Andy Street on the wonders that will come from the Dudley Tram - including TRAINS, once again!

This argument is the astonishing stupidity that comes from inheriting a network of railway lines, only 100 years old, but using them for roads, hotels, homes, trading estates and, since 1981, for tramways.  Our tramways were replaced by railways 200 years ago.  Fast forward to a past age.  Andy and Richard are the latest two smart guys, from the only two political parties we ever elect.  It actually reflects very badly on us lot!

"The Wednesbury to Brierley Hill line presents a tremendous economic and regeneration opportunity to the Black Country as well, which is demonstrated in the strength of the attached business case and the benefit to cost ratio of 2.5:1. It will align initiatives in employment, education, health and tourism along the 11km corridor, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. In terms of housing, upwards of 50,000 homes will be stimulated by the project, and approximately 170 hectares of brownfield land brought back into use.

"The project will dramatically reduce journey times along the corridor to the Curzon Station HS2 Hub, for example, the current journey from Dudley Bus Station to Curzon Street would be reduced from 65 to 40 minutes, and the scheme will more than halve journey times from the more remote stops along the route into central Birmingham.

"As you are aware, we are also working on a case for transferring the ownership of the line from Network Rail to the West Midlands Combined Authority which we think will help to ensure we are able to control costs and deliver to timetable whilst making provision for future national rail use of the route."  So how, precisely, do you do that, may I ask?  What a waste when you have to go back and take away all the trams people have got used to and convert the tramway back for railway use, once again!

FROM:

https://www.metroalliance.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/WBHE-Business-Case-June-2017.pdf

Andy's Forward to the Business Case, page 3                June 2017

Scandalous costs of the Dudley Tram is here

Thank you for writing.  Much appreciated.  Another request, please, to help save my 30 years of planting, watering and tending Nature with the knowledge of the different landowners and management companies over the years.  Photos, below.

While I'm writing, this if you feel able to say something, please to customerservices@tfwm.org.uk:

With all the interest in tree planting and nature, the scandalous £261.4 m for 1 Km of Metro trams must STAY on the former mainline railway down to Stourbridge Jct.

If TfWM must put the trams on the Dudley No 1 Canal embankment to destroy my 30 year old guerrilla garden, it MUST go on top of the embankment, next to the towpath, to reduce the impact on the trees, etc in the garden.

PHOTO:

Behind mostly my trees/planting is the rusty, metal sheet piling, as is seen on the left in this photo:

 Overview contrast.jpg

You can stop the tramway going slap bang through the middle of my fine guerrilla garden - PLEASE!  See:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

On the above plan, my planting is on the north side of High Plateau that was levelled for housing above the metal sheet piling in the 1990s when the canal was straightened.  This was when I started the vertical garden to cover the ugly, rusty sheet piling.

EVIDENCE:

FROM: https://governance.wmca.org.uk/documents/s20364/Wednesbury%20Brierley%20Hill%20Metro%20Extension%20Phase2.pdf

" ... on the delivery of the Metro extension Phase 2b totalling £261.4m.

Phase 1: Wednesbury to Flood St., Dudley

Phase 2a: Flood St, Dudley to Waterfront Business Park

Phase 2b: Waterfront to Merry Hill Shopping Centre

Phase 2c: Merry Hill Shopping Centre to Brierley Hill Town Centre

(FROM para 12.4 on page 8)

"Since rewriting and submitting the FBC and the SAF appraisal in May 2024 it is noted in this report the total projected cost of Phase 2a, 2b of the WBHE project remains at £654.9m."   END OF QUOTE from para 12.12 on page 8.

£655 m for 4 Kms (£164m/Km) is SCANDALOUS - and, to destroy a former, principal mainline railway (that should have been brought back into use by the year 2000 CE)!

For another £261.4 million for only a maximum ONE KILOMETRE (1 Km) of the route from Waterfront to Merry Hill, is SCANDALOUS!  And it is deepening the catastrophic Climate emergency instead of urgent mitigation, that is still not seen (apart from my house that is a warm home).

Another extract:

"SAF Change Request CR 123 12.6 In May 2024 a formal Change Request (Ref: CR123) was submitted for appraisal through the Single Assurance Framework (SAF) seeking: 

• Additional WMCA funding of £36m (CRSTS over-programming)  Indicates bad budgeting and overspending.

• Confirmation of additional request for £212.5m funding from Government   Indicates bad budgeting and overspending.

• Time extension of 5 years for WBHE (2023 to 2028)   Indicates delays, time wasting, inability to get a professional job done, incompetence.

• Reduction of track length by 0.6km for WBHE (omission of Phase 2c)"  Now, 10.1 Kms for exorbitant expenditure to wreck so much and to do so much idiocy.

Best wishes

We assist the dying to die for us and assist Israel to make the living die in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon

One people assist the dying who have chosen to do so and meet the criteria.

The Other people have their neighbour assisting the living to die when they want to live and, in peaceful co-existence and not to die in their tens of thousands.  HORROR, as we assist the living to die with our drones, weapons and ammunition.

CRIMINAL COMMISSIONERS

Each of the bloody useless Commissioners get well OVER, £1,000 per day. SCANDALOUS! How can they possibly spend so much money? I live off £15 to £20 per day including heating and eating, with the energy efficient, humble home I've lived in for 49 years. LIVE SIMPLY SO THAT OTHERS MAY SIMPLY LIVE - now and in the future.

Soak the rich to feed and keep warm the poor. Robin Hood economics, sustainable economics with ecology put first, central and last in EVERYTHING.

High Scam 2 because the only argument in support is fraudulent

It is dishonest to claim that HS2 will improve capacity/services on the intercity line when there might well be a poorer service because passengers travelling between London and Birmingham might well transfer onto the high-speed line to leave fewer passengers using the intercity trains.  Perhaps, same frequency but shorter intercity trains, so intercity passengers won't then lose out.

We must all prioritise:

We must all prioritise:

My concerns are over the Climate Emergency that you declared in 2020 but where actions are sadly lacking as we carry on with business as usual.

• Renewables are essential.  My wife and I have found that our solar array has given us a total energy bill of £48 for the last four weeks.
• Energy storage is essential.  We have a 14 kWp battery that takes cheap electricity in the early hours of the morning to use later in the day.  It helps to balance the grid​ that is important.
• Energy efficiency is obvious.  ​One way is to use existing transport infrastructure for their original design purpose and not wasting ​energy/resources or converting ​heavy rail to another transport mode!  What am I thinking of?!
• Reduce demand for energy is urgent.  That means NOT doing very nice but rather greedy luxuries like HS2, mixing up heavy rail and light rail, and not doing Sprint buses, the bus that thinks its a tram, alongside all the other transport modes between Walsall, Brum and Solihull.  Be content with two rather than four​ modes!

Assisted Dying for those who want to live - always ...

... but they are the ones who get picked off by the Democratic, Land of the Free and the Brave, Western bloc of nations!

My emphasis is trying to stop assisted dying for those who are getting it, without any choice in the matter, in war zones around the world, especially what our side is doing with our weapons in Gaza, Lebanon and Judea/Samaria (aka West Bank).

I'm guilty, too as a taxpayer funding the armaments from the ever so Righteous, Rules Based, International World Order (aka Us Lot!) to Israel that Linda and other friends, I know, flock to as a holiday destination and for pilgrimage to see the unHoly Land. Well, they did until 7 October 2023.  I don't think they've been since!

All the faith leaders (a few notable exceptions, like George Carey), it seems, are strongly opposed to the Assisted Dying Bill.  Yet, my own Halesowen Christian faith leaders (and other Christians) were notable for their absence when I joined the one million protesting in London in February 2003, just before Tony Blair and Gordon Brown launched the UK into the disastrous war that was totally catastrophic for Iraq and made everything worse, still to this day, for Iraq.

In other words, Gordon, in opposing the Assisted Dying Bill, was strongly in support of assisting the hale and hearty in the prime of life, many to have a painful and lengthy death.  Gordon was also strongly in support for bringing pain and suffering to the healthy children, women and men in Afghanistan for 20 years.  That was also so wrong and catastrophic for that country, too.  I think his daughter who died would not have been eligible if the Assisted Dying Bill was in force when the girl was alive.  His argument over his daughter is irrelevant.

I think, our military is a "state death service" when death came to the wholly innocent children and people under Gordon's tenure of the highest offices of State.  Tony and Gordon were/are hypocrites - more so than I am.

Our leaders always assist painful, lingering death in war around the globe for those who want to live but, oppose those who want to die relatively quickly with the least pain at the end of their lives.  Strange morals!

Not one Christian friend has ever supported my strong stance on non-violence as I have argued for in my blog and emails.  Only the very occasional Quaker I have come across and, of course, the Amish and the Mennonites.

FROM MY BLOG:

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

Assist dying for those who wish it and are terminally ill

I had prostate cancer in 2016/17 but survived.  Dying and death is a natural and normal event and need not be feared.  We don't have to suffer to the bitter end without morphine.  Doctors already administer it, anyway and, in the process, it does hasten death.  FINE!

Photos and maps/plans of Merry Hill

Photos and maps of Magnificent Merry Heaven, here:

This site is still down for housing on the other, west side of Dudley No 1 Canal from the tramway viaduct and shopping centre.  A possible SSSI with great crested newts that are found 1 Km north at the Fens Pool SSSI.

 Out of reach nature paradise at Dudley No 1 Canal at Merry Hill/Heaven.jpg

Photo taken from the towpath where the tramway will be built on the canal embankment:

 Possible SSSI at Merry Hill, next to Waterfront, Brierley Hill.jpg

This Swiss engineered monorail lasted 3 years in the early 90s but was very useful to take people into the very centre of the shopping centre at Central Station (still survives intact) but, stupidly, it was never connected to the mainline railway that should have been reopened for freight and passenger trains then!  It connected the Waterfront car park (free) to the main stores and those in the south.  Single track, suspended Von Roll monorail would, very likely, be cheaper to rebuild than the double track tramway that is a sledge hammer to crack a nut and is 100 metres from the main entrance to the shops, unlike the monorail:

 1990s monorail map.jpg

July 2020 prices here:

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

Please send, below, to customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com  and  customerservices@tfwm.org.uk    and  communications@metroalliance.co.uk

Very best to keep the Dudley Tram (aka WBHE) on the former, principal, mainline railway to Stourbridge Jct station to benefit the most passengers.

Second best: At Merry Hill SC minimise further destruction of Nature and Climate by putting the tram on the TOP of the steep Dudley No 1 Canal embankment, alongside the towpath from Level Street.  NOT slap bang through my 30-year-old guerrilla garden as planned, here:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

Metro tram planned to go across the steep embankment and straight over the rusty iron wall that I have greened up with climber plants and trees, as here:

 Overview contrast.jpg

The white trees could be saved if the tram went next to the towpath, on top of the embankment from Level Street, where there is plenty of room for the  double tracks.  My vertical guerrilla garden would also be saved:

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

PLEASE OBLIGE​, all you VIP decision makers.  THANKS!

Tim Weller

to Leigh Day

A secondary injunction to stop the 20 Kms on the same existing, ready-built, former principal mainline railway (not far from where HS2 is being built to Handsacre) from being turned into a cycle-walkway when, over the decades, tens of millions of pounds have been spent building bridges, flyovers and underpasses for passenger and freight trains.  Far better than dog walkers and cyclists using it to stop forever the return of trains!

1. A brief chronology of events, including dates.

1981  Metro tram network announced, to be rebuilt 20 years after completing the total destruction of the first tram network.  1980s  plan to get 200 Kms, 10  lines by the year 2000.

1990 Merry Hill monorail built but never connected to the Black Country Mainline Railway only 400 metres away.  It should have had its passenger trains returned then but it remains for freight, only.  TfWM/WMCA want trams, FIRST, only in order to get the full train service returned!!

1993 The Swiss built monorail closed and may still be in use in Queensland, Australia.

1999  First Metro line of 20 Kms opened.  19 Kms on the first mainline railway were destroyed to get the 20 Kms of trams.

2016  Metro tram on the Camp Hill line on the Brum to Bristol mainline railway was abandoned.  Half hour diesel service to be introduced but nothing appeared, so far!  3 railway stations are being rebuilt - very slowly!

2017  West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Mayor, Andy Street was elected and boosted work on Metro tram expansion, at the expense of trains reintroduced on the remaining 100 Kms of existing, unused or freight only W Midlands railway lines.

2019  Work on the ground finally started to destroy the UK's last principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" on the former and popular mainline (for 100 years) in the Black Country between London/Cardiff and Edinburgh.  It is called Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE), aka the Dudley Tram.

2019 WMCA declared a Climate Emergency.  Resolute intention to deepen the Climate Emergency with trams taking over buses and trains continued apace!

Jan 2020  Andy Street announced a £15 BILLION programme of works to build underground and overground tramways to 2040 of 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops.

2020s  Postponements, cancellations, reprogramming of Metro tram projects after dire financial constraints emerged.

 

2.  Confirmation as to what it is you want to challenge.

SCRAP Metro expansion programme and concentrate on getting car commuters, who clog up road space for six hours a day, five days a week and have them use Fare-Free Public Transport to free up road space for essential vehicle users - LIKE BUS DRIVERS!

 

3.  Confirmation as to what it is you want us to do for you (i.e.: what your goals are).

INJUNCTION TO STOP WHBE tram wrecking nature, public open space, housing land and my magnificent guerrilla garden.  Work on the ground starts in January 2025.  NO TIME TO LOSE!

 

4.  Confirmation as to how you would propose to fund any assistance (i.e.: legal aid, ‘no win, no fee’, etc.).  No win, no fee.

Assisted Dying Bill - and a boring something else. Guess what!

Dear Alex and Alex

My wife, Linda, came back from this morning's meeting full of praise for your excellently conducted gathering of the Church Faithful in the Shenstone Theatre.  Thank you for holding it.  I wish I had been there but, then I would have been tempted to say something.  I was out clearing a blocked public right of way in the pouring rain!

I go to church with my fantastic wife on most Sundays, where she is one of the leaders.  However, I do disagree with her on this issue and, over her trenchant support for our friend and ally, Israel with that country's really remarkable and unique, "most moral army in the world".  (Weren't you in the most moral army in the world, in Afghanistan, Alex?)  From Linda's report, it seems that most of those in the room were from the churches.  It is the evangelical wing of the Christian Church that is most enthusiastic for Israel and has been since its rebirth in Palestine after terrorism and aggression was rewarded in 1948 with her being allowed to keep part of the unHoly Land.  The Democratic Free World does not allow such largesse for the Other, Outsider countries who don't see things as we do with our morally upstanding Rules Based International World Order - that, from time to time, we conveniently overlook for ourselves, would you believe!

I also note that it is the evangelical Chrisians who are least bothered by one of our leaders of the Democratic Free World having a warrant issued for his arrest, by the International Criminal Court, for alleged war crimes.  They are more bothered by someone like me wishing to have a reasonably quick and pain free end to my  life.  In other words, the death of the unborn and extending life at all costs at the other end is far more important than killing the hale and hearty, like me (no longer) in the prime of life.

 

IN OTHER WORDS,

Don't let me finish myself off when I'm suffering and in pain on my deathbed, despite the very best palliative care but, you can finish me off at any age in your many wars around the globe (just from 1945):- Palestine, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Egypt, central America, Falklands, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Yemen, Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Lebanon ... !

I agree with Esther Rantzen and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey from what I heard on Radio 4.  Very fair and reasonable, I thought.

Perhaps read:-

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/22/what-are-the-key-issues-in-the-assisted-dying-bill-debate

Please send, below, to customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com  and  customerservices@tfwm.org.uk    and  communications@metroalliance.co.uk

Very best to keep the Dudley Tram (aka WBHE) on the former mainline railway to benefit the most passengers.

Second best: At Merry Hill SC minimise further destruction of Nature and Climate by putting the tram on the TOP of the steep Dudley No 1 Canal embankment, alongside the towpath from Level Street.  NOT slap bang through my 30 year old guerrilla garden as planned, here:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

Best wishes

Things have gone seriously wrong at 16 Summer Lane for many years - since the 1950s!

I have serious concerns, even though no-one else seems bothered

I expect I am the only one who writes to the TfWM/WMCA about these matters.

1. Only Albert Thomas, Richard Worrall and I use our right to attend your committee meetings as members of the public.
2. However, we are not allowed to say a dicky bird.  And, Albert and Richard are allowed to go straight up on arrival, I believe but I have to wait until just before the meeting before I am escorted up from reception by your good self.  This is to minimise my chances of approaching an officer or member to spill the beans!
3. At the end of the meeting, I am then quickly ushered out and away from the VIP top brass on the Committee - by your good self, Dan once again!  Officers and members must NOT be tainted by my (Trump) garbage.
4. Yet, Albert Thomas told me to "Fuck off" when I asked him to remind me of his name last Monday 4 November.
5. Before Covid, when he was Council Leader of Wolverhampton City Council and the Transport Lead, (name forgotten!) told me to "Stick it up your arse" when I invited him to take a leaflet from me.  Ignorance and intolerance are rife.
6. Many or, certainly, too many of your councillor members on all the WMCA committees and boards change once a year.  This means that no sooner do they get up to speed with their brief, than they are moved off altogether or, go on to a different committee or board.  Or, get voted off in a yearly election.
7. The members are meant to check, challenge and question.  However, many also hold down jobs or, are old geezers like me who are well past our prime.
8. Therefore, how do you expect us to read the most voluminous reports of great erudition, witten in professional jargon and in much detail?
9. In the summer, the seven leaders were presented with a 500 page report on bus franchising, I believe.  The Coventry leader, I think it was, said he would take a look at it in his summer holiday - by then too late.  The decision to continue the expensive process was agreed by the Seven (or, is it Eight with Richard Parker?) at that same full Board meeting!
10. Had the seven leaders actually agreed for the 500 pages to be written and the long, expensive process to franchising be started?
11. Or, was it an initiative started by your top officer(s) to make sure the W Midlands was not left behind by go-ahead Greater Manchester, with no approach to even a single Council Leader?
12. After 43 years of very well-intentioned endeavour started by your continuing and respected member, Cllr Phil Bateman, how is it we are still fragmenting two regional mainline railways into part tramways in a densely populated conurbation that needs important railway lines used for railway trains?
13. Understandably, I think, I am very angry that my 1990s vertical guerrilla garden, with the passive permission from all the owners of Merry Hill since the 90s, is soon to be wiped out, buried by your £100 million, 400 metre tramway viaduct.  It also destroys the rest of nature, public open space and housing land at Merry Hill.
14. The sensible, cheaper and less Climate damaging alternative is to keep the tram, from Flood Street, Dudley town centre, on the former principal mainline railway to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.
15. Your Top Director, Anne Shaw is saying that work on the ground (planning started in the 1980s!) will finally start in January 2025, to take the Dudley Tram off the railway line into the Waterfront.  Or, is this a euphemism for bringing the tram into Merry Hill, at even greater expense of taxpayers' money and even more tragic, unnecessary destruction?  As in these PHOTOS.  These trees, and much else on either side of the photo, get wiped off the face of the earth by the 400 metre, Climate worsening concrete and steel tramway viaduct:
    
     6 glorious white trees.jpg
    Most of the trees, below are my planting and tender care over the decades.  Nearly all will be lost:
    
     Overview contrast.jpg
16. I am now approaching Leigh Day, the solicitors with expertise in these matters, to seek an injunction from a Court of Law to put a stop to the Dudley Tram wreaking havoc on the land between the main car park at Merry Hill and the Dudley No 1 Canal.
17. The beautifully landscaped Level Street roundabout is also obliterated by the Dudley/Merry Hill tram because a further double track tram viaduct has to be built over the top of it.  See top right hand corner in their PLAN, here
    
     WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg
18. I am prepared to spend a maximum of £10,000 of my lifetime savings for judges to put a stop to the idiocy that trained, professional transport planners have been intent on since the 1980s.
19. About 1980 was when BBC 1's 'Tomorrow's World' first alerted me to what Climate scientists had been reporting since the 1820s.  Yes, the 1820s!  Do your research, as I have, if you don't believe me.
20. On Monday, 4 November, Anne reported to the meeting that she was "moduly agnostic" over the public transport mode that is chosen to be used to take over from buses.  In other words it could be any mode out of heavy rail (HR), light rail (LR), Very Light Rail or Ultra Light Rail (eg, Stourbridge Shuttle).
21. Why does a "bus on rails" (UK Tram Promotion Group at your own  HQ!) have to be used at all when we already have TRAINS for railway tracks and BUSES for roads?  USE THEM!  And, remember, Anne is "moduly agnostic", ie, she doesn't mind which transport mode is used - anywhere.
22. NO!  I think she should get it right - regular buses and trains, from now on, at least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe.
23. Don't spend £15 BILLION by 2040 (Jan 2020 figure) on 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops in the West Midlands when your accelerating Climate Breakdown has just been seen in Valentia, Spain.  And, fast melting glaciers in the high mountains of the planet!

Best wishes

to Cllr Andrew Burrow, Chair, Overview & Scrutiny, WMCA

Dear Andrew 

Thanks for the reply and for forwarding my email to Tim Huxtable who owes me a reply to an earlier email - please Tim.

My concerns are wide and embrace the Climate Emergency that you declared in 2019 but where actions are sadly lacking as we carry on with business as usual.

Is this because, for 40 years your top expenditure and most staff time is on the issue which takes the biggest slice of the budget pie - transport?

Out of transport, it is buses and trains being replaced by trams that has turned out to be the biggest and longest running expense and scandal in UK finance/transport history. Please read my summary of what has gone so wrong for so long:-

   40 short statements never corrected or even challenged

Do you now understand why Overview and Scrutiny must be involved, must be concerned and must be challenging, checking and questioning why you have had over 70 years of councillors and MPs destroying tramways, then railways and now rebuilding the tram network on what survives of the railway network?

All that money could have gone into putting trains back to relieve congestion at a fraction of the price that has been spent, since 1981, on rebuilding the tram network and failing!

All that money and effort could, and still must, go on helping the lowest incomes with their housing, food and energy needs - for the sake of Climate justice and social justice.

It starts with you and your committee, Andrew.

Assist dying for those who wish it and are terminally ill

I had prostate cancer in 2017 but survived.  Dying and death is a natural and normal event and need not be feared.  We don't have to suffer to the bitter end without morphine.  Doctors already administer it, anyway and, in the process, it does hasten death.  FINE!

Our side is killing many more of our fellow humans than Russia is

1948 can be seen as our side's 'illegal invasion and occupation' of Palestine.  Britain retreated from Palestine and relinquished the mandate in the face of two years of violence from the Jewish terrorist gangs.

The West and Israel should not have profited from an opportunity to gain territory out of aggression and by rewarding terrorism.

2014 saw Russia take back Crimea after over-enthusiastic Western/European/NATO fanatics overthrew the pro Russian and fairly elected President Yanukovych.

Western expansion into the largely Muslim Middle East (Israel taking, holding and expanding land in Palestine over 76 years), together with American/NATO wars over that time, must have seen much more death and destruction than Russia has inflicted all around the world.

RAILFUTURE SAYS on 10 November 2024:

"On the issue of connecting Dudley to Stourbridge Junction we do agree with you about the need to provide some form of co-ordinated transport between these two places.  Our preference is for this to be rail based and eventually we would expect the tram service to do so, whilst retaining also the possibility of heavy rail usage.  As an interim a VLR solution or even dedicated electric bus might be appropriate for some years so that connectivity was provided as soon as possible.

"I will certainly raise this with my committee when we next meet with a view to pursuing it with TfWM and/or WMRE." 

Dr Stephen Wright

Railfuture – Chairman, West Midlands Branch

This makes it clear that, as was the case in the 20th century, Railfuture want heavy rail, light rail and very light rail or, whatever is on offer - nothing has changed!

I want an injunction ...

... to stop the official policy of converting bus and train services into TRAMWAYS by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) and West Yorkshire Combined Authority.  200 years ago, UK tramways were being replaced by railways.  Present policy is backward, stupid, and is similar to our ancestors allowing the superb road network, bequeathed by the Roman Empire, to fall into wrack and ruin.

REASONS:

This enormous expenditure, since the 1980s in the case of the West Midlands, has accelerated the Climate Emergency, officially acknowledged by the WMCA by their declaration in 2019.

£ spent = lb weight in greenhouse gas emissions, as a very rough rule of thumb because of our addiction to finite fossil fuels.

Construction of W Midlands tramways is the second biggest expenditure per Km of any transport project after HS2.

That money should be going to help the lowest incomes with food and energy bills.

That money should be going to insulate/upgrade the homes of the poorest.

That money should be going for Fare-Free Public Transport and to make buses and trains as least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe.

TIM WELLER   0791 380 4363

So sorry to miss you this morning

Hi Andy

I go to more Sunday mornings than I miss, especially when Linda is speaking.  I would have forgone today's Sunday morning sunny walk in the wild Worcs countryside if I had known you would be at church.

My Christian beliefs have changed over the decades since I went on summer beach missions in my teens and 20s.  Now, I'm not far off 77 years.  I have always been a Christian believer in non-violence since watching the BBC 'Great War' series in the 1960s on the 1914-18 tragic, foolish, inexplicable war between the immoral European empires.  For me, the crime of imperialism (that brought the even more disgusting crime of slavery) that, in itself, is wholly contradictory to Christ's teachings, quite apart from the stupid warfare that is even more so.  I am a Conscientious Objector at all times, in peace or war and have been all my life.

I am horrified by the enormously high majority of believers who do not see it that way.  Especially, evangelicals who regard life at both ends of our time on earth as being of far greater preciousness than slaughtering the hale and hearty in the prime of their lives!

I do still love to go to church with Linda and to be preached to by our much loved and respected Leading Trio of Joy, David and Linda!  I love the karaoke element too but, for many years, have not been taking communion.  I let it pass me by to reduce my hypocrisy quotient.

More sounding off follows - or ignore!

EXTRACT FROM A BLOG POST of mine:

Pastor Michael Youssef of Atlanta, Georgia voted for Donald because saving the unborn is his more important issue, according to his interview on the 'Sunday' programme on Radio 4.

Why are the large majority of born-again Christian believers on the side of Israel, regardless of their War of Self Defence on the defenceless non-combatants, must be regarded as yet another War of Aggression, fueled by the Wicked Wild West?

Why is replacement theology denigrated when it is the State of Israel that is acting with impunity and contrary to the wishes of the international world order, certainly, to the Laws of the Sermon on the Mount?

AND, BELOW, SOMETHING ELSE!       WMCA = W Midlands Combined Authority

Monday, 4 November 2024

WMCA involvement in Lebanese/Palestinian slaughter

Dear friends

W Midlands businesses are selling/giving/subsidising drones and weapons of war to our partner, friend and ally, Israel to murder/kill/maim up to 50,000 children, women and men in the area of the unHoly Land since the 7.10.23 atrocity.

Israel, part of our Wicked, Wild West, is out of control.  And we are letting them get on with it.

What is the WMCA doing to stop it?

Why are you not issuing a statement/press release condemning our murderous behaviour and distancing yourselves from it?

What grants and moral support do you give to the despicable, disgusting W Midlands arms trade?

Or, are you guiltily silent?

Best wishes and every blessing to you and Mandy

Transport for Greater Manchester report extract = conflicts with ecology and Climate realities

Emerging priorities for new tram and tram-train lines, faster bus routes, and an underground service being considered to sustain long-term growth and economic prosperity

DO WHAT JAKE THRUSH ADVISES but use the existing Metro tram

JAKE ADVISES:

"This suggests that the feasibility of tram-train, from Stourbridge to Brierley Hill, and then onto Dudley, Wednesbury and Walsall needs to be explored further."

BUT, IF YOU IGNORE YOUR OWN JAKE THRUSH and persist with the WBHE into the Waterfront and Merry Hill, abandon the route along the centreline of the canal embankment at Merry Hill and choose the easier line along the top of the embankment next to the canal towpath.  It is sufficiently wide for a double track of standard gauge.

This can be achieved by bringing the tram onto the top of the canal embankment after it soars over the Level Street roundabout but before the Merry Hill tramstop at the top of the concrete steps down to the road.  Exit the tram off the TOP of the embankment by swinging it over the canal to bring it into Cottage Street.  My vertical guerrilla garden is thus saved, more of the housing land too and some of the existing Scots Pine.

HERE IS CONSENSUS - JAKE THRUSH HAS GOT IT!!

Dear Neil

WHAT JAKE THRUSH IS ADVISING, IN CONCLUSION BELOW (his 24 Aug 2022 report), IS VERY NEAR TO WHAT I AM SUGGESTING/AGREEING WITH!  JUST DO WHAT WE BOTH SAY!

We (Neil and I) had a chat yesterday about whether or not I had spoken to an Overview and Scrutiny Committee.  At the time I could not recall having done so.  However, later in the day it occurred to me that I had been granted an opportunity to say something to the committee both before and after Jake Thrush had written a report about why, after forty years of hard endeavour, it was still essential to put trams and not freight, commuter, regional and intercity trains on the 120 Kms former principal, mainline railway through the densely populated, one million population of the Black Country.  That train has long since departed the station!

JAKE WROTE, with my comments in blue:

Conclusions
1. While the option presented by Tim Weller could lower costs for the WBH extension, it would
not directly stop at Merry Hill and The Waterfront, two of the line’s main attractors. This
would impact patronage and thus the overall viability of the scheme.

So why, in the early 1990s, did you allow Don and Roy Richardson to build the monorail from very near to the freight and mainline railway at Round Oak (but without the rather vital connection!) and to take it into the heart of the shopping centre at Central station which is still there?

Why was the monorail only used for about three years?

Why was it never connected to the major Black Country Railway at that time AND, with the mainline brought back into use then?

Do you agree, it would STILL be much cheaper to reinstate the monorail than spend over £300 million on 5 or 6 Kms of tramway with a 400 m concrete and steel viaduct, a flyover at Level Street and two bridges with their diagonal crossings over the canal?

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

2. From 2021 assessments, the most promising option to link Brierley Hill and Stourbridge Junction is to share the live rail freight line from Stourbridge Junction to Round Oak terminal with a tram-train just stick to the tram now you have it coming down from Flood St, Dudley with freight at night and "passive provision" being built in and then proceed to join the Metro line to provide direct services without interchange to Merry Hill and The Waterfront without diverting off into the Waterfront and Merry Hill, you mean I think. This enables higher service frequencies to attract significant patronage. Light rail and Very Light Rail services would require a separate single line which would only give low frequency services, attracting less patronage. This suggests that the feasibility of tram-train, just call it the Metro tram now you have it, from Stourbridge to Brierley Hill, and then onto Dudley, Wednesbury and Walsall needs to be explored further.

TIM WELLER

Weller's Last Ditch Stand

Dear Cat - my plea, my last ditch stand, in blue

"You are Alex's constituent and I have reminded him that due to strict Parliamentary procedure, I can only take up issues from my own constituents."  Since the 1990s, although I live in Halesowen, I've been working by writing, texting, attending meetings, challenging Andy Street on Radio WM and at his 'Ask Andy' public meetings, pleading at umpteen Community Forums all over Dudley ... all to try and get you wonderful Stourbridge people, your very own former principal mainline railway up and running again.  To get your train connection north and north east to Dudley, Walsall, Lichfield, Derby, with stations reinstated.  Cat, please can you be your own constituent and the MP for yourself, to ask a Parliamentary question to Louise Haigh?

"I resent your suggestion that I haven't acted on this issue. I am doing a lot of work and research and reaching out to key people. You know I agree with you on the destruction of the land around Merry Hill.  THAT IS BRILLIANT AND REASSURING TO READ - THANK YOU!  Therefore, please tackle Louise in the Commons (and privately) over the idiocy and incompetence and the sheer scandal of spending over £1 BILLION for less than 11 Kms of tramway to wreck the UK's most important and last, principal mainline railway between London/Bristol and Glasgow/Edinburgh via the Black Country.

"Finally, I do not sit on the WMCA board and have no voting power in that forum."  Perfectly true, Cat but you are in a powerful position as the MP for your own home town.  Continue to be the first MP I have ever known who is jumping up and down demanding sensible railway trains on what is left of the 120 Kms Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby.  NOT FOR CYCLISTS, DOG WALKERS AND HORSE RIDERS BETWEEN WALSALL AND LICHFIELD!  200 years ago tramways were being replaced by railways.  We are going backward in time to the Georgian age!  And yet, TfWM wants the tram thinking it can be the catalyst for the freight and passenger trains to return all the sooner.  Honestly!  See below:

Letter from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro in the year 2000, 18 September of that year:-

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

A LIE, in fact.  And, it has never come in 24 years because TfWM/WMCA are obsessed with Metro trams - now 150 miles to 2040 costing £15 BILLION (Jan 2020 figure).  That money is needed to fight the Climate Emergency by helping the lowest incomes.

The full horror to entertain you, Cat is all enclosed in these 40 statements:

 40 short statements never corrected or even challenged

Thanks so much for acting to help your constituents preserve nature, public open space, housing land and my magnificent guerrilla garden at Merry Hill.

Please, don't let a Transport Minister sign off on WBHE Phase 2 this month or next.  Work on the ground begins in January, said Anne Shaw, Executive Director, TfWM.

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

Best wishes