ALL WE CAN DO IS KICK UP A FUSS but calmly and rationally to educate and persuade

Dear friends

At last night's meeting, Sandra was so right in saying that sending an email or two to a councillor is an ineffective, failed policy/strategy - or words to that effect.  I am suggesting targeting the seven councillors who are the leaders of the WMCA, with Andy Street as their mouthpiece/PR man.  Plus, their seven CEOs, together with Laura Shoaf, CEO of the Combined Authority.  These top VIPs/decision makers are all listed here with their addresses and are all responsible for what is going so wrong:

 Funny behaviour by our dear betters and masters

What I am asking for is a call to arms, a proactive, an up and at 'em, persistent, never ending onslaught on all the authorities, as I have so enjoyed doing over the last 25 years, when it comes to railway destruction for tram construction in Brum, Coventry and the Black Country.  The pen is mightier than the sword of defensive weapons to Ukraine and, possibly now, to Taiwan.  I even turn up at some of their ever so important meetings to try and nobble them - it is so much fun to take them by surprise with a polite, pleasant but pertinent question before they hurriedly excuse themselves!

Left Unity must hit the headlines with our press releases of positive, practical and helpful actions for the bosses to take to improve our prospects.  In 2020, Mike sent our resolution on the idiotic destruction of our 120 Kms Black Country Mainline railway to the VIPs and media outlets.  I think more must follow if people are going to sit up and take notice.  I'm very slowly working on the SWP, the BTUC, the WMPC (Pensioners) and friend Stuart Richardson & co.  XR, too.  But LEFT UNITY MUST TAKE THE LEAD and show how it's done!

Both our own Combined Authority and Edinburgh City Council love to boast, in press releases, of "the largest concrete pour ever" for their "bus on rails" tram schemes at the most colossal and immoral expense when each £ spent = lb weight of GHG emissions, such is our addiction to rather finite fossil fuels.  I have just tweeted back this:

"The largest concrete pour means the largest pour of greenhouse gas emissions to help turn planet earth, eventually, into planet venus."  Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect, according to Wikipedia.

This is from my blog:

Sunday, 31 July 2022

Each of us must walk the talk on climate - and do what we can to help

“This is a call to arms,” he says. “So if you feel the need to glue yourself to a motorway or blockade an oil refinery, do it. Drive an electric car or, even better, use public transport, walk or cycle. Switch to a green energy tariff; eat less meat. Stop flying; lobby your elected representatives at both local and national level; and use your vote wisely to put in power a government that walks the talk on the climate emergency.”

Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide by Bill McGuire is published by Icon Books, £9.99

Tim

 MY CLUES FOR A CLUELESS, FLOUNDERING, WAYWARD G...

SCAM: being taken for a ride, accepting what turns out to be hollow, empty, fake, false, folly

WARNING: strong language.  This is my scathing denunciation of scam after scam!

1. HS2 deception that it will increase capacity on the railways.  It turns out that the thing goes so fast you still need exactly the same intercity service that we've always had, because it can only stop at the very few, most important stations!
2. It gives the most important and wealthy people the choice of either flying through the air in a plane or, on a flash train.  What destruction of nature and of homes to give the big wigs, the wealthy VIPs an even greater feeling of self-importance.  Clearly, they need it for their self-esteem!
3. HS2's little sister is Metro "bus on rails" trams.  This bus on rails must stop at every single tram stop.  The normal bus, going straight on the roads without the expense and chaos of laying down railway tracks, only stops if you push the little button or stick your arm out.  Another deception that makes public transport worse, when it can hardly get any worse.
4. The Sprint scam gives us the bus that thinks it's a tram it's so super duper and flash.  It is all empty style over substance.  All done to impress and give the 'WOW!' factor.  Another disgraceful deception!
5. Grass verges and trees removed and lots of road widening for the wonderful Sprint scam that, like HS2 only stops at the special, few bus stops.  So you still need the 2nd class, ordinary bus for those passengers who need the stops the vanity, swish, smart Sprint is not allowed to stop at!
6. Our figurehead, PR and exceedingly nice ambassador and Chair of the Board for the W Midlands has no official powers!  What is the point of that?
7. He has brought another layer of bureaucracy with the Combined Authority, Midlands Connect, Midlands (wrong) Growth Engine, Midlands Engine Rail, Midlands Rail Hub.  All new organisations and layers of authority we never had - ever before!  How did we ever manage without them?
8. More glossy documents and papers to occupy the pen pushers and give them something to do.  Another scam.
9. "Midlands Engine Rail (MER) is our £3.5 billion plan to transform the region's rail network."
10. SEVEN projects that don't even include finishing the UK's last, principal mainline by putting TRAINS on the middle section that the scammers have clean forgotten all about!!
11. "MER also boosts rail freight capacity by making space for an additional one million lorries' worth of cargo to be transported by rail each year."
12. Yet, these fine transport experts, now in their fourth year of existence, as well as the railway industry's experts, have just destroyed any prospect of freight trains being extended NE to Derby from Worcester, to fill the missing, already built but unused, middle section between Burton on Trent and Stourbridge Junction.

ANOTHER RIGHT FINE MESS OUR POLITICIANS AND TOP OFFICERS HAVE GOT US INTO!