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
No comments:
Post a Comment