Lunar Society historian, Richard Vinen

For the first time, for a Lunar Society meeting yesterday, I visited the luxury, extravagant, grandiose Edgbaston Park Hotel that is owned, managed and is on the campus of the University of Birmingham.

This, after reports of the most distressing conditions having to be endured by patients in our government run NHS hospitals.

It seems that the authorities have the money for the most wonderful university and college buildings to be built but not for simply decent hospitals and prisons.  The authorities should be putting the sick and the poor as their top priority and NOT our top academics.

My meeting was with the Lunar Society that in the 18th century had Brummie leading lights - Boulton, Murdoch and Watt - led the world in exploiting finite fossil fuels to bring us the industrial revolution for three hundred years and this century's frightening Climate Catastrophe.

The widespread declarations of the Climate Emergency has meant much of Los Angeles being destroyed in wildfires, unprecedented floods for the UK and Holyhead port, the UK's second busiest port closed for six weeks.

The speaker, yesterday was the historian of Birmingham, Prof Richard Vinen whose key word for me, in his talk, was "destruction".  Destruction of buildings and transport infrastructure.  Two Birmingham major city centre libraries have been demolished and the city is on its third library.

We are now on our second brand new major New Street railway station.  Two demolished!  The latest building cost three-quarters of a billion pounds.  The fine Victorian Snow Hill station also destroyed.  For decades, that station's platform Four has been out of use for commuter and regional trains.

All of this is a scandal, in my opinion.  Yet, knowing all of this, the UoB fully supported the biggest office building I have ever seen for a university and hospital railway station.  All that was essential was a platform that DID need to be three times longer than the old one and more ticket machines and staff at peak times.

It seems that the University Station had to look pretentious and prestigious to fit in with the other brand new university buildings. Yet, all the academics are unanimous in warning of the danger in burning up our remaining fossil fuel reserves.  Indeed, the Vice Chancellor of the UoB is Prof Adam Tickell who is, I believe, a nephew of Sir Crispin Tickell who wrote Margaret Thatcher's major speech on Climate in 1988 to the UN.

In 1977, while taking a sabbatical at Harvard he wrote Climatic Change and World Affairs. This was one of the first, and for at least a decade, the only book on the coming climate crisis, and what governments should do to prevent it. He argued for mandatory international pollution control, something that is finally taking shape. Margaret Thatcher credited him with convincing her of the science of global warming and the danger that it posed for the planet, which resulted in her speech on the subject to the Royal Society in September 1988. This brought climate change into the mainstream of British politics.