they see things, even though they are people of integrity and honour.  My answer to your question is 'No'.  Even with the ongoing cost of Brexit for many businesses, we remain a very wealthy country.  The problem is always how we get that wealth shared out equitably - for social justice and climate justice.  Moving money out of HS2 into more responsible, useful and necessary spending to address transport oddities, poverty and climate is one example of how the Metro millions, too, can be used to benefit poorer pensioners and their children and grandchildren.

Transport oddities = mainline railways almost fully built and safeguarded but then never used or, used for the wrong things!

Money in one pot can easily be put in another pot, as we saw with HS2.  Do the same with Metro to get buses and trains more popular.

The 120 Kms between Worcester and Derby on the London to Edinburgh mainline railway, is being turned into a Light Rail tramway, a 2 Km Very Light Rail test track, a cycle-walkway, heavy rail trains and fresh air!

I am highlighting the regional disgrace of the 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway that links the above 120 Kms Black Country Railway in the DY5 Enterprise Zone, with NW Wolverhampton and the national canal towpath network.

The authorities will not finish, so we can actually use, these two major UK transport assets that WILL lessen the climate and nature emergencies.

Does this make sense to you, Bob?  Or, am I completely out of my mind ("ranting"), as Tony believes!