The UK was defeated by Israel in 1948 but they can't defeat the people they displaced!

Bear in mind that the UK is part of the Judeo-Christian West that allowed Israel to be rewarded for their 1945 to 1948 aggression by being allowed to keep the land of Palestine - then and ever since.  For 80 years, every government of every Western nation has been firmly on the side of Israel's never ending wars against the Palestinian uprisings.  Our side wins every time over the Palestinians with never any BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), until, very late in the day, this year - and this with a hopeless Labour government that proscribes Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation!  Sir Jonathon Porritt was one of the noble, brave 500, I'm impressed to say, who is threatened with imprisonment when they all go to court.

The evangelicals, some more extremely like Linda who is a Messianic Christian, simply echo the electorate and the governments they have elected since 1945.  We all allow Israel to always get away with murder for 80 years and to show favouritism to them in the preceding 45 years, too!  For 125 years in total.  Read Jeremy Bowen, 'The Making of the Modern Middle East', pub 2022, for the evidence.

Russia started in Kyiv 1,000 years ago!

 According to Martin Sixsmith, with Daniel Sixsmith, in 'Putin and the Return of History' (pub 2024).

OVERBOARD!

SUMMARY

Hubris, West is Best boasting and domination led to imbalance and Putin snapping in frustration and anger.

Much talk these days of overfishing our seas.  Less about overgrazing our land and even less about overdominating, overextending and overinfluencing other countries.

Earlier this month, in an interview with Nick Robinson, German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said that the West was partly responsible for Russia's actions and the Ukraine War.  Unfortunately, Robinson did not pick him about it.  However, I think he meant the EU/NATO has been overenthusiastic in stretching its reach and influence to the former Warsaw Pact countries.

An open invitation to the former USSR countries to join us, first in the EU and then in NATO, was not essential.  I think it meant that Putin, a very different man from his immediate predecessors*, was pushed to the limits and finally snapped in February 2014, after his 'defeat' in the Revolution of Dignity in Maidan Square?

Or, did Merz mean that it didn't help with good relations with Russia when there was German reunification?  What exactly was said to the Russians about E Germany and NATO eastern expansion?  That must have been the seed, the start of EU/NATO eastwards overreaching of itself.  No magnanimity, no understanding of Russian/Moscow nationalism exemplified in Putin.

The sanity of MAD in the Cold War could have been maintained in an agreed balance between Russia and the American-led West.

* like Gorbachev (who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991, Wikipedia) and Yeltsin.

Machine beats the Man!

Beat this for sheer craziness?  A 77-year-old codger on a 16” Brompton folding bike attempting cyclo-cross on public paths!  I decided on the 19 miles of the Monmouthshire Three Castles Walk, taking in three large, magnificent ruined castles - Skenfrith, White, Grosmont.  And, sticking exactly to the stiles, gates and footbridges on the 16,000 scale Yellow Map taken from the OS Explorer.

It’s the people you meet who make it memorable.  I had just set out and a lovely man was so encouraging in saying he greatly respected my giving it a go.  Another who warned, “There’s a gorge coming up.  You’re welcome to put the bike in the shed.”  “Thanks so much but I’ve been lifting the folded bike over stiles and gates.”  A 92-year-old was struggling up the lane to feed polo mints to his horse -  “I’ve had enough of life, now but, of course, I can’t do anything about it.”

The afternoon and evening took me four hours for my night in White Castle.  The bike was useful in zipping round the inside to find a sheltered spot under the high wall out of the wind.  I slept well in my bivy bag, more clothing put on but no sleeping bag.

On Day 2, I met a farmer on his quad bike.  I explained about a folding bike which he had never seen.  There followed the narrowest footbridge I had ever seen.  Up went the folding left pedal as I pushed the bike in front of me.  Followed by a long section through grass by a stream, over it by cottages, up a narrow path pushing the bike to a road.  But then the steep bank on the other side to a stile.  I was exhausted, I couldn’t do it.  But I had proved a Brompton COULD do it!

The evangelicals are so similar to the wider electorate over our great Friend and firm Ally Israel

Bear in mind that the UK is part of the Judeo-Christian West that allowed Israel to be rewarded for their 1945 to 1948 aggression by being allowed to keep the land of Palestine - then and ever since.  For 80 years, every government of every Western nation has been firmly on the side of Israel's never ending wars against the Palestinian uprisings.  Our side wins every time over the Palestinians with never any BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), until, very late in the day, this year - and this with a hopeless Labour government that proscribes Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation!  Sir Jonathon Porritt was one of the noble, brave 500, I'm impressed to say, who is threatened with imprisonment when they all go to court.

The evangelicals, some more extremely like Linda who is a Messianic Christian, simply echo the electorate and the governments they have elected since 1945.  We all allow Israel to always get away with murder for 80 years and to show favouritism to them in the preceding 45 years, too!  For 125 years in total.  Read Jeremy Bowen, 'The Making of the Modern Middle East', pub 2022, for the evidence.

The open-air prison and the open-air abattoir

I am so sorry that I have to send this but I have had no reply since I started writing to church leaders after the 7.10.23 atrocity by very violent Palestinian fighters (I have embraced non-violence all my adult life).

You are the very well liked and respected leader of the biggest and most thriving church in town.  I think you and your church leaders should be examining your consciences and beliefs over our own fellow evangelicals' actions in the UK, USA and in Israel in supporting Israel's war on the Palestinians.

Like my Linda and other Christian friends, you may not listen to the BBC or watch their news.  Perhaps, however, you might read my transcript from a BBC programme from last June.  At the close is a devastating, shocking indictment from someone who read it and emailed me.  I don't think there is any chance of him darkening a church door anytime soon.  Tragic but understandable:

"Thanks for that.  (I had sent him the above.)

I now understand how these God fearing people can be brainwashed into believing that it is morally right to persecute an entire nation in an open-air prison before slaughtering them in an open-air abattoir.

Jesus must be very proud of them."

What did you do about the Climate unravelling, Grandad?

Thanks so much for apologies sent or emails written - all very much appreciated and John C is doing such brilliant work in Balsall Heath, and with Brum leaders, over retrofit, eco-architecture and Passivhaus standards for buildings.

Keith, Kevin and I chatted for about 1 and 1/2 hours - (and Kevin paid for the teas - THANKS!).  We all find that changing minds amongst officers and members is well nigh impossible or, even getting an acknowledgement let alone a reply.  John C, however, did get a brilliant and lengthy reply from Customer Services the other week that he sent me.  Well done, John C!  I've just recalled a 'Geraldine' wrote at some length to me, too - not to be outdone!!

But on reflection in writing this, I do think that we simply have to persevere with our feedback.  It may not always be welcome but at least it shows them that a few of us ARE interested and watching them!

I thought that Keith has had great success in Coventry, over the years, in meeting with top people and presenting his thoughts to them - for their edification.  So although nothing seems to change, none of us are letting them get away with anything that we know is plain daft or, more importantly, so Climate denying that it simply accelerates the Climate Emergency and deadly GHG emissions.

Kevin has kindly said he'll meet me next week at 16 Summer Lane at Transport/Tram HQ.  The idea is that the two of us turn up at Reception and ask to see Dan Essex, Governance Services officer who always comes down and will speak to me and accept any piece of propaganda I have!  We'll ask if he might arrange a meeting for the two of us with two senior officers on green hydrogen and rail/road/retrofit investment - and see what he says!

For me, doing what I can is one way to ease my conscience when my grandchildren might say, "What did you do, Grandad", when the Climate is unravelling before our very eyes, right now.

Rebecca Singerman-Knight of Kingston Liberal Synagogue

Who was your lovely woman who spoke up for the starving Gazans on 29th June?  What a fantastic woman!  Tim Weller

Tuesday, 1 July 2025

Our evangelical friends want the lot - from the river to the sea and more!

TRANSCRIPT

Yesterday, 29 June 2025, Radio 4's 'Sunday' covered Israel's war on Gaza.

"500 people killed and 4,000 injured.  Those are the casualty totals stated by the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza for people waiting to get aid from the American and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation."  Thought to be registered in Delaware but, from the address given, it was not found there.

Some evangelicals believe the Lord's coming is linked to the fulfilment of Israel taking land and the warfare that is inevitable in the unHoly Land before Christ's return.

An excellent woman, a former co-Chair of Kingston Liberal Synagogue and recently suspended from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, spoke so well.  She said she really loved Israel, was a proud Zionist but was deeply critical of the actions of the current government which was being governed by the extremists in the governing coalition.  She said she is speaking up against the horrendous actions that are taking place in Gaza because of the extremist elements in the Coalition.

The evangelical Christian, Rev Johnnie Moore who is Executive Chair of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Delaware, was referred to.

Author of 'Before the Religious Right', Gene Zubovich said,

"Johnnie Moore is a protege of the religious right man Gerry Falwell Snr (from the 1970s).  Moore believes in religious Zionism.  Most evangelicals believe that the restoration of Israel/Palestine to the Jewish people must precede the Second Coming of Christ.  The technical term for this is premillennial dispensationalism.  Evangelicals believe that history is divided into distinct eras or dispensations and they also believe that a lot of suffering will take place before the millennium.  Hence the premillennial part.  So because evangelicals believe that the restoration of Israel/Palestine to the Jewish people must precede the Second Coming of Christ, they have historically supported Zionism.  Evangelicals view the events of the Middle East and the conflict that is happening there as a confirmation of their prophecy about the End Times.  So their theological beliefs have very much driven their Zionism."

"Johnny Moore is very close to Donald Trump ... He picks and chooses who gets invited to meetings with Trump.  So somebody with a lot of access and political power in the way of connecting evangelicals to the Trump administration."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002f6n9

Eco-transport Committee

Thanks Kevin for telling me about the 16 Sept meeting that I have contacted Helen about.

Thanks to Keith for saying he will come tomorrow.

Thanks to John N for his invaluable insights and link to Bridget.  I suspect/fear that she has always been a big supporter of HS2 since its tragic inception in 2009 (Andrew Adonis and George Brown to blame).  And, therefore, she also wants its little sister Metro that is an even longer and bigger fiasco of non-appearance on the transport scene.

John N wrote, "What's important is that we don't fight old battles (I am thinking of you Tim!) "  I'm only too glad of, and want to be corrected, always - by anyone, please!  For me, the old battle of 80 years of bulldozing or selling off one-third of the railway network to any old Tom, Dick or Harriet continues apace today.  I got involved 40 years ago, insisting that we don't need to reinvent the wheel with buses on railway lines on roads and on mainline railways.  Just use existing buses and trains and make them as least as good as the average on the mainland of Europe.  SEE this that I want:

 Image of hydrogen train 01.pdf

 Image of hydrogen train 02.pdf

I helped to save the one mainline railway that is now taking many years to have its three stations rebuilt - Kings Heath, Moseley and Pineapple Road on the Brum to Bristol mainline.  However, the other two mainline railways have gone for trams, a VLR test track innovation centre HQ, a dog walkers' paradise and fresh air.  But that still leaves getting on for about 100 Kms of double track railway unused or freight only in our region - alongside or near to congested main roads and motorways!  See this revealing map of wasted you know what!!

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

The attention and the billions is always on Metro trams, Sprint buses, VLR trams and, now guided busways for Hagley Road.  Why not FFPT and ...

 Bus and businesses at the centre of a virtuous circle

9 POINTS WHY METRO IS ESSENTIAL, here:

 A SOLUTION LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM

 A SOLUTION LOOKING FOR A PROBLEM

See Kevin, Keith and anyone else tomorrow at 11.  I'll buy the drinks!  We must see how we can do what John N wrote, "Would it too much to suggest that the WMCC asks to be in communication with Bridget Rosewell or one of her staff? We could write something and/or meet with them."  John N, please could you write/call because I seem to be getting rebuffed, refused, blanked out!?

Act of Oblivion

I've just finished the 550 pages of Robert Harris's best historical novel - my 5th. An extraordinary piece of both scholarship and gripping reading to the very end - only on the last page is everything resolved. Twists and turns in the story, such that I never knew how Harris would end it. How does the man do it? 'ACT OF OBLIVION' is an act of sheer genius!

Sentence by sentence rebuttal requested

Dear Dan

In our last phone call you insisted that it was down to my opinion being different from the Transport experts at 16 Summer Lane.  I think you meant that my conclusion from the evidence over the last forty years is different from theirs.  Please ask that someone like Toby Rackliff at, I believe: Toby.Rackliff@wmre.org.uk might, perhaps, answer these three different ways of putting the same thought, below.  And my arguments with the photos, too further on for rebuttal - thanks!:

By the way, the Mayor's transport man on his Council of Experts Taskforce is Alistair Crisp who is "Sustrans Network Development Manager – West Midlands

Accessibility Lead | Midlands & East
Co-Chair of the Neurodiverse and Disabled (NDnD) Colleagues Network"

He wrote to me, earlier this week:  "In line with my agreement to sit on the West Midlands Journeys for Everyone Taskforce,  I cannot speak on the taskforce's behalf without prior agreement. I'm also mindful that public transport is not my specialism, this being walking, wheeling and cycling. "  (my emphasis)

In other words, the Task Force Council of Experts does not include an independent, all round, transport expert.  May I suggest Mat Taylor?
Mathew Taylor, owner of CNNCT LTD, has over 30 years experience in providing advice and support to clients and projects all over the world.
Protecting investments through excellent cost consultancy
https://www.cnnctconsultancy.com/    email:  

mt@cnnctconsultancy.com

Could he be considered for the Task Force Council of Experts?

MY POINTS FOR REBUTTAL:-

Are trams effective in getting car commuters onto them, when they would not do so if it was bus or train?

Are there more cost-effective ways which are better at reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

Where is the evidence that building tram networks on roads and railway lines gets car commuters to use public transport, rather than bus/train users switching to the new, swanky tramway?

Toby has known me for many years.  I think it was in 2013 that Toby, Peter Sargant and I met at 16 Summer Lane.  Nearly twelve years, then!

Are trams effective in getting car commuters onto them, when they would not do so if it was bus or train?

Are trams effective in getting car commuters onto them, when they would not do so if it was bus or train?

Are there more cost-effective ways which are better at reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

Where is the evidence that building tram networks on roads and railway lines gets car commuters to use public transport, rather than bus/train users switching to the new, swanky tramway?

PHOTOS: Easy to understand why trams are naughty but nice!

Your blog post, 'Trashing Nature Pouring Concrete' is excellent.  Do you support my suggestions, here, Jonathon?

Very nearly every tree, shrub and plant is now wiped out in this photo.  Those in the corner, almost off the picture, survive.

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

This was done to bring trams on the UK's last, existing (not now because of trams arriving for Christmas!), principal mainline railway of ...

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

... that will bring trams to the major shopping centre in the Black Country, previously served by a monorail taking shoppers into the heart of the stores. The tram will leave them well over 100 metres from the main entrance.

Out of 3 West Midlands mainline railways down for trams, this one is the most important: 

The first was destroyed in 1999 for Metro One and the second was going to have trams until that decision was reversed in 2016 to return the previously successful commuter trains.  However, this is still not achieved after 9 years of three stations still being rebuilt.

Photos of the 2003 railway bridge (plans for a cycle-walkway, now!) over the London, Black Country, Edinburgh mainline railway near Brownhills, Staffordshire:

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

One track nicked by metal thieves!:-

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

There are tram networks or extensions planned for Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, West Midlands, Edinburgh and Nottingham.  Railfuture and the Campaign for Better Transport has always fully supported trams and HS2 and FoE, too but, not quite so enamoured.  Both modes must have vast quantities of very high GHG emitting concrete poured, and steel, to build them.

I think, the billions being spent on both modes could be better spent on Fare-Free Public Transport (as I've had for 17.5 years!) electric buses directly on roads without the railway lines having to be laid in concrete in the road for the "bus on rails" tram.  "Bus on rails" was the phrase used by the UK Tram director when he was interviewed on the 'Today' programme in November 2016 at the time of the Croydon tram crash - "of 69 passengers, there were seven fatalities and 62 injured, 19 of whom sustained serious injuries." (Wikipedia)

UK Tram Ltd has its HQ in the Transport and Combined Authority HQ in Birmingham.  Vested interests, improper influence, collusion all leading to corruption!

Tram construction is the second most expensive transport mode to construct after HS2.  In addition, the subsidy every year for the Metro tram on 23 Kms is only slightly less than the subsidy for buses over 100s of miles in the West Midlands.

Cost in price = (or far worse) similar environmental cost from deadly GHG emissions because of our addiction to finite fossil fuel burning to maintain our so entitled, high-energy lifestyle.

Please explain, Jonathon, why I am wrong and you are right.

Best wishes and thanks for all you do on the ecological, environmental and social justice front (your brilliant stand over Palestine).  You have my full support but, why is George Monbiot believing nuclear/fissile fuels is the lesser evil than finite fossil fuels?

to John Christophers

Hi John - you are welcome to please send this to TfWM, for their response and as coming from me, if you wish.  Just delete the sentence with your name in it or, better keep it in!

Their approach to determine the best transport mode is all hot air - meaningless, irrelevant and all style over substance.  A solution looking for a problem.  It gets us nowhere and makes Climate even worse!

Thanks so much for writing to TfWM and for their update.

I can assure you that what is written to us, yet again, about the Digbeth to Solihull extension is what they have told me over the last 44 years of work in getting the, supposedly, 200 Kms of Metro lines by the year 2000.  Yet, NOT 200 Kms but only 20 Kms by that date.  Since January 2020, very nice Andy Street promised us 150 miles by 2040, with 380 tram stops and 8 lines.  All for £15 billion in price and in weight of GHG emissions.  Richard Parker's policy is exactly the same.

Up to now, their very assiduous, careful and so, seemingly, professional approach, as described in the email to you, has achieved precisely 23 Kms of tramway.  The 1999 delivered 20 Kms of Metro One has destroyed a perfectly good mainline railway between platform 4 at Snow Hill station and Wolverhampton Low Level station that, as a result, is now a conference and events centre.  It would have been obvious, even to a primary school child, that with an existing, double track railway line, railway trains should go on it.  It does not need decades of expensive work by well paid, fully trained transport experts to decide that our two mainline railways should be converted to tramways at many times more expensive per Km to construct than simply reinstating railway trains and stations.

All the politicians and transport experts agree that the more different kinds of transport modes that can be provided, the more superior the public transport becomes.  The more the motorist will be impressed, find it so irresistible that they will desert their motors and pour onto the fabulous, multi-modal public transport of five rail modes and two bus modes.  That has never happened in 44 years of hard endeavour of over promising and under delivering.  Not just under delivering but destroying two mainline railways in the process.  Totally counter productive!  In fact, incompetence.  Or, am I being far too harsh on them, John?

The full horror story of idiocy and incompetence - a fun read but true and not exaggerated - is here:

 Trumpland Transport in the West Midlands since 1981

The well intentioned but absurd over provision of different transport modes between Solihull and Brum city centre is listed here:

 Is this investment somewhat extreme

What Network Rail and Department for Transport think is here - but nothing changes!:

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

Thanks so much, John for writing.  Your position in society, your status and the respect you are held in Brum, makes your opinion a hundred times more valuable than mine.

to Cycling UK

Hi Connor

Thanks so much for getting back to me.

I am not wanting funding from yourselves but from Active Travel England and West Midlands Combined Authority (Beccy Marston)!  However, your action, please, to get the missing NCR number for easily the UK's most important, business, commuter, leisure route in the very middle of England, with its over 2 million West Midlands population!

Very important because it is an urban-rural-urban cycle-walkway connecting three large council areas on two unused railway lines.  Yet, after all these years of asking the authorities and yourselves there is still no interest - apart from one excellent former Labour councillor (climber and big cyclist) who has identified a superb circular route to take in three of the four Black Country boroughs and the 2,768 metre long Netherton Canal Tunnel, with its slum disgrace of a flooded, pot holed towpath.  His circular route includes our 18 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway!

I've even had a phone conversation with Duncan Dollimore but, still nothing!  Duncan does not agree with me over its importance and scandalous neglect.

Very important because it is longer than the 1970s Bristol to Bath railway path and, it was made into a cycle path I think in the 1980s, certainly in the 5 Kms Dudley section and has been neglected ever since in Dudley by Dudley MBC.  Now it is a dirt bikers, quad bikers, 4x4 paradise after the drought this year!  Law-abiding active travellers get inconvenienced and even excluded because of the dirt bikers brigade and 4x4s.

Very important because South Staffordshire District Council has, this year completed the tarmacking of their section through Wombourne town.  Everyone is delighted!

Easily the most important cycle-walkway because even famous John Grimshaw (founder of Sustrans) and Caroline Levett have ridden it and agree it must be an oversight regarding the missing NCR number.  That was this year, on the 24 March but nothing since then, even from them and their Greenways and Cycle Routes organisation!  Never a reply.

Very important because it has so many names over its 18 Kms length, plus three nature reserves, two cafe in two Victorian railway stations and a Woodland Trust property.  All it lacks is the King coming up from the Palace to walk, cycle or horse ride it!  Part is called the Monarch's Way, too, after a previous King Charles (no 2)!

Best wishes

Tim  (walker, cyclist, whistleblower)

Is this investment somewhat extreme?

'Improving' the transport between Brum city centre and Solihull by accelerating the Climate Emergency:

• Building the UK's 5th mode of rail transport, a high speed railway when it already has the fourth mode, heavy rail.*
• Spending tens of millions in price and in weight of greenhouse gas emissions for the bus that thinks it's a tram, called Sprint when it already has regular buses.
• Spending billions in price and in weight of GHG emissions for superduper trams when it already has a good bus service.
• The UK tram promotion group (at WMCA HQ) calls the tram a "bus on rails".  Therefore, the third bus service and two different kind of railways over a distance of 12 Kms.

"Ah, but you are wrong, Mr Weller.  The three new modes of transport go through deprived areas of transport and poverty."

And multi-modal transport is a GOOD THING.  Our Andy Street says so, echoed by our man today, Richard Parker.

NOTES:

*Ultra light, Very Light Rail, Light Rail, Heavy Rail, High Speed = five!

What goes on which?:

The forgotten Capital Railway through the heart of the Black Country.

Sutton Coldfield Railway is freight only.

Kings Norton to Grand Central station was down for Light Rail Metro until 2016!  But still no commuter trains!

Comments from Israelis who read Haaretz

 there's no rising antisemitism in the world, there's only rising criticism of israel, the most dangerous place for jews.

Would you want to come to a country where the government is gangs of Cossacks united by their ability to extort the Chief Hetman who will do anything, including send your children to battle, to stay out of jail? Where the Justice Minister changes the locks of the office on the Attorney General?

"Growing antisemitism is not driving Jews out of their countries, as Israeli immigration officials had predicted" - "had predicted", or had been expecting? Considering that there is an official and concerted strategy of sowing fear about increasing antisemitism abroad by conflating it with criticism of Israel's policies, could we infer that this campaign is part of a deliberate overall scheme to attract more settlers to Israel at a time when more land is intended to be grabbed from the West Bank and Gaza, like the two sides of the one coin? A wild thought, perhaps, but could Israel be that sick, manipulative, and treacherous towards Judaism? It has already sunk so low that this would hardly be surprising...

My comment was deleted but I can back up every word I said with either a Haaretz.com article or documentary by a global media. Why do you ask me to not believe my own eyes? For you who were born in the UK, France, Germany..., you know it is illegal to steal somebody's else land but you choose to partake in it in Occcupied West Bank, that you call J and S. I ask you: why? Why are you not doing it in France for example? Were you refraining yourself all the time. Unless you were faking your western values all the time? If you are stealing someone's land for religious reasons then you are violating the Ten Commandments already. The Land was promised to Abraham' s seed. But did he no buy land for a place to bury Sara ? So yes you are stealing . In your racial rage you even say Palestinians and Palestine never existed. That is the real genocidal rhetoric.

Reply to comment

"The Land was promised to Abraham' s seed." Yes! What people tend to forget is that the Palestinians/Arabs ARE descended from the seed of Abraham – through Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar! QED!

Why do trade union, left wing, environmental groups find it impossible ...

 ... to meet with and have a discussion over all of our mutual concerns with the actual decision makers at TfWM/WMCA HQ at 16 Summer Lane?

A plethora of great groups from Acorn, through pensioner groups to West Midlands Climate groups but never any attendance at meetings that the public are entitled to attend.

Why am I the only one?  Although I've had a break this year.

Am I the only one who has actually met with individual decision makers at 16 Summer Lane?

Am I the only one who thinks that to slow rather than deepen the Climate Emergency, we want the decision makers to minimise their spending on the wrong things?

What are the wrong things?

Would our respected Bob Whitehead's list, here help?

Will anyone else join me at a WMCA meeting in September?

TIM WELLER

We always have to be the world democratic dominant bloc - and definitely over Putin and Hamas!

Since the 2nd millennium BC, when the people of Israel committed aggression, the Lord God of Israel rewarded them with victory and ownership of the Land. 

In 1948, Yahweh gave them victory over the biggest and mightiest Empire the world has ever seen. With God on their side they won every war since 1948 - but they are STILL not living in peace and security. Their enemies remain surrounding them.  Tragic, unhappy Israel.

The mightiest, WMD-equipped, regional super-power still can't exterminate Hamas. Is the IDF simply incompetent, I have to ask myself?

Israel even has Emperor Trump backing them to the hilt.  He was saved, indeed by the Lord God Himself but, they still can't wrap up the war in a glorious victory to achieve the Greater Promised Land from the River to the Sea, as the Likud Charter puts it as their objective. Quite shameful failure, this time.

For the first time in over 3,000 years, under the most ultra-nationalist, right-wing Government, Israel has ever seen, they may be incapable of winning this never-ending, insurgent-led war (cf Vietnam War). Even with every modern military piece of kit supplied by the Judeo-Christian, American-led West.

What is the matter with our Bibi and his friends?  I started reading his autobiography when I was with some lovely Messianic Christian friends, of whom Linda is one.  All three are very pro-Israel.  Yet, I was disappointed that even after Mosad received reports of suspicious-looking, even suggested military activities, over the border in Gaza, prior to 7.10.23, the arrogance, complacency and disbelief of Bibi's Government, meant they still did not act.  As Head of Government, Bibi lacked the integrity to do the honourable thing and resign as the one responsible for this very serious and horrific security lapse.

Israel and its Judeo-Christian, American-led, Western allies have made enemies throughout the Middle East with their grasping of Arab oil to fuel their 20th-century wars; with their military bases on holy Muslim soil - the most mortal sin imaginable for some Muslims like Osama bin Laden.  Such men were appalled at the moral decadence and immorality, as they saw it, of the 'Christian' West.  We rarely were a good example with our democratic duplicity, democratic double standards, democratic coercion, force and violence and, in effect, giving ourselves a democratic American/European base in the heart of Muslim/Arab country as a blatant reward for their/our side's aggression.  We have not covered ourselves in glory over the last 125 years in the Middle East.

My jaundiced view of Christian ethics as actually practised and, of British behaviour around the world, was not helped by my reading and re-reading of Jeremy Bowen's 2022 book, 'The Making of the Modern Middle East'.  Measured, fair, accurate and always a seeker after the truth, the true facts.  And, like Sam, yourself and me - Bowen is also happy to be corrected!

Bishop Nick Baines has it dead right, again

My point is simple. The problem of the human bias to destructiveness is evidenced in religious conflict and the lust for power at any level. It is not cured by rationalism. How is that the culture, philosophy and idealism of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, etc. was so easily corrupted within a century or less by a populace drawn to populism, fascism and mass slaughter?

If the bloodbaths of religious wars in Europe led to a better way, then that better way also led to Buchenwald and the Stasi. Now listen to the rhetoric of the far right wing groups springing up in Germany and across Europe, blending the language of dehumanising hate under the guise of “cultural realism”.

https://nickbaines.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/the-fragility-of-civilisation/

Nick Baines on good governance in Germany

I was in Vienna recently and saw something that sums up the challenge of Germany in the last century. At one end of the Judenplatz is the haunting Holocaust Memorial by Rachel Whiteread; facing it, twenty metres away, is a statue of the philosopher, poet and Enlightenment hero Johann Gottfried Herder who re-shaped German education and culture. The question that cries out is this: how did Germany go from Herder to Hitler in a mere century?

This is the question that Germany has been unable to escape in the last seventy years or so. Walk around any German city and you will find yourself stepping on small brass plaques in the pavement bearing the name and dates of Jews deported to their deaths from the houses before which you now stand. They are everywhere – and they are called Stolpersteine: stumbling blocks that get in your way and compel you to face responsibility for what happened to your neighbours only a generation or two ago.

Because of its history Germany has had no option but to confront its past and choose its future. Yet, as time moves on and memory becomes history, revisionism becomes easier for some people. Recent changes in the political landscape come on the back of concerns about immigration in general and Islam in particular. Yet this phenomenon was almost inconceivable only a decade ago.

What it demonstrates is that human beings all too easily re-shape their worldview according to the world they now live in. We can accommodate all sorts of challenges to our ethics … until we find their foundation has been undercut and we have given away too much. Perhaps history teaches us that it is not a big step from ‘every human being matters’ to ‘some matter more than others’ to ‘these are not really people of value’.

If you go into Berlin Cathedral and look up at the dome, you will see in gold lettering words from the Lord’s Prayer: “Dein ist das Reich” – “Thine is the Kingdom”. I have sat there and thought of the generations of people – from the Second Reich through Weimar and the Nazis, through the GDR and the now-reunited Germany – and wondered what Christian worshippers thought that meant. And how could they so easily confuse the Kingdom of Caesar with the Kingdom of the Jesus we read about in the gospels? Whose Reich/Kingdom do we really serve?

The question goes to the heart of how human beings make sense of themselves and the world – and whether, when the heat is on, the foundation of our ethical frameworks is as sound as we like to think it is. Humility, generosity, loving your neighbour, protecting the weak – or self-preservation at all costs?

Every generation faces the same question. So does every nation.

Thought for the Day extract from Bishop Nick Baines

Every day in Parliament begins with the Lord’s Prayer. It will be said daily by millions of Christians and in most church services. But, how we say it reveals what we really think it means.

So, for example, should I stress “Your kingdom come” or “your kingdom come”?

I think it should be the former, with the stress on the “your”. Why? Because there are plenty of other kingdoms on offer and vying for dominance. When Jesus taught his friends to pray this way, you could get executed for claiming that anyone other than Caesar was ‘the Lord’. To pray “your kingdom come” was potentially – or maybe even essentially – seditious.

This isn’t a merely religious question. Whose kingdom we choose to serve has real-world consequences. For some people, it means protesting against the state or the law, thus coming into conflict over what they believe is more fundamentally right than what the dominant culture allows. Those taking part in protests against the proscription of Palestine Action are counting the cost of this ethical choice.

Why does the Israel/Palestine war get so much airtime?

"Why does this very small place generate so many headlines and why does the world look at it in the way that it does?  Firstly, it is uniquely divisive.  Everybody with a background in one of the three monotheistic religions, probably learnt about this place in their education; a lot of people think they know something about here.

"It also plays into people's world views.  If you are one of those people who believe there is a dominant Western agenda driven by American power, by finance capital, by Western attitudes towards the rest of the world.  And also if you have the other attitude that there are important issues of liberation, of freedom, of colonialism at play here, then I think not just the Middle East but specifically the Israeli/Palestinian conflict becomes a microcosm of all of that.  And people are able to play into that a lot of the things that they are passionate about and sometimes people are more passionate about those wider issues than actually knowing the detail, which can be a little involved about what is going on here."

JEREMY BOWEN on Feedback, 7 August 2025