Legitimate parallel between the idiocy and incompetence revealed in the Post Office scandal ...

FAO Alison Appleby, Natural England, Worcester and other VIPs, all included here.

 Daniels Land draft report V3 24-11-23.pdf

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

 Map Wednesbury - Brierley Hill.pdf

There is a legitimate parallel between the utter idiocy and incomparable incompetence revealed in the Post Office scandal and with what is going on, for even more decades, over land on either side of Dudley No 1 Canal at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.

For more than forty years there remain plans, now coming much closer to fruition, to destroy for ever public open space, housing land and nature, including a possible SSSI.  This is, particularly, the wetland habitat at Daniels Land on the W side of Dudley's premier canal that may have great crested newts as are found at the SSSI at Fens Pools, Pensnett.

In our case, it is the total absence, especially by professional officers, to be even slightly bothered or to be even a smidgeon interested in what is planned.  In over thirty years, I don't think one person has said they agree with me over the stupidity of destroying the UK's last railway

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

• to also destroy a possible SSSI,
• to further deplete nature in "one of the most nature depleted countries in the world" by putting buildings on it;
• to destroy the only official and well used public open space on the 400 metre canal embankment at Merry Hill;
  
   6 glorious white trees.jpg
• to build, for £100 m, a 400 m concrete and steel, double track tramway for Metro when it would get many more passengers by staying on the nationally important railway between London and Edinburgh via the Black Country to complete the missing link between Dudley and Stourbridge Jct;
• the tramway goes soaring over my vertical guerrilla garden, planted with the knowledge of the owners - to nicely wipe that off the face of the earth, too!

Will I get even a single response?!  We'll see!

QUIZ no 4 - to amuse and inform

Should £100s m be spent on bringing Metro trams to Merry Hill when it will completely obliterate the only public open space, nature and housing land there? YES/NO    

Should £10s m, instead be spent on connecting that same tram, from Dudley town on the existing/missing railway link, to connect the tram to the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct?  YES/NO

H​ow do you get a DOUBLE advantage from one sensible decision in this mad, mad world?!    

5 suggestions for the Left to support

Thanks, Mike and Bob for writing.  Nice to hear from you both.  Copied to Stuart.

I bcc'd only Stuart as a leading Birmingham left politician along with Bob and yourself.  Stuart is an indefatigable campaigner for social justice and peaceful co-existence around the world whom we must work with in any new and broader left wing party.  LU and SWP and all the others, including the Communist Party must be included in a broad left coalition where we cannot all agree on everything, obviously but, my list of rather basic and obvious suggestions, as here may be included - but, I somehow doubt it!:

1. 1/2 bedroom apartments that are highly energy efficient and solar powered for the most badly housed at High Plateau, Merry Hill Shopping Centre.
2. The return of ONLY stations, commuter and regional trains to our railway lines that have not been built on or turned into two nibble sized tramlines on a total of 5.5 Kms with 50.5 Kms still remaining for TRAINS on the 120 Kms Black Country Railway between Worcester and Derby.  To cut greenhouse gas emissions from our addiction to car use.
3. The major, urban-rural-urban, 22 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walk Mudway to be transformed into a usable, finite fossil fuel FREE, business, commuter and leisure route.   To cut greenhouse gas emissions.
4. The Black Country Urban Forest to be returned to, in order to use the grass embankments and the other suitable land at Merry Hill SC.  To capture carbon dioxide and improve biodiversity.
5. WOULD THIS WORK?  A two-year trial of a bus/business lane (NOT TRAMLINE!) on the nearside lane of Hagley Road in Brum to reward car commuters who take the bus with Fare-Free Public Transport extended to ALL and, in the rush hours with some traffic light priority on Hagley Road for buses and work buses and pre-registered essential vehicle users who can all use both lanes.  So you don't need a dedicated bus lane at all, then?

Objectives: (a) to free up road space in rush hours for essential road users who must have a vehicle to be able to carry out their work.

(b) to make for a more efficient use of highly expensive city centre land, with much less given to car parking and more for solar powered, modest sized housing.

(c) a more sensible use of road space that cannot go on being widened.

(d) to make it as anti-social to car commute as smoking now is in the presence of non-smokers.

(e) to cut deadly greenhouse gas emissions.

All the best

Tim   (0791 380 4363)

I have succeeded and failed by going into the citadels of power

Dear Fran  (Fran Wilde of XR)

First by writing letters, then emails and texts.  But, above all, by visiting the decision makers in their surgeries and offices and their important Board meetings.  By going into the citadels of power when their meetings have been opened to the public and engaging with them in conversation and asking for this, that and the other.

A wonderful Labour councillor and Chair of a Brum CC committee saw me and quickly got Graham Lennard to turn the Harborne Line into a decent and usable cycle-walkway.

After 30 years of asking, off and on, the same was done in Woodgate Valley CP and I now have a six mile traffic-free cycle route into the centre of Power at HQ of everything - 16 Summer Lane!

I've succeeded in turning Merry Hill SC into merry heaven

by my guerrilla garden antics and my own landscape enhancement scheme;

by asking for housing there and getting the homes in the grounds of Merry Hill, on Pedmore Road;

by asking for the corroded metal sheet piling to be covered by nature and getting 16 trees, officially planted round the corner from where I have my vertical guerrilla garden;

for 40 years keeping the 400 metre canal embankment free of the massive 400 m concrete and steel tramway viaduct for the Dudley Tram.  It would have destroyed my guerrilla garden.

I failed to keep the monorail at Merry Hill.  Perhaps, because it was never connected across the final 400 m to the principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" that should have been re-opened in the 1990s.

Less than ten years ago, HQ of the lot decided to no longer turn the important mainline railway into a tramway through Kings Heath, Moseley and Stirchley.  Instead, by the end of the century, they may have succeeded in getting their now wanted diesel, half hour commuter service twice every working day - with three railway stations, too.  SUCCESS!

I have succeeded in keeping the 106 Kms of wasted or only half-used railway lines at the forefront of their minds.

What do you think of these two fun quizzes - funny peculiar, funny humour or what, Fran?  Tongue in cheek with a serious purpose?  My attempt at poking fun at the mighty powers that be?  Improvements, please.

High Plateau stalled site

1. Who owns this site?  The owners of the Merry Hill Shopping Centre.
2. For how long has it been available? The site was created in the late 1990s following the diversion of the Dudley Canal No 1 and has remained undeveloped since.
3. Why has nothing been done on the site? This is not a Council site, the applicant will need to refer to the owner.  The site is however affected by the Midland Metro construction works.  A viaduct is proposed to the east of the site to carry the tram to Brierley Hill High Street.  Part of the site is temporarily needed to support the construction works.
4. What is its area, please? site area to be 2.5 ha (approx.)

Transport and climate essentials

TRANSPORT

Stop destroying or, not fully using, urban railway lines.  It only adds to road traffic congestion and all our woes!

You must have the courage to say 'No' to yet more conversions of vital railway lines and roads to tramlines.

Be content with trams from Dudley town centre to Sandwell and Brum.

If you must do WBHE Phase 2, then keep the trams on the railway line to connect with the national railway network at Stourbridge Jct.  Freight trains at night.

DO NOT destroy nature (we are also part of nature!) by wiping out Dudley Canal No 1, 400 metre canal embankment and housing land at Merry Hill.

Cllr Linda Bigham of Coventry CC

I would like to make the point that it is members of the TDC who are directly responsible for what is so extraordinary and inexplicable and, indeed, tragic.  Councillors make the decisions for the officers to implement.  And I've been alerting PTA/Centro, then TfWM/WMCA to the perplexing behaviour of the experts and authority members since the 1990s!  However, nothing changes.  But you, Linda, can make all the difference and be my heroine!  I'll even treat you to coffee and cake if you would like to make a site visit to the mighty Dudley No 1 Canal embankment at my favourite Merry Hill Shopping Centre that I'm making merry heaven - with your help.

My contact details:

28 Hunnington Cres  HALESOWEN  B63 3DJ

0791 380 4363

Best wishes

Tim

Positive, practical, helpful action to release staff and money for insulation/retro/solar

Hi Chris and Bob - thanks for the Chat sent.

Please could this go to everyone on our mailing list?

In my opinion, we each have a responsibility to stand up against what is clearly wrong and to stand up for how our money should be spent.

The WMCA, and all of their constituent authorities, are spending, literally BILLIONS of money and tonnes of GHG emitted on destroying railway lines and burying Nature under concrete, brick and tarmac.

The Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

is still being destroyed with the WMCA intent on also destroying a brownfield housing site in part, trees/shrubs and my guerrilla garden on the 400 m long public open space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  A £100 m, GHG intensive, 400 m concrete and steel Metro tram viaduct is planned for the steep canal embankment that carries Dudley No 1 Canal with great views to the Clent Hills, Egghill/Frankley Beeches and Netherton Hill.  The tram must, now be kept to the mainline railway to Stourbridge Jct.

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

Up to 1,000 trees/shrubs must be felled for the Westside Metro extension to Bearwood on the westbound side of Hagley Road.

This is all part of the 2020 WMCA/TfWM plan to build 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops to extend Metro tram extensions for £15 BILLION to 2040.

The money must be diverted and the staff redeployed, after training, to work on ending fuel poverty by insulating and solar powering the homes of the poorest.  Called retrofitting that is our FIRST Action Point, as here:

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

PLEASE WRITE OR, FORWARD THIS EMAIL.   THANKS!   Tim Weller

Dudley's emails and customer services

Dudley's address is dudleycouncilplus@dudley.gov.uk and their leaders' addresses: Cllr.Patrick.Harley@dudleymbc.org.uk   Kevin.OKeefe@dudley.gov.uk     Cllr.Qadar.Zada@dudleymbc.org.uk (leader of the Opposition)

And the three Customer Services, here:

customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com;

customerservices@tfwm.org.uk; 

customerservices@wmca.org.uk

STAND AGAINST CLEAR WRONG DOING - AND, FOR THE RIGHT!

Please could this go to everyone on our mailing list?

In my opinion, we each have a responsibility to stand up against what is clearly wrong and to stand up for how our money should be spent.

The WMCA, and all of their constituent authorities, are spending, literally BILLIONS of money and tonnes of GHG emitted on destroying railway lines and burying Nature under concrete, brick and tarmac.

The Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

is still being destroyed with the WMCA intent on also destroying a brownfield housing site in part, trees/shrubs and my guerrilla garden on the 400 m long public open space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  A £100 m, GHG intensive, 400 m concrete and steel Metro tram viaduct is planned for the steep canal embankment that carries Dudley No 1 Canal with great views to the Clent Hills, Egghill/Frankley Beeches and Netherton Hill.  The tram must, now be kept to the mainline railway to Stourbridge Jct.

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

Up to 1,000 trees/shrubs must be felled for the Westside Metro extension to Bearwood on the westbound side of Hagley Road.

This is all part of the 2020 WMCA/TfWM plan to build 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops to extend Metro tram extensions for £15 BILLION to 2040.

The money must be diverted and the staff redeployed, after training, to work on ending fuel poverty by insulating and solar powering the homes of the poorest.  Called retrofitting that is our FIRST Action Point, as here:

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

PLEASE WRITE OR, FORWARD THIS EMAIL.   THANKS!   Tim Weller

Dudley's emails and customer services

Dudley's address is dudleycouncilplus@dudley.gov.uk and their leaders' addresses: Cllr.Patrick.Harley@dudleymbc.org.uk   Kevin.OKeefe@dudley.gov.uk     Cllr.Qadar.Zada@dudleymbc.org.uk (leader of the Opposition)

 

And the three Customer Services, here:

customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com;

customerservices@tfwm.org.uk; 

customerservices@wmca.org.uk

Our incompetent politicians, senior officers and trade union/faith leaders

Dear Philip - very good of you to engage and to disagree.

WE ALL HAVE FEET OF CLAY AND EVEN BLOOD SOAKED HANDS DOWN THROUGH THE CENTURIES

Very many thanks for your email that gives the conventional, official, 'our side is wholly right, our No 1 Sworn Enemy since 1945 is wholly wrong' line.  I feel, sins of commission and omission are not confined to one side and we all need a little repentance and forgiveness from time to time!

Do you also call the Ukraine war, 'The War of Dignity', like the 'Revolution of Dignity' that started it in 2014?

I think we all need to try and see into the mind of Putrid, to stand in his shoes, and attempt to understand decades of our side ruling the roost, of missing opportunities to be less expansionist at his expense - as he sees it.  He also wants his own sphere of influence, just as we do.  Pity that Putrid is going about it in all the wrong ways, just as we do - called human nature that means humanity will, very likely, have great trouble in outliving the 150 million years of dinosaurs in charge on Earth!

Never mind.  Our wars and arms trading to fuel them are all good for employment and economic growth.  The more the merrier, I say.  Live it up today and to hell with tomorrow; the philosophy of too many but certainly not your good self, Philip!

Would you feel able to help over this, please?

This piece, below is about the cross party, financial scandal that your government has been complicit in with enthusiastic funding since 2010 and has never opposed even when you were the official Opposition from 1997 - 2010.

A SCATHING BUT SAD DENUNCIATION OF OFFICIAL ACTIONS (my weekend email to an Express and Star reporter):-

Our incompetent politicians, senior officers and trade union/faith leaders have left the poor out in the cold with a forty year old obsession with Metro trams that destroyed two mainline railways and their stations.  The first was Snow Hill, Brum to Wolverhampton, when the tram was put on the mainline railway to Shrewsbury/Crewe in 1999, when the tram opened.  We heard on Friday that this has cost hundreds of millions of pounds leaving an overspend of £171.1 million in the WMCA transport budget, mainly on tram projects that should never have started, incomplete.

The Dudley Tram has destroyed the former, highly successful for 100 years Oxford, Worcester, Wolverhampton Railway Co line and destroyed the ​recently intact but unused 120 Kms Worcester, Black Country, Derby railway "of national strategic significance"

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

The Dudley Tram, aka Wednesbury Brierley Hill Extension or WBHE is also due to obliterate the only public open space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre, a nature site and part of the 23,000 sq metres of land designated for housing but wasted for decades.  This is called High Plateau between Next, Primark, M&S and the Dudley No 1 Canal.  Obliterated because a 400 metre concrete and steel viaduct will carry the tram on a standard gauge double railway track, over the steep, high canal embankment and my guerrilla garden developed since the 1990s.

Cost for the viaduct and two canal bridges, alone must be in the order of £100 m when the tram could stay on the mainline railway from Dudley town and then connect with Stourbridge Jct and the national railway network.

THE EVIDENCE

The route of the tramline: 

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

This shows the 120 Kms Black Country Railway and the missing middle section:

 Railfuture's full map.pdf

The official leaflet showing the grossly extravagant, financially irresponsible and totally unnecessary scheme:

 WBHE map in leaflet

Railways in our area and railways converted to tramway idiocy:

 Map Wednesbury - Brierley Hill.pdf

The scandal of trains and buses sidelined and even destroyed to give top priority to extremely expensive Metro trams:

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

Your photographer meets me at the clock tower, here - please.  1 pm on Wednesday, 21st.  Road is called 'Embankment'.  Everything on the other side of the road, up to the towpath, gets the massive viaduct treatment:

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

Thanks, Lisa for any write up you can do, please.  Mark Andrews can vouch for me.  He has written pieces over the years that have included what so simply and obviously needs to be done and quoted me.

Tim    (Weller)    0791 380 4363

PS bonus of 3 photos, 2 cartoons to entice:

 Happy and glorious reigning by our VIPs (exclud...

PPS:  Only one wonderful trade unionist has supported me over the years.  Excellent man and train driver, Dave has now resigned from ASLEF, with its hopeless, do nothing, Deputy/Assistant who shares his surname with me!!

Best wishes

Tim

to Bob Whitehead re unsustainable W Midlands

Dear Bob - and invitation to John Christophers in case he might like to join us on Tuesday evening.

70 YEARS OF CITY COUNCIL DESTRUCTION, AND NEGLIGENCE AND IDIOCY!

You seem to be the person who has come the closest to understand what I am getting at!!

You wrote, " ... the money diverted into upgrading the current regional public transport system, including the opening of new routes."  Those new routes, I think should be your own local railway line through Kings Heath, mine through the Black Country and the Sutton Park line.  The lines are already in place or safeguarded, in my case in the Black Country but are not fully used!

For decades I have been toiling away pointing out to the authorities that they first need to build a sensible unsustainable West Midlands where perfectly good transport infrastructure and buildings are NOT destroyed or mothballed/overlooked.  And, where building sites are used to house the badly housed.

My futile attempts to kick up a fuss about the destruction of our railway lines in Brum and the Black Country has been ongoing since the 1990s.  Yet, the UK's only remaining, principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance"

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

 is still being broken up into heavy rail (HR), light rail Metro trams (LR), Very Light Rail (VLR) and, possibly ultra light rail Stourbridge Shuttle (ULR).  Incredible!

When it comes to housing, we are still building well below best energy efficient standards and, overlooking building sites, like the massive 23,000 sq metres at Merry Hill Shopping Centre that has been wasted since the canal was straightened in the 1990s, I believe was the decade.  23,000 sq m designated for housing at High Plateau since, at least, 2020 as here:

 WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

 On High Plateau, I'm suggesting solar powered, very high energy efficient apartments for the badly housed, including some of this year's record 40,000 small boat migrants.  Any chance of WMCC going along with that?

BACK TO TRANSPORT:

Transport infrastructure destruction has been continuing for 70 years when it started with the total obliteration of the Midlands tram network in the 1950s and continues with the Dudley tram on the nationally important mainline railway to this very day!!

More here about the merry dance we've all been taken on:

 6 scandals on the 40th anniversary of the W Mid...

 One horrible history of truly terrible transport

 Dudley's Seven Smashed railway lines

FIRST, get a sensible, unsustainable, non-green transport and housing practice!!

Best wishes

WMCA Director of Housing

Dear Gareth

Thank you for your email.  That is fine and I hope they copy you in, too.

I would like to try and influence you away from affordable housing which I suspect is not really affordable at all!  I would like this: 'Very low cost, highly energy efficient apartments or terraced housing, partly powered by solar PV on their roofs'.

My own home since Jan 1976 is just that!  Mid terrace, 3 storey town house that is so cheap to heat, run and maintain with the E/W roofs with 12 solar PV panels on each.  £1/day in total energy bills for the last six months with Octopus Energy as my supplier.  More for the next six months, of course!

I'm also asking you to fast track High Plateau and Daniels Land at Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Brierley Hill.  Both remain designated for housing for decades but nothing is ever done.

Please can you authorise ACTION!  Only your good self has the power and authority to make all the difference.  To smash through all the paralysis as superman!

Best wishes

Terminate WBHE at Level Street

Dear Chris - and this is also intended for Alex Lane at the Brum and Black Country Wildlife Trust for his interest and action, please Alex!  I've also copied in TfWM who are well and truly fed up with hearing from me and, I'm sure, would love to hear from you both!

Terminating Phase 2 of WBHE at Level St tram stop, between the Waterfront and Merry Hill SC  (WBHE is Metro Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Extension)

I've been wanting to write to you, Chris for a long time and missed my opportunity to give you my email address, last year, when you so very well and fairly chaired the hustings for candidates for Combined Authority Mayor.  I was one of them, you may remember, until I had to pay the deposit!

Like me, you were horrified in the 1980s at the continuing, never ending tarmac, brick and concreting of farmland and countryside at Merry Hill, as well as that open space lost at Narrowboat Way, north of Saltwells Wood Nature Reserve and north of Highbridge Road, Lodge Farm.  Only a narrow buffer zone for nature is now left.  Wildlife gets pushed out for humans!

 UK is one of the most nature depleted countries

Since the 1990s, I've been writing to 16 Summer Lane B19 3SD (Transport and Combined Authority HQ) objecting to Metro trams taking over perfectly good railway lines that should have had commuter and regional trains reinstated.  I soon lost the Snow Hill to Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury mainline that was given to trams when Metro One opened in 1999.  Last decade, I lost the more important, 120 Kms principal mainline railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

that runs between Worcester, the Black Country and Derby.  That line has been given over to light rail Metro on two short sections and, on the site of the former Dudley Castle Hill Station, to a Very Light Rail Innovation Centre at the foot of the road called Castle Hill, Dudley town, below the zoo and castle.

There is one last battle that you and I might still be able to win with the help of both of you, please Chris and Alex!  The Metro tram rejoins the former principal mainline railway at the Cinder Bank roundabout on the Dudley Southern Bypass.  Where the trams come off the railway after Canal Street tram stop, Hart's Hill, I am suggesting it still goes into the Waterfront and almost all the way to Merry Hill Shopping Centre but, it should terminate at a new Level Street tram stop.  This slightly shortened route is to

1. save £100 m by not needing to build the 400 metre, steel and concrete, double track, standard gauge, tram viaduct on the 400 m long and high canal embankment;
2. save my 'magnificent' guerrilla garden from being wiped out;
3. save the only public open space at Merry Hill;
4. everything (and more) in this photo between the road and the canal gets bulldozed for the massive viaduct;
   
    6 glorious white trees.jpg
5. save nature - of which we are part and depend on for our very existence;
6. save the view of five lovely hills from the canal towpath and from the boats on the high canal embankment; and 
7. save all the 10,000 sq metres of land designated for housing - after some decades, is still available for very low cost energy apartments for the poor, as here:
   
     WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg

Level Street tram stop would enable passengers to walk to the Waterfront and, in the other direction, to the shopping centre.  Level St is marked on the above plan and crosses, west to east, the roundabout in the top right hand corner of the plan, above.

Other maps and full details are found here:

https://metroalliance.co.uk/projects/wednesbury-to-brierley-hill-extension/

 WBHE map in leaflet

 Map Wednesbury - Brierley Hill.pdf

 Metro map with my notes.pdf

What do both of you think?  Please could you write and support me?  I'd be very happy to show you my own landscape enhancement scheme that is about to be wiped out - anytime after these next three weeks.

The most important email address is customerservices@tfwm.org.uk - as I've used, above.

Best wishes for helping with this positive, practical and helpful suggestion.