4 STOKE MPs hanker after a Mayor

Midlands Connect Summit at Stoke, 12 September 2025

"As a Sub-national Transport Body, Midlands Connect", is to make "the Midlands region fairer, greener and stronger for everyone who lives here."

My attendance brings this:

FOUR STOKE MPs hanker after a Mayor.

In a conversation with me, Gareth Snell would not dream of questioning the projects that Mayor Richard Parker has secured for the West Midlands Combined Authority and Midlands Connect organisation.  In effect,

• "Good luck to what they get, I cannot criticise the billions coming their way and virtually nothing for us."
• 'It is of no concern of mine to be bothered about the billions in weight of deadly greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted'. (what Gareth was thinking!)
• CLIMATE EMERGENCY was never mentioned.
• Tens of billions secured for the highly prestigious HS2 for the West Midlands and not Staffordshire.
• This largesse is widely ridiculed as being nowhere near being completed after 16 years and will not be for another 10 years, just to Birmingham.
• The HS1 line never increased capacity.  Nor will High Scam 2 when it has no stations, so you have to keep the existing intercity service!!
• It ends at Handsacre, an insignificant village in Staffordshire.
• But even the much-looked-up-to WMCA failed to get its 200 Kms and 10-line tramway network by the year 2000.
• By that date, it had a paltry 20 Kms with 18 Kms on the first mainline railway.  This, to replace commuter trains for many times more per Km!
• It has a trifling 23 Kms, 
• Now, £15 billion to 2040 for 150 miles of tramway, 8 lines and 380 tram stops.
• Failed to complete its motorway box on its western side.
• Has such horrendous motorway congestion that drivers use it at night to escape long hold-ups.

The WMCA and Midlands Connect have destroyed the UK's only railway "of national strategic significance" that could have taken vehicles off the M5/M6.  Work is ongoing to turn it into a dog walkers' paradise of a cycle-walkway.  In other parts, our cllrs/MPs and transport experts have put buildings, a test track and, shortly, 6.7 Kms of trams (simply a “bus on rails”) on two sections.

120 Kms between Worcester and Derby.  One of only two north-south railways between Brum and the Irish Sea now drowned, dead from political and transport expert idiocy, breathtaking incompetence and stunning indifference.

PHOTO of the principal, mainline railway for dog walkers/cyclists!!

• There are Staffordshire railway lines wasted and overgrown in the Stoke area.
• But brilliant for Nature and bees - and Climate compliance.
• The Stoke Midlands Connect Summit ended with the four MPs wanting top billing for the A50/A500 upgrade.  It's already dual carriageway!
• Yet more clamour for PRIVATE transport as public transport remains in the doldrums.

The enormous gulf in funding between Stoke and the West Midlands is laid bare, here:

4 rail modes for West Midlands.  NOT FOR STOKE - it has to make do with one.

3 bus modes for the W Mids.  NOT FOR STOKE - just one for them.

But Stoke MPs must not interfere in other MPs’ business - over anything, so they have to keep silent!