10 questions for Mike Rouse and Simon Geraghty

My questions to Mike Rouse and Simon Geraghty but to everyone present on Thursday 14 September at 1000 hrs - 3 minutes to read out:-

1. In my recent emails to you, have you read a single one because there has not been a reply from either Mike or Simon?
2. Do you actually believe Attenborough's dire warnings about the runaway greenhouse effect?  He talked of:-
   "the collapse of civilisations", the "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings (Dec 2018 at COP 24)?
3. What are your personal reasons, Mike and Simon, as leaders of this council, acting in ways to deny climate science and to deny that burning of fossil fuels is dangerously enhancing the natural greenhouse effect?
4. As important non-constituent members of the West Midlands Combined Authority, why have you failed to challenge your colleagues over destroying about 100 Kms of railway lines, including your very own 120 Kms Worcester, Kidderminster, Stourbridge, Dudley to Derby railway "of national strategic significance"?
5. How did this come about that you have shown no interest whatsoever in restoring passenger and freight trains to one of only two north-south railways west of Birmingham and, that goes through your county town?
6. Why have you failed to act to replace the slum disgrace and joke of a bus station at Kidderminster while being fully aware that your fellow councillors, up the unfinished mainline railway, were splashing out on putting the most expensive form of public transport after High Scam 2 on the Worcester, Black Country, Derby railway?
7. Were you aware that hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on replacing buses and trains with wealth flaunting, glitzy, glamorous trams?  Did you know that only 23 Kms have been built in 42 years, with 18 of those 23 Kms on the first mainline railway destroyed?
8. How do you explain, if only to yourselves, that you have subsidised and cosseted motorists while forgetting and failing in your duties towards the "households outside of London where 16.7% don't have a car.12 Dec 2022"  (Wikipedia) and have to use buses and trains?
9. Have either of you ever been to Kiddi bus station and seen the broken roof panels with rainwater dripping on your heads if you stood in the wrong place?
10. And when did either of you actually travel by bus?  Did you know it was national 'Catch a Bus Month', this month?  When did you last try bus travel?

Tim Weller

Kidderminster's slum bus station disgrace!

This time a definite 20th century, tired, uninviting, slum bus shelter

Dear Cllrs Mike and Simon (Rouse and Geraghty)

PHOTO, below

Could Mike Rouse and the relevant officer reply, please with an assurance that something will finally be done about the shocking state of bus provision in Kidderminster?

How can we get modal shift from car to bus with this kind of antiquated, uninviting provision?

Hundreds of millions of pounds in price and pounds in weight of greenhouse gas emissions for trams taking over railways and roads in Brum and the Black Country but nothing for the poor bus passenger who contributes the least in worsening the climate emergency!!

Is this a Victorian horse-drawn omnibus shelter or Victorian coffin rest?

Dear Cllr Mike - no reply from Alan Amos.  Perhaps, you could do so, please along with the appropriate officer.  And Cllr Simon could do with visiting this astonishingly decrepit looking bus station, too - it must be the worst in England!

SEE PHOTO, below

It concerns the grotty, the disgraceful and shoddy looking bus station that looks as though it is something out of Noah's Ark.  Two roof panels are missing to let in the rain.  The drivers have their break/rest by standing at one end, with the waiting passengers standing at the other end!

Read my email, below that got no comment or reply from a single person!

PHOTO, BELOW - taken in Exchange Street, Kidderminster today, in the 21st century.

But, did they have bus shelters in the Victorian age, for this might be one?

Is this where Queen Victoria's coffin rested in 1901?  I didn't know she died in Kiddi.

This particular 19th century model is draughty and cold, without even its Victorian wicker or timber seating and is not inviting to stand in for hours in hope of a Diamond drawing up.  Do you agree?

Seriously, what is this odd structure, please?

If a bus shelter, can the woman in the photo be sure of a bus even stopping if she continues to wait and wait and wait?

This 'shelter' is the first from the bus station for at least the Diamond 192 that my wife and I were on today but it went rushing past, so perhaps it is not a 'live' bus stop, at all.

Should this particular coffin rest or horse-drawn omnibus shelter now be consigned to the Black Country Living Museum, perhaps?

Please reply