Since 1981, STILL no desire to stop the destruction of over 500 metres of nature, public open space and housing land when, INSTEAD, there is available the London to Edinburgh mainline railway, through the heart of the Black Country, that MUST be used to connect with the national railway network. WHY NOTHING? NO INTEREST. WHY NO MOVEMENT? BY ANYONE?!!
Sunday 15 September 2024
Saturday 14 September 2024
Russells Hall Hospital pleas
Thanks, Ninette for the chat on Friday.
To summarise and as a reminder of my pleas!
- Please ask if one or two Sheffield stands could go where there is room between the hospital building and the low wooden fence I use at the moment to lock my bike to. E side of the main entrance. The maternity entrance has them and I have used.
- Please support and encourage the present cyclists to continue to do so.
- Is there any cycling allowance for staff using bikes on official Trust business?
- Please gossip to colleagues the importance of public transport and cycling in fighting the obesity epidemic and for the prevention of so many diseases that clog up the NHS.
- I cannot remember what you said about how you get into work from Pedmore or, do you work from home mostly, as I expect is the case?
- Please do what you can to talk up the importance of the 20 Kms Black Country Active Travel Route that runs so near to RHH but is unused by staff, visitors and patients (except ME!)
- Very important because it is so long, connects three major population centres, is already well used in South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton and must be the UK's only urban-rural-urban active travel route.
- It is important for commuting, business and leisure purposes.
- But it needs upgrading and modernising.
- Please join me in talking to Action Heart (Ann Welsh is so helpful and excellent, copied in here) at RHH about having a healthy heart through using the car less and active travel more. And, her people/patients using the Black Country Active Travel Route!
- You are welcome to join Chris Barnett and me for our Third Annual Walk Ride Cycle the Black Country Route on Sat 2nd or Sat 9th August 2025.
Friday 13 September 2024
Why Bus Franchising is Unnecessary, Costly and an Irrelevance when you have EBP
Why Bus Franchising is Unnecessary, Costly and an Irrelevance when you have EBP = Enhanced Bus Partnership
On the 'Today' programme on Radio 4 on 9 September 2025, Chief Executive of the Confederation of Passenger Transport, Graham Vidler said,
from 2:21:00 -
GUEST, Graham Vidler: "extra cost and extra risk with franchising."
NICK ROBINSON: Why extra cost and why extra risk?
VIDLER: "Extra cost because you need to transition from the current de-regulated market into a franchise market. You have all the contracts and the staff to change over, in some circumstances. You might also need to buy the depots and the buses. The risk comes both economically and politically because in most franchising arrangements it's the local authority takes the most revenue risk. So if passenger numbers are not where they expect to be, they and their council taxpayers take the hit. Equally, in circumstances where services are no longer viable, it is them that will be the sole person responsible for making that tough decision to cut or reduce the bus service."
"Buses account for two-thirds of all public transport journeys."
"We published independent research last week that showed the benefit of investing in bus service. Every pound government puts in reaps £4.55 in economic and social benefits so we think there is a very strong case in investing in the nation's favourite mode of public transport."
ROBINSON: Is the demand really there?
VIDLER: "Take Norfolk as an example, not normally seen as a hotbed of public transport, but what they've achieved over the last couple of years is a huge investment in extending services, cutting fares and giving buses more priority on the routes into Norwich bus station in particular. The result of that is a 16% growth in passengers over the last year. A really tremendous example, I think, of what can be done when local authorities, bus operators and central government work together and back Britain's buses."
FROM
https://www.cpt-uk.org/news/economic-impacts-of-bus/
"The research also confirms the value of public spending to improve bus services: Taking a selection of typical investments including alterations that give buses priority over other traffic on the roads, higher service frequencies, and lower fares, researchers calculate that every £1 of public funding spent on a typical package of measures can generate at least £4.55 in economic benefits, a figure that rises to over £5 for more targeted interventions such as bus priority measures."
Not just dishonest but murderous
Not just dishonest but murderous, resulting in the never-ending and dishonest War of Self-Defence by the West on Gaza and the Occupied West Bank for our side to have permanent ownership and occupation.
In this very one-sided war between USA/UK/Israel v Palestinians/Arabs since 1 January 1919, it is dishonest reporting to fail to point out that our side has killed/murdered many more Palestinians/Arabs than they have killed/murdered us, ie Jews and Christians and those of no faith. Zionism (a homeland for the Jews with them in charge as we have seen in the State of Israel for 76 years) seems to have been given a boost by the Dreyfus Trial when a wholly innocent Jew was found guilty and punished. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was there and wrote about the trial.
FROM
In 1895, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote in his diary:
“We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless
population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.” (America And The Founding Of Israel, p. 49 & Righteous Victims, p. 21-22)
Thursday 12 September 2024
Three 'Ways' all come and gone!
Thanks very much for the report of Tuesday's meeting. To clarify, I am not wanting trams off railway lines when they are now on them at a much greater cost to our purses and planet than using TRAINS!!
I am insisting that even the Dudley Tram must now STAY on the railway line to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct station and must not wreck over 400 metres of nature, public open space and housing land at Merry Hill to only end up in little known Cottage Street, Brierley Hill - not quite in the middle of nowhere!
I think it is urgent that we stop the billions now being planned for 150 miles of trams in the West Midlands and stop the tram network rolling out between Leeds and Bradford in West Yorkshire, that Mayor Tracy Brabin is working on. Like Richard Parker for us. Both are desperate for their own tram empires by 2040. The exact opposite of being Climate Compliant! The exact opposite of all that history has taught us of how these people love to build (first waterways, next tramways, followed by railways, back to tramways now as railways continue to decline from having the tramways built on them) only for them all to be destroyed in the years from 1945 to the present!
Monday 9 September 2024
My musings on Israel yesterday and today and forever(?)
We have the people of Israel to thank for the Ten Commandments over 3,000 years ago, for the quite outstanding Good Samaritan story and for the amazing, non-violent, Jesus Christ from Nazareth.
All three are at odds with their present-day practice. Such a pity that today's people of Israel have somewhat departed the Faith.
Yet, their own Hebrew Scriptures contain the most astonishing teaching over obedience to their God, Yahweh to slaughter their Baal-worshipping neighbours.
This century, our side is still slaughtering our Allah-worshipping neighbours of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan.
Nothing changes.
Sunday 8 September 2024
A fall in pride "for invasion, exploitation and occupation”, leading historian, Alan Lester has said.
FROM https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/sep/06/uk-history-survey-loss-of-pride-alan-lester
... there was a 22-point fall in the proportion of people saying they were proud of Britain’s history.
Prof Alan Lester, the editor of a new book on empire featuring guest essays from the eminent historian Liam J Liburd and the journalist Sathnam Sanghera, described the results as an “encouraging sign” that the public were becoming more discerning about Britain’s past.
“It shows an awareness that history is complicated, that Britons have done both admirable things and deplorable things in the past, and we need to break down history into the kinds of things that we see as sources of pride and those which we need to move beyond.”
He credits this shift in public consciousness to the Black Lives Matter movement and Britain’s changing demographics.
...
The Black Lives Matter movement was met by a ferocious response from the right, who attacked protesters and historians alike for interrogating Britain’s imperial past. Lester said: “Sathnam Sanghera wrote the foreword for The Truth About Empire, in which he talks about how unacceptable it is that we’ve reached this stage of fervent denialism about the past, and such a fervour about Britishness and patriotism, that historians just doing their job are being called woke and attacked.”
The historian David Olusoga had to employ a bodyguard at some speaking events; Prof Corinne Fowler, who co-authored a report for the National Trust in 2019, was often forced to call police for protection, and Sanghera stopped doing public events with adults due to the severity of the abuse he received on a regular basis.
The survey also showed a decline in the proportion of people who believed that Britain was better than most other countries, or that people should support their country even if it was in the wrong.
People were also less likely to express pride in Britain’s democracy, its economic achievements and its political influence in the world.
While the report authors note these survey results have happened despite Brexit and the toxic debates around immigration, Lester suggested they might be a reaction to it.
“Pride in the British political system and pride in the British economy have both taken a big hit. I suspect that’s because of disillusionment directly as a result of Brexit,” he said.
“People have simply had enough of what Brexit has done to Britishness, to the identity of Britishness and to the reputation of Britain overseas, and they’ve had enough of the hatred and the bile being directed towards people seeking asylum.”
Legal system skewed in favour of those with deep pockets
In an article for the Guardian in May, Bates wrote: “If the Horizon scandal has taught us anything about our legal system, it’s that it is skewed in favour of those with deep pockets.
“Large corporations can exhaust their opponents’ reserves – both in terms of finances and resilience.
“A prime piece of evidence for this is an internal Post Office memo, released as part of the current statutory inquiry into the Post Office, which only came about as a result of the findings of our original case.
“It is from Post Office lawyers pledging to: ‘stretch out the litigation process so to increase costs in the hope that the claimants, and more particularly their litigation funder, decide that it is too costly to pursue the litigation and give up’.”
Friday 6 September 2024
Honest reporting and nonviolence ARE the best policies.
I'm really disappointed by the inadequate, non existent response in condemning Israel's grossly OTT, nearly incessant air strikes and ground attacks, that are out of all proportion to what Hamas sends over the border. Anyway, after 11 mths of major firepower on Gaza, the Incompetent Defence Force is living up to its name in STILL not coming anywhere near to wiping Hamas off the face of the earth. And 76 years of completely falling to subdue its enemies.
Honest reporting and nonviolence ARE the best policies.
Over 40 years, Brum and Black Country councils have spent £100s millions of OUR taxes turning two mainline railways and bus routes into tramways. They are still at it - DESPICABLE. We must insist that that money is used to give highly energy efficient, solar powered, low cost homes to the most badly housed, urgently.
Greedy, glitz and glam, instead of mundane, boring buses and trains - the problem!
FFPT = Fare Free Public Transport
VLR = Very Light Rail
GHG = greenhouse gas
TfWM = Transport for West Midlands
Liverpool's Glider transport is like our TfWM Sprint buses - the bus that thinks it's a tram - that is being put, along with Metro, on the Walsall-Brum-Solihull corridor that is already very well served by buses and trains, unlike other areas that do not have trains on existing, already built but, not yet destroyed, railway lines. Their priorities need to be put right, methinks!
Priority One for improving our streets: Scrap Metro and Sprint and put all that money into financial inducements to bribe car commuters who do not need their motors for their work, to use the bus, train, tram or, to car share instead. So much money is being wasted on fancy, flash transport schemes instead of FFPT, as one essential, to bribe/reward everyone who uses bus, train, tram. Non-essential car commuters to free up road space for essential vehicle users - by rewards for doing what's right and penalties for doing what's wrong (driving into work when bus/train/tram is a 10 mins walk away to keep them active and healthy and blooming with rosy cheeks when they get into work fresh and ready for a day's work!!).
Priority Two - get existing active travel routes, including towpaths, up to scratch so we can actually use them, eg deal with the mud and the overgrowing vegetation on the UK's major, Black Country Cycle Super-Highway of 20 Kms between Brierley Hill unused railway station/mainline and onwards all the way to NW Wolverhampton and its canal towpath network, via Wombourne.
Priority Three - provide a cycle-walkway alongside all roads that do not have footways/pavements, where there is room, without narrowing down road space and so upsetting our precious motorists. Eg, Duncan Edwards Way, aka the Dudley Southern Bypass. One side is to have the tram because the former mainline railway has the VLR test track. The other side is grass verge for active travel. Nick McGork take note!
Priority Four - stop destroying railway lines and put TRAINS and STATIONS on them - for goodness sake!
Priority Five - scrap the tens of millions in price and in weight of GHG emissions going into bus franchising that will not make a scrap of difference to bus use when they already have the Enhanced Bus Partnership with the bus operators. This is where the bus companies get paid for socially necessary but unprofitable bus routes. I think that is fair enough, works really well with direct talks between Pete Bond/Jon Hayes and the bus companies. If the regs were changed there is no earthly reason why TfWM should not become a shareholder in National Express and Diamond. Much more sensible! Bus franchising means more bureaucracy and paperwork and less action/fewer results. There would be very much more money for lower fares, more buses, bus routes and trains back if Metro, Sprint and Franchising were all scrapped.
All the best
Wednesday 4 September 2024
To Lewis Goodall - a hustings Chair in 2024
My own questions:
- 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?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? PHOTO to show what is lost:Everything, and more out of shot, gets bulldozed between the Dudley No 1 Canal at the top of the embankment and, the road, below the bank.
- Dudley's top canal next to the planned Metro tramway, the Dudley Tram aka Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE).
- The remains of the magnificent monorail from the 1990s.
- The 22,000 sq m housing land, High Plateau, that is available but unused since the 90s.
- The rusty metal sheet piling and official attempts at hiding it.
- 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!
- The Waterfront marina and the nearby 120 Kms Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance".
- Green deserts that could be used to finish the Black Country Urban Forest.
- The possible SSSI on Daniels Land adjacent to the canal.
- MAP:
Best wishes
Sunday 1 September 2024
Rogue landlords like Brum CC
Hi Paul
I am writing because of your importance and skill in standing up for our working class and the most marginalised in Birmingham. You have around you a great crowd of people whom you are excellent in leading and inspiring.
For over 30 years I've been fighting, on my own, the idiocy, the immorality and incompetence of replacing bus routes and ready built mainline railways in Brum and the Black Country, with highly expensive Metro trams. On my own because no-one else seems at all interested - honest!
Your city council, the biggest and most influential with its Transport/Tram HQ in the city centre, has led the way to destroy or spoil transport infrastructure; trying to obliterate precious housing land, nature (to worsen the nature crisis) and public open space. So far I've been totally successful with the last three (housing, nature, public open space) and successful in helping (with all my writing) to save the Kings Norton, Kings Heath, Moseley mainline railway from highly expensive trams to build and, then, to subsidise, forever, in running them.
However, Brum CC and the WMCA are still intent with spending £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure) of our money on peripheries, on extravagant luxuries to make Brum a world class city like Paris, Milan and Tokyo with super-duper, prestigious, wealth-flaunting trams to glide, through more of our streets and front gardens in Hagley Road, in Birmingham (still their intention). Thus, accelerating the nature and climate crises and worsening poverty and housing conditions amongst our people.
That money from abandoning Metro and Sprint (the bus that thinks it's a tram) must go towards insulating the homes of the poorest tenants that the city council has, in order to comply with their own Climate Emergency Declaration of 2019. It must go towards forcing and helping all landlords in the private sector to spend money on retrofitting their properties to an energy efficiency standard to at least a 'B' rating. But the BCC and the WMCA must lead the way and must abandon their foolish and very wrong priorities over glitz and glam trams and Sprint buses everywhere. Then they will have the money and staff to sort out all the bad, cold, damp, mouldy and, ant/rat infested homes
Please read my
Getting decent, energy efficient housing to a 'B' rating must be the Brum led WMCA's top priority instead of 150 miles, 8 lines, and 380 trams stops for tramways in the W Midlands by 2040.
Do you agree, Paul? Can you and Acorn help, please?
Best wishes
First things first
What is the problem about spending our taxes on making existing cycle-walkways and towpaths fit for purpose by responsible shared use, active travellers, like me?
Get the existing provision up to scratch, first. Does that make sense?
Now you've got the Dudley Tram on the principal mainline railway
keep it on the railway, with freight trains at night, to Stourbridge Jct so that it connects with the national railway network.
On 8 March 2024 to Patrick Harley
Dear Patrick and colleagues
After 43 years of officers and members all intent on bringing extremely expensive, climate worsening, Metro trams to Dudley town centre and to Merry Hill Shopping Centre, you have got the tram to the historic capital of the Black Country. WELL DONE. Now, do not take it to Merry Hill.
All you have to do is to instruct Kevin O'Keefe and persuade your fellow leaders at the WMCA, of this:-
Dudley's Metro tram either terminates at Flood Street or stays on the former mainline railway line to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct and does NOT come off the railway at Canal Street, Hart's Hill to go into Merry Hill to boost that shopping centre at the expense of Dudley businesses. They must thrive and prosper and not Merry Hill that has free car parking and you now want to give them a grossly extravagant, prestigious, climate accelerating tram - FOR FREE!!
Support Dudley Traders who don't want the Dudley Tram taking their customers off to Merry Hill!
Best wishes
Thanks for the email Tim,
However as you are well aware this is an argument you lost a long time ago.
No one even in the rail industry is on the same side of your argument.
Metro will continue to Brierley Hill and will regenerate both Dudley and Brierley Hill.
Regards
Pat
Dear James (James Morris, my MP from 2010 to 2024)
Did Conservative Central Office write that reply of 'yours', my friend? How about directly taking on board my points and attempting a point by point rebuttal - please?
Could Central Office answer these questions please:
- After five months of intensive and, supposedly, competent warfare on Gaza, has the IDF finally stopped all the Hamas rockets and killed every Hamas fighter?
- 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?
- If not, how does Hamas in Gaza continue to acquire armaments and ammunition to still kill Israelis?
- From Egypt via the tunnels into Gaza?
- 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?
- 30,000 death toll of Palestinians. What is it for Israelis - please? 417 West Bank Palestinians; 15 Israeli settlers, all killed since 7.10.23 said Fergal Keane on 8 March on Radio 4
- When will the IDF (Incompetent Defence Force) go into the tunnels to bring out the hostages?
- Did the Incompetent Defence Force, themselves, shoot dead three hostages who were surrendering, stripped to the waist and with their hands up?
- 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?
- How many more decades will it take for Israel to defeat the Palestinians and bring peace and quiet to all Israelis - Arab and Jewish?
- Was it the Arabs who occupied the land of Israel from the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE to 1948 CE?
- Does that make it over 1800 years in Arab hands (or, certainly not Jewish hands)?
Thanks for the email Tim, Many thanks for yours - I think, the FIRST!
However as you are well aware this is an argument you lost a long time ago. You have never before heard my sensible argument that you do NOT gift the £650 m (2022 figure), 10.7 Kms, Metro tram on your mainline railway
to Merry Hill Shopping Centre that already has free car parking and the tram will take Dudley town shoppers off to Merry Hill by tram - much more fun and exciting than a boring bus!
No one even in the rail industry is on the same side of your argument. The rail industry loves trams on their railway lines more than commuter and regional trains. Throughout your political life, Pat you have fully supported the idiocy and enormous expense of turning the mainline railway between Snow Hill station and Wolverhampton into a tramway.
Metro will continue to Brierley Hill and will regenerate both Dudley and Brierley Hill. I have no doubt you will get your foolish way. However, you will go down in history as the well meaning but, sincerely mistaken politician who turned an even more important mainline railway into a piddling little shuttle tramway that is not even connected to the national railway network. Even when you have finished, the Dudley Mainline Railway will remain isolated and wasted at either end of the tramway on the railway!
Regards Best wishes Tim
Pat
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