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.