Extravagance for the authorities; austerity for the rest of us - my definition of corruption!

Extravagance for the authorities; austerity for the rest of us - my definition of corruption!

£750 million for the grand Grand Central Shopping Centre, atrium and concourse with the mainline station put in the basement - tagged along as an afterthought.  Still, on the platforms and in the ‘Stop and Crawl’ car tunnel, poisonous diesel fumes to harm our health.  Still, no additional tunnels for the trains to ease train congestion!

£190 million magnificent New Library of Brum opened as smaller libraries closed or were given restricted opening hours.  Just like the new library in its second year of opening!

£86.6 million for Midland Metro trams to Centenary Square from Snow Hill Station (less than one mile) - to replace buses.  Cast iron business case for this profligacy, of course.

£62 million to promote cycling in Birmingham and to give away 5,000 free bikes to Brummies.  No business case of any kind, I believe.

£25 m for a tram on one line for one mile, and the test track on the other.  This prevents the Black Country ICE (inter city express) Line of 13 miles re-opening.

£10 million per mile for Beeching rural line re-opening in depopulated southern Scotland in September.  In this age of austerity, a strong business case was made.  Yet, nothing for the Black Country ICE (inter city express) Line that remains closed.

£100 million per mile for smooth, sleek electric trams to return to Brum city centre to replace hybrid buses.  In this age of austerity, a robust business case made the funding vital.  Yet, nothing for the Black Country ICE Line that remains closed.

£130 million for 1.5 Km (just under one mile) that includes some new trams for the Eastside extension.  In this age of austerity, an unassailable business case was made for the project to go ahead.  This is 13 times more expensive than reinstating passenger trains and stations on nearly 50 miles of freight only lines, like the unused Black Country ICE (inter city express) Line.

£1,000 million per mile (estimate) for HS2 to come to Curzon Street Station in 2026.  Whatever the cost, the watertight business case made this project essential.  It is absolutely vital for the transport and economic health of the nation.  Isn't it funny, that there is still nothing for the Black Country ICE Line that remains closed to passengers?

Isn’t it funny that every business case that is written strongly confirms whatever the unthinking, grey-suited, fine old politicians of ours, want?

15 July 2015

Extravagance for London, Scotland and Brum; austerity for Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall

Dear Laura and Cllr Roger

My subject heading, above is, for me, one example of one legitimate meaning of corruption.

If I may be so honest as to say so, there is this one big flaw in your argument:-

Money is no object for rail projects for London (£15 billion for Cross Rail east-west and now Cross Rail north-south in the planning at similar expense), two very expensive HS2 stations for Birmingham and tram extensions for Brum at over £100 million per mile, to end up replacing hybrid buses.  In other words, business cases are quickly written to make the business cases watertight, unassailable and more secure than Fort Knox - as we have seen with the £50 billion HS2 line - and, the very low priority rail line to the middle of nowhere in rural,depopulated southern Scotland at £10 million per mile.

Business cases are dishonest because they are always made to come up with what the right wing political masters want!  Like the cost benefit analysis that made the Kidderminster, Blakedown, Hagley motorway bypass essential to be built in the 1990s to bypass a mainly rural, dual carriageway and queues at traffic lights in Hagley (we stopped this wasteful idiocy).  So much for it being essential!

Like the business case that made Metro One essential because it would get 15 million passenger journeys a year.  It turned out to be five million every year or less and, been loss making every year ever since.  In other words, it was built under false pretences - corruption in my book.  So much for honest and accurate business cases.

In this age of supposed austerity (now in year six), you and Roger should be livid at the following weird and wonderful and very extravagant public expenditure schemes that go to London and Scotland, with crumbs from the rich man's table going to Birmingham and never the Black Country boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall.  This, in 34 years of fruitless endeavour that must have cost millions of pounds in salaries to the team of officers and, in generous expenses to the many PTA, ITA and the Transport Delivery Committee councillors.  This is all the exact opposite of Gordon Brown's prudent economics for the poor taxpayer.  It is what you get with right wing politicians out of control because there is no checks and balances from left wing politicians like me who never get elected - until, extraordinarily, one did on Saturday, 12 September!

For me, this is all corrupt economics and nothing like living with our means, limits and boundaries of steady state green economics.

In addition, passenger numbers on our urban rail network is increasing.  The demand is clearly there for more rail lines in the rail and road congested Black Country.  More capacity is urgent.  It cannot wait until the 2040s before you work on getting diesel (or better, electric) trains on the Black Country Line.

How to build a railway:

This is how it is done at £10 million per mile - ten times cheaper than Metro in Brum city centre:

http://www.bordersrailway.co.uk/project/how-to-build-a-railway.aspx

Example:

MOVING HEAVEN AND EARTH

Earthworks are often the first and most visible sign that the railway is being built. Firstly, surface layers – in this case cycle-path tarmac– are removed. The ground is then excavated down, or built up to the level where the railway line will lie. Embankments or retaining walls are built either side of the track, using earth sourced from other locations which is then stabilised or re-enforced. Some of the pre-existing embankments will also require improvement. Drainage also needs to be created, as well as installing pumps, laying pipes, building storage tanks and building culverts (drains) which allow rainwater to flow underneath, and away from, the railway. 

WORK TO STRUCTURES

There are a number of structures along the route: 137 bridges, 42 newly constructed and 95 in need of refurbishment. A variety of work is required to existing bridges in order to help them comply with safety standards and make them suitable for the railway to run over or under. We may have to demolish and re-build some structures, including the creation of entirely new roads. However, where parts of a bridge can be re-used, we will keep these in situ to minimise construction works and we only ever replace what is failing or unsuitable. 

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LAYING THE RAILWAY

First we create a railway formation (the foundation on which the railway lies). This is flattened, ready for ballast to be laid on top. Ballast consists of layers of crushed stone which form the track bed and also help to drain the railway. We then level and stabilise this ballast using special machinery, before laying sleepers at precise intervals all the way along the route. Then the tracks are finally laid on top and fixed into place.​

Electrification and electric trams seem to be beyond the UK's level of competence:

Now in the sixth decade of electrifying our rail network we are, still, nowhere near seeing an end to it.  The Swiss did theirs in two decades before 1939.  34 years ago we went haring off into electric trams to replace mainly trains.  Only 22 Km would have been achieved by the end of the year when we were assured that 200 Km would be up and running by they year 2000, fifteen years ago.

This summer, there was an inexplicable delay of three months when all work was stopped on two major English electrification schemes.

Are we competent in building HS2?  Should TfL come to the West Midlands to advise us?  Should we get a further opinion from the European rail industry who do know what they are doing?

Yours sincerely

Corruption is the greater evil than killing Commies and Muslims

Dear all

What some sons of Abraham get up to!

For what its worth, this is how I see things, after reading Simon’s blog about the Central African Republic (CAR).

ONE VERSION:

What a horrendous time for the people of the CAR.  I cannot possibly understand how the situation developed to such a frightening scenario of sectarian violence.  All I do know that the killings by Muslims must not make us even more anti-Islam or prejudiced, in anyway against Muslims we might meet.  It certainly must not make us even more determined to get our own back or, to extend the War of Terrorism in Afghanistan beyond the end of 2014.

As regards political correctness, I think that being correct in every way is the only correct thing to be!  We could do with being religiously correct, too but then that means being loyal to the faith you were brought up in when we should be able to think things out for ourselves and to come to our own conclusions.

Being correct in every way means, I think, acknowledging that the Muslims have a better track record than the Christians when it comes to who does the least violence.

Being correct in every way means, I think, accepting that the Koran has no violence but the Bible has much.

Being correct means understanding that the Arab slave trade was much less extensive,  and brutal than the slave trade by the ‘Christian’ nations.

It seems to me that the Muslim countries look as though they are less avaricious, materialistic and less dominated by the ‘consume ever more’ mentality of the now very rich ‘Christian’ nations.

It is definitely the Western world, with those nation’s wars over their various empires, over the last two hundred years, at least, that has the worst record for man’s inhumanity to man.  The Western, ‘Christian’ world that includes America, is responsible for

• the killings of Africans that included Muslims during the vicious slave trade.
• decades of oppression and deaths of black people by the supposedly ‘Christian’ and advanced nations of the USA and South Africa.

• the persecution and killing of Jews,
• then, Communists in the countries of SE Asia as we fought for “our vital strategic interests”, capitalism and democracy against godless, evil Communism; and, now
• the latest horrors are perpetrated against Islam and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Both direct and indirect killings in, so far, twelve years of the war of terrorism in leaving a wasteland, mayhem and intermittent civil war in Iraq.
• Yet, Bush and Blair sincerely believed they were doing what God wanted in launching the War of Terrorism.  Just like the two Muslims who killed the soldier outside his barracks in Woolwich in 2013.  Except Bush and Blair have much more blood on their hands than the two Muslims, of course.  Abraham and his God and Allah have much to answer for.
• for years the West has threatened to attack Iran for wanting nuclear weapons to balance or match Israel’s arsenal and so deter an attack from them.
• this year, the Western powers nearly attacked Syria as punishment for a chemical attack in July.  Putin saved the day.  And, what an excellent article of his in the ‘New York Times’, too!

Yet, we get into such a state of indignation over the very much lower killings in the countries of eastern Europe that came under Stalin’s control in the wake of his help in defeating Nazism.  We honestly think USSR communism killed “millions of millions” of their own (Daily Mail Dep Editor, Jon Staefel, ‘Newsnight’ 2013) but we conveniently forget our own millions whose premature deaths we are responsible for! However, since we kill blacks and foreigners, perhaps that does not matter.

Therefore, not man’s inhumanity to man but ‘Christian’, Western inhumanity to the Muslims of this century.  How very ironic, how very thoughtless and hypocritical of us, how very unkind of us, how very reprehensible of us!

ANOTHER VERSION:

1. I do suspect (but there is no way of proving this) that down through the centuries, the adherents of the three dominant and influential Abrahamic faiths have been more responsible for killing their own than all the other faiths put together.

2. Muslims in my former workplace (I have now retired) tend to view their home of Britain as being founded and still based on the Judeo/Christian view of the world eg for many centuries the practices of Parliament on the centrality of the Bible and Christian belief and, especially, in the Coronation ceremony of our once all powerful, unelected and dictatorial and, too often, very badly behaved monarchs.  In other words, since we label all Arabs as Muslims, some Muslims do like to label all people in the West as Christians.  That is understandable.

3. The latest upsurge of violence between two largest branches of Abraham's family started with what the 'Christian' West called a declaration of war on the USA - 9/11.  The 11 September 2001.  Indeed, that Bible believing Christian who was saved from alcoholism by the Lord, President GW Bush called his launch of the War of Terrorism, a crusade.  For Muslims, the word, 'crusade' has the horrifying connotations of the first named Christian crusades against the Muslims some centuries ago.

4. That far wiser man of God, Bishop Desmond Tutu, commented on 9/11 as being an act of terrorism and not an act of war.  The implication being that the White House administration of the time, rather than seeing the attack on the twin towers as an opportunity to launch their 'New American Century Project' of violence and domination in the Middle East, should have used the courts of law to bring Osama bin Laden and the other surviving plotters to justice under American law in the USA and not to lock suspects up for years in Guantanamo Bay outside American law, in a state of limbo.  Many seem to be suspects picked up on a whim, provided they were Muslims.  Some remain in Guantanamo Bay without evidence against them and without trial.  No wonder we have many Muslim insurgents or terrorists fighting our brave, upstanding, heroic soldiers.

5. Rather than keeping within the law, we have seen both the very military powerful Jewish state of Israel and its financial backer and supporter, the 'Christian' state of the USA, both indulging in extra judicial assassinations of their enemies who are classed by both democratic states as 'terrorists'.  Exactly the same name was used to describe Nelson Mandela who narrowly escaped hanging for his crime against the state of South Africa.

6. Using the term ‘terrorist’ does help them to assuage their consciences in circumventing the far lengthier but inconvenient route of going down the legal avenues of using American law on US territory.  Or, in the case of Israel, Israeli law.

7. What is worse, the men of violence in both the Knesset and in the White House feel quite unable to even abide by the resolutions and mandates of the United Nations.  The UN, like the law, is another inconvenience that both the Western states, with sometimes Russia and China, simply ignore when it suits them!

8. No wonder we have constant war and mayhem in some parts of Africa, along with Iraq and Afghanistan.  Iraq and Afghanistan that we have liberated to enjoy the rich blessings of Western democracy, religion, culture and schooling for girls.

9. In addition, all these men of violence, some the sons of Abraham in the prosperous 'Christian' West (and not so prosperous 'Christian' Africa) or the 'Muslim' Middle East and Africa, make the very weapons that fuel these never-ending wars.

10. The Bible has much violence in the Old Testament (see NOTE, below); the Koran has none.  I have read every single word (practically) more than once in the Bible and literally every word in the Koran, once.

11. The Bible even has rules for waging holy war (Deut 20 v 1-20); the Koran has none.  The Koran allows self-defence but not pre-emptive attacks of so called ‘self-defence’ as the Israelis have done many times since their state was founded.  Founded, too out of many acts of terrorism in 1946 and 1947 to force the hand of the authorities to give them, and only them, the land.  The most unholy Holy Land, ever.

12. The centuries of the most shocking violence indulged in by the supposedly Christian Western European nations - and the United States of Aggression with its offshoot, Israel - all, in this century, set a very bad example to the warring factions in the Central African Republic.  Or, is it just human nature the world over, regardless of religious belief?

The time is well overdue for us good Christian men and women, the righteous of the Lord, to actually begin living up to the, admittedly, extremely difficult teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels.  Or, if we cannot even attempt to do the non-aggression of being peacemakers instead of warmongers, how about abiding by UN mandates, international law or, just the law of our own lands?

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Or, if even that is beyond us, how about keeping to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights?  This time, only thirty paragraphs of sound, common decency for us to attempt!

NOTE

The Bible is a contrast of ‘Thou shalt not kill’, yet also ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth’, to genocide as God told Israel to wipe the inhabitants of the Promised Land off the face of the map. From that to a loving God and His people are to love neighbour and to love enemies.  Perhaps, all that explains why atheist, agnostic and devout Christian believers all take part in warfare, and look up to our soldiers as heroes, as making the ultimate sacrifice, as noble service and, who so respect our soldier heroes (as my father in law did).  Nearly all vote for the three main political parties who are this century’s war parties.  For it is they who order the years of aggression, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, without any authorisation from the UN.