SCANDALS, SCAMS NEED DENOUNCING

Dudley Hippodrome is lost because all the politicians have supported the disgraceful scandals & scams of HS2, Metro trams, powerless Mayor, Sprint, destruction of our railway lines, more bureaucracy with Combined Authority, Midlands Connect ... who have all supported instead of denouncing these wrong practices.

Hippodrome, and the station in the UK's largest town without a railway station, are both lost to gain Metro "bus on rails" trams.

Figurehead, Ambassador Mayor, Metro, Sprint, HS2 are additional, totally unnecessary costs and, therefore, a boost to rising greenhouse gases that we do not need when cutting the gases is urgent to WIN THE BIG PRIZE of survival for all.

VAIN, EMPTY, POWERLESS PROJECTS AND POSITIONS. A hollow joke.

A gesture, showing off, chest-puffing out, of self-aggrandisement.

Report on 6 Feb 'Ask the Dudley Leaders' Question Time'

Four Dudley leaders.  These were the Police - Chief Superintendent Sally Bourner (she used the bus and ran to join the panel - brilliant!); Health - the Director from the Clinical Commissioning Group; Dudley College Principal; and, Cllr Qadar Zada, Leader of Dudley MBC

Cllr Qada's top three issues are rough sleepers, fly tipping and community trouble, said the Chair.

FLY TIPPING

"Assist those who want to do something about fly tipping", said Cllr Qadar.  "I have invested several hundred thousand pounds in a deep clean programme to target every fly tipping zone in the borough and will increase enforcement ... We will clean the borough up ... Clearing 7,500 gullies so we don't have flooding ... Together we can solve some of the problems ... empowering local residents to help them deal with anti-social behaviour and litter ... we are targeting troubled trees.

CAVENDISH HOUSE

Due for demolition ... dilapidated ... £664,000 from the Black Country LEP to demolish it.  £82m will be invested by the company to redevelop the site.  Qadar would like to demolish the building in person if that was possible.

SELF Can the site be used for one and two bedroom apartments to reduce the housing crisis and help rough sleepers?

DUDLEY HIPPODROME

Qadar said, "We have an exciting set of plans from a consortium ... with £9 m of investment" (for that site).

SELF: Keep the facade and convert to apartments, as above.

TRAVELLERS

"Travellers on Flood St for the last 3 weeks with a porta loo", said Qadar.  "This is an isolated case.  We have agreed a departure date for them" but we were not given the date.  "We do not want illegal encampments in our borough.  Our approach to travellers is very robust ... We will have a permanent travellers site with a range of other measures.  We are still committed to that.  W, e will have borough wide injunctions.  We will lock down the parks ... People are not prejudiced in Dudley."

SELF:  Flood Street is to have the swish, glitzy, glamorous "bus on rails" Metro tram gliding down it to Merry Hill.  £343 m to achieve this; yet, Qadar said that the council has been denied £71 m since 2010 in reductions in government grants to run their services.  The lost £71 m has gone to Metro to replace some buses and trains.

POTHOLES

"Talk to Dudley Council Plus website to report a pothole", said Qadar.  "We must make roads safe for people to drive on."

BURGLARY

"One of our top priorities alongside violent crime and organised vehicle crime", said Sally Bourne.  "We will use overt and covert resources to target these gangs.  Four or five burglaries a day.  Targeting car key burglary."

AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE CENTRE

"It will make us one of the leaders in advanced technology to make sure we don't get left behind" - Qadar Zada

"With it taking over the Hippodrome site it will become part of Innovation Park which will have the VLR centre, plus autonomous vehicles and the Institute of Technology" - Neil Thomas, Principal, Dudley College.

LOCAL TOWN CENTRES

"The High St is a challenge up and down the country ... with online shopping.  We are taking on board the Preston model by growing the local economy.  It adds social value.  Our contracts will purchase within Dudley.  Free car parking has not had a major impact on footfall.  No overwhelming attendance.  More people want to live in the town centre - Qadar

BRING BACK SPEEDWAY

Qadar: We are committed to bringing it back.  Tell us where it can go.  I have asked officers to look at those sites.

Self: What about bringing back the railway, to finish it, instead of the short tramway to cut it in half to make for a train-tram-train mainline railway - a world first?!

PROPER RECYCLING BINS WANTED

We will introduce in every ward, recycling bins for segregated waste in every town.  It is a massive part of our agenda.

ROUGH SLEEPERS

No mention by the four leaders or the public in Facebook comments.  Only by the Chair, once.

ENVIRONMENT AND TRANSPORT

My question was read out by the Black Country Radio chair.  Who was he?  He never told us!

Cllr Qada - copied into this e-mail - said, "I'm in constant dialogue with Tim".  CORRECTION: He might get constant e-mails from me (like the rest of you!) but it is all one way.  A monotonous monologue and no dialogue, so far!  He will not send a single e-mail or deign to see me - as yet.  He is not interested in hearing the other side of the case.  A one sided leader with a closed mind.

In his answer to my question, he said that "improving cycling routes is being worked on."  Does this include the 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway; and, signs and leaflets for the Dudley town centre to Brum city centre traffic free cycling route to tell people about it and to keep them on the route?

Qadar said that he wants to reduce nitrogen oxides, a greener housing agenda and is getting more mobile air sensors.

"The environment is very important to us ... We can't deliver on what Tim would like us to do ... Lots of other people do want Metro trams and they are a modern way of improving public transport ..."

MY RESPONSE: I love riding on trams (apart from the hard plastic seats!) but their enormous cost of installation has been at the expense of commuter/regional trains returning to our existing urban, double track railway lines that have not yet been turned into roads, housing and trading estates by planning committees of Dudley MBC.

LATEST NEWS:

This week, the Birmingham Post reported that the Metro Eastside extension has now gone up to £152.2 m for 1.7 Kms and will not be opened in time for the Commonwealth Games in 2022.  Just think how the £1.41 BILLION to 2026 on trams replacing buses and trains could be used to reverse the decline in bus use and more greenhouse gases!

BBC NEWS SITE:  Roger Harrabin on 5 Feb -  Headline: "TRANSPORT WAS THE LARGEST EMITTING SECTOR OF GREENHOUSE GASES IN 2017  On aviation, planes are getting more efficient - but that’s being overtaken by the growth in the amount people fly – and the government is expanding capacity at airports.

It’s a similar picture on trains. Humble local trains help reduce motoring– but commuter services are starved of cash whilst billions are poured into HS2."

SELF: Yes.  Humble local trains help to reduce motoring but trains are not allowed on the 120 Kms Black Country Railway through Dudley because of the obsession with trams at UK Tram Ltd HQ at Transport HQ.  Vested interests at work, aka collusion, complicity, corruption.  Network Rail has also banned commuter trains until the 2040s at the earliest and, then, only freight trains are allowed - aka incompetence, idiocy, illogicality!!

Not Facebook but face to face on Mon 4 Feb 2019

Rough Sleepers and very rough justice  RAISE THE ISSUE ONLINE!

I know that Ernest and Clare are organising an official HGJG meeting for Feb.  This is an additional one for those who are as concerned as I am about injustice, idiocy and ignorance right on our doorstep.

Please come to my home, 28 Hunnington Cres  Halesowen B63 3DJ (3 storey town house with red car) at 7.30 pm on Monday 4 Feb - a week today.  The idea is for us to ask questions on Dudley Council's online forum two days later.  My ideas are below.  Let's discuss all our concerns and, perhaps, get some positive, practical and sensible action from our elected councillors.

"Online forums

If you are unable to join us at a community forum meeting you can still take part through our online forums which take place on the council's Dudley Borough Facebook page and @DudleyMBC Twitter feed, from 6-7pm ahead of each round of community forum meetings. Questions and issues raised via Facebook and Twitter are forwarded onto the relevant council service to be dealt with."  https://www.dudley.gov.uk/council-community/community-council/

For me, Ernest, you are one showing real leadership over what is going so wrong in our borough.  Rough sleepers are the iceberg because they are so visible on our streets.  I think they are symptomatic of inadequate housing provision, of overcrowding and desperate poverty that, regrettably means that voluntary food banks are essential to stop some from starving.  This, in an extremely wealthy nation - in the top five - out of over 190 nations in the UN.  THIS IS A SCANDAL.

Our nation is so obscenely rich, we are now seeing the spending of the grossly immoral £1.38 BILLION to replace only some buses and to destroy any hope of commuter and regional trains from returning, one day, to our own railway "of national and strategic significance" to relieve chronic road and railway congestion in the Black Country and Brum.

QUESTIONS FOR DUDLEY COUNCIL'S 6 FEB ONLINE FORUM - from the comfort of your living room

How about saving the facade of Dudley Hippodrome and building apartments, behind, for first time buyers, and tenants? Or, supported housing for rough sleepers?

What about a new Dudley Central Mosque to replace the shabby, shameful one when the flash, glitzy and glamorous and gloriously expensive trams come swishing by?

Ever thought of putting commuter and regional trains on your wasted railway at new town centre, Castle Gate?  A station there to get passengers to Walsall and beyond and, to Brum by TRAIN!

Is it really just and moral to spend over £343 m to build a most impressive looking electric tram through rundown Dudley town centre when buses are already doing the job just as well and there are many low income Dudley residents who might appreciate free bus use, as disabled and elderly people like me have had for over ten years? Or, the money used for the NHS? Or, free NHS car parks?

In addition, over £2.5 m for each new tram at ten times the price of a new double decker bus.

One disgraceful looking Dudley Central Mosque, a casino, an unusual looking JW Kingdom Hall, a martial arts centre and one wasted Hippodrome are all on Castle Hill dual carriageway. That line of interesting looking buildings is relieved by a smart and most presentable Station Hotel. Yet, the reinstatement of the station, opposite the hotel to relieve congestion and poisonous air and to slow human climate change is not even wanted by our leaders. They only want a piddling little shuttle tram stop to shuttle passengers on our former, half finished, mainline railway to our neighbour's mainline railway at Dudley Port that is in Sandwell!

Tim Weller   Independent candidate for W Mids Metro Mayor 2020 to instil some urgency into how changes in transport policy can reduce the impact of human climate change and postpone Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations" and "extinction of much of the natural world" warning.

Are our taxes being wasted on the Hippodrome and Metro?

Dear Sarah, Helen and FoI team.  Could Sean, at 16 Summer Lane, also help with the answers to the financial questions, please?

"Curtain up on many more years of misery"  Halesowen Chronicle dated 29 March 2018

Could you please give me the answers to these questions?

1. For how much money did Dudley MBC buy the Hippodrome Theatre?
2. When did the council buy it?
3. What company or organisation or individual did you buy it from?
4. Why did you buy it?  What was the original intention and plan?
5. What were Cllr Patrick's "exciting plans" for the Hippo that would end "years of misery"?
6. Was it to create a leisure and tourism hub to rival that of the four at the foot of Castle Hill?
7. How many years or months after the purchase was the decision made to demolish it?
8. Why was it not sold to the private company who wanted to buy it for £8 m?
9. Please name the private company.

Metro trams will revive Dudley town centre with investors pouring in to make their wealth

1. For how long has Cavendish every window smashed House been empty?
2. What are the plans?
3. When will the plans for the site start to come to fruition?
4. For how long has the other huge office block in Flood Street been empty?
5. Are there any plans for it?
6. Am I right in thinking that the flash, glitzy, "all that glisters is not gold", Metro tram will run down both Flood Street and past Cavendish House?
7. When did the last investor move in to Dudley town centre on hearing the good news that trams were finally going to arrive, after 37 years of trying?
8. Is it true that, from a newspaper report in 2016, Dudley was the fifth worst town centre of its size for empty shops - more than 20%?
9. What is the most recent figure?
10. Is there evidence to suggest that it is very largely only local people who shop in Dudley town?
11. What research has been done to find out what proportion of Dudley town's people shop at Merry Hill Shopping Centre?
12. Has there been any market research done to find out how many Dudley folk will jump on the tram for shopping at Merry Hill?
13. When did Beatties department store move out?
14. When does a town centre officially become a ghost town?
15. Do the two huge, largely empty car parks that the trams will run past indicate that Dudley top town is, in fact, now a ghost town?
16. What is the latest figure for the cost of building "bus on rails" trams to pour into Dudley town centre at the rate of six to ten trams an hour?
17. In 2016, it jumped from £310 m to £343 million, plus cost overruns from unforeseen difficulties.
18. Of the new figure, how much are council taxpayers in the West Midlands paying?
19. How much of the second devolution deal will be going to pay for Dudley's extravagant and inappropriate 11 Kms WBHE?
20. Can over £31 m/Km to block, for ever, any hope of finally finishing the 120 Kms Black Country Railway be regarded as prudent, sensible expenditure?
21. Does Helen Martin now regard Dudley low town at Castle Gate as being regenerated and high town as a 'rundown centre'?

Dudley Central Mosque

1. To promote good community relations, does your council give any time or, even any thought, to the Muslim's community long standing wish for a purpose built mosque in or next to Dudley town centre?
2. Has it occurred to you that the smart, flashy tram will run straight past the present unfortunate building that is the mosque?
3. What are the present plans for the Hall Street site that was denied to the Muslims?

With thanks for your help in these matters.  Like two years ago, I will refer the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman if there is no complete and full response by the end of this month.

Best wishes

Tim Weller