Positive, practical, helpful action to release staff and money for insulation/retro/solar

Hi Chris and Bob - thanks for the Chat sent.

Please could this go to everyone on our mailing list?

In my opinion, we each have a responsibility to stand up against what is clearly wrong and to stand up for how our money should be spent.

The WMCA, and all of their constituent authorities, are spending, literally BILLIONS of money and tonnes of GHG emitted on destroying railway lines and burying Nature under concrete, brick and tarmac.

The Black Country Railway "of national strategic significance" 

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

is still being destroyed with the WMCA intent on also destroying a brownfield housing site in part, trees/shrubs and my guerrilla garden on the 400 m long public open space at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.  A £100 m, GHG intensive, 400 m concrete and steel Metro tram viaduct is planned for the steep canal embankment that carries Dudley No 1 Canal with great views to the Clent Hills, Egghill/Frankley Beeches and Netherton Hill.  The tram must, now be kept to the mainline railway to Stourbridge Jct.

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

Up to 1,000 trees/shrubs must be felled for the Westside Metro extension to Bearwood on the westbound side of Hagley Road.

This is all part of the 2020 WMCA/TfWM plan to build 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops to extend Metro tram extensions for £15 BILLION to 2040.

The money must be diverted and the staff redeployed, after training, to work on ending fuel poverty by insulating and solar powering the homes of the poorest.  Called retrofitting that is our FIRST Action Point, as here:

 Nine Action Points from W Mids Climate Coalitio...

PLEASE WRITE OR, FORWARD THIS EMAIL.   THANKS!   Tim Weller

Dudley's emails and customer services

Dudley's address is dudleycouncilplus@dudley.gov.uk and their leaders' addresses: Cllr.Patrick.Harley@dudleymbc.org.uk   Kevin.OKeefe@dudley.gov.uk     Cllr.Qadar.Zada@dudleymbc.org.uk (leader of the Opposition)

And the three Customer Services, here:

customerservices@westmidlandsmetro.com;

customerservices@tfwm.org.uk; 

customerservices@wmca.org.uk

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?