TO DUDLEY'S DIRECTOR OF HOUSING - Kathy Jones

TO DUDLEY'S DIRECTOR OF HOUSING - Kathy Jones

Are you able to promote home grown timber for new homes, Kathy?

Can you encourage house builders to do so, in any way?

Does the council build any new homes these days?  Or, just leisure centres?

Is solar passive heating ever specified for new buildings?  Let alone PV solar?

Or Passivhaus standard?

Many thanks for your opinion on these matters, Kathy - please.

Forum now on cost of living and net zero instead of transport

Thanks for this, Katie and Ed.  For the forum, I would like you all to address what I have written here, please.  This is all about climate, cost of living, shortages and building a more sociable and humane society - starting from the bottom, for the most important citizens.

I think it is vital that all WMCA members and officers cancel any further work on tram and Sprint extensions in order for the money to be used to remove all fares from bus, train and tram operations in the West Midlands.  It has been done for me over the last 14 years, since I was 60.  It can easily be afforded for everybody from the hundreds of millions saved from abandoning further Metro, Sprint and HS2 expansion.  High Scam 2 is an unnecessary luxury of only benefit to those who do far too much travelling as it is and, only between three cities and two of their airports, too!

Those targetted for further financial help must be those having to choose between heating their homes or eating nutritious meals.  A massive insulation programme must be targetted at the worst homes occupied by the poorest.  Landlords must be forced to pay, of course.

Solar PV must be encouraged on roofs and not on fertile land that is needed for farming to give food to the local population.  Further measures are here:​

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

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Actual examples, that I can visit for myself, must be given over what is meant by affordable housing.  I asked Gareth many weeks ago but nothing has been forthcoming.  Low energy bills, highly energy efficient homes fit for the workers mean not one square metre bigger than my own mid terrace, 1960s, 3 storey townhouse where I have lived for nearly 47 years.

Best wishes

Tim

My Solar Demonstration Project

Dear Sarah and Tom

I had over an hour, I think it was, with Stewart Towe and Stuart Everton, Black Country Director of Transport, some years ago.  It is now urgent that I meet with you to discuss the climate emergency and, the way that that reality was worsened by the seven decade scandal of first tram destruction, then railway destruction, followed by trams being reintroduced on two mainline railway lines not yet destroyed for roads and buildings as the other 100 Kms were in the West Midlands.

Secondly, I need to discuss with you my own eight year solar demonstration project that has seen the generation of 38,000 kWh of electricity for others to use 32,000 kWh via the national grid.  I used just 6,000 kWh in my own home (2 kWh/day).  We do not need over £20 BILLION spent on spewing out yet more greenhouse gases in building another nuclear plant heavily dependent on finite fossil fuels for the concrete and steel.

Thirdly, Andy Street's £15 BILLION to 2040 for 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops for overground and underground tram lines must be ended.  I have given you the evidence of a worsened bus and railway network that has resulted in the Black Country and Brum.  Just as we have seen with the misspending in the North of England on trams in Greater Manchester and, now possibly, in Leeds too.  Their railway network is now one of the worst in Europe.  And not helped by High Scam Too Fast To Stop (HS2).

 Dear Tom Westley - Chair of Black Country LEP

 One horrible history of truly terrible transport

I can make any time and any day to meet with you both.

With best wishes

Tim    (Weller)

Minimise is the watchword

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk-LnUYEXuM

Excellent video on why we need to go fossil fuel-free asap.

By the spending of money to as little as possible, going for active travel (walk, cycle, horse) and minimising fossil-fuel travel as much as possible.

MY EXAMPLE:

Cruise at 65 mph on 70 mph roads; aim for over 70 mpg in a diesel car but have your own voluntary fossil fuel allowance. Mine is 7,000 miles max for 2021, a 50% cut on 2019 and twice to Scotland instead of six times in 2019.

Disinvest from fossil fuels, now!

End subsidies to fossil fuels, for flying and to arms manufacturers.

End major infrastructure projects immediately.

Invest in solar and small to medium-sized, Passivhaus standard, housing.

End HS2, Metro, Sprint expansion and go for FFPT and bus priority measures.

LEAVE CARS AT HOME INCENTIVE:

You get paid for every day you cycle or walk into work. Include motorbikes.

Voluntary one day a week scheme to leave the car at home, linked to free VED that is ended if three contraventions detected via speed cameras.

Active travel allowance paid to parents who leave their cars at home when dropping off children at primary school.

END free car parking owned by councils. Dudley MBC car parks are still free.

Remove VAT from cargo bikes on new bike purchases.

Voluntary car mileage allowance that I have introduced to cut my car use for, mainly, car camping holidays in Scotland. Six trips in 2019 cut to two for 2021; 14,000 miles in 2019 cut by 50% for 2021 to a maximum of 7,000 miles. Max 65 mph on 70 mph roads to bring over 70 mpg in my diesel car for the max 7,000 miles in 2021.

Solar Panels on NextDoor Hasbury

From what the climate scientists have found, the runaway greenhouse effect means, for our own survival, we have to urgently get out of burning oil and gas. There will be shortages by the end of the century, too. That leaves only renewable energy and wood. Buy your energy from a 100% renewable supplier. I would urge everyone to put PV solar panels on every sq cm of E, W, S facing rooves/roofs. You then use electrical items, one after the other when the sun shines or during the daytime. My E/W roof is completely covered with 24 panels and we get lots of free electricity and export the excess to the national grid for others to use. Check out: info@yougen.co.uk and research their website. Let me know, please what you conclude. THANKS! Tim Weller 4 Sept 2020

From alarming news about the ecological crisis (Covid is one) we have to urgently get out of fossil fuels when, anyway, oil and gas reserves are becoming exhausted. Electricity from renewables is urgent, even though new people who fit PV solar will not get FiT payments. "Currently the FiT scheme pays domestic and commercial green energy producers for the electricity they generate and export to the grid. The closure follows the announcement in 2015, that new generation tariffs would be stopped in March 2019." from: https://www.power-technology.com/features/end-feed-tariffs-uk-mean-small-scale-renewables/ "We can't shop our way out of this problem ... no more consumerism", said Jane Fonda on Radio 4, 'Today' this morning. But, we do have to shop for PV! 9 Sept 2020

Some simple solar solutions for Parliament's and my, James

Dear James and team - and copied to Owen Paterson MP

Your letter was about solar.  It was nice of you to write.

It is not clear from your letter that you understand that for those of us who have solar panels on our roofs (microgeneration), each of us is reducing, a little, the necessity for macrogeneration from large fossil fueled and nuclear power stations.  We are generating our own electricity and exporting what we don't use for others to use.  In other words, each of our homes is a mini power station when the sun shines!  Do you understand that, I wonder?

Therefore, is it not right, and only fair and reasonable after all, that we should be paid for the electricity we are generating for the nation?  We are the true patriots, after all!  Or, do you not get it?

Every single building could be generating some electricity for its own use and, what cannot be used, can be exported for others to benefit from.  Of course, we still need macro generation for when the sun does not shine.  But solar is, at least a help, do you not think?

Do any of you have solar power for your own use and that of the nation?

£8,000 for my 24 east and west facing panels on my mid terrace, three bedroom town house and fitted two years ago this month.  I love my rather complacent, smug satisfaction of reducing my greenhouse gas emissions that we can very well do without!  Enhancing the natural greenhouse effect is most definitely not a very good idea, at all!

Please write back to tell me if you understand how important it is economically and ecologically to use the sun to make electricity, when it does shine!

Please set your own brilliant example to your own colleague and friend, Owen Paterson who has never understood.  And he was Secretary of State for the Environment for a time, too!  But, is there any hope for you, James?  Of course, you understand.

Best wishes

Tim

What a true patriot I am!

Letter to his PA

So far, I have read most of Owen's speech that is good to read (Owen Paterson MP: speech to Global Warming Foundation on 15 Oct).

Could you please tell him that I have generated for the national grid, 4,700 kWh in the first eleven months of having 24 solar panels on the E/W facing roofs of my three storey 1967/68 terraced house, here in the West Midlands.

Before I went for solar electricity we used 2,200 kWh from 12 October 2012 to 11 Oct 13.  In the next twelve months, I used 1,300 kWh (to 11 Oct 14) that I imported from the grid for use when the panels were not generating electricity or, not generating enough.  Therefore, 4,700 minus 1,300 equals 3,400 kWh for others to use and all free of finite fossil fuels.  This is a remarkable achievement that could be replicated by every other roof in the land.  My small, three bedrooms, terrace house is a mini-power station.  And what a true patriot I am!

DO SOLAR and be a humanitarian, a philanthropist!

I've had a short chat this evening with Mike, my father in law.  He's against investing in solar panels because it takes far too long to get the investment back.  Certainly, that is true for him at 86 but I see solar renewables as avoiding fossil fuels that are finite and limited and, all enhance the natural greenhouse effect.  Why think only of putting your money where it will make the most money in the shortest possible time?  Can we not think of future generations and their energy needs?  Can we not think of slowing the exhaustion of non-renewable resources?  Of slowing climate change.  How about investing in solar for humanitarian reasons?  Not for self advancement but to play one's own very small part but, essential part, in improving the prospects for humanity.  Do it for others!

As you said Becky (Roseff), every single roof should have solar panels.  New builds should have them on the roof pitch that is south facing.  I will now make enquiries over the feasibility of E/W facing pitches having solar.  Both those pitches get the sun for half the day each if they are not shaded by trees or higher buildings.  Will any company do it for me?  I will see.