System Change and Climate Change

Dear Stuart

It was brilliant to hear you say that you have PV and don't have a car.  You're a better man than me and, have been a brilliant campaigner - I'm sure all your life.  In using solar and not car we are divesting from fossil fuels and cutting the profits of the fossil fuel industry.  VERY SATISFYING!

I've also been working for change for 40 years, since about 1980 when I saw a BBC 'Tomorrow's World' programme that, if I remember correctly, said that there were 200 greenhouse gases to make for climate change.

My own system change to reduce climate change:

The 80s and 90s saw two roads schemes that I worked hard to oppose: 16 Km KBH and the 87 Kms WOM.  The 90s and onwards has seen me asking that trains be returned to the Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level Station.  But the "solution looking for a problem" and "bus on rails" tram line was done instead.  Just as is happening with the 120 Kms Black Country Mainline between Derby, Dudley and Devon.  Trams are going on two short, nibble-sized (officially "bite-sized") chunks totalling 6.7 Kms.  But there is still 49 Kms left for commuter and regional trains.  What do you think, Stuart?

Do I have your support over cutting GHG emissions by putting trains, instead of trams, on our mothballed or freight-only railways in the Black Country and Brum?  106 Kms, including the railway used as a cycle-walkway between Walsall and Lichfield when every motorway, road and canal crossing is in place for trains.

Switzerland electrified their railway network in the 1920/30s. The UK is nowhere near finishing after 70 years of trying and, certainly the Black Country, thinking that roads, trams and every building imaginable were meant to run along railway lines. Complete incompetence by everyone in the railway sector!

Stuart, do I have your invaluable support over opposing the £15 billion of GHG emissions for underground and overground tram extensions that Andy wants?  If so, why please?

Your wonderful eloquence and outspoken nature is a huge asset to all of us.  Did you get to speak at the climate rally on the 6th Nov?

Could I have the email address for Martin Lynch, please?  I'm desperate to win over the unions.  My really big FAIL!

All the best

Tim

PS I love your banners, behind you, on Zoom calls.  Absolutely brilliant!

ReplyForward

e-mail to Ros on 29.7.21 re UK already undergoing disruptive climate change

Dear Ros - it is urgent that we all pull together on the top priorities for Dudley MBC because of these further alarming reports this morning:-

FROM

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57988023

• 2020 was the third warmest UK year since 1884; all the years in the top 10 are since 2002
• Last year was one of the least snowy on record; any snow mainly affected upland and northern areas
• Spring 2020 was the UK’s sunniest on record, and sunnier than most UK summers.
• 2020 was the UK’s fifth wettest year; six of the 10 wettest years have been since 1998

When you met with Patrick Harley, did you and Marie have a set of prepared questions to put to him?

If so, what were they, please?

Did Metro and Sprint and the £1 billion regeneration of Dudley town centre come up in conversation?

If so, what was said?

Did he explain why he was destroying the Derby to Devon via Dudley principal mainline railway?  What were his reasons?  And why did he want a tram stop instead of the reinstated railway station that was so popular for 100 years?  Especially, when he wants Dudley to become a city and Dudley is the biggest UK town, by population, without a railway station!

You wrote, "improvements to public transport to encourage people out of their cars".  What are your reasons, Ros, Marie and Chris for supporting trams replacing buses and trains at the most enormous cost in accelerating climate catastrophe?

We have opened a Pandora's Box of troubles that will be impossible to put back.  But we must not give up trying but much more urgently reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.  We must immediately stop all work on HS2, Metro, Sprint and put the staff, instead to work on fitting PV, insulation and reusing water in every single building.  Jobs only to feed us and to keep us in shelter and clothing and, well away from coming flood danger.  Only an eco-socialist society can do this.  Hence, I'm a member of Left Unity, as well as a life member of national FoE since the 80s.

We must stop turning nature into concrete, brick and tarmac by destroying railway lines (6 in Dudley alone and 7th on the way) and building unnecessarily, like moving Dudley Leisure Centre all of 1 Km to sit alongside Metro in Flood Street!!

We must regenerate agriculture, woodlands and hedges to bring biodiversity and maximum sequestration of CO2.  I think the Hagley Road hedge regeneration and new planting was the right thing to do, it seems to me!  I walk or cycle past it because it is near where I live.

Everything else, like Dudley town centre, must have retrenchment and not Patrick's kind of regeneration.

Sorry to make more work for you, Ros but I'm a worried Weller about the tough future my two baby granddaughters are facing.  And, I'm guilty and sorry for my own contribution to it.

Please, join me on my cycle ride on the Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway, on Sun 8 Aug at 3 pm from Fens Pool Avenue/A461/Stourbridge Road, to see the state of it now.  We turn back whenever we want.  After an hour might be enough.  MAP BELOW.

Best wishes

THE BACKSTOP!

The BBC Radio 4 definition on 12.3.19: "The Backstop is the mechanism designed to fulfil the pledge made by the UK and the EU that the Irish border will remain open after Britain leaves.  It will kick in if a trade agreement with Brussels was not reached at the end of the post Brexit transition period.  It is contentious because it involves, in part, Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK temporarily remaining in a customs union with the EU."

Journalists, like Jeremy Vine, have described it as ensuring a "no wall between the ROI and NI.  ... there must be no physical border.  It leaves NI closer to the EU and the ROI than the UK."

"Remember, all tips are included"

Booking Reference: 0813/23065

"Remember, all tips are included"

At first, I thought how great.  But then, when I saw the age and apparent wealth of the 99% white passengers and compared them with the largely non British born crew, I wondered how fair this was.  On my return from the excellent cruise, I went on the website and saw that you can get a seven night cruise for under £300, if you can go at a moment's notice.  This is far too cheap for the clientele that the crew are serving in kitchen's, cabins and restaurants.  Modern day serving/servitude/slavery?  I do wonder!

I had breakfast last Saturday morning in Compass Rose and saw the large wooden box for us wealthy passengers to give a service charge for ten days of exemplary service.  I put in a ten pound note that, since then, I now feel was too little.  I should have given ten pounds for each of our excellent stewards, Ann and Ida and waiters, Sely and Sheldon.  I would still be delighted to do so if you can guarantee them receiving my tip and give me sort code and account number.

I came back to BBC Radio 4 on Saturday and heard about cheap immigrant labour.  Therefore, were  our delightful Compass Rose waiters and our two cabin stewards, on the UK's minimum wage?  Who qualifies for the minimum wage on Thomson Cruises?

With the ship based in Turkey from next year, does this mean you can keep wages lower for the lower paid crew?

Do all cruise companies operate a no tipping policy to entice the public on board?

Another quick point for feedback for you!

I did feel that your Daily Mail digest each day is not independent or responsible reporting.  Nor does it follow the BBC guidance over impartiality.  I am particularly thinking of the UK biased and sensational reporting of the Prince of Wales comment in likening Putin to Hitler.  Later, Putin's response was restrained and statesmanlike.  In sharp contrast to the misguided, extremist comment from Charles.

Please consider using 'The Independent' for your cruise daily digest.

Which power bloc of humanity does the most killings?

Many thanks, John.  Sorry for this length - I just love to crystalise my thoughts in writing!

Which power bloc of humanity does the most killings - the Christian capitalist West or the Communists and Muslim extremists in the East?

I particularly liked 'Drop Medicines, not Bombs'.  Not just medicines but, for Afghanistan and Iraq from the War of Terrorism started on 7 October 2001, we would have been better off dropping 'bikes' not bombs!  By bikes I mean everything but handing out death and injury.  Parachute humanitarian aid in to these poor countries and never death dealing devices, unless authorised by the Security Council and never Congress and the US President.

My Christian discipleship also means doing what Paul advised, "Think of others as better than yourselves."  Hence, I am very unpatriotic in mischievously delighting to point out how it appears that the Christian West, down too many centuries (not just the 20th) has been the worst offender in killing other humans.  Death by all kinds of horrendous means that the West got to do first. From, just 1945:- use of WMD, Korea, the Kenyan atrocities in the 1950s, the West's wars against the Communists in many countries of SE Asia, extra judicial killings but, good news, we do seem to refrain from suicide bombing (I wonder why?  Of course, no need to when we have drones to keep us safe when killing!)

It seems, that it was not the Arab Muslims or the Communists who did the most killings (even when remembering but, never verified, Stalin's millions that he killed*).  For me, this is because of the European nation's responsibility for rounds one and two of the industrialised scale slaughter.  Known, by me, as the wild West's World War 1914 to 1945, with the interlude between 1918 and 1939.  20 million godless Communist Russians were slaughtered to help the Christian West defeat Nazism.  Nazism that came out of a Christian country, too!

I think it is unlikely that the Nazis would have risen to power if the West had not started the 1914 war.  The victors saw to it that vanquished Germany was treated without Churchill's much vaunted magnanimity.  German reparations meant that they had their noses rubbed in the dirt.  It was all a breeding ground for very angry, very patriotic, right wing, National Socialism.  Thus, the sequel in 1939.

We persist in thinking that the violent Communists and the violent Islamists are worse than ourselves because, quite naturally, we more carefully keep a record of their killings of us than that of our own of them - and, we never really like violence, of course; it is forced upon us!  In the last century, the 'Christian' Europeans even got their colonies to help in the slaughter to defend their mighty empires in the (so worthy) West's World War.

Hence, my boring and constant theme:- that I would like - shock horror - to hear, occasionally, a Christian preacher exhorting their flock to avoid arms manufacturing and the armed forces when it comes to a job.  Actually, I did hear Tony Campolo (on Friday 6 Sept at B'ham Christian Centre) do just that in the context of President Obama wanting to punish Syria for using chemical weapons in August.  Praise the Lord - and pass the ammunition!**

NOTES *"Ralph Miliband was a supporter of Marxist ideology that was being used to run governments in other parts of the continent and other parts of Europe which was responsible for an awful lot of terrible things, including millions and millions of deaths."  (Jon Steafel, Dep Editor of Daily Mail, on 'Newsnight', BBC2 on 1 October 2013)

** Christians might only vote for political parties that try non-violence or, at least, non-aggression and who abide by Security Council wishes or UN resolutions.  That means, for me, voting for none of the major three war parties.  Therefore, abstaining.