Capitulation to whatever 16 Summer Lane wants

You must all take a much greater interest in transport and not just leave it up to 16 Summer Lane.  Especially, when it comes to the UK's most important, "of national strategic significance", double track, principal mainline railway right slap bang on your very own doorstep!  Connect the proper railway to the bus station by electric bus.  You should be livid that you are being walked all over by Big Bad Birmingham at Transport HQ.  You get second best, passed over, palmed off, with a piddling little shuttle tramline, instead of the proper, grown up, railway that was so successful for 100 years and will certainly be so again.  But you have to stand up to Brum, TfWM/WMCA/Network Rail.  Be assertive.

 

Does this foreshadow when fossil fuels will be scarce and the climate emergency blindingly obvious?

Dear Patrick - leader of Dudley MBC, Patrick Harley

Does this foreshadow when fossil fuels will be scarce and the climate emergency blindingly obvious?

For ten years, your political party has been in power in the UK.  For ten years your party has implemented a policy of extravagance and luxury for the few and of belt tightening and austerity for the many, including your own council.  Yet, as your party has been in power in Dudley Council House for much of that time (exactly, how many years?) you and your Cabinet have been happy for your national government to reduce your grants without a murmur of protest.  Or, will you tell me that I am wrong and provide the evidence, please?

For ten years, under austerity, our NHS has not had the funds it has needed.  Hence, the difficulties we see now.  In addition, your government was taken by surprise, was unprepared, even with widespread travel around the world, that the coronavirus might possibly come to the UK.  From December, your government saw what was going on in China but didn't seem to heed their awful experiences, their warnings and advice to the rest of the world.  The government, your government Patrick, was asleep at the wheel before Johnson's announcement on the evening of the 16 March.

For ten years, your foolish government persisted with grossly extravagant HS2, already spending billions in that time to achieve very little;

since the 1970s, allowing your railway lines to be built on with everything except the kitchen sink;

since 1981, spending much largesse with grossly extravagant Midland Metro trams when buses needed the funds to reward car commuters for using buses, instead to get into work; and to reverse bus decline;

since 2015, with unnecessary and expensive arguments over whether we should be in or out of Europe.

In 2016, Dudley Council gave planning permission for the only feasible site for our reopened Dudley Castle Gate/Hill railway station to be built on.  This foolish decision when the councillors and officers at Transport HQ were telling me that we needed trams costing £449.5 m, first to get trains back on your Dudley railway line so that it could be finally finished between Worcester and Derby!

Will you regard our present lockdown as a foretaste of the time that must surely come when fossil fuels are scarce and when the climate emergency is more blindingly obvious to even you, my friend?

With best wishes for keeping free of this virus and for more sensible, pre-emptive policies NOW, to prepare for even more difficult times ahead this century.

 My ten point West Midlands plan for the new Gov...

Tim

20.6.19 Everything but the kitchen sink on our urban railway lines!

Hi Andy

Thanks very much for your email.  Much appreciated.

From what I have seen or not seen in my 71 years, the railway, the transport and the green lobbying groups; plus the railway industry itself and trade unions, have never fought to stop the destruction and selling off of railway lines that Beeching rightly closed as being uneconomic in the 1960s.  Beeching never suggested that they be obliterated in the way that even urban railway lines have been.  I would think that Beeching never wanted the lines sold off to any old Tom, Dick or Harriet.  Unfortunately, I don't think he recommended that they all be mothballed in case of future use.  Hence, over these last fifty years, our councillors have given planning permission for every kind of building imaginable - and roads - to go on the lines.  I have estimated that we must have lost over 100 Kms of railway lines in the West Midlands in this way.  The 6 Kms Halesowen Railway line to Longbridge has been sold off to private individuals that makes it much more difficult to reopen as a cycle-walkway, without compulsory purchase that is unheard of for a cycle-walkway.

" the various ‘rail enthusiast train groups’ " are never campaigning groups in the more assertive, constructive and helpful way that I think I am.  They all seem to be passive, deferential, apathetic and would never dream of vigorously pointing out the error of their ways - ie, the errors of transport professional officers and the councillors.  The councillors, in particular, show very little interest in getting about in ways other than the car.  They all leave transport matters to Transport HQ at 16 Summer Lane.

In addition, the rail enthusiast groups are as equally keen on trams, tram trains and train trams as they are on the more frequently seen, ordinary, trains.  They would not dream of opposing a tram extension, even on a rare, mothballed, the UK's only, mainline, half finished railway.

Devolution, sharing sovereignty and converting the last mainline railway!

DO WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING?

The process for UK devolution to its smaller countries was not followed for leaving the EU or in converting a mainline railway into a tram line, a test track, a trail of trees and an extended cycle-walkway.

The three minor countries have to share sovereignty with England in a united UK but the UK is not willing to share sovereignty with the EU in an eventual federal set up very different from three countries being part of England/UK!

The 1990's and 00's careful, sensible and gradual process that led to eventual devolution was not followed for a matter of even greater import - our future membership of the EU.  For something more complicated than devolution, all the checks and balances built in to get, eventually an assembly and one parliament was not followed over the matter of the UK leaving EU membership.

On 5 April 2019, 'Have I Got News for You', Ian Hislop commented, "Thatcher said we shouldn't have a referendum on Europe.  It was too complicated an issue to put to the public. She was right."

Similarly, for something so game changing, expensive and, therefore, climate breaking as the decision to convert a safeguarded, 120 Kms mainline railway into two very short sections of tramway, on that matter too, none of the checks and balances were followed.  There was not even any kind of debate or even discussion beforehand, let alone a vote. Not even one of the constituent councils of the WMCA had a debate and vote.  The elected members were content to have the decision imposed upon them by the UK pressure group for trams that has infiltrated Transport HQ.  This, to spend nearly half a billion to destroy the middle section of a mainline railway that reduces capacity.  Yet, £56 billion is spent to increase capacity on our railways with HS2!

Never mind!  That will make £92 billions of benefits for the UK, says the business case!!  Are we living in Alice in Wonderland? Or, know what we are doing? This must be dishonest, crooked economics when all the crucial, fossil fuel resources are finite and, when burnt, screw up the planet's climates in changing the composition of the atmosphere for the worse?