Five Scandals Always Overlooked by ...

FIVE SCANDALS ALWAYS OVERLOOKED by every council leader over 50 years and two WMCA Mayors since 2017

Yesterday, I missed out from my list of three scandals, a fourth!  The deteriorating, disgraceful slum of a canal tunnel which is the Netherton Tunnel towpaths - one closed and the other becoming unusable.  Becoming unusable, even for crazy outdoor adventurers like Chris and me because of its unlit, flooded potholed state, only made a little safer by an ancient rickety rail to prevent a slip into the murky waters!

This is my cycling and walking in the Black Country list of destruction and negligence, of incompetence and corruption by the authorities.  My sad conclusion on the 50th anniversary of my moving to the Black Country in 1976 :

1. Perhaps, one of the first two railways in the UK turned into an official footpath in the 70s or 80s but never improved/modernised and, certainly, never maintained.  Now a dirt bikers paradise to trash and destroy - exactly as is happening.

2. Himley Environmental Ltd (HEL) allows public access from the cycle-walkway and other public rights of way (PROW) to a landfill site venting off a cocktail of poisonous gases - and right next to our cycle-walkway!

3. Anti social behaviour and criminal activity on the Dudley section of the cycle-walkway.  I complained to the Police over these people's threats and intimidating behaviour towards me.

4. The trashing of nature on the other side of our route from the landfill/sewage site in Pensnett/Gornal.  The destruction and negligence is worse than ever from what I saw on Sunday!

5. The deteriorating, disgraceful slum of a canal tunnel which is the Netherton Tunnel towpaths - one closed and the other becoming unusable.  Becoming unusable, even for crazy outdoor adventurers like Chris and me because of its unlit, flooded potholed state, only made a little safer by an ancient rickety rail to prevent a slip into the murky waters!

Netherton Canal Tunnel must be included as part of our ‘Cycle Circular’ which takes in the UK’s Top cycle-walkway through the Black Country and South Staffordshire.

A round table, major get together is very necessary, I think.  Before Covid we had one at Dudley's Lister Road depot over the Pensnett Railway Walk - but nothing came of it.  It was such a well attended meeting by officers, too.  The senior officer moved on to another authority and things got worse, in fact!

Beccy, may we discuss active travel matters​ with you, please at 16 Summer Lane (or wherever) and with Richard Parker, too?  A full hour would be needed, please.  Richard must be involved because of the serious health and safety/security implications from the above scandals.

TIM WELLER 13 August 2026

Ukrainians welcome; Small boat people go home!

Fleeing the Russian enemy attacks on Ukraine and your welcome; fleeing countries who have been under the cosh of Western nations military wars and our wars on nature to bring Climate devastation to them, can damn well GO HOME!

Our English Channel and North Sea moat was effective for a time to ensure there was no way, we Brits took our fair share of these awful people thinking that we can give them, yet again a better life.  We had already been over the world for 500 years to give them the British blessings and virtues they always lacked.  And now they come here.

TODAY! For Climate and Justice, start to finish ...

 ... the magnificent 20 Kms Black Country Active Travel Route in Dudley's very poor 5 Kms.

WRITE to the Mayor above to turn the disgrace into the delight that this alternative travel route is in South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton.

COPY and PASTE the above sentence to the VIPs, above, for ACTION at long last.

VISIT it today, 8 Aug at 10 am at Himley Woodland Trust car park, Himley Lane, Wombourne, S Staffordshire

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/woods/himley-plantation/

Tim Weller - I want to cycle the lot BEFORE I'm too old and decrepit to do so.

Report of 8.8.2026 of Chris's Circular Cycle Route

Chris Barnett and I had our best turn out for our annual ride of his Black Country Circular Route. It takes in our annual inspection of the roughest and worst 3 Kms of a 70s/80s footpath on two Pensnett railway lines in Dudley, the historic capital of the Black Country. 

Yet, the very next section is the best, with a 2.5 m wide, tarmac smooth surface with walkers of all shapes and sizes and cyclists, too. It goes through the town of Wombourne in South  Staffordshire, to the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve in the City of Wolverhampton. 

There follows miles of towpaths - but no roads - to the next challenge. This is the mighty, black, unlit, flooded potholes and puddles of the nearly 2,000 yards of the 18th century Netherton Tunnel canal towpath. Forlorn and neglected for 200 years but a shortcut to connect the two Black Country towns of Sandwell and Dudley.

Forlorn and neglected too by the sidelined Canal and River Trust but also by the wealthy and powerful West Midlands Combined Authority. Made up of the local councillors of Brum, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell et al, they have their top priority to turn our two former mainline railways into tramways - plus, much else, too!

More twisting towpaths on the Dudley No 1 Canal to the 50 Kms finish at a beautiful canal marina.

All this is ideal for cycle commuters and business, leisure users. BUT WHAT A DEPLORABLE STATE OF AFFAIRS, too!

This paperback is essential reading ..

to get Britain's (parlous, pathetic, counter-productive, duplicitous, perfidious, cheeky, self serving, disastrous, catastrophic, so well meaning for supposedly British interests alone, cuck-handed, war oriented, whoopsy daisy foreign policy meddling, revengeful - take your pick) interventions in the Middle East into perspective.

Fair on all players; properly sourced; first hand accounts, unsensationalised and sober - but devastating:-

FROM:  https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Making_of_the_Modern_Middle_East.html?id=AgM10QEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

"supposedly" in our interests because acting selfishly is never in the doers interests in the long term.

If you use ...

I think - but open to correction - if you use violence/war you are showing hate, are part of the problem and being a total hypocrite in not allowing the other side to use violence because only you are allowed to use it. I am thinking of Putin, Netanyahu, Trump. One is our 'enemy', the other two are our side with no BDS against them (double standards by our side).

If you use coercion force violence you are being anti Jew, anti Muslim, anti Christian, anti Russian/Ukraine or anti anyone else. You are therefore part of the problem. 99% believe in violence and war, astonishingly!

I think, they are all anti humanity and bringing us all crashing down to be one of the shortest lived species Earth will have seen. Corporate suicide and ecocide. 

If Zach Polanski had been strong on non-violence, he would never have tolerated the vile Nigel/guillotine tweet by passing it on.

to Gerald

Thanks for this excellent piece that was so good to read. And informative. I've also read Porritt's 'Hope in Hell'.

In often chatting to car drivers sitting in their cosy cars beautifully air conditioned in summer or heated in winter, with their engine idling - sometimes for many minutes - none of them seem to have a clue that the petrol or diesel will one day be no more. It is inconceivable for them to understand that fossil fuels are finite! And that electric cars are also unsustainable and little better than combustion motors. Everyone is in denial that we are foolishly living infinitely on a finite planet and unnaturally on a natural planet. 

For these people, understanding of Climate science is zero. Some think it is up to governments to sort it, if they have heard of Climate concerns. It's nothing to do with them, they think.

I read on Wikipedia that some scientists fear that earth will turn into our sister or twin planet, venus. Venus is hotter than mercury because of its runaway greenhouse effect, although further from the sun than mercury. As we are doing to earth. 

Our thoughtless, care-less drivers live it up today and to hell with tomorrow are hastening the end for humanity. But I am guilty, too but, at least, I'm trying to minimise my impact in many ways while not living as a hermit. Perhaps I should be!

I love your akrasia and must give it some more reading from other erudite authors. I read a book by an XR man who calls our guilty pleasures but knowing they are damaging and totally unsustainable as "cognitive dissonance".

Keep up the brilliant work you are doing.

2nd mail out for Sat 8 Aug 26

Cycle or walk, for coffee and back, on SATURDAY 8 AUGUST 2026 at 10 am, from Himley Plantation car park

Two of us cyclists and walkers are trying to whip up support for getting the authorities to finish the UK's most important and longest, 20 Km urban-rural-urban Black Country Active Travel Route from Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill to NW Wolverhampton, to infinity and beyond.

The surface is fine from the Woodland Trust's Himley Plantation car park, going north through Wombourne and on to Wolverhampton.  It is a 5 Km winter mud bath going south from the Dudley/S Staffs border, which we do not touch!  But please help us to get it upgraded to the South Staffordshire District Council standard by joining us on the cycle/walk.  It needs more of us asking!

First coffee stop, certainly for walkers, is https://www.theplatformwombourne.com/ - at Bratch Lane, Wombourne in the old railway station.

Go to - https://maps.app.goo.gl/YdEszfAvqspUNMyP8

First for cyclists is https://cupcake-lane.com/ - at Smestow Valley/Tettenhall Railway Station, Meadow View Terrace, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton.

MEET at Himley Lane - entrance to car park at P, below:

TIM WELLER  Halesowen  Black Country  (0791 380 4363)

Why I've back slidden, fallen out of love with evangelical Christianity

Many years ago, you (60 year old friends) very kindly showed interest in why I had departed from the evangelical Christianity of my Westhill College days. At that time I gave a very brief and, an extremely inadequate answer. What follows is a better explanation. But, again not everything!

Politics is about morality and leadership.  Ecology trumps theology, as must morality, conscience and personal integrity rather than creeds and doctrine.

 

For me, heresy is when Christians get mixed up with arms production, with the armed forces and going to war at the behest of a  Bush, a Blair/Brown or an equally demented Trump in this decade.

Heresy is when nature's laws are dismissed as being of little consequence when compared to the magisterial monument which is the Bible.

The Bible is put on a pedestal for instruction in how to live. No wonder, the believers have got mixed-up in coercion, force and violence and in control, domination and occupation of other peoples' lands. This is ruling over others, without a by your leave - just imposition from beginning to end. I've seen it called "aggressive pacification" until mutiny (1857-59), as in India, against our British rule! 

The Church gladly saw worldwide colonialism as a wonderful opportunity to save souls and extend the Kingdom of God for His glory. Never mind the million dead and the million forced out of their homes when the Jewel in the Crown, the mighty British Raj, came to an end in 1947.

The very next year saw the defeat of the British Empire as the three Jewish-Zionist terrorist gangs defeated the largest Empire the world has ever seen.  One of them, Haganah, became the IDF! 

Funded by America, the New State of Israel had its aggression rewarded in every subsequent war with ever more land conquered and occupied ever since.

This was a repeat of the colonial settler movement by mainly Bible-believing, God fearing, Christian Puritans of the 17th century who took over N America from the indigenous native Indians. That saw decades of violence by the White man before gaining total and complete control for the last 250 years.  Our total control over the last 78 years imposes American, British and Israeli ever so Righteous Way of the West on the land once known as Palestine.

95% of the followers of the Way of Jesus, for the first 300 years, had it dead right in understanding that total discipleship meant renouncing coercion, force and violence.

Metro history summary

The Wombourne station is the coffee shop, called 'The Platform'.

The Tettenhall station on the Black Country Active Travel Route is another coffee shop, called Cupcake Lane, as here - https://cupcake-lane.com/.

The three new stations on the Camp Hill line were going to be tram stops under the West Midlands Metro tramway plan from 1981 to 2016.  Only in 2016, before Andy Street was elected, did they finally cancel the tram plan and decided on reinstating the commuter trains instead.  It took them ten years to achieve it!

I was writing from the 1990s opposing existing, three mainline railways being turned into tramways.  The first tramway on the first mainline opened in 1999.  The second on the London to Edinburgh, principal mainline railway through Dudley opens in time for Christmas - for the last two or three years - perhaps this year!

Please take a look at riversimple.com and tell me what you think.

With today's talk of Nazis ...

 ... isn't it the Judeo-Christian world behaving like Nazis with still our massacres and slaughters, our genocides and holocaust, our past (unrepented) chattel slavery and world domination; nasty, cruel and callous ways towards the Arab/Muslim peoples?

For 120 years, the very people who call themselves the people of the Book, the Jews and Christians, have been by far the worst at following the civilised norms of the 3500 year old Ten Commandments!

This happy state of hypocrisy is perfectly exemplified in the Jewish Bibi (much beloved even by many fervent evangelical believers) and in Donald Trump with his strong, evangelical power base. 

Today's pathetic, way out of order, way out verdicts on our masters and betters who are only doing their best

We love to give our victims the opportunity to forgive us in our killing sprees down the centuries and round the world.  Just a pity the dead don't have a voice to say just that, "I forgive you for killing me."

Always 1 Samuel 15 v 3 and never the non-violence of the Christian's founder, leader, exemplar and Top, All Round Good Man.  Not even Commandment no 6 (unless God tells you to kill) which goes back, the archaeologists think to about 3,500 years, seems to have deterred the people of violence in wiping people like me off the face of the earth.  Silly me, all the killing was decreed by the Lord God so I just have to put up with being finished off before I can say, 'I forgive you.'

May 2025 Climate alarm IGNORED!

FROM: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide

• Each year, human activities release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than natural processes can remove, causing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to increase.
• The global average carbon dioxide set a new record high in 2024: 422.7 parts per million ("ppm" for short).
  • The increase over 2023 amounts was 3.75 ppm—the largest one-year increase on record.
• Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now 50 percent higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
• The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago.  
• The ocean has absorbed enough carbon dioxide to lower its pH by 0.1 units, a 30% increase in acidity. 

Sooner we urgently stop burning fossil fuels the better.

Professor Caroline Lear, one of the report’s co-authors from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said:   “Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have varied naturally in the past. Although these changes were far slower than the modern changes caused by burning fossil fuels, we can use them to understand how our planet responds to changes in CO2.

Our findings tell us that we will continue to see the impacts of our emissions for thousands of years, as the planet continues to warm and sea levels continue to rise. Phasing out fossil fuels is our only option to reduce this harm, and has never been more urgent.

Professor Caroline LearDean of Research and Innovation, College of Physical Sciences and Engineering

The new assessment shows the last time CO2 was consistently higher than now was about 16 million years ago, at about 480 parts per million (ppm) – the unit used to report CO2 concentrations.

By 14 million years ago it had sunk to today’s human-induced level of 420 ppm.

The decline continued, and by about 2.5 million years ago, CO2 reached about 270 or 280ppm kicking off a series of ice ages. It was at or below this figure when modern humans came into being about 400,000 years ago, and persisted there until the effects of widespread combustion of fossil fuels by humans took effect on a grand scale about 250 years ago.

FROM -  https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/view/2794064-66-million-year-history-of-carbon-dioxide-shows-climate-is-highly-sensitive-to-greenhouse-gases

My matters of concern affecting our town and borough

We are between the devil and the deep blue sea but, there is still much we can do:

1. For my 50 years living in the town, McDonald's pair of traffic lights work independently on the morning major traffic flow to the M5 and Brum.  They can be fixed to work together so that the traffic allowed through on the first Green light is allowed through on the second Green light.
2. The Asda car park white stone roundabout can be put back to how it was - 100% nature to maximise the carbon dioxide captured by nature to slow the release of this global warming gas.
3. Instruct only an annual mow along the edges of the A456/Manor Way bypass to maintain visibility and for trees and shrubs to re-colonise the central reservation to sequester carbon dioxide to slow a warming planet.  Pine trees, we hear on Radio 4, are the worst for ready burning.
4. The present thick woodland on the central reservation shows how the full length looked like before the major carriageway restructuring of 30 years ago.
5. The 50 year old, tyres to tarmac, Grange roundabout could have carbon absorbing soil and grass without affecting visibility to bring it into line with every other UK, major, 30 metre diameter, highway roundabout.
6. Lapal Lane South corner by the 5G mast should have a professionally designed, landscaping scheme of CO2 sequestering trees and shrubs between the footpath and carriageway.
7. Order the scrapping of tram extensions which have brought the enormous cost, inconvenience and more changes between the half a dozen different rail modes under the DfT's Mixed Use Railways project.
8. STOP the dangerous practice of allowing the public to walk over the Gornal/Gornalwood landfill site which vent a cocktail of poisonous gases.  Himley Environmental Ltd (HEL) must be brought to account and put things right.
9. FINISH the UK's top in importance, 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway on the two old railway lines alongside the HEL site, so it is safe and attractive for walkers, cyclists, runners and horse riders to use it on the entire 20 Kms length between Merry/Brierley Hill and NW Wolverhampton.
10. Use the W Midlands remaining, existing or freight only railway lines for commuter and regional TRAINS not trams.

Tim    (Weller 0791 380 4363)

Climate problems arising fast, so ...

We all need to live more simply and modestly to allow other peoples and future generations to simply live on a planet able to sustain all life for all.

ALL as bad as one another!

I just can't get out of my head that our more 'virtuous' side, with our Judeo-Christian Bible and beliefs are ending up allowing aggression to pay in 1948 Palestine.

We Brits meekly withdrew in the face of terrorism by the Jewish gangs - one of which became the IDF!.  Now 80 years of slaughter in the unHoly Land by our side and still no BDS against Israel because she is our friend and ally.  Only Russia!

We are ALL as bad as one another - capitalist or Communist; West or BRIC nations; Judeo/Christianity or Islam!

All this can't be worth it to underscore a principle - aggression must not pay

Ukraine/Russian War - hundreds of thousands of casualties - suffering the most terrible deaths - all for being ruled either by Zelensky or Putin - Volodymyr or Vladimir!

We're all as bad as one another!

I just can't get out of my head that our more 'virtuous' side, with our Judeo-Christian Bible and beliefs are ending up allowing aggression to pay in 1948 Palestine. We Brits meekly withdrew in the face of terrorism by the Jewish gangs - one of which became the IDF!.  Now 80 years of slaughter in the unHoly Land by our side and still no BDS against Israel because she is our friend and ally.  Only Russia!

We are ALL as bad as one another - capitalist or Communist; West or BRIC nations; Judeo/Christianity or Islam!

This paperback is essential reading ...

... to get Britain's (parlous, pathetic, counter-productive, duplicitous, perfidious, cheeky, self serving, disastrous, catastrophic, so well meaning for supposedly British interests alone, cuck-handed, war oriented, whoopsy daisy foreign policy meddling - take your pick) interventions in the Middle East into perspective.

Fair on all players; properly sourced; first hand accounts, unsensationalized and sober - but devastating:-

FROM:  https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Making_of_the_Modern_Middle_East.html?id=AgM10QEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Comment on Andy Street's Facebook page

Andy Street took responsibility for delivering the destruction of the UK's very last principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" by allowing two short sections, totalling 6.7 Kms to be turned into a tramway. All he had to do was to stop the trams and to return the commuter, regional and intercity TRAINS between London and Edinburgh via Dudley in the Black Country. HE FAILED. He was told. He ignored the simple, cheap solution. He hankers after the HS2 of the North!

Octopus Energy gone haywire - again!

I'm an electricity only customer, we are two OAPs, using such a minute amount of electricity because we don't have central heating, no air conditioning and one primary instant electric water heater of 10/12 Kw for kitchen and bathroom which takes electricity only when switched on to give hot water.  A second unit is 3 Kw for hand washing in the small downstairs toilet.

Years ago, we invested in a 6.24 kWh solar array and 14.4 kWh set of batteries which should also explain that even £50/mth charge is too much, let alone £100.

This means we use only 3 to 4 kWh of electricity per day when averaged out over the full year.

Please check your arithmetic and computer for faults.  Or is your whole system of working somewhat inept?

Please explain your actions fully in writing.  And put things right.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, Energy Sec

Fahnbulleh is a rising star in the party who contributed heavily to Burnham’s policy ideas as he was preparing for government.

She previously worked closely with Miliband so was a natural choice for the energy role and will have a crucial task in Burnham’s mission of cutting bills while sticking to commitments in net zero.

FROM: 'The Guardian' today

Ed Miliband praised

... the rules Labour inherited governing the UK’s privatised power market, which mean that the price of electricity is set by gas-fired power stations, which can be highly profitable for them but disastrous for consumers.

Miliband has been trying to wean the UK off fossil fuels, to cheap renewable energy. This will require more investment, particularly in the grid. And the government is intent on decoupling gas and electricity prices, but this is proving a tough and slow process.

His move to the Foreign Office will prevent Miliband from following through on this project, and it remains to be seen whether his replacement, Miatta Fahnbulleh, will continue it with such enthusiasm.

---------

Teresa Ribera, a vice-president of the European Commission responsible for green transition, has been a close ally since Miliband began his first stint as energy secretary in 2008. “He is, by some distance, one of the most skilful and respected negotiators I have ever worked with, and one of the most honest and principled politicians I know. He commands respect in international institutions and among the world’s most influential governments, but equally among developing countries, workers, scientists and business and civil society leaders,” she told the Guardian.

This will help Britain, and the world, in his new role. “I have absolutely no doubt that he has all the qualities needed to become an outstanding foreign secretary,” says Ribera. “His experience in international climate negotiations, his understanding of the economic and social dimensions of the energy transition, and his unwavering commitment to fairness and social justice make him one of the most valuable figures not only in British politics, but in global public leadership.”

FROM:  https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/21/labour-briefed-against-ed-miliband-success-popularity

White Judeo-Christian West record of Islamophobia is longer and deeper than antisemitism!

The Judeo-Christian world has been Islamophobic for many centuries.  Especially, since the 1WW with first Sykes-Picot​ and then with Balfour.  We got the Arabs to help us win the War by telling them that if they helped us win, we would let them govern their own land.  We then reneged on our assurances and tightened our grip on them because we were now in control and wanted things to remain that way.  Duplicitous, perfidious Albion!

Their land, with all that lovely black gold, was far too important to be trusted to the Arabs/Muslims, so we took control of it.  For many decades in the case of Iran.  We even dictatorially, in a USA/UK coup, deposed their own elected President Mosadeq and imposed our man, the Shah of Iran and his Police state!  This is Islamophobic and breaks international law.

Islamophobic since the 7th century because we didn't like their new faith insisting it was a further revelation and correction of our own Jewish/Christian truth.

FROM: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/20/islamophobia-spectator-britain-oldest-political-magazine

A large and comprehensive report from the Centre for Media Monitoring reviewed 3,733 articles published in the Spectator relating to Islam or Muslims. Released last week, it criticised the publication for “a sustained and systemic pattern of biased coverage of Muslims and Islam”, according to the CMM, “with more than half of all relevant articles rated as biased over an eight-year period”. It is grim, grim reading.

Among the conclusions reached by the report are that articles in the magazine regularly portrayed Muslims as a “problem population”, delegitimised the very notion of Islamophobia, and consistently presented Muslims as exceptional or threatening. The overall effect is of a minority that is not only sectarian and separate, but also, ironically, from within its ghetto, dangerous and aggressively colonising British society.

NESRINE MALIK, Guardian columnist

to David G

I love trams and always use them rather than buses.  The first idiocy by our politicians and transport experts was to destroy the lot of them, apart from Blackpool and up Snaefell hill in the Isle of Man.  They then replaced them with a cocktail of poisonous gases from diesel buses and started selling off railway lines for buildings and roads, instead of mothballing them for future railway use to reduce road and railway congestion.  How shortsighted.  How stupid was that?

Next, in the 80s in Manchester, trams replaced trains and buses at the most colossal expense, when that money could have been better spent.  More of the railway network lost for multi-modal transport to make for more changes.  Money for regional Fare-Free Public Transport for every single person from the cradle to the grave and, to entice car commuters out of their tin boxes!

Over one billion to destroy 10 Kms of the principal mainline railway.  Scandalous expense for doing the wrong thing.  BUT the tram was sold to us as needing to be built to get the full 56 Kms between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent reopened.  Trams to get trains.  How stupid is that?

Have you read what I sent you today, David?  Have you read anything I have sent you over the years?

Midlands Connect has always fully supported Metro trams and their expansion.  The £15 billion for 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops by 2040 has not been cancelled, David.  Or, what have you heard?  Am I wrong?

All the best and keep in touch.  Please try and get Railfuture to fight for trains on freight only or unused, still not built on railway lines.  I've been doing their work over the last 40 years in opposing Metro on mainline railways.

What is most shocking and reprehensible, dear friend - McClean Way

Thanks for mentioning to your team members, our Saturday 8 August walk/run/cycle event on the 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway from Himley Woodland Trust car park. Activity and distance are personal choice!  But it is the two old Dudley railway lines, south of the S Staffs/Dudley border which are the object of our desire for us all to use without being decked out in old clothes and wellies in winter.  It's an official public right of way from the 70s or 80s, too but is so neglected it is heaven on earth for dirt bikers and quad bikers!

Tim, were you aware that there was a perfectly good, double track, principal mainline railway that was available but, reserved for trams from 1981, from Walsall Railway Sta to Stourbridge Jct Railway Sta and onwards?  But, perhaps, the authorities were unaware there was your perfectly good railway line in S Staffordshire that is its continuation!

I hope you won't be offended at my sending this to you, just in case you were unaware of the 45 year history of Metro trams going on railway lines - but only 23 Kms actually achieved when 200 Kms was wanted by 2000, 26 years ago!  It is now 150 miles or 241 Kms by 2040.  Here it is:

Sunday, 19 July 2026

What is most shocking and reprehensible, dear friend

 ... about regional transport policy since the 1980s, by both Centro, their political leaders and continuing under the Mayor and the Combined Authority/TfWM, is the constant refrain that Metro trams are the catalyst to get the railway​

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

​open again.

"Light rail (trams) provide the basis for restoring heavy rail services (trains) at the appropriate time."  Tom Magrath, Centro Passenger Services Director, letter dated Sept 2000 about the 120 Kms Black Country Railway bypassing THE railway congestion bottleneck of Grand Central.  Trams are essential to get the trains!

In more recent years, Mayor Andy Street in my talks with him, was only ever concerned that the trams would not stop the reopening of the full Black Country Railway for trains.  In the main meeting I had with him and his advisers, they reassured him that the trains would still be able to return at a later date, thanks to their magic "passive provision".  Absurd!  Therefore, Andy did nothing because he believed his officers rather than me when I pointed out the blindingly obvious that railway lines can be reopened without turning them into tramways and cycle-walkways first!​

 Misconduct in public office - the sham, the dishonesty, the lie of "passive provision" for the re...

​

​What is worse is that their policy of trams to get trains is accelerating the Climate Emergency at a time when drought, 40 C temperatures and wildfires are showing we may be seeing the runaway greenhouse effect on our planet similar to the one on our sister or twin planet, Venus.  Now uninhabitable.

In addition, there are still existing but wasted railway lines in our region or, freight only lines, alongside or near to congested roads and motorways which could slow congestion and mitigate Climate horrors if brought back into use for TRAINS, rather than grossly expensive trams or, nothing.  See this 2003 map​

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

​

​In 23 years, very little has changed for the better.  For 35 years to 2016, the policy was for Metro trams on the Bristol to Grand Central railway in Brum!!  There must still be about 100 Kms of underused/wasted railways left in the region. However, they are all besotted with trams at the most enormous expense and difficulty to achieve.  One tramway is going to the new Birmingham City football stadium to smarten up that deprived area of poverty and poor housing in Bordesley.  Such are their priorities!  241Kms of tramway and 380 tram stops by 2040 to give us the perfect ideal of 'Mixed Use Railways' from the Dept for Transport - the current mantra to bring Transport Heaven on Earth to us all.

Christian = Trump supporter

"Faith is being used to legitimise 'political exclusion', academics warn"

Dr Katie Gaddini, Associate Professor in Sociology at UCL, said that Christian women in the US have become an increasingly crucial part of Trump’s MAGA movement.

“Being a Christian means being a Trump supporter,” she noted, adding that the lines between political and religious belief are blurred.

“‘That's how fused the categories were within the Christian communities that I grew up in… we're at the point, where departing from not only conservatism, but a MAGA-informed conservatism, automatically puts you on the outside within your Christian community.”

from Premier Christian News

8,000 miles off our coast; 300 miles off Argentina's

Yet again, coercion, force and violence have settled the matter once and for all.  We won the war in '82 to determine who should own the islands.  The islanders had no say in the matter but were certainly over joyed that our side was victorious, if never in football.

If we had lost, presumably we would have relocated the islanders to the UK.  No problem.  So why did nearly one thousand people have to die to underscore the principle that you don't ever takeover/attack another country - like Chagos Islands, S Africa or Palestine/Israel or Afghanistan or Iraq or Venezuela or Iran?

Anyway, all that matters is that what we want goes in this world.  We want, we have.  Everything, but its not greed, mind you.  Now, multiple rail modes are called, officially by the DfT - Mixed Use Railways.

Whites taking over S Africa worked. Why not for Israel?

Do you Aaron, see any similarity between the Whites taking over S Africa and eventually coming to an agreement, a settlement with the indigenous Blacks, and Israel taking over more and more of Palestine throughout the 20th century after nearly 2,000 years of being deprived?

Certainly not an exact parallel, of course but it has worked in South Africa where Israelis have failed in their takeover.  Not even a Pyrrhic victory because the Israelis want the lot - from the River to the Sea (in the Likud Charter).

The colonisers upset the apple cart - well and truly!

1600:  Tens of thousands of indigenous N American Indians peacefully co-existing after many thousands of years of their low materially but, sustainable, lifestyles.

1620:  The Pilgrim Fathers arrived from W Europe and trouble started!  The Protestant Puritans believing every word in the Bible newly translated into English, became the foundation of today's USA.

400 years of internal killings - first of the native population and then the slaughter of Americans in the War of Independence from Britain and then the Civil War to rid the land of slavery but not racism.

I'm sure I've heard from one authority on the subject, that more Americans were slaughtered in the 1860s Civil War than the total in all their subsequent wars to the present day!  58,000 dead to fight Communism in the 1950s, 60s and 70s - and then it was an ignominious defeat with later parallels to the withdrawal from Kabul in 2021.

The USA is strongly Bible believing and is the country with the highest proportion of church attendance in the world.  But that means nothing if they cannot stop their slaughter and dominating behaviour on the international scene!