IN A COST OF LIVING CRISIS LET THE POOR HAVE TRAMS AND FOOD BANKS

A LITTLE TONGUE-IN-CHEEK AND STRAIGHT-TALKING:

You may swan around in a car but give the rest - the 2nd class public transport users - flash, glam and gloriously expensive trams to feel important.

A Metro network is a greedy luxury we cannot afford and is immoral, anyway, in the face of so much poverty, shocking housing for too many and, poor diets leading to obesity and health problems.

The politicians and transport experts have had 40 years of trying to rebuild the tram network but it has ONLY resulted in railway lines being destroyed to get nothing that can be called a tram network!

Yet, there is always top priority for the tram network to be rebuilt rather than the train network reopened.  In six years of Mayoral action, not one railway line has reopened and only the tram from Grand Central to Edgbaston - but planning for that started well before Andy's arrival!

Trams are naughty but nice because:

• They do glide from one stop to another at an average speed of 22mph.
• Unlike buses that are 95% request stops, trams have to stop at every stop strung out at about every one Km, on average.
• They are meant to be the silver bullet to solve all our congestion and poisoned city air problems.
• How come, then the roads are clogged and railways crammed even on the A41 that runs parallel to the mainline railway, now a tramway? 
• Everyone, especially disabled people - and me - love the "bus on rails" trams for their step-free access and gap-less platform to tram.
• However, bus stop platforms can be provided, as well, to avoid a total tram takeover.  Where there's a will there's a way.
• Trams are so loved, we can easily lose 1,000 trees and shrubs felled on the south side of Hagley Road for the tram extension to the Kings Head pub.  Bang goes that carbon capture and storage as climate disaster has another turn of the screw!
• Seven UK places have trams and they are found on the mainland of Europe.  Why don't the other 93 have them too?
• With our growing food banks, it is what a top-rate, wealthy country like ours can easily afford, along with £100 billion High Scam 2 fast-to-stop train.
• Metro is 8-10 times more expensive per Km to build than rebuilding a 50 Km railway in Scotland.  But money is no object, even at £4m per tram.
• At such a price, they make a stunning sight on our two former mainline railways.
• It's worth all the blunders causing work to be changed and redone correctly on the short 700 m extension to get it to the bus and railway stations that they forgot at their first attempt with the first tram in 1999.
• If the trains and stations had gone back in the 1990s instead of the trams, the 700 m extension would not have been necessary!
• The 2020 planned 150 miles of tramlines are a scandalous and immoral waste of our money to worsen the climate emergency.
• Especially when people at the bottom of society and migrants are suffering from poverty and ill health.

to Bob Sleigh - Our truly sick, unsustainable, selfish society

Our truly sick, unsustainable, selfish society is letting the poor go to the wall as more of them become dependent on food banks and more have difficulty paying food and energy bills.  It is immoral and foolish to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money on replacing buses and trains with light rail trams, very light rail trams and ultra light rail trams.  Give the money to the poor or, at least give them FFPT (that I've had for nearly 15 years) rather than wasting it on destroying yet more of our railway network.

Ragged Trousered Philanderer

 

Ragged Trousered Philanderer

@RaggedTP

·

9h

Workers aren't poor because they don't know how to save money or cook a meal cheaply. They're poor because a capitalist minority own the means of production, exploit their labour and pay them as little as possible. Workers are poor because capitalists are rich.

Police, PMs, Presidents like to feel that they are untouchable

"To whom more is given, more will be required"

Our culture, our prejudices always tend to give the benefit of the doubt to all authority figures (except, perhaps, social workers!). We all seem to be most sympathetic to our own kith and kin, our own kind, our own class. We are less sympathetic to the stranger, the poor, the immigrant, the classes beneath our own. Hence, our prisons are stuffed full of a disproportionate number of blacks, the poor, the mentally ill and the illiterate - and, now, asylum seekers.

I am always astonished by the number of miscarriages of justice in which the Police are implicated. They tend to go for the old lags, the men already known to them. They go for the likely characters; the men who look as though they are up to no good! Getting the hard evidence is less popular. They also feel that they are entitled to use the tactics of the criminal to beat the criminal. In other words, 'cos they are on the side of the angels, they can use any means to get their good end. They are convinced that, for them, the ends always justify the means. Or, the ends are so important, the means can be stretched, are elastic and ethics can be ignored. Hence, the Police will hide their uniform numbers, be heavy handed and feel they are above the law (they used excessive force - unprovoked attacks, in fact - at the G20 protest in April 2009). No wonder there are so many complaints and so much rough justice. (Remember David Jessell and his 'Rough Justice' TV programmes?).

I think, for men and women of integrity, these sloppy, short-handed methods should be treated more seriously. The Police are so powerful that when they break the law, justice should be applied. It is less popular to do this 'cos we don't like to think that they could possibly be crooks and must, therefore, be charged with a crime. However, the good Lord says, "To whom more is given, more will be required." There should be justice done to deal with lawless Police officers to get the Police to be what we all think they are - upright, clean living, setting a fine example to the rest of us. The problem is, I think, they let themselves down too often and nothing is done. The murder of the Brazilian electrician is one of many examples. General Pinochet also got let off. Margaret Thatcher, in sinking the 'Belgrano', contrary to the rules of engagement when the ship was outside the exclusion zone, killed over 400 Argentinian sailors yet, was unassailable; but, was not beyond criticism on the TV programme, 'Nationwide'.

An extension of this is when our Prime Minister and President think that they can short circuit the UN and international law by deciding they can attack other independent, sovereign nations and, in consequence, be responsible (directly and indirectly) for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. However, even with this enormous war crime, both men are untouchable. Yet, the Lord says that these top men (who both belong to Him) should be required to account for their sins. More is given to them; more is expected of them. Does this not mean that we should be stricter with those in power? But, always justice tempered with mercy, of course.

We are more prepared to forgive those in authority for their crimes because, it seems to me, we are almost all prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to the Police and we supported every post-war governments' unethical foreign policies (Robin Cook's phrase when he was Foreign Secretary). For example, although the small majority of the UK seemed to be against the attack and six year war on Iraq, the people were not against our invasion and, so far, eight and a half year war on Afghanistan. The ends still justify the means when it comes to Afghanistan. Incidentally, our present war is the fourth against Afghanistan since 1839; we lost the previous three and we are losing this one. Our foreign policy is not only as unethical as ever but is as incompetent as ever!

Last night's 'Unreported World' on Ch 4 showed how Kabul is a bloodbath and a hell hole thanks to our well intentioned and sincere intervention but, it is wrong, stupid, immoral; simply a war crime. And more troops from the US/UK are pouring in from Obama and Brown! Attack and invade, occupy and fortify, grab and brag is what we do best as the New Colonialists from New Labour.

Summary
Whenever the law makers, enforcers and upholders break their law, behave like criminals and worse, rather than us lot sympathising, excusing and turning a blind eye, prosecution and justice tempered with mercy is essential - in my opinion. "Those to whom more is given; more will be required."