Kiddi's Slum Bus Station

Choc-a-bloc Tesco car park next to the near deserted, dreadful looking, missing roof panels, Kiddi Bus Station!

Your disgraceful slum bus station ​next to the full car park at Tesco ​is symptomatic of how Kiddi folk  - and everyone else - regard public transport. Private transport is paramount and is all that really matters - plus trams, of course. Very sad!

Thank you Adam for the email.  However, your disgraceful slum bus station, next to the full car park at Tesco is symptomatic of how Kiddi folk  - and everyone else - regard public transport. Private transport is paramount and is all that really matters - plus trams, of course for the few. Very sad!  Would you chase up Wharf Management, who own the site -  please?   Many thanks!   Tim Weller

Why such a very strange, eccentric looking, black (and wooden?) bus shelter that looks nothing like one?!Are you sure there is a timetable somewhere on the structure?  I don't remember seeing one.  The lady standing there in my photo did say it was a bus shelter, so I had to believe her.

Would your civic pride, Adam not want it brought up to date with a modern, conventional shelter that we have in Stourbridge and Halesowen?  This shelter of yours is not even attractive or, interesting as an historical artefact!

The two 20th century, more modern shelters round the corner on the way out of the town centre were also very poor with missing information and not like the TfWM ones in the W Midlands, next door.

Standards need to be urgently raised.  That disgraceful slum of a Kiddi Bus Station needs to be razed to the ground for something more respectable.  Are you not aware of the climate emergency, with the Secretary General of the United Nations saying at COP 27, two weeks ago, "We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator"?  One simple answer is to make bus use much more obvious, attractive and, indeed irresistible to those many wedded and welded to their cars.  You know what to do, Adam.

Best wishes for much higher standards of provision in future days - PLEASE!

Tesco, Asda and the High Street

For many decades, some have been prophesying the death of the High Street - first, in the 1970s from too many building societies, then from too many charity shops and, in the last 20 to 30 years, from superstores like Tesco in Stourbridge and Asda in Halesowen.  In the early 1980s we had the rise of Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  In Halesowen, in the last decade, Lidl came and Aldi next to the new Travel Lodge on Earls Way/Whitehall Road.  However, the High Street remains as vibrant as ever, thanks to coffee shops and tea rooms, pound shops and our Farmers Markets in Halesowen and Stourbridge.  The passing of the years has shown that there is room for many small businesses and large superstores in our High Streets up and down the land.

The great thing about Merry Hill, of course, is not the free parking but the enormous car parks that make us get out of our cars and walk for really great distances for those who are normally so wedded and welded to their cars and sofas - no more parking outside the shop you want to pop into and back into the motor and away (except for High Street, Stourbridge that completely destroys my argument!).  All thanks to pedestrianisation and Merry Heaven and the nirvana of economic growth!!

I remember that Oldbury in Sandwell was a real dive in the 1960s and 70s - dilapidated and down at heel until the superstore, Sava Centre heralded the town's revival and transformation.  It, now even has Sandwell MBC's prestigious Council House.