to Megan and Ros

Dear Megan and Ros

I hope to be there, with Mark I expect, but we cannot speak in the public forum.  But you two have 3 mins each!

Would you both like to read out these questions, please - one each, perhaps?

1. With the urgency of responding effectively to the climate emergency, the fuel poverty crisis and, the migrant crisis would this committee recommend that the Dudley Cabinet gives a high priority to putting low cost, highly energy efficient, 1/2 bedroom apartments on the 10,000 sq m of wasted, brownfield land at High Plateau and Daniels Land at Merry Hill Shopping Centre?
   
    WBHE plan for Merry Hill.jpeg
2. Now that the Dudley Tram is arriving in Dudley town centre, is this the right time to recommend to Dudley's ruling Cabinet that the promise of reopening the full 120 Kms Black Country Railway has finally arrived and must be worked on?  Laura Shoaf, Chief Executive of the WMCA has reassured us that "passive provision" for freight and passenger trains to return is being built in to the Dudley tram line (a paltry concession as both have standard gauge track, anyway.  Or, is that only what she means?).

EXPLANATION AND BACKGROUND

Since the 1990s, under Centro and the Passenger Transport Authority, the promise of reopening the middle section of our railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

has always been dependent on the tramline going on the two nibble sized sections first: "Light rail investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" (letter from Tom Magrath, Passenger Services Director, Centro, dated 18 September 2000)

 Magrath quote, MM history and costs

Light rail is the Dudley Tram aka the Wednesbury, Brierley Hill Extension (WBHE) of Metro.

Heavy rail is commuter, regional and freight services or, the regular trains that we see elsewhere on railway lines not yet converted to tram lines (to then have their trains back decades or centuries later!!)

VERY MANY THANKS!

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